Wednesday, December 15, 2010

International Visitor Reflects on Thailand’s Misrule by Law

In an article for the Wall Street Journal, former FSI-Stanford Humanities Center International Visitor Thitinan Pongsudhirak questions Thailand’s return to the rule of law and argues that the judicial and military establishment are skewing the playing field in favor of the ruling party. Read the full article»

Thitinan Pongsudhirak is professor of international political economy and director of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Stanford Literature Lab “Quantifies” the Humanities

Interest in the digital humanities continues to grow and Stanford scholars are leading the way. Two weeks ago, The New York Times featured a major Stanford collaboration in an article about the use of technology in liberal arts research. This week, the Stanford Report’s Cynthia Haven details the work being done by the Stanford Literature Lab.

Directed by former fellow Matthew Jockers (2006-07) and English and Comparative Literature professor Franco Moretti, the Literature Lab makes use of the vast digital archives now available to conduct quantitative analyses of literary texts. By analyzing the data rather than the text, scholars are able to see broader patterns in literary production. As Jockers puts it, they are conducting a form of “distant reading.”

Read the Report’s article “Non-consumptive research? Text mining? Welcome to the hotspot of humanities research at Stanford” for more about the research being conducted at the Literature Lab. Then read earlier coverage of Jockers’ and Moretti’s work in Marc Parry’s article, “The Humanities Go Google” (Chronicle of Higher Education), as well as in Amanda Zhang and Corrie Goldman’s piece, “Stanford Students Use Digital Tools to Analyze Classic Texts.

Further information about the Lab and Jockers’ work in humanities computing and academic technology is available on Jockers’ blog.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

“Mapping the Republic of Letters” Featured in NY Times

Mapping the Republic of Letters,” a major collaboration between Stanford scholars and researchers at institutions around the world, was featured in the recent New York Time’s article “Digital Keys for Unlocking the Humanities.” The article looks at the new trend in humanities scholarship towards using technology to enhance liberal arts research and quotes at length project co-leader and former fellow Dan Edelstein. A graphic in the left sidebar highlights the project’s visualizations and summarizes some of its key findings.

In addition to the article, the Times devoted an Arts Beat blog entry to “Mapping” that features a video about the project and explains how to use the publicly available visualization.

“Mapping the Republic of Letters” is led by former Humanities Center fellows Paula Findlen (1998-99) and Dan Edelstein (2008-09) and the Center’s academic technology specialist, Nicole Coleman. Other former fellows on the team include Caroline Winterer (2008-09), Giovanna Ceserani (2007-08), and Keith Baker (2005-06). Groups of researchers are combining data from curated correspondence collections and other archives with tools for visual analysis to better understand the circulation of people, letters, and objects during the 17th and 18th centuries.

“Mapping the Republic of Letters” receives support from the Stanford Humanities Center and is funded by Stanford’s Presidential Fund for Innovation in the Humanities as well as a National Endowment for the Humanities “Digging into Data” grant.

RELATED INFORMATION

Digital Keys for Unlocking the Humanities (New York Times)

Digitally Mapping the Republic of Letters (New York Times Arts Beat entry)

Multimedia Feature on Mapping the Republic of Letters (New York Times)

Chicago Press Blog (features a response to the NY TImes article by Dan Edelstein)

“Mapping the Republic of Letters” Website

Monday, November 8, 2010

Center Names New Associate Director

The Stanford Humanities Center is delighted to announce the appointment of Katja Zelljadt as the new associate director of the Center. She will come to Stanford for the beginning of winter quarter 2011.

Zelljadt currently heads the Scholars Program at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, running the fellowship and academic programs for approximately fifty researchers in the broad field of art history. She helped found the Getty Research Journal, a peer-reviewed venue for scholarly writing, and has been its managing editor for the last three years.

Director Aron Rodrigue praised Zelljadt’s work at the Getty Research Institute, highlighting her “professionalism, unique background experience, and enthusiasm.”

Zelljadt received her PhD in German history from Harvard University, taught at the University of Southern California, and has worked at various museums such as the Harvard Art Museums and the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin. Her interests and publications have focused on historiography, collecting, display, and museum history, as well as urbanization, historic preservation, and photography. Her current project looks at picturing trades in the sixteenth century.

Zelljadt succeeds Matthew Tiews, who served as associate director of the Humanities Center from 2005-10. He left the Center at the end of September to assume the new university position of executive director of arts programs.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Former Fellows Explore Race and Ethnicity at San Francisco’s Premier Literary Festival

On Saturday, October 9, 2010, former fellows David Palumbo-Liu (1994-95) and Bryan Wolf (2004-05) joined two other Stanford humanities professors at Litquake 2010, to share examples of representations of race and ethnicity in literature and art, and to discuss how these portrayals impact contemporary culture.

Led by comparative literature professor David Palumbo-Liu, the panel discussion took place during Litquake’s infamous, pub-style Lit Crawl in San Francisco’s Mission District.

