2017-2018

A Conversation with Peter Ho Davies

This event features Peter Ho Davies, recipient of the 2017 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction, in conversation with CWRU faculty members Thrity Umrigar and Lisa Nielson. Peter Ho Davies’ innovative novel, The Fortunes, examines the burdens, limitations and absurdities of Asian stereotypes.  In four linked sections, The Fortunes explores the California Gold Rush, actress Anna May Wong, the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin by a disgruntled Detroit autoworker, and the contemporary adoption of a Chinese daughter by American parents. Davies, is a Professor in the Helen Zell MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan.

KeyBank “Lunch and Learn”: Internship Opportunities for Humanities Majors

Location: Clark Hall Room 206, 11130 Bellflower Road, Cleveland, OH 44106

Are you a Humanities student looking for a Summer Internship or Job? Come learn about the opportunities at Key Bank during this special H@W event with Aqeel Brown, Senior Campus Recruiter. Aqeel will talk about the internship and development programs at Key Bank, explain their applications and hiring process, and answer any questions you might have. One of Cleveland’s largest employers,

Key Bank has openings not just in finance and technology but also:

Faculty Work-in-Progress — The Air War in the Museum: The Bombing of Dresden as History and Spectacle

Susanne Vees-Gulani, Associate Professor of German in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, explores the representations of the 1945 destruction of the famous German baroque city in two new exhibition spaces – the Military History Museum of the German Armed Forces, redesigned by Daniel Libeskind, and the large-scale panorama installations by the architect Yadegar Asisi. Despite vastly different methodologies, both places favor an emotional experience over a factual analysis and in turn create opportunities for developing a new, possibly troubling, German nationalism.

A Humanities@Work Workshop for Undergraduate Humanities Majors: Preparing for the Career Fair

Location: Clark Hall Room 206, 11130 Bellflower Road, Cleveland, OH 44106

Tom Matthews, Executive Director of the CWRU Career Center, will present a general overview for creating effective resumes and will offer practical advice for a successful Career Fair experience. As well, Dr. Matthews will have a directory of the companies represented at the October 5th Career Fair and will provide guidance as to which companies would have the best employment opportunities for humanities students.

Please bring a copy of your current resume to the workshop.

Rose Wohlegemuth Weisman Women’s Voices Lecture: The New Exploitation Economy

Location: Tinkham Veale University Center, Ballroom C, 11038 Bellflower Road, Cleveland, OH 44106

In her lecture, Katherine Boo, staff writer at The New Yorker and a former reporter and editor for The Washington Post, will provide field notes from global reporting on families who lack privilege and power.   Boo’s reporting has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize, a MacArthur “Genius” grant, and a National Magazine Award for Feature Writing.

Free and open to the public.  Registration recommended.

Graduate Student Work-in-Progress: Opera, Shakespeare, and the Creation of Romanticism

Location: Clark Hall Room 206, 11130 Bellflower Road, Cleveland, OH 44106

Shakespeare’s current position atop the global literary pantheon belies a complex history of reception, especially in continental Europe. By examining the collision of early nineteenth-century Shakespeare reception and nascent romantic opera, Musicology PhD candidate Paul Abdullah highlights the entanglements of literary and musical histories for the romantic generation.

Pre-lecture reception begins at 4:15 pm.

Free and open to the public.

Faculty Work-in-Progress – Iraq and Syria, 1941: Working Around Lies, Exaggerations, Distortions, and Deletions to Tell a Little-known Story of WWII

In spring 1941, the Iraqis and the Vichy French in Syria made agreements with the Axis powers that might have had disastrous consequences for the Allied war effort if the Allies hadn’t improvised a jerrybuilt force to respond. In his talk, Professor Broich, Associate Professor in the Department of History, argues that this fight in Iraq and the Levant had outsized geopolitical importance in part because it was relatively small in scale compared to the titanic battles in North Africa and Russia in the same year. This magnified the importance of the choices made by relatively few people, from rulers to common soldiers from across the globe, and its on these people and choices that his book focuses. His talk centers on the difficulty he’s encountered getting at the truth of affair when the historical sources have been obscured by wartime propaganda, colonial delusions, nationalist flimflam, and erasure.

Girih Tiles: Decagonal Geometry in Medieval Islamic Architectural Tilings and Beyond

The conventional view holds that geometric star-and-polygon patterns in medieval Islamic architecture were designed using a straightedge and a compass. Peter Lu, a research associate at Harvard University, will present his findings that, instead, a wide variety of patterns with five- and ten-fold symmetry were conceived as tessellations of specific decorated puzzles pieces, called girih tiles, that appear in medieval Islamic architectural scrolls. Beginning in the 12th century, patterns designed with these girih tiles appeared throughout the Islamic world, from North Africa to the Middle East and Central Asia, for more than half a millennium—and in some cases exhibit mathematical principles that we in the West did not understand until the past few decades. This event is co-sponsored by the Departments of Physics and Art and Art History.

Faculty Work-in-Progress – Object Memory: Souvenirs and Memorabilia in the Roman Empire

The Roman Empire produced a rich range of souvenirs and memorabilia commemorating cities, monuments, sporting and theatrical events, and religious rituals. At a time when literacy was limited and visual communication was essential, these objects were a critical means for generating and mediating memory and knowledge of their represented subjects.

Why Bob Dylan Matters

Harvard Classics Professor, teacher since 2004 of the freshman seminar, “Bob Dylan”, and celebrated ‘Dylanologist’ Richard F. Thomas makes a compelling case for why the music and lyrics of Bob Dylan endure and inspire us.  Thomas discusses his new book Why Bob Dylan Matters with MacArthur Fellow and fellow Dylanologist Thomas Palaima and Professor Daniel Goldmark, Director of CWRU’s Center for Popular Music Studies.