2015-2016

Inamori Ethics Prize Academic Symposium

As part of the 2015 Inamori Ethics Prize events, prize recipient Professor Martha Nussbaum will participate in a lively, moderated discussion with international experts and audience Q&A on her groundbreaking Capabilities Approach to global ethics that gives practical direction for seeking justice and positive change for those who cannot access opportunities or enjoy the basic freedoms they need to flourish and unlock their potential. 

This event is free and open to the public.  Registration recommended. 

“Lost” Between Memory and History: Writing the Holocaust for the Next Generation

Daniel Mendelsohn, Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities at Bard College, draws upon his experience researching, writing, and then touring The Lost around the world. He explores the meaning of the Holocaust as both a historical and a literary event as time passes and the event belongs to a new generation of writers, and readers, who no longer have direct contact with the event itself. A bit provocatively, he suggests that the “never forget” injunction is, essentially, anti-literary: that literature–because it forges a large, manageable narrative out of historical events for cultures to use–has to “forget” the individual stories, smoothing and shaping particular memories into the parables we need to live by.

Faculty-Work-in-Progress: UPA and Modernist Cartoon Music

The United Productions of America (UPA) animation studio, which came to prominence on the big and small screen in the years following World War II, profoundly changed animation from the dominance of Disney’s naturalistic approach to a more modern, even avant-garde style, with cartoons like Gerald McBoing-Boing and the Mister Magoo series. In his talk Daniel Goldmark, Associate Professor in the Department of Music, will discuss the atypical approach UPA took to music in the animation soundscape, which included music taken from a variety of genres and styles, composers coming from widely different backgrounds, and a general disavowal of the Hollywood approach to cartoon scoring.

The Rita Hayworth of this Generation: A Solo Play Starring Tina D’Elia

The Rita Hayworth of this Generation is the story of Carmelita Cristina Rivera, a queer Latina performer, who is ready to premier her show, an homage to Rita Hayworth, in a seedy Las Vegas nightclub.  She feels this will make her a star, but enter the Transgender Playboy, Jesus Antonio Gitano.  Camelita falls for Jesus and enters a world of magical realism where dead Hollywood Movie Stars collide with the living.

Baker-Nord Faculty Lecture: Where Do Characters Come From?

Readers come to books in search of characters they can love, hate, empathize with or relate to. But how do writers create characters that are realistic and who remain with the reader after he or she is done with a novel? In this talk, Thrity Umrigar, Professor of English at Case Western Reserve University and bestselling author of the novels The Space Between Us, If Today Be Sweet, Bombay Time, The Weight of Heaven and The World We Found, explains her own writing process.

Humanities@Work: CEOs

During this event planned for undergraduate students, Cleveland area CEOs discuss how studying the humanities influenced their careers.

Graduate Student Work-in-Progress: Black Entertainment in the Heart of Cleveland’s “Colored District,” 1922-30

Peter Graff, a graduate student in the Department of Music, will discuss how Cleveland’s Globe Theater (Woodland avenue and E. 55th street), once a venue for live Yiddish entertainment, rebranded itself in 1922 to capitalize on the city’s burgeoning black population. Audiences packed the house nightly to see and hear the latest blues queens, black musical revues, and the occasional race picture. As a site for these converging artistic traditions by and for African Americans, the Globe played a significant role in shaping the identity of Cleveland’s black community in the 1920s.

Poetry Reading by Jorie Graham

Due to family illness, this event has been CANCELLED.  A reading with poet Dan Beachy-Quick has been scheduled for Friday, November 20 at 3 pm.  Click HERE for more information and to register for that event.

Cuban Literature Today: Tendencies and Perspectives

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED.   

A Talk in the Vineyard with Mansfield Frazier

Community activist and entrepreneur Mansfield Frazier leads The Vineyards and BioCellar of Château Hough, an urban vineyard located in Cleveland at the intersection of East 66th and Hough where grapes are grown for award-winning wines. They also operate the world’s first experimental underground greenhouse.  He will discuss how these projects utilize innovative educational and entrepreneurial strategies in the growing field of urban agriculture to encourage, prepare and assist at-risk youth, veterans, and those who are returning — or who have already returned — to their home neighborhoods after a period of incarceration in creating safer, greener, healthier and wealthier places to live, work, and raise families.