Read more about the presentation, and watch the video recording, on The Human Experience.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Fellows Update Fall 2010

New publications, new appointments, and plenty of awards—here’s what we’ve heard from you since April. And look for a full list of fellows’ publications in the 2009-10 Annual Report, which will be published later this fall. Remember to stay in touch, and if you have news to share, send an email to shc-newsletter@stanford.edu.

2007-08

MICHAEL BRATMAN gave the Presidential Address on “Agency, Time, and Sociality” to the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association in San Francisco last April.

BENJAMIN LAZIER won the Best First Book in History of Religions from the American Academy of Religion for God Interrupted (Princeton University Press, 2008).

2006-07

WILLIAM TRONZO co-edited the digital publication Medieval Naples: A Documentary History, 400-1400 (Italica Press, 2010) with Caroline Bruzelius, Ronald Musto and Eileen Gardiner.

Bill was appointed to the faculty of a new graduate program in History of Art at the University of Rome: Università degli Studi Roma Tre, Dipartimento di Studi Storico-Artistici, Archeologici e sulla Conservazione, Collegio dei Docenti del Dottorato di Ricerca (Storia e Conservazione dell’Oggetto d’Arte e d’Architettura).

He was also appointed by the Sicilian Parliament (Assemblea Regionale Siciliana) to a major new research project on the Palazzo dei Normanni in Palermo: Comitato tecnico-scientifico e organizzativo sul Palazzo Reale di Palermo.

Bill was awarded a three-year (2011-14) grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities with his colleague Caroline Bruzelius for a new research project on architecture and landscape in Sicily and Southern Italy, from the twelfth to the fourteenth century.

2004-05

CHARLES GRISWOLD’s book Forgiveness: a Philosophical Exploration (Cambridge University Press, 2007), which he worked on while at the Center, has received some attention at an American Philosophical Association Pacific Division Meeting (March 20, 2008) and an American Catholic Philosophical Association Meeting (Nov. 1, 2008).

The exchange with the American Philosophical Association will be published in Philosophia 38.3 (2010) and is available online here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/w4r21626m6687535/. The exchange with the American Catholic Philosophical Association has been published in the 2008 ACPA Proceedings and is available online here: http://www.bu.edu/philo/faculty/ACPAProceedings.pdf.

In April 2008, a conference occasioned by the book took place at the University of Oslo. Routledge will publish the results of the conference, edited by C. Fricke, under the title The Ethics of Forgiveness (see http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415885430/).

2002-03

SIBYL SCHWARZENBACH recently published On Civic Friendship: Including Women in the State (Columbia University Press, 2009). She also wrote an article on the notion of civic friendship for the Huffington Post that can be found at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sibyl-a-schwarzenbach/a-failure-of-civic-friend_b_387528.html.

2001-02

ILIAS CHRISSOCHOIDIS has received fellowships from ACLS and the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. Currently (2010-11), he is a visiting fellow at the Houghton Library (Harvard) and the Burney Center (McGill) as well as a Research Associate at the Centre for Economic Learning and Social Evolution at University College London, where he works on applications of game theory to opera. Specifically, he will be exploring the early reception of Handel’s oratorios from cognitive and psychological angles.

Ilias is also the creator of the “Handel Reference Database” the largest documentary collection on the composer, which he has made available at http://ichriss.ccarh.org/HRD/ through the Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities at Stanford.

MICHEAL DYLAN FOSTER’s book Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yôkai (UC Press, 2009) received the 2009 Chicago Folklore Prize for best book-length work of folklore scholarship of the year. The prize is sponsored by the University of Chicago and the American Folklore Society. For more information see http://www.afsnet.org/aboutAFS/AFSprizes.cfm#chicago.

BRENT W. SOCKNESS co-edited Schleiermacher, the Study of Religion, and the Future of Theology: A Transatlantic Dialogue (De Gruyter, 2010).

DANIEL J. WALKOWITZ recently published the book that he started at the Center, City Folk: English Country Dance and the Politics of the Folk in Modern America (NYU Press, 2010).

2000-01

DORIAN LLYWELYN published a new book, Toward a Catholic Theology of Nationality (Lexington Books, 2010).

1997-98

THOMAS D. CONLAN published Weapons and Fighting Techniques of the Samurai Warrior (Amber Press, 2009) and was recently promoted to the rank of professor at Bowdoin College.

MICHIKO SUZUKI published Becoming Modern Women: Love and Female Identity in Prewar Japanese Literature and Culture (Stanford University Press, 2009). For more information see: http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=17270.

1996-97

JOANNA LEVIN recently published Bohemia in America, 1858-1920 (Stanford University Press, 2009). For more information, see: http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=16175.

1995-96

SVEN BERNECKER published Memory: A Philosophical Study (Oxford University Press, 2010).

1994-95

LAWRENCE P. JACKSON has a book appearing with Princeton University Press in November titled The Indignant Generation: A Narrative History of African American Writers and Critics, 1934-1960.

