Share the Vision
Barbara Snyder
Aug 20 2010
The annual CWRU Share the Vision Orientation program, held on August 20, 2010, included a speech by President Barbara Snyder and discussions about the Common Reading, Bottlemania. Students were invited to write essays on the topic of the common reading; the Baker-Nord Center, a co-sponsor of the 2010 Common Reading Essay Contest, is proud to feature the winners of the essay contest.
American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Workshop
Nicole A. Stahlmann
Aug 31 2010
Nicole A. Stahlmann, director of fellowship programs of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) will provide an overview of ACLS fellowship and grant opportunities, discuss the ACLS review process, and talk about the characteristics of successful ACLS proposals. A complete list of 2010-2011 ACLS Fellowship and Grant Competitions and ACLS application information is available at www.acls.org/programs/comps. Lunch will be provided.
The “Pre-Colombian” Era of Drug Trafficking in the Americas: The Origins of Illicit Cocaine, 1945-1973
Paul Gootenberg
Sep 27 2010
Gootenberg, Professor of History, State University of New York, Stony Brook, will examine the early cocaine smuggling class, which came together across a vast expanse of shifting geographies, and, as they invented and shared new tools of the trade, represented a new form of pan-American “networking,” as well as cocaine’s new transnational geographies pertaining to the “cold-war” history of the Americas.
With support from:
Department of History
Poetry in the Garden
Ilya Kaminsky
Oct 3 2010
Local and national poets share their work in the idyllic setting of the Cleveland Botanical Garden, co-sponsor of this event. Their readings reveal how globalism — gathering ideas from new places and cultures or from objects and ideas that have come from afar — has shaped their work. The day also includes a poetry contest, book signing, and reception. Support provided by the Helen Buchman Sharnoff Endowed Fund for Poetry at Case Western Reserve University and the Ohio Arts Council. Pre-registration required for free admission to garden. Poets include Ilya Kaminsky (San Diego State University), Phil Metres (John Carroll University), Kazim Ali (Oberlin College), Michael Dumanis (Cleveland State University), and Erika Meitner (Virginia Tech).
With support from:
Cleveland Botanical Garden, Ohio Humanities Council, Ohio Arts Council
The Host
Robert Spadoni
Oct 4 2010
A combination of blockbuster plot and political commentary, The Host is a monster film that contains elements of comedy and drama films and deals with the implications of America’s military presence in Korea. It won several awards including Best Film at the Asian Film Awards and at the Blue Dragon Film Awards.
With support from:
Ohio Humanities Council
Darwin’s Nightmare
Eric Chilton
Oct 5 2010
An Academy Award Nominee for Best Documentary Feature, Darwin’s Nightmare deals with the environmental and social effects of the fishing industry around Lake Victoria in Tanzania. It discusses the effects of the introduction of Nile perch to Lake Victoria, how it has affected the ecosystem and economy of the region, and also dwells at length on the dichotomy between European aid, which is being funneled into Africa, and the unending flow of munitions and weapons from European arms dealers
With support from:
Ohio Humanities Council
Bamako
Richard Gordon
Oct 6 2010
Bamako depicts a trial taking place in Bamako, the capital of Mali, amid the daily life in the city. In the midst of that trial, two sides argue whether the World Bank and IMF, or perhaps corruption, are responsible for the current financial state of many poverty-stricken African countries. In French and Bambara with subtitles.
With support from:
Ohio Humanities Council
What is a Zoo?
Kurt Koenigsberger
Oct 14 2010
Academic critics tend to read zoos as texts, usually condemning them on ethical grounds. Kurt Koenigsberger, Department of English, thinks about the zoo as a genre that organizes relations in human society, and draws a theoretical distinction between “zoos” and “the zoo function.”
Thinking About Grad School?: Pros, Cons, and How-Tos
Andrew Cutrofello, Christopher Flint, Paul Cox, Stephanie Liscio,
Oct 20 2010
A Panel Discussion for Humanities Majors.
Love Story: The Tragic Severance Family Romance that Uplifted Western Reserve University
Diana Tittle
Oct 22 2010
This is the final program in “The Severance Saga,” a lecture series by Diana Tittle based on The Severances: An American Odyssey, from Puritan Massachusetts to Ohio’s Western Reserve, and Beyond (to be published by the Western Reserve Historical Society in September 2010 and sponsored by The Western Reserve Historical Society, The Cleveland Orchestra, the Women’s Council of the Cleveland Museum of Art, and Case Western Reserve University). This lecture discusses how a grieving husband’s desire to advance Christian education at Western Reserve University, in memory of his young second wife, helped to pave the way for the college’s evolution into a modern research university.
