2006-2007

Rita Dove

Sep 8 2006

A discussion with Rita Dove


China Express: Railroads in the Imperial, Nationalist, and Communist Experience

Elisabeth Koumil

Sep 21 2006

A discussion with Elisabeth Koumil.


The Test Drive

Avital Ronell

Oct 5 2006

Using an historical, philosophical and cultural analysis, Avital Ronnel will explore the prevalent and ubiquitous use of testing in search of the truth. Testing has become more pervasive to determine what is true, probably, or verifiable. What motivates this drive to test? Ronell will explore changes in twentieth-century toward the increased use of testing across a broad range of areas.

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The Wisest Virgin and the Wise King: Music, Art, and Literature for Emperor Maximilian I

David Rothenberg

Oct 26 2006

A discussion with David Rothenberg.

With support from:

North East Ohio Medieval and Renaissance Studies Group


The Logic of Stories: New Cognitive and Semiotic Ideas on Narrative Structure

Per Aage Brandt, Emile B. De Sauzeacute

Nov 16 2006

A discussion with Per Aage Brandt and Emilie B. De Sauzeacute.


Blasphemous Images, Secular Media

Brent Rodriguez-Plate

Nov 16 2006

Danish newspaper cartoons, the Holy Virgin adorned with dung, and photos of desecrated religious symbols, confront politicians with an axe to grind, priests with an ethical mandate to uphold, rabbis with a tradition to defend. Such religious and cultural ingredients constitute the realm of blasphemy and show the ways blasphemy is a contested, fluid, and dynamic category of meaning. These taboo, controversial, and offensive images serve as powerful components in the making and shaping of society since they reveal a general public’s lusts, longings, fears, and repulsions. Emphasizing the visual dimension as potent conveyor of information, this lecture will be heavily illustrated with images from around the world.

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Cloning Terror: The War of Images, 9-11 to Abu Ghraib

J. T. Mitchell

Nov 30 2006

In the months before September 11, 2001, the cloning debate was the leading issue in American newspapers. After September 11, terrorism dominated the news. Dr. Mitchell will explore the logic that connects cloning and terrorism as the twin phobias of our historical epoch. The clone and the terrorist are cultural icons linked by the fear of the “uncanny double,” the mirror image of the self as its own worst enemy. The terrorist is the enemy who doubles as a friend or countryman, pretending to be “one of us.” The clone is the figure of biological doubling as such, the inverted, perverted mirror image of a parent organism, an artificial simulation or twin of a natural person. The terrorist is the “evil twin” of the normal, respectable citizen-soldier, and the clone is the “evil twin” as such. The “war on terror” therefore is also a “war of images” that draws its vocabulary from the language of epidemiology, of plagues, sleeper cells, and viruses, on the one hand, and from iconoclasm, iconophobia, and holy wars over images on the other. Tracing the “war of images” in mass media and popular culture from the cloned Schwarzenegger of The Sixth Day to the clone armies of George Lucas, from the destruction of the World Trade Center to the Abu Ghraib torture photographs, this paper explains why the war on terror is actually “cloning terror” by breeding more terrorists.

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Archipelagos and Networks of the Second Slaver: Mapping the Plantation World

Charles Burroughs, Elise B. Smith

Dec 7 2006

A discussion with Charles Burroughs and Elsie B. Smith.


Experience By Design: How Writers Make Distributed and Discrete Rhetorical Choices

Todd Oakley

Jan 25 2007

A discussion with Todd Oakley.


Publishing with University Presses

Mary C. Francis, Mary E. Davis, Jenifer Neils, Laura Hengehold

Feb 2 2007

Scholars at every professional stage, from graduate school to retirement, face an overwhelming array of pressures concerning the publication of their scholarship. These pressures are only growing as academic and trade publishers struggle to adapt to new market forces and a rapidly changing landscape of new media technologies. This series of panel discussions brings a range of professional experience to the table — from editors and agents to librarians and deans to authors of books and hypertexts — in order to empower graduate students, faculty members, and other academic writers to survive and thrive in the publishing world.

This series is supported by the Presidential Initiative Fund grant, made possible by the generosity of The Cleveland Foundation.


Writing and Publishing for Trade

Andrea Schulz, Timothy K. Beal, Ted Gup, Thrity Umrigar

Feb 9 2007

Scholars at every professional stage, from graduate school to retirement, face an overwhelming array of pressures concerning the publication of their scholarship. These pressures are only growing as academic and trade publishers struggle to adapt to new market forces and a rapidly changing landscape of new media technologies. This series of panel discussions brings a range of professional experience to the table — from editors and agents to librarians and deans to authors of books and hypertexts — in order to empower graduate students, faculty members, and other academic writers to survive and thrive in the publishing world.

This series is supported by the Presidential Initiative Fund grant, made possible by the generosity of The Cleveland Foundation.