It is the first narrative history of the neglected but essential period of African American literature between the Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights Era, which saw the communal rise of Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ralph Ellison, Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, and many other influential black writers. While these individuals have been duly celebrated, little attention has been paid to the political and artistic milieu in which they produced their greatest works. For more information see: http://www.lawrencepatrickjackson.com/RenofIndig.html.

1993-94

VILASHINI COOPPAN published Worlds Within: National Narratives and Global Connections in Postcolonial Writing (Stanford University Press, 2009).

JANN PASLER received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities 2010-2011 to work on her new book Music, Race, and Colonialism in France 1880-1920.

1992-93

JUTTA SPERLING published Across the Religious Divide: Women, Property, and Law in the Wider Mediterranean ca. 1300-1800 (Routledge, 2010).

PHIROZE VASUNIA published three edited volumes: India, Greece, and Rome, 1757 to 2007, co-edited with Edith Hall (Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, supplement volume 108, 2010); Classics and National Cultures, co-edited with Susan A. Stephens (Oxford University Press, 2010); and The Oxford Handbook of Hellenic Studies, co-edited with George Boys-Stones and Barbara Graziosi (Oxford University Press, 2009).

1991-92

KATHRYN J. MCKNIGHT co-edited Afro-Latino Voices: Narratives from the Early Modern Ibero-Atlantic World, 1550-1812 (Hackett Publishing, 2009) with historian Leo Garofalo. It is the first book-length collection of its kind, making available archival narratives produced by Africans and their descendants in the early part of Atlantic colonization. Kathryn and Leo are very excited about the potential this book has to enrich and, hopefully, impact studies of the African Diaspora, especially within Latin American Studies.

1986-87

VAN A. HARVEY recently contributed a chapter on Feuerbach in the newly published four volumes of The History of Western Philosophy of Religion (Acumen Press, 2009) edited by Graham Oppy and Nick Trakakis. He also contributed to the new Cambridge Encyclopedia of Christianity (forthcoming).

RENATO ROSALDO won the 2009 Many Mountains Moving Poetry Book Contest for his poetry book manuscript, Diego Luna’s Insider Tips. Part of the award is publication of the poetry book (expected fall 2010).

1985-86

REGENIA GAGNIER is currently director of the Exeter Interdisciplinary Institute, president of the British Association for Victorian Studies, and editor-in-chief of the Literature Compass. In addition, Regenia is the chair of the Consortium of Institutes of Advanced Study for the UK and Ireland (CIAS). In June, she addressed the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Tsinghua University in Beijing on the Global Circulation of Literature and Culture.

She also published Individualism, Decadence, and Globalization: On the Relationship of Part to Whole, 1859-1920 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

1984-85

JANE COLLIER published a Spanish translation of From Duty to Desire, Del deber al deseo: Recreando familias en un pueblo andaluz (CIESAS, Universidad Iberoamerica, Mexico, 2009).

GENARO PADILLA has a book coming out in the fall titled Cultural Politics and Pérez de Villagrás: Historia de la Nueva México, 1610 (forthcoming, University of New Mexico Press).

1983-84

GREGSON DAVIS published the edited volume A Companion to Horace (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).

JOSEPH FRANK published two books, Dostoevsky, A Writer in His Time (Princeton University Press, 2010) and Between Religion and Rationality, Essays in Russian History and Culture (Princeton University Press, 2010).

1982-83

DAVID WELLBERY received the 2010 Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Prize awarded by the German Academic Exchange Service for career contributions to the understanding of German language and literature abroad.

David also published Deutscher Geist. Ein Amerikanischer Traum with Ernst Osterkamp (Exhibition Catalogue, Marbach am Neckar: Deutsches Literaturarchiv, 2010).

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Call for Nominations for International Scholars 2011-12

The Stanford Humanities Center and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) intend to offer up to four short-term residencies to international scholars in academic year 2011-2012. Stanford University departments, programs, and research centers are each eligible to nominate one candidate for consideration through their chair or director. Nominations must be submitted by November 1, 2010.

About the Residencies

The purpose of the residencies is to bring high-profile international scholars into the intellectual life of Stanford, targeting those scholars who would be of particular interest to departments and other units on campus and who fit within the respective missions of the Humanities Center and FSI. This year, the Humanities Center will also consider nominations for a limited number of international visitors whose work may not fit within the mission of FSI but would be appropriate for the Humanities Center.

Residencies will be approximately four weeks. Depending on the availability of funds, longer visits of up to eight weeks may be possible. International scholars in residence will receive an office at the Humanities Center and be invited to weekday lunches with the Humanities Center fellows. They will also participate in a research group at one of the FSI centers. They will receive a stipend of $2,000 per week for the duration of their visit plus a housing and cost of living allowance of $3,000 for the month. The Humanities Center and FSI will cover travel expenses for one round trip from their place of origin.

Nominating units are asked to commit to hosting at least one activity with the candidate, should the nomination be successful. Examples of such activities include: student workshops, faculty discussion sessions, departmental lectures, participation in departmental colloquia, etc. Note that these visitors may not offer courses for credit.

