Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research 305 Glasscock Building Texas A&M University, 4214 TAMU College Station, TX 77843-4214 phone: (979) 845-8328 · fax: (979) 458-3681 glasscock@tamu.edu · glasscock.tamu.edu Glasscock Center Staff: Richard J. Golsan, Director, University Distinguished Professor, Department of International Studies Sarah M. Misemer, Associate Director, Associate Professor, Department of Hispanic Studies Hannah Waugh, Administrative Assistant Donna C. Malak, Communications Specialist Desirae Embree, Undergraduate Apprentice 2013-2014 Advisory Committee Tom Green, Department of Anthropology Kevin Glowacki, Department of Architecture Jasen Castillo, Bush School Heidi Campbell, Department of Communication Alain Lawo-Sukam, Department of Hispanic Studies Brian Linn, Department of History Marian Eide, Department of English Christian Brannstrom, Department of Geography Federica Ciccolella, Department of International Studies Jayson Beaster-Jones, Department of Performance Studies Dwayne Raymond, Department of Philosophy Diego A. von Vacano, Department of Political Science Les Morey, Department of Psychology Tazim Jamal, Department of Recreations, Parks, and Tourism Sciences Harland Prechel, Department of Sociology Lynn Burlbaw, Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture 2013-2014 Internal Faculty Residential Fellows Stefanie Harris, Department of International Studies Nancy Klein, Department of Architecture Brian McAllister Linn, Department of History Wendy Leo Moore, Department of Sociology 2013-2014 Brown Graduate Fellows Staci Willis, Department of Anthropology Fiona C. Wilmot, Department of Geography Marshall A. Yokell, Department of History © 2014 The Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research
2 • HISTORY AND MISSION OF THE GLASSCOCK CENTER
HISTORY OF THE GLASSCOCK CENTER Growing from the Interdisciplinary Group for Historical Literary Studies, founded in 1987, the Center for Humanities Research was created by the Board of Regents of Texas A&M University in 1999 and received a naming endowment in 2002. This name change recognizes an extraordinary gift from Melbern G. Glasscock ’59 and Susanne M. Glasscock, which constitutes a sustaining endowment for the Center.
MISSION OF THE GLASSCOCK CENTER The Glasscock Center is dedicated to fostering and celebrating the humanities and humanities research among the community of scholars at Texas A&M University and in the world beyond the academy. The Glasscock Center awards residential fellowships, research fellowships, course development grants, funding for working groups, publication support, and research matching awards for independent and cross-disciplinary research in the humanities. Fellows and grant recipients are integral to the Center’s ongoing programs and activities, through their participation in bi-weekly coffees, faculty and graduate colloquia, working groups, and seminar series. The Glasscock Center also recognizes outstanding scholarship annually with a national book prize, the Susanne M. Glasscock Humanities Book Prize for Interdisciplinary Scholarship, which is accompanied by a guest lecture from the recipient and a response from a (inter) nationally recognized scholar in the field. The Mary Jane and Carrol O. Buttrill ’38 Endowed Fund for Ethics also supports a roundtable discussions and course grant on the investigation of ethical issues coordinated by the Glasscock Center. Finally, the Glasscock Center awards three Brown-Kruse Fellowships to graduate students. These fellowships are made possible by the generous gift of Maggie and Corey Brown ’92 and of Gayle and Layne Kruse ’73. A primary focus for the Glasscock Center over the next several years will be the development of the “World War II and its Global Legacies” Initiative through guest lectures, seminar series, and faculty, graduate, and undergraduate funding for research opportunities.
TABLE OF CONTENTS Letter from the Director.......................................................... 5 The Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research is a unit of the College of Liberal Arts and is located on
Glasscock Center Lecture Series..........................................6-7 Buttrill Endowed Fund for Ethics............................................ 8
the third floor of the Glasscock Building
Susanne M. Glasscock Humanities Book Prize........................ 9
on the Texas A&M University Campus.