Before you Sign that Contract…

Gail Ross, Esq., Timothy K. Beal, Georgia J. Cowart, Deepak Sarma

Feb 16 2007

Scholars at every professional stage, from graduate school to retirement, face an overwhelming array of pressures concerning the publication of their scholarship. These pressures are only growing as academic and trade publishers struggle to adapt to new market forces and a rapidly changing landscape of new media technologies. This series of panel discussions brings a range of professional experience to the table – from editors and agents to librarians and deans to authors of books and hypertexts – in order to empower graduate students, faculty members, and other academic writers to survive and thrive in the publishing world.This series is supported by the Presidential Initiative Fund grant, made possible by the generosity of The Cleveland Foundation.


Fair Use, Copyright, and other Nuts and Bolts

Anne Helmreich, Raymond Ku, Martha Woodmansee, Robert Spadoni, Holly Witchey

Feb 23 2007

Scholars at every professional stage, from graduate school to retirement, face an overwhelming array of pressures concerning the publication of their scholarship. These pressures are only growing as academic and trade publishers struggle to adapt to new market forces and a rapidly changing landscape of new media technologies. This series of panel discussions brings a range of professional experience to the table — from editors and agents to librarians and deans to authors of books and hypertexts — in order to empower graduate students, faculty members, and other academic writers to survive and thrive in the publishing world.

This series is supported by the Presidential Initiative Fund grant, made possible by the generosity of The Cleveland Foundation.


Black Church Culture as a Strategy of Action

Sandra Barnes

Feb 27 2007

A discussion with Sandra Barnes.


Louis XIV, Lully, and Low Mass: revolution or evolution?

Peter Bennett

Mar 1 2007

A discussion with Peter Bennett.


New Horizons in Digital Publishing

William Breichner, Gary Lee Stonum, Timothy Robson, Brian D. Ballentine

Mar 2 2007

Scholars at every professional stage, from graduate school to retirement, face an overwhelming array of pressures concerning the publication of their scholarship. These pressures are only growing as academic and trade publishers struggle to adapt to new market forces and a rapidly changing landscape of new media technologies. This series of panel discussions brings a range of professional experience to the table — from editors and agents to librarians and deans to authors of books and hypertexts — in order to empower graduate students, faculty members, and other academic writers to survive and thrive in the publishing world.

This series is supported by the Presidential Initiative Fund grant, made possible by the generosity of The Cleveland Foundation.


It’s About Time: A Brief History of Women in Space

Eileen Anderson-Fye

Mar 20 2007

A discussion with Eileen Anderson-Fye.


Water and the Making of Modern London

Marie Lathers

Mar 22 2007

A discussion with Marie Lathers.


Be Careful What You Wish For: What To Do when the Information Revolution Is a Way of Life, Not a Dream

Scott Simon

Apr 15 2007

From Ground Zero in New York to ground zero in Kabul, to police stations, subway platforms, and darkened theaters, National Public Radio’s Peabody Award-winning correspondent Scott Simon brings a well-traveled perspective to his role as host of Weekend Edition Saturday. Simon joined NPR in 1977 as chief of its Chicago bureau. Since then, he has reported from all 50 states, covered presidential campaigns and eight wars, and reported from Central America, Africa, India, the Middle East, and the Caribbean.


Critical Literacy and Discourse Practices of African American Females in the Age of Hiphop and the New Racism:

Elaine Richardson

Apr 16 2007

A discussion with Elaine Richardson.


My Ill Literacy Narrative: Growing Up Black and Po in Cleveland

Elaine Richardson

Apr 17 2007

A discussion with Elaine Richardson.


Narrative, Temporality, and Embodied Cognition

Yanna Popova

Apr 18 2007

Yanna Popova is assistant professor in the Department of Cognitive Science. Before coming to Case, she taught at the Universities of Oxford and Birmingham. Her education has been in linguistics, literature, and philosophy and her main areas of research are cognitive linguistics and cognitive poetics. Cognitive poetics arises from the insights of cognitive linguistics and holds that linguistic knowledge is figurative and embodied, and it is this situated, embodied aspect of cognition that Popova finds most interesting and worth pursuing. “I strongly believe that cognitive science provides a new way of thinking about the verbal, visual, and musical arts and I’m interested in the multiple ways cognitive science can be used to throw light on questions about the origins, significance, and effect of our cultural heritage.”


Narrative, Temporality, and Embodied Cognition

Yanna Popova

Apr 19 2007

A discussion with Yanna Popova.


Can the Book Survive the Information Revolution?

Robert H. Jackson

Apr 19 2007

Robert H. Jackson, a senior partner at the Cleveland law firm, Kohrman Jackson & Krantz P.L.L, is a noted collector of rare books and tribal art. He has lectured about literature, rare books, libraries, and travel throughout the U.S. and Europe, including at The Library of Congress, many research universities, and The Grolier, Caxton, and Rowfant Clubs. Later this year he is featured speaker at a conference on libraries and collectors at Chawton House (Jane Austen’s home) in Hampshire, England.


Racism, Sexuality, Class, Gender and Literacy

Elaine Richardson

Apr 28 2007

A discussion with Elaine Richardson.