This will be the third year of the program.

Eligibility and Nomination Process

Stanford University departments, programs and research centers are each eligible to nominate one candidate through their chair or director. Preference will be given to departments, programs and research centers that have not recently hosted an FSI/Humanities Center visitor. Nominations should include:

—Brief rationale for nomination, including a précis of the candidate’s profile and an explanation of how the candidate would fit with the respective missions of the Humanities Center and FSI and engage collegially with the intellectual communities of the institutes (approx. 500 words: see http://shc.stanford.edu and http://fsi.stanford.edu for more information about the two institutes).

—A commitment from the nominating unit to host at least one activity with the candidate if he or she is selected, along with a brief proposal for a possible activity (one to two sentences).

—Indication from one of FSI’s research centers or programs that the candidate would be of interest to their community. (Not applicable for the “humanists” only). (For the list of FSI’s research centers, and programs, see http://fsi.stanford.edu/centers/).

—Candidate’s CV. Candidates will normally be scholars affiliated with a non- U.S. university or research institution. Candidates must be non-U.S. nationals working abroad. Candidates are expected to be able to function in an English-speaking academic context, although at the department’s discretion, their departmental activity may be conducted in another language.

Deadline

Nominations must be submitted by November 1, 2010. Please send nominations to Beth Stutsman(bstutsman@stanford.edu).

Selection Process

Selections will be made by a committee convened by the Humanities Center and FSI. Especially appropriate are candidates who are finishing a project and are in a position to share the results with colleagues on campus.

Other Opportunities

The Humanities Center will also consider nominations for a limited number of international visitors whose work may not fit within the mission of FSI but would be appropriate for the Humanities Center.

The Humanities Center and the Stanford Institute for Creativity and the Arts are also inviting nominations for arts writers/practitioners.

Questions

Please direct all questions to Beth Stutsman (bstutsman@stanford.edu).

Call for Nominations for Arts Writers/Practitioners 2011-12

The Stanford Humanities Center and the Stanford Institute for Creativity and the Arts (SiCa) intend to offer up to two short-term residencies to arts writer/ practitioners in academic year 2011-12. Stanford University departments, programs, and research centers are each eligible to nominate one candidate for consideration through their chair or director. Nominations must be submitted by November 1, 2010.

About the Residencies

The purpose of the residencies is to bring high-profile arts writer/practitioners into the intellectual life of Stanford, targeting especially those scholars who would be of particular interest to departments and other units on campus and who fit within the respective missions of the Humanities Center and SiCa.

Residencies will be approximately four weeks. Depending on the availability of funds, longer visits of up to eight weeks may be possible. Arts writer/practitioners in residence will receive an office at the Humanities Center and be invited to weekday lunches with the Humanities Center fellows. They will also participate in SiCa’s programming during the academic year. They will receive a stipend of $2000 per week for the duration of their visit plus a housing and cost of living allowance of $3,000 for the month. The Humanities Center and SiCa will cover travel expenses for one round trip from their place of origin.

Nominating units are asked to commit to hosting at least one activity with the candidate, should the nomination be successful. Examples of such activities include: student workshops, faculty discussion sessions, departmental lectures, participation in departmental colloquia, etc. Note that these residents may not offer courses for credit.

Eligibility and Nomination Process

Stanford University departments, programs and research centers are each eligible to nominate one candidate through their chair or director. Preference will be given to departments, programs and research centers that have not previously hosted a Humanities Center/SiCa visitor. Nominations should include:

—Brief rationale for nomination, including a précis of the candidate’s profile and an explanation of how the candidate would fit with the department’s goals, faculty and mission and engage collegially with the intellectual communities of the institutes (approx. 500 words: see http://shc.stanford.edu/ and http://arts.stanford.edu/ for more information about the two institutes)

—A commitment from the nominating unit to host at least one activity with the candidate if he or she is selected, along with a brief proposal for a possible activity (one or two sentences).

—Candidate’s CV. Candidates will normally be artists and writers with a high degree of visibility. Candidates may, but need not, be affiliated with a university or research institution. Candidates are expected to be able to function in an English-speaking academic context.

Deadline

Nominations must be submitted by November 1, 2010. Please submit nominations electronically to Beth Stutsman (bstutsman@stanford.edu).

Selection Process

Selections will be made by a committee convened by the Humanities Center and SiCa. Especially appropriate are candidates who are finishing a project and are in position to share the results with colleagues on campus.

For questions, contact Beth Stutsman (bstutsman@stanford.edu).

Monday, June 14, 2010

Center Director Aron Rodrigue Quoted in the New York Times

Humanities Center director Aron Rodrigue was quoted in a recent New York TImes article on the genetic similarity of Jews. Rodrigue is an internationally renowned scholar of modern Jewish history and the Ottoman Empire. At Stanford since 1991, he is currently the Anthony P. Meier Famiy Professor and Director of the Stanford Humanities Center.