World War II Initiative...................................................... 10-11 Other Glasscock Center Events............................................. 12 Faculty and Graduate Colloquium Series.............................. 13 Internal Faculty Residential Fellows................................. 14-15 Glasscock Faculty Research Fellows................................ 16-17 Brown Graduate Fellows................................................. 18-19 Glasscock Graduate Research Fellows.............................20-21 Undergraduate Summer Scholars Program...................... 22-23 Glasscock Three-Year Seminars.......................................24-25 Other Faculty Grants............................................................. 26 Other Graduate Student Grants............................................ 27 Co-sponsored Events.......................................................28-29 Humanities Working Groups............................................30-31
Photos (L-R): Melbern G. and Susanne M. Glasscock; Melbern G. Glasscock Building; Glasscock Center Books
TABLE OF CONTENTS • 3
4 • LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR
FROM THE DIRECTOR I am delighted to have this opportunity to report on the numerous and wide-ranging activities sponsored by the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research during the 2013-2014 academic year. As usual, things were very busy! It is always a pleasure and a privilege to serve the research needs of faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students, and to provide a forum for intellectual exchange in the College of Liberal Arts, and in the University more broadly. In addition, the events the Center sponsors and the guests it hosts not only bring fresh perspectives and ideas to the Texas A&M University community, they also enhance the visibility of the humanities at Texas A&M on regional, national, and international levels. Let me highlight some of our sponsored and co-sponsored events: During the academic year 2013-2014 Glasscock Center continued to sponsor lectures, film screenings, and an international conference as part of the World War II Global Legacies Initiative. In October, Distinguished Professor of Astronomy Nicholas Suntzeff discussed human rights abuses in Pinochet’s Chile and their legacies today in introducing Patricio Guzmán’s film Nostalgia for the Light. The screening of the film was followed by a roundtable discussion of human rights and memorial sites in Latin America today featuring professors Paola S. Hernández of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Brenda Werth of American University. In January 2014, the Glasscock Center hosted an international interdisciplinary conference to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Hannah Arendt’s influential and controversial book on the 1961 trial of the Nazi Adolph Eichmann, Eichmann in Jerusalem. As part of the event, the French film maker Michael Prazan’s film “The Trial of Adolph Eichmann was shown at the Annenberg Auditorium in the Bush School. Before the conference Professor Seyla Benhabib of Yale University gave a lecture entitled “The Dilemmas of Human Rights: Ideals and Illusions.” None of these events would have been possible without the generous support of the Offices of the Provost and the Vice-President for Diversity; the College of Liberal Arts; the Departments of International Studies, Hispanic Studies, Communications, Philosophy, and History; the Scowcroft Institute at the Bush School; and the France/TAMU institute. We wish to acknowledge their generosity here. Other lectures hosted by the Center include then-President of the Modern Language Association Professor Marianne Hirsch of Columbia University’s Buttrill Ethics lecture entitled “School Pictures in Liquid Time: Assimilation, Exclusion, Resistance” In March, Christopher Newfield of UC-Santa Barbara addressed the timely issue of the place of the humanities in American higher education in a lecture entitled: “Enough with the Defense! Why We Should Stop ‘Making the Case for the Humanities’ and What We Should Do Instead.” The Buttrill Ethics Roundtable, which featured Interim President Mark Hussey, TAMU Foundation Director Eddie Joe Davis, Provost Karan Watson, and Dean José Bermudez, provided a forum for Texas A&M leaders to share their thoughts on “The Ethics of Higher Education at Texas A&M University: Re-Vision 2020” with faculty and students. Thanks to the generosity of the Department of History, in 2012-2013 the Glasscock Center increased its available meeting space such that it can now host larger conferences and professional organization meetings. This made it possible to host the North American Levinas Society in February 2014, and the Hannah Arendt Circle is scheduled to host its annual conference at the Glasscock Center in April 2015. In conclusion, higher education in the United Sates is experiencing unprecedented changes, and the humanities in particular are facing daunting challenges that will continue into the foreseeable future. In the face of these changes and challenges, we at the Glasscock Center remain committed to the fundamental value of research in the humanities and also to fostering an intellectual community that enriches our campus, our community, and the world beyond.