With support from:
Department of Music
America’s Exhibit A: Hilary Rodham Clinton’s Living History and the Genres of Authenticity
Sidonie Smith, Ph.D.
Oct 22 2010
Sidonie Smith, President of the Modern Language Association and Martha Guernsey Colby Collegiate Chair of English and Women’s Studies Chair, Department of English, University of Michigan, ponders how Clinton’s Living History produced (or didn’t produce) the authenticity effect of a “real Hillary,” the convincing persona that is always at stake in the political field; and how both the narrating and narrated “Hillarys” do and undo the gendered idioms of political power.
With support from:
Department of English
Ritual and Pilgrimage in World Religions:
Deepak Sarma, Vasudha Narayanan, Sarah Brett-Smith, Justin R. Ritzinger, Griff Mann
Oct 24 2010
Experts in Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and African religions will explore the themes of ritual and pilgrimage from a cross-cultural perspective.
With support from:
Cleveland Museum of Art
Prospects for a World Art History
Philippe de Montebello, David Carrier, Noelle Giuffrida
Nov 3 2010
Is a world art history possible and, if so, what would it look like? This lecture, in memory of Walter A. Strauss (1923-2008), who was the Elizabeth and William T. Treuhaft Professor of Humanities, is generously supported by funds provided by the Paul Wurzberger Endowment.
With support from:
Department of Art and Art History
So You Want to be an Architect?
Peter van Dijk
Nov 4 2010
Peter Van Dijk is a Fellow in the Ohio Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and recipient of it’s highest honor, The Gold Medal of the Ohio. He is also a past winner of The Cleveland Arts Prize – Architecture and the Ohio Arts Prize. He will discuss design, preservation, tradition and globalism.
Walking to New Orleans: The Music of Fats Domino and Dave Bartholomew
Nov 13 2010
In its 15th year as a collaboration with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, the American Music Masters Series celebrates the lives and careers of artists who have changed the shape and sound of American culture. This year’s program honors the music of Antoine “Fats” Domino and Dave Bartholomew, on of the most important partnerships in the history of rock and roll music.
With support from:
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Cuyahoga County Library
Interreligious Dialogue through Visual Imagery: Jews, Muslims and Christians in Iberia
Brent Plate
Nov 17 2010
Brent Plate, visiting associate professor in Religious Studies at Hamilton College, explores historic relations between Jews, Muslims, and Christians on the Iberian peninsula (present day Spain and Portugal). Many scholars have pointed to the ways people from these religious traditions lived side by side and influenced each other’s theologies during the middle ages. Plate’s illustrated lecture highlights these relations by drawing on visual materials that demonstrate how the three Abrahamic religions coexisted and entered a symbiotic relationship. The talk concludes with thoughts on coexistence in the modern age, as Jews and Muslims have again found their homes in Spain and struggled to maintain identity through visual means.
Twentieth Century Tanzimat: Privatizing Higher Education and Museums in Turkey
John Grabowski
Nov 18 2010
John Grabowski, Department of History, will discuss his work on the rise of foundation-funded private universities and museums in Turkey in the period after 1980.
Advice for the Humanities
Mary C. Francis
Jan 28 2011
Scholars at every professional stage, from graduate school to retirement, face an overwhelming array of pressures concerning 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. Mary C. Francis, Executive Editor for the University of California Press will discuss publishing with university presses and writing a successful book proposal.
The Myth of Dresden
Susanne Vees-Gulani
Feb 10 2011
In February 1945, a firestorm caused by heavy air raids destroyed Dresden, famous for its art collections and architecture. Since then, Dresden has served as a symbol for the brutality of warfare, loss, suffering and victimhood. Susanne Vees-Gulani, Department of Modern Languages and Literature, challenges the unquestioned acceptance of this discourse and explores its preconditions and manifestations, including tourism, the visual encoding of the cityscape, propaganda, rebuilding debates, and postwar cultural productions.
Climate Policy and Wise Literature in a Perfect Moral Storm
Stephen Gardiner
Feb 17 2011
Ethical action on climate change is made more difficult by global, intergenerational, and theoretical challenges, and puts us at risk of moral corruption. Stephen Gardiner, Associate Professor of Philosophy at The University of Washington, proposes that literature, including the writings of novelist Jane Austen, can help us understand the threat of this “perfect moral storm.”