Read the article: Studies Show Jews’ Genetic Similarity

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Former Director John Bender Publishes The Culture of Diagram

Former Humanities Center director and Stanford English professor John Bender has co-authored a book with Stanford art history professor Michael Marrinan called The Culture of Diagram (Stanford University Press, 2010).

The Culture of Diagram explores a terrain where words meet pictures and formulas meet figures, foregrounding diagrams as tools for blurring those boundaries to focus on the production of knowledge as process. It outlines a history of convergence among diverse streams of data in real-time: from eighteenth-century print media and the diagrammatic procedures in the pages of Diderot’s Encyclopedia to the paintings of Jacques-Louis David and mathematical devices that reveal the unseen worlds of quantum physics. Central to the story is the process of correlation, which invites observers to participate by eliciting leaps of imagination to fill gaps in data, equations, or sensations. This book traces practices that ran against the grain of both Locke’s clear and distinct ideas and Newton’s causality—practices greatly expanded by the calculus, probabilities, and protocols of data sampling.

“Traditional pictures are said to open windows onto the world. We wanted to show how diagrams broke the window, shattering visual knowledge into multiple scales and points of view.” Bender said. He also observed that: “Diagrams often are drawings like those engineers make in which each thing is shown at whatever size will make it clear to the viewer, but the user is the one who puts it all together into a machine or a building. People often think of pictures as final objects but diagrams are not finished. They are tools for users to work with as their minds encounter the world.”

Read more about The Culture of Diagram on The Human Experience: Inside the Humanities at Stanford University.

To look inside the book, visit Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Culture-Diagram-John-Bender/dp/0804745056.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

2010-11 Geballe Research Workshops

The Stanford Humanities Center is pleased to announce that fifteen research workshops have been selected for 2010-11. The Theodore and Frances Geballe Research Workshops bring together groups of approximately 100 Stanford faculty and over 200 advanced graduate students, as well as visiting scholars and those at other local institutions to present their current research and otherwise explore topics of common intellectual concern. Workshops meet regularly (at least three times a quarter) during the academic year.

Archaeology Today
Faculty Coordinators: Lynn Meskell (Anthropology), Jennifer Trimble (Classics)
Graduate Student Coordinators: Adam Nazaroff (Anthropology), Claudia Liuzza (Anthropology)

Capitalism’s Crises
Faculty Coordinator: Sylvia Yanagisako (Anthropology)
Graduate Student Coordinators: Ramah McKay (Anthropology), Hannah Appel (Anthropology)

Environmental Norms, Institutions, and Policy
Blokker Research Workshop
Faculty Coordinator: Debra Satz (Philosophy and Ethics in Society)
Graduate Student Coordinator: Rachael Garrett (Environment and Resources)

Ethics and Politics, Ancient and Modern
Marta Sutton Weeks Research Workshop
Faculty Coordinators: Chris Bobonich (Philosophy and Classics), Josh Ober (Classics, Political Science, and Philosophy)
Graduate Student Coordinator: Ben Miller (Philosophy)

French Culture Workshop
Faculty Coordinators: Dan Edelstein (French), J.P. Daughton (History)
Graduate Student Coordinator: Melanie Conroy (French and Italian)

Global Justice
Linda Randall Meier Research Workshop
Faculty Coordinator: Joshua Cohen (Political Science, Philosophy, and Law)
Graduate Student Coordinators: Ruth Kricheli (Political Science), Rob Barlow (Political Science)

Graphic Narrative
Faculty Coordinators: Andrea Lunsford (English), Scott Bukatman (Art, Art History, Film and Media)
Graduate Student Coordinators: Angela Becerra Vidergar (Comparative Literature), Haerin Shin (Comparative Literature), Mark Vega (English)

The Literary Public Intellectual
Faculty Coordinators: Russell Berman (Comparative Literature) and Saikat Majumdar (English)
Graduate Student Coordinator: Nikil Saval (English)

Medieval and Early Modern Studies
Humanities Center Fellows Research Workshop
Faculty Coordinators: Laura Stokes (History), Bissera Pentcheva (Art and Art History)
Graduate Student Coordinators: Erin Lichtenstein (History), Chris Kark (Iberian & Latin American Cultures), Marco Aresu (Italian Literature)

Mythos & Logos: Religion and Rationality in the Humanities
Claire and John Radway Research Workshop
Faculty Coordinators: Brent Sockness (Religious Studies), Nadeem Hussain (Philosophy)
Graduate Student Coordinators: Peter Woodford (Religious Studies), Noreen Khawaja (Religious Studies)

Republic of Letters
Faculty Coordinators: Caroline Winterer (History), Paula Findlen (History)
Graduate Student Coordinators: Marcelo Aranda (History), Biliana Kassabova (French)

Seminar on Enlightenment and Revolution
Research Workshop in Honor of John Bender
Faculty Coordinators: Blair Hoxby (English), Heather Hadlock (Music)
Graduate Student Coordinators: Stephen Osadetz (English), Jenna Sutton (English)