Richard J. Golsan Director of the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research and University Distinguished Professor in the Department of International Studies, Texas A&M University LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR • 5
Glasscock Center
LECTURE SERIES Roundtable on “Human Rights Abuses and the Politics of Memorial Sites in Latin America” PAOLA S. HERNÁNDEZ | Associate Professor, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, The University of Wisconsin, Madison BRENDA WERTH | Associate Professor of World Languages and Cultures, American University The Glasscock Center hosted a roundtable discussion on 2 October 2013. Participants in the roundtable reflected on and continued the conversation started by Patricio Guzmán’s documentary, Nostalgia for the Light, which was shown the previous evening. Two scholars of Latin American theater and performance, Dr. Paola S. Hernández and Dr. Brenda Werth, presented papers focusing on the Southern Cone region of South America in the aftermath of human rights violations that occurred under dictatorships that existed there in the 1970s and 1980s; topics that were also presented in the film Nostalgia for the Light. Professor Hernández’s talk addressed the ongoing debates initiated by human rights organizations and grassroots movements on how best to recover or document history. She proposed two modes for understanding a traumatic past: museums and documentary film. Professor Werth’s presentation revealed the ways in which Southern Cone human rights activists and artists collaborated to produce artwork that is central to the collective tasks of mourning, commemoration, and memorialization in the postdictatorial contexts of Chile and Argentina. Her multi-genre approach used theater and photography to demonstrate the creative modes artists have employed to represent loss and absence, to draw attention to continuing injustices, and to provide public sites and rituals of commemoration.
“A Genius for War: The Surprising Case of Ulysses Grant” HENRY WILLIAM BRANDS | Dickson Allen Anderson Centennial Professor of History and Government at The University of Texas at Austin On 21 October 2013, Professor H.W. Brands, spoke to a generous group of students and faculty on how Ulysses Grant saved the Union twice: once as commanding general of the Union army during the Civil War, the second time as president during Reconstruction. This was quite a record for someone with neither ambition nor observable talent during his first forty years. H.W. Brands explained how Grant accomplished these feats and what it means.
Albert Camus Centennial Roundtable ROBERT ZARETSKY | Professor of French History at the University of Houston Honors College JOHN MCDERMOTT | University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Texas A&M University MARC DAMBRE | Professeur des Universités at Université Paris 3 On 21 November, the Glasscock Center hosted a roundtable discussion commemorating the 100th birthday of Albert Camus. Nathan Bracher, professor of French at Texas A&M University chaired the roundtable which included presentations and discussion by Marc Dambre, professeur des universités at Université Paris 3; John J. McDermott, University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Texas A&M University; and Robert Zaretsky, professor of French History at the University of Houston Honors College.
6 • GLASSCOCK CENTER LECTURE SERIES
Guest Lecture by Laurent Binet LAURENT BINET | French novelist and author of award-winning novel HHhH On 25 November 2013, French novelist Laurent Binet discussed his award-winning novel HHhH. A highly praised World War II novel, HHhH won the Prix Goncourt du Premier 2012. The story follows two men's journey as they dramatically escape from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia to England. Binet discussed their discretely heroic acts from a harrowing parachute into a war zone to their stealth attack on Heydrich’s car to their own brutal death in a basement of a Prague church. Additional support provided by: France/Texas A&M University Institute (Centre Pluridisciplinaire)
“The Dilemmas of Human Rights: Ideals and Illusions” SEYLA BENHABIB | Eugene Mayer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy, Yale University On 23 January 2014, Professor Seyla Benhabib gave the Glasscock Visiting Scholar Lecture to kick off the Glasscock Center’s spring semester events. Benhabib is the recipient of two of Germany’s most prestigious philosophical prizes as well as the Leopold Lucas Prize. In this public lecture, she began with a discourse-theoretic account of human rights, which she states, is neither simply traditional nor political, but incorporates aspects of both. She then addressed the five puzzles of human rights: 1) Are they moral or legal?; 2) What is the distincion between human rights and civil and political rights?; 3) Who is the ‘human’ in human rights?; 4) What is the status of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?; and 5) How can we account for the unity and diversity of human rights?
