2014-2015

Animating the War: The First World War and the History of Animation

The history of animation dates back to the 1890s, yet the medium as we know it was deeply shaped by the events of the First World War. In this talk, Donna Kornhaber – Assistant Professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin and author of numerous articles on the history of animation and the book Charlie Chaplin, Director – explores the role that the Great War played in the modern development of animation in terms of its subject matter, style, humor, and relationship to violence.

“Rockwell Kent” Screening and Discussion

Artist and social activist Rockwell Kent produced haunting landscapes inspired by his adventures in Alaska, Tierra del Fuego, and Greenland. For more than ten years, producer/writer Frederick Lewis, associate professor in the School of Media Arts and Studies at Ohio University, retraced the nomadic artist’s many travels, shooting footage in Greenland, Newfoundland, Alaska, Ireland, and Russia to produce this film, which documents how Kent’s travel experiences inspired his artistic work. A discussion with Frederick will immediately follow the film screening.

Freedman Fellows Presentation: Tibet Oral History and Archive Project

Dr. Goldstein will discuss his research, as well as the challenges it has presented and how the Freedman Fellows program provided both solutions and support.

Issues on 20th and 21st Century Art

Anuradha Vikram is a curator, critic, and educator, currently Director of Residency Programs at 18th Street Arts Center, in Santa Monica, CA. From her pedagogical and curatorial experience, Vikram will expand on the productive intersections of Art as Research, Arts as Engagement, and Art as Politics.

This lecture is an integral part of a joint seminar between Case’s Department of Art History and The Cleveland Institute of Art, taught by the artist José Carlos Teixeira, Champney Family Visiting Professor at CWRU and CIA.

Chemistry in Art, Art in Chemistry, and the Spiritual Ground They Share

After looking at the evolution of pigments for the color blue, Roald Hoffmann – Frank H. T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters Emeritus at Cornell University and recipient of the 1981 Nobel Prize in Chemistry – will discuss how scientific articles relating to chemistry also deal with representation of an underlying reality, and face questions that are essentially artistic. The presentation will address the spiritual ground shared by art and a science as it poses the question Is there an analogue in science to abstract art?

The Story of the Cleveland Play House

Founded in 1915, the Cleveland Play House remains the longest-running professional theatre in the country, but its history has never been studied by anyone outside of the institution itself. Jeffrey Ullom – Assistant Professor of Theater and Director of the Undergraduate Program in Theater at Case Western Reserve University – contextualizes the history of Cleveland’s famous theater to look beyond the subjective legacy and explore how and why this institution is able to persevere decade after decade. This event is co-sponsored with The Laura & Alvin Siegal Lifelong Learning Program.

Faculty Work-in-Progress: Honoring the Prophet, Performing American Islam

For centuries, Muslims have performed mawlids, or festivals and celebrations in honor of the Prophet Muhammad. These rituals came under attack in the twentieth-century, critiqued as either harmful innovations from early Islamic models or as superstitious practices incompatible with modernity. In this lecture, Justine Howe, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, examines the resurgence of mawlids in Chicago-area Muslim institutions.

The Issa Lecture: Interspecies Ethics

Cynthia Willett, a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Emory University, draws upon animal studies and relational ethics to propose transpecies ideals of communitarianism and cosmopolitan peace. Expanding our understanding of human and animal capacities begins with appreciating the capacity in ourselves and other animals for wonder and acts of moral beauty. These capacities call for a paradigm shift in moral philosophy.

A reception in Clark Hall Room 206 will immediately follow the lecture.

Free and open to the public. 

Freedman Fellows: Tornado Destruction & Financial Damage to Homeowners

Dr. Gallagher will discuss his research, as well as the challenges it has presented and how the Freedman Fellows program provided both solutions and support.

Neoliberal Practices and Cultural Production in Latin America in the Past 40 Years

PLEASE NOTE NEW LOCATION!

Idelber Avelar – a professor specializing in contemporary Latin American fiction, literary theory, and Cultural Studies at Tulane University – will address the effects of neoliberal practices in the production of culture, the transformation of state economies into transnational flow of goods, and how both of these factors have worked to position the discourse of memory as a new cultural and economic commodity.