TransAmerican Studies Working Group
Faculty Coordinators: Ramon Saldivar (English and Comparative Literature), Roland Greene (English and Comparative Literature)
Graduate Student Coordinators: Guadalupe Carrillo (English), Jennifer Harford Vargas (English), Cristina Jimenez (English)

Working Group on the Novel
Marta Sutton Weeks Research Workshop
Faculty Coordinator: Nancy Ruttenburg (English)
Graduate Student Coordinators: Sarah Allison (English), Mike Benveniste (English), Joseph Shapiro (English)

Workshop in Poetics
Faculty Coordinator: Roland Greene (English and Comparative Literature)
Graduate Student Coordinators: Kathryn Hume (English), Noam Pines (Comparative Literature)

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

How is Innovation Taught? On the Humanities and the Knowledge Economy

Former fellow (2008-09) Dan Edelstein’s recent essay in Liberal Education reflects on the central role the humanities play in developing innovative thinking. Edelstein asserts that while the humanities are not more innovative than the sciences, they do require students to practice innovative thinking earlier on in their studies. Read the full article»

Dan Edelstein is assistant professor of French at Stanford University and the author of The Terror of Natural Right: Republicanism, the Cult of Nature, and the French Revolution (University of Chicago Press, 2009).

Monday, April 19, 2010

Fellows Update Spring 2010

Here is what we have heard from you since February. Please stay in touch, and if you have news to share, send an email to shc-newsletter@stanford.edu.

2004-2005

BRETT WHALEN published his first book, Dominion of God: Christendom and Apocalypse in the Middle Ages (Harvard University Press, 2009).

1997-98

JOHN BENDER (also 1988-89) and Michael Marrinan (Art and Art History) published The Culture of Diagram (Stanford University Press, 2010). The Culture of Diagram explores a terrain where words meet pictures and formulas meet figures, foregrounding diagrams as tools for blurring those boundaries to focus on the production of knowledge as process. Read more about the book on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Culture-Diagram-John-Bender/dp/0804745056.

1993-94

PERICLES LEWIS Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Yale, recently published his third book, Religious Experience and the Modernist Novel (Cambridge University Press, 2010). He is now working on a new edition of the Norton Anthology of World Literature, for which he is editing the 20th-century volume.

JOHN MORAN GONZALEZ published his first book, Border Renaissance: The Texas Centennial and the Emergence of Mexican American Literature (University of Texas Press, 2009). The Troubled Union: Expansionist Imperatives in Post-Reconstruction American Novels, which he first worked on as his dissertation during his fellowship year, will be published by Ohio State University Press in October 2010.

ALLEGRA GOODMAN has a new novel, The Cookbook Collector, appearing in July, 2010. Goodman’s short story “La Vita Nuova” is featured in the April 26 issue of The New Yorker. Read an email exchange between Goodman and Cressida Leyshon, a fiction editor at the magazine, about art, writing, and Goodman’s new novel, here: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2010/04/this-week-in-fiction-allegra-goodman.html

HANS ULRICH GUMBRECHT will receive an honorary doctorate from Aarhus University, Denmark. Gumbrecht, the Albert Guérard Professor of Literature in the Division of Literatures, Cultures and Languages, will receive the honorary degree on Sept. 10, 2010, in conjunction with the university’s 82nd anniversary. Rumor has it the Danish queen will be present at the ceremony.

1992-93

MICHAEL FELLMAN has just published In the Name of God and Country: Reconsidering Terrorism in American History with Yale University Press. Read more about the book on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Name-God-Country-Reconsidering-Terrorism/dp/0300115105/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_3

1988-89

ANNIE FINCH published a book-length narrative and dramatic poem, Among the Goddesses: A Libretto in Seven Dreams (Red Hen Press). Her first book of poetry, Eve, was reissued as part of Carnegie Mellon University Press’s Classic Contemporaries Poetry Series, and her second book of poetry, Calendars, was released in an audio CD format, read by the author, by its original publisher, Tupelo Press. Annie also published two related textbooks with the University of Michigan Press: A Poet’s Ear: A Handbook of Meter and Form and A Poet’s Craft: A Complete Guide to Making and Sharing Your Poetry. Annie was awarded the 2009 Robert Fitzgerald Award for contributions to the art and science of prosody.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Humanities Center-SiCa Arts Writers/Practitioners in Residence 2010-11

The Stanford Humanities Center and the Stanford Institute for Creativity and the Arts (SiCa) are pleased to announce that two international artists have been chosen to come to Stanford in 2010-11 as part of a jointly sponsored pilot program. Nominated by Stanford departments and research centers, the artists will be on campus for four-week residencies. They will have offices at the Humanities Center and will be affiliated with their nominating unit, the Humanities Center, and SiCa.

These residencies bring high-profile arts writers/practitioners into the intellectual life of the university, targeting artists whose arts practice and writing engage with the missions of both the Humanities Center and SiCa.