China’s Rise and Its Impact on Almost Everything
Orville Schell
Feb 24 2011
Author and journalist Orville Schell will discuss how China’s economic rise is influencing the world balance of political and military power. Whether the US and China succeed in forming a more collaborative relationship will determine whether the world is able to solve such critical problems as global warming, world trade imbalances, and nuclear proliferation. In ways that we have hardly begun to realize China’s rise will also influence America’s place in the world and sense of itself.
Order and Things: The Transformation of Chinese Objects into Sculpture
Stanley Abe
Mar 16 2011
Stanley Abe, Associate Professor of Art History at Duke University, discusses the idea that certain kinds of figural objects–produced in China for millennia–only became Sculpture and Fine Art at the beginning of the twentieth century. The historical process through which non-art objects were transformed into “Chinese Sculpture,” a heretofore unknown category, began in the second half of the Qing Dynasty when Chinese antiquarians began to collect Buddhist and Daoist works as material evidence of antiquity. Meanwhile, foreign scholars were making attempts to formulate a canon of Chinese Art ordered along the categories of the Western discipline of Art History. The transformation of Chinese figural objects into “sculpture” commenced through a complex process of engagement between Chinese antiquarian practices and foreign orders of knowledge expressed in museums, religion, modernism, and Fine Art. Objects were recoded and redefined, collected and exhibited as a heretofore unknown object of knowledge: Chinese Sculpture. This talk inaugurates the Friends of Art Lecture Series in Asian Art.
With support from:
CWRU Friends of Art, Department of Art and Art History, Cleveland Museum of Art
Albert Ayler: Music, Spirituality and Freedom
Dwight Andrews, Henry Grimes, Charles Hersch
Mar 17 2011
A panel of interdisciplinary scholars will discuss the significance of Cleveland-born jazz musician Albert Ayler’s music, the spiritual dimension of jazz, the dialogue it opens up between freedom and order, and the relationship between American and Europe as mediated by Ayler’s music. The panel will be moderated by Joy Bostic, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies (CWRU).
This program is part of a three-day event dedicated to the legacy of Albert Ayler. Other events include a screening of “My Name is Albert Ayler” on March 16 at 7 pm at the Cleveland Museum of Art and a concert by Spiritual Unity, Marc Ribot’s quartet dedicated to the music of Ayler, on March 18 at 7:30 pm at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
A Workshop on National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships
Mar 23 2011
A panel of CWRU humanities faculty who have received NEH Fellowships will provide an overview of how NEH Fellowship grants work, what constitutes the NEH peer-review process, and what characterizes successful applications. Faculty members who are considering applying to NEH for a Fellowship this year, which are due May 3, 2011, are especially encouraged to attend. Lunch will be provided.
The Licentiousness of Slavery: Counterdiscourse at the Intersection of Abolitionism and Female Moral Reform, 1831-1861
April Haynes
Mar 24 2011
Prior to the 1830s, both free and enslaved African Americans protested the sexual violence and coercion inherent to slavery. Yet historians posit “the licentiousness of slavery” as a trope popularized by white reformers for their own purposes. April Haynes, Department of History, will discuss “licentiousness” as a rhetorical bridge linking abolitionism to the female moral reform movement and its impact on ideologies of race, gender, and sexuality in the nineteenth-century United States.
Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void
Mary Roach
Apr 6 2011
With her wry humor and inextinguishable curiosity, Mary Roach has crafted her own quirky niche in the somewhat staid world of science writing, showing no fear (or shame) in the face of cadavers, ectoplasm, or sex. Roach will discuss the strange science of space travel, and the psychology, technology, and politics that go into sending a crew into orbit and will share the stories that don’t make it onto NASA’s website–from SPCA-certified space suits for chimps, to the trial-and-error approach to crafting menus during the space program’s early years.
Retracing the Imperial Modern: The Carceral Archipelago of Empire
Ann Stoler
Apr 7 2011
This lecture is part of a set of considerations on how we might methodologically rethink the genealogies of imperial formations. Rather than assuming that we know what “a colony” is and the features that defined it in the nineteenth-century, Ann Stoler, Willy Brandt Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology and Historical Studies at The New School for Social Research, takes a different tack to explore the logics that underwrote colonies in their multiple mutations. Exploring what joined them and set them apart suggests far tighter connections between histories that have been held as distinct and set apart.
