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

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.

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”

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.”

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.

Former Fellow Terry Castle Elected to PEN American Center

PEN American Center is the U.S. branch of the world’s oldest international literary and human rights organization. International PEN was founded in 1921 in direct response to the ethnic and national divisions that contributed to the First World War. PEN American Center was founded in 1922 and is the largest of the 144 PEN centers in 101 countries that together compose International PEN. Read the full article»