The following artists have been selected for the upcoming academic year:

Victor Gama is a creative musician, folklorist, instrument maker, and computer musician from Lusophone Africa. Born in Angola, Victor Gama’s music addresses the relationship between technologies and artistic traditions with a particular focus on musical styles and histories of Africa and the diaspora. Trained in electronic engineering, he draws on his interests in diasporic music and in computer generated music. During his residency, he will conduct a public solo performance of his music using his own designed musical instrument (Pangeia Instrumentos). He was jointly nominated by the Center for African Studies, the Department of Art and Art History, the Latin American Studies Center and his nomination was also supported by the Cantor Museum.

Milica Tomic is a Serbian artist working at the intersection of performance art forms, using video, film, photography, light, and sound installation. Her work centers on political violence, nationality and identity with an emphasis on the tensions between intimate experience and media-constructed images. Among her projects is the use of art to address war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Kosovo. During her residency, she will present a selected number of her works in which she used art in order to re-actualize past traumatic events. She has exhibited globally including at Venice Biennale in 2001 and 2003, Sao Paulo Biennale in 1998, Istanbul Biennale in 2003 and Sydney Biennale in 2006. Ms. Tomic was nominated by the Department of Drama.

While at Stanford, the artists will offer informal seminars, demonstrations, student workshops and public lectures and will also be available for consultations with interested faculty and students. For additional information, please contact Marie-Pierre Ulloa, mpulloa@stanford.edu.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Mary Robinson Speaks at Stanford

Former President of Ireland Mary Robinson spoke about human rights at Stanford on Monday, drawing from her past work as the United Nations high commissioner for human rights and on her more recent work with nonprofits, such as Realize Rights. She focused on practical action and the role Stanford could play in the process. Robinson’s lecture was part of the Presidential Lecture series sponsored by the Office of the President and put on by the Stanford Humanities Center.

Read article in the Stanford Report: ”The world needs a ‘shared view’ of human rights, says Ireland’s former president”

Read article in The Stanford Daily: “Robinson speaks to Farm”

View the Presidential Lectures site for more information about Mary Robinson and her work

Friday, April 9, 2010

Stanford Humanities Center Names 2010-11 Fellows

The Stanford Humanities Center has named 21 fellows for the 2010-11 academic year. Chosen from a pool of nearly 500 applicants, including a record number of external applicants, the 2010-11 cohort comprises scholars from other institutions, as well as Stanford faculty and advanced Stanford graduate students. They will pursue individual research and writing for the full academic year while contributing to the Stanford community through their participation in workshops, lectures, and courses.

The Humanities Center will also host a series of month-long visitors throughout the year through two new programs: one for international scholars (jointly sponsored with the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies) and one for arts writer/practitioners (jointly sponsored with the Stanford Institute for Creativity and the Arts). These visitors, who were selected through a process of nomination by Stanford departments, will be announced separately.

Amy Appleford, External Faculty Fellow
Department of English, Boston University
Learning to Die in London, 1350 - 1530

Alain Bresson, Marta Sutton Weeks Faculty Fellow
Department of Classics, The University of Chicago
Why Coinage? An Economic Analysis of the Development of Coined Money in Ancient Greece

Gordon Chang, Donald Andrews Whittier Fellow
Department of History, Stanford University
China Elusive: Two-Hundred and Fifty Years of America-China Relations and the Pursuit of America’s Destiny

Max Edling, External Faculty Fellow
Department of History, Uppsala University, Sweden
A Hercules in the Cradle: War, Money, and the American State, 1783-1867

Harris Feinsod, Geballe Dissertation Prize Fellow
Department of Comparative Literature, Stanford University
Fluent Mundo: Inter-American Poetry, 1940-1973

James Ferguson, Ellen Andrews Wright Fellow
Department of Anthropology, Stanford University
Rationalities of Poverty and Social Assistance: Mapping New Conceptual and Discursive Constructions in Southern Africa

Lori Flores, Geballe Dissertation Prize Fellow
Department of History, Stanford University
Other Californias: Tracing Mexican American Lives, Civil Rights Activism, and the Coming of the Chicano Movement to Salinas Valley, 1945-1970

Daniel Hackbarth, Geballe Dissertation Prize Fellow
Department of Art and Art History
Media as Medium: Raoul Hausmann, 1886-1971

Gavin Jones, Violet Andrews Whittier Fellow
Department of English, Stanford University
Forms of Failure: American Literature and the Emotional Life of Class

William Leidy, Geballe Dissertation Prize Fellow
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
Bringing a New Word to the World Through Charismatic Scandal

Heather Love, External Faculty Fellow
Department of English, University of Pennsylvania
The Stigma Archive

Cecilia Méndez, External Faculty Fellow
Department of History, University of California, Santa Barbara
The Wars Within: Civil Strife, National Imaginings, and the Rural Basis of the Peruvian State

Giorgio Riello, External Faculty Fellow
Department of History, University of Warwick, United Kingdom
Global Cotton: Why an Asian Fabric Made Europe Rich, 1000-1800

Courtney Roby, Geballe Dissertation Prize Fellow
Department of Classics, Stanford University
The Encounter of Knowledge: Technical Ekphrasis from Alexandria to Rome

Karen Sanchez-Eppler, Marta Sutton Weeks Faculty Fellow
Departments of American Studies and English, Amherst College
The Unpublished Republic: Manuscript Cultures of the Mid-Nineteenth-Century U.S.