With support from:
The National Endowment for the Humanities
Toward a Global Poetry: A Reading and Discussion
Jerome Rothenberg
Apr 8 2011
Poet and editor Jerome Rothenberg, co-founder of Deep Image movement of the early 1960s, reads his own poetry, along with samples of contemporaries and near-contemporaries. Interspersed with this readings, Rothenberg will discuss the international nature of modern and postmodern poetry, and the development, during the last hundred years and more, of an engaged ethnopoetics, a term he coined in 1968 to recognize the meaningful intersections of poetry, linguistics, anthropology, and ethnology.
With support from:
Department of English
The Powerless Power of the Call of Conscience
Simon Critchley
Apr 12 2011
Simon Critchley, internationally renowned philosopher, New York Times best-seller, and chair of the Philosophy Department at The New School for Social Research, will discuss the power of conscience and its relation to the life of universities.
Theater and the Poetics of Resistance:
George Seremba
Apr 14 2011
Case Western Reserve University and the Cuyahoga County Public Library welcome visiting writer George Seremba (Ph.D., Trinity College, Dublin), recipient of a Creative Fusion award from the Cleveland Foundation. An award-winning actor and playwright, Seremba has authored several plays. His notable Come Good Rain relives his political protests in Uganda and his botched execution attempt by the military intelligence, leading him to seek asylum in Kenya, then in Canada and Ireland.
With support from:
The Cleveland Foundation, Cuyahoga County Public Library
Line and Gesture in Korean Sijo Verse
David McCann
Apr 15 2011
David McCann, Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Literature at Harvard University, will discuss the dynamic features of Korean sijo poetry as found in traditional-style performances. The song, characterized by drawn-out syllables as well as changes in pitch and tone, is a distinctive feature of Korea’s musical tradition. That drawn-out line, steady, then wavering, is akin to a calligrapher’s brushstroke. Sijo text also incorporates such gestures and lines, which attentive reading can make visible.
With support from:
Cleveland Museum of Art
Vergil Week: Vergilian Footrace
Apr 17 2011
5-kilometer footrace that ranges over the north side of campus.
Vergil Week: Art Contest and Exhibition
Apr 18 2011
Exhibition of student and faculty art inspired by Vergil and Greco-Roman civilization.
Vergil Week: Latin Recitation Contest
Apr 19 2011
The Latin recitation contest is open to high school and university students.
Vergil Week: Lecture, Staged Reading and Concert
Timothy Wutrich
Apr 20 2011
5:30 pm, Recital Hall – Lecture: “Theatricality in the Cleveland Dido and Aeneas Tapestries,” Timothy Wutrich 6:30 pm, Armor Court – Stage Reading: Aeneid Book IV – “The Dido Tragedy” 7:30 pm, Armor Court – Concert: The Early Music Singers conducted by Debra Nagy.
Watteau’s Utopias of Music, Dance, and Theatre: Visions of a New France
Georgia Cowart
Apr 22 2011
Georgia Cowart, Department of Music, will discuss how the ideal of the theatrical utopia, emerging on the Parisian stage c. 1700, helps to explain certain of Watteau’s paintings embodying theatrical visions of music, dance, commedia dell’arte, and love. This event is co-sponsored by the CWRU Department of Music. Reception immediately follows the lecture.
With support from:
Department of Music
Vergil Week: Continuous Public Reading of the Aeneid in English
Apr 22 2011
All are invited to read from Vergil’s Aeneid.
Vergil Week: Tradition: Vergil in Literature and the Arts
Apr 22 2011
Participants include: Florin Berindeanu, Case Western Reserve University,”Ars as eros in Dante and Vergil”; Ricardo Apostol, Case Western Reserve University, “Epic Interruptions: Vergilian Allusion in Petrarch’s Bucolicum Carmen”; Timothy Wutrich, Case Western Reserve University, “Arms and the Men: Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage”; Susan Shimp, Independent Scholar, “Excavating Vergil in Counter-Reformation Rome: Domenico Mazzocchi’s Aeneid Dialoghi (1638)”; Edith Foster, Ashland University, “Vergilian Themes in Willa Cather’s Shadows on the Rock.”
Vergil Week Keynote: Annotated Manuscripts of Vergil in the Middle Ages
Jan Ziolkowski
Apr 22 2011
Lecture by Jan Ziolkowski, Chair of the Department of Classics at Harvard University