Informal Roundtable: “Boycotting Israeli Universities” RUSSELL BERMAN | Former President of the Modern Languages Association (MLA) On 23 January 2014, Russell Berman held a conversation about the academic boycott of Israeli universities.
“Frederick Douglass, Thomas Auld, and the Reunion Narrative: 1977, 1881, 1892” ROBERT S. LEVINE | Texas A&M University Institute for Advanced Study (TIAS) Eminent Scholar, Professor of English and Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland Professor Robert S. Levine gave a public lecture on 20 March 2014. Levine addressed a relatively little known moment in Frederick Douglass’ career: his 1877 reunion with his former slave master, Thomas Auld. Levine focused on Douglass’ presentation of the reunion in his third and final autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881, 1892). He also discussed Douglass’ accounts of Auld in his ealier autobiographies and essays. Professor Levine offered new perspectives on Douglass and on Douglass’ relationships with the family that once held him as a slave.
“Enough with the Defense! Why We Should Stop ‘Making the Case for the Humanities’ and What We Should Do Instead” CHRISTOPHER NEWFIELD | Professor of English, University of California Santa Barbara Christopher Newfield is a professor of literature and American Studies and helped to found the area of critical university studies. On 26 March 2014, Newfield discussed current issues the American public seems to have with its vision of the university system. Conversation is now focused on high tuition, high student debt, mediocre graduation rates, and growing inequality between rich and poor colleges. Newfield asked what these problems have to do with the humanities fields. He argued that the correct answer is “nothing,” suggesting two non-defensive steps: 1) In universities, humanities fields need to budget and build their research infrastructure; 2) Outside universities, the humanities fields need strong explanations of its role in non-commercial forms of innovation.
GLASSCOCK CENTER LECTURE SERIES • 7
Carrol O. Buttrill ’38
ENDOWED FUND FOR ETHICS
With the goal of fostering discussion in a field of inquiry he valued, Carrol O. Buttrill ’38 established a fund through which the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research promotes on-going investigations into ethical questions of significance to the Texas A&M community. The Carrol O. Buttrill ’38 Endowed Fund for Ethics supports annual lectures, roundtables, special events, and course activities. The Buttrill Ethics Curriculum Enhancement Grant, introduced in 2007-2008, has now become an annual award to faculty for ethics-related curriculum development. See page 22 for details.
Buttrill Ethics Lecture “School Pictures in Liquid Time: Assimilation, Exclusion, Resistance” MARIANNE HIRSCH | William Peterfield Trent Professor of English and Comparative Literature; Professor, Institute for Research on Women and Gender, Columbia University On 13 November 2013, Marianne Hirsch discussed the ideological deployment as well as the historical, memorial, and aesthetic dimensions of school photographs as a vernacular genre. She reflected specifally on the process of exclusion of Jews in the twentieth century Central Europe in the years of the Holocaust. Professor Hirsch analyzed both historical images and critical re-framings by contemporary artists who expose photography’s ideological role within political climates that shifted from emancipation and integration to exclusion, persecution and genocide.
Buttrill Ethics Roundtable “The Ethics of Higher Education at A&M: Re-Vision 2020” M. KATHERINE BANKS | Vice Chancellor and Dean of Engineering, Texas A&M University JOSÉ LUIS BERMÚDEZ | Dean, College of Liberal Arts, Texas A&M University EDDIE J. DAVIS | President, Texas A&M Foundation KARAN L. WATSON | Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, Texas A&M University On 9 April 2014, panelists addressed three areas of excellence presented in Texas A&M University’s Vision 2020: 1) educating the next generation of leadership; 2) scholarly impact; and 3) stewardship and partner engagement. Vision 2020 identifies twelve specific areas of focus, imperatives that define accepted precepts, and goals that the university is targeting over the course of two decades. The panelists diccussed how we as a university are doing in these three areas , as well as, how the College of Engineering’s 25 by 25 initiative aligns with Vision 2020 and how STEM initiatives integrate into the overall mission.
8 • BUTTRILL ENDOWED FUND FOR ETHICS
F ifteenth Annual 25
book submissions received
The fifteenth annual nationally competitive interdisciplinary book prize was awarded to to Gabrielle Hecht for Becoming Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade (The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2012). The Glasscock Book Prize, first awarded in 1999, originated by the Texas A&M Center for Humanities Research, was permanently endowed in December 2000 by Melbern G. Glasscock ’59 and his wife Susanne M. Glasscock, for whom the prize is now named.
Book Prize Winner Becoming Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade GABRIELLE HECHT | Robert Schirmer Professor of English, Princeton University In her book, Gabrielle Hecht examines a political question, a human question, and an ontological one. A key aspect of this book lies with the way in which it engages what Hecht calls nuclearity—of what it is that makes it possible to understand a nation as nuclear. This political designation, though frequently used—x or y is a nuclear power, a nuclear nation—is far less frequently examined. Hecht disrupts our certainty that nuclearity has a scientific basis and a single meaning, revealing the extent to which that certainty is a fantasy grounded in a geopolitics focused on a post-Cold War sense of the world in which ‘having the bomb’ is the ultimate goal. She also addresses the questions of what happens to bodies that encounter radiation and what we mean by “being nuclear.” In this book, Hecht aims to expand, nuance, and texture our understanding of the nuclear by focusing on what nuclearity means in postcolonial Africa.
Book Prize Outside Reader MARY JEAN GREEN | Edward Tuck Professor of French Professor of Comparative Literature, Dartmouth University
Book Prize Internal Readers TROY BICKHAM | Department of History, Texas A&M University MARY ANN O'FARRELL | Department of English, Texas A&M University LINDA RADZIK | Department of Philosophy, Texas A&M University JYOTSNA VAID | Department of Psychology, Texas A&M University
SUSANNE M. GLASSCOCK HUMANITIES BOOK PRIZE FOR INTERDISCIPLINARY SCHOLARSHIP • 9
“ World and its
War II
Global Legacies ” Initiative
The “World War II and its Global Legacies” Initiative is a multi-year program sponsored by the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research focusing on World War II, its history and consequences, as well as its global impact on international law, national memory and identity, and the humanities. The Glasscock Center hosted lectures, conferences, workshops and film screenings to help students, faculty, and the general public better understand the events and implications of the conflict. World War II and its outcomes continue to shape our lives today, particularly through global efforts aimed at recognizing and supporting human rights. Given its past and military traditions, Texas A&M University is an ideal institution to host this initiative, and in the future, to assume a leading, permanent role nationally and internationally in fostering the study and teaching of World War II and its Global Legacies.