Scott Saul, External Faculty Fellow
Department of English, University of California, Berkeley
Becoming Richard Pryor: A Critical Biography

Londa Schiebinger, Ellen Andrews Wright Fellow
Department of History, Stanford University
The Science of Race: Human Experimentation in the Atlantic World

Blakey Vermeule, Violet Andrews Whittier Fellow
Department of English, Stanford University
Irony and its Relation to the Unconscious: A Literary Journey

Richard White, Donald Andrews Whittier Fellow
Department of History, Stanford University
The Long Crisis

Ben Wolfson, Geballe Dissertation Prize Fellow
Department of Philosophy
Intentional Action and Practical Knowledge

James Wood, Geballe Dissertation Prize Fellow
Department of English, Stanford University
Anecdote and Enlightenment, 1710-1790

The Center’s fellowships are made possible by gifts and grants from the Esther Hayfer Bloom Estate, Theodore H. and Frances K. Geballe, Mimi and Peter Haas, Marta Sutton Weeks, the Mericos Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the offices of the Dean of Research and the Dean of Humanities and Sciences.

Monday, April 5, 2010

David Holloway Weighs in on U.S.-Russian Nuclear Treaty

With an April 8 date set for the United States and Russia to sign a new nuclear arms reduction treaty, each country is preparing to cut their deployed weapons by about 30 percent. Former Stanford Humanities fellow David Holloway (2005-06) spoke with the Stanford News Service about the latest pact between the United States and Russia, and what the prospects are for further reduction of nuclear weapons.

Read the article: ”Stanford’s David Holloway weighs in on U.S.-Russian nuclear treaty to slated for signing this week”

Friday, April 2, 2010

Thai Protestors Shed Culture of Restraint

Stanford Humanities Center International Visitor Thitinan Pongsudhirak is quoted in the New York Times’ ”Memo from Bangkok,” by Thomas Fuller. Pongsudhirak is professor of international political economy at the Faculty of Science at Chulalongkorn University and a leading scholar on contemporary political, economic, and foreign-policy issues in Thailand.

Read the article: “Thai Protestors Shed Culture of Restraint.”

Thailand’s Battle of Attrition

Stanford Humanities Center International Visitor Thitinan Pongsudhirak discusses the demonstrations in Thailand in his New York Times op-ed “Thailand’s Battle of Attrition.” Pongsudhirak is professor of international political economy at the Faculty of Science at Chulalongkorn University and a leading scholar on contemporary political, economic, and foreign-policy issues in Thailand.

Read the op-ed: “Thailand’s Battle of Attrition.”

Friday, February 26, 2010

Fellows Update Winter 2010

Here is what we have heard from you since last October. Please stay in touch, and if you have news to share, send an email to shc-newsletter@stanford.edu.

2007-08

H. SAMY ALIM, after completing a wonderful year as a Stanford Humanities Center Fellow in 2007-2008 (and returning from completing a MA and PhD from Stanford), is happy to be back on “the Farm” as an Associate Professor of Education and (by courtesy) Linguistics, as well as an affiliate faculty member of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity. The year at the Humanities Center provided a window into the engaging intellectual life across Stanford’s campus, and Samy is delighted to be a part of this challenging and stimulating environment.

2005-06

WENDY LARSON published a book that came out of her Humanities Center fellowship, fortuitously emerging at the 100th anniversary of Freud’s debut talk in America at Clark University in 1909: From Ah Q to Lei Feng: Freud and Revolutionary Spirit in 20th Century China, Stanford University Press, 2009.

1999-2000

JAMES ROBSON published his book that was incubated long ago at the Humanities Center: Power of Place: The Religious Landscape of the Southern Sacred Peak in Medieval China, Harvard University Press, East Asian Monograph Series, 2009.

RICHARD STREET was the recipient of the 2009 Howard Chapnick Grant for the advancement of photojournalism in a ceremony held at The Asia Society in New York City on October 14, 2009. The grant will allow him to travel to Washington, D.C. and conclude the final phase of his research in the Leonard Nadel Collection at the Smithsonian Institution on his book titled Subversive Images: Leonard Nadel’s Massive and Unknown Photo Essay on Braceros in 1956, which will be published in 2011.

1997-98

TIM DEAN published two books recently: A Time for the Humanities: Futurity and the Limits of Autonomy, ed. James J. Bono, Tim Dean, & Ewa Plonowska Ziarek, Fordham University Press, November 2008; and Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking, University of Chicago Press, May 2009.

1985-86

HARRIET RITVO published The Dawn of Green: Manchester, Thirlmere, and Modern Environmentalism, University of Chicago Press, in October 2009. She presented a piece of it at a symposium at the Humanities Center several years ago.