Film Screening of Nostalgia for the Light A film by Patricio Guzmán, Icarus Films Introduction and Q&A by NICHOLAS B. SUNTZEFF | Mitchell/Heep/Munnerlyn Professor of Observational Astronomy, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Texas A&M University On 1 October 2013, the Glasscock Center showed a public sreening of the film Nostalgia for the Light. Dr. Nicholas Sunztzeff introduced the film and held a Q&A with an approximately 100-person audience including students, faculty, staff, and members of the community. A private reception was held prior to the film. In Nostalgia for the Light, director and documentarian Patricio Guzmán travels 10,000 feet above sea level to the Atacama Desert in northern Chile where astronomers from around the world gather to observe the stars. The thin atmosphere and low humidity are ideal for gazing far into the universe. This region was also host to human rights abuses under the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. A concentration camp was created in the Atacama region where thousands of political prisoners were kept by the Chilean army and later “disappeared” after the September 1973 military coup. The remains of these prisoners have been preserved under the hot desert sun, along with the intact remains of Pre-Columbian mummies, and nineteenth century explorers and miners. “Melding the celestial quest of the astronomers and the earthly one of the women [searching for relatives’ remains], Nostalgia for the Light is a gorgeous, moving, and deeply personal odyssey” (Icaraus Films).
10 • WORLD WAR II AND ITS GLOBAL LEGACIES INITIATIVE
Photos from the private reception for the film screening of Nostalgia for the Light.
The Glasscock Center and the Scowcroft Institute in the Bush School at Texas A&M University hosted a conference commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem at the Melbern Glasscock Center for Humanities Research on January 24-25, 2014. The conference kicked off with the screening of Michaël Prazan’s documentary The Trial of Adolf Eichmann on 23 January. Conference proceedings included topics relating to the trial, Arendt’s philosophy, our understanding of Nazism and totalitarianism, human rights, international law, and more. Keynote Speaker:
Film Screening of The Trial of Adolf Eichmann
Seyla Benhabib, Yale University – "From ‘The Right to Have Rights’ to Eichmann in Jerusalem and Back"
Introduction and Q&A BY MICHAËL PRAZAN | Film Director
Presenters:
The 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann held in an Israeli courtroom and broadcast around the globe, was a benchmark event in the historiography of the Holocaust, especially in Israel where the trial proved a watershed experience for survivors and citizens of the new Jewish state. Employing new video and broadcast technologies, the trial was also a milestone in media and journalism coverage.
Dana Villa, Notre Dame – "Eichmann in Jerusalem: Conscience, Normality, and the ‘Rule of Narrative'" Leora Bilsky, Tel Aviv University – "An Arendtian Perspective on the Right to Truth in International Law" Russell Berman, Stanford University – "Arendt’s Conservatism and Her Eichmann Judgment" Dan Conway, Texas A&M University – "A House Divided: Banality as a Condition of Evil" Valerie Hartouni, University of California San Diego – "Thoughtlessness and the Optics of Moral Argument: Screening the Spectacle of Eichmann" Carolyn Dean, Yale University – "Eichmann’s Victims and the Future of Holocaust Historiography"
Film provided by:
Lawrence Douglas, Amherst College – "Eichmann in Jerusalem, Demjanjuk in Munich" Rebecca Wittmann, University of Toronto – "Holocaust Trials, History, and Memory: The Enduring Fascination with Adolf Eichmann and the Role of Law in Shaping Perpetrator Representation"
Film screening supported in part by:
Conference supported in part by: Melbern G. and Susanne M. Glasscock • Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs • Department of International Studies • Dean of Faculties • Department of Philosophy • Office of the Vice President and Associate Provost for Diversity • Department of Communication • Department of History Photos (L-R): Russell Berman, Conference Reception, Seyla Benhabib
WORLD WAR II AND ITS GLOBAL LEGACIES INITIATIVE • 11
Other
GLASSCOCK CENTER EVENTS
Glasscock Center Meet and Greet on 4 September 2013. The Meet and Greet provides an opportunity for Glasscock Center faculty fellows, graduate student fellows, and new faculty and staff to interact and become acquainted with the Glasscock Center.
Morning Coffee Hour. Every other Wednesday during the semester the Glasscock Center hosts an informal coffee hour with a featured guest. All are welcome for coffee, tea, pastries, and conversation.
The Glasscock Center hosted a grant writing workshop for graduate students. Faculty members provided valuable insight to those interested in applying to Glasscock Center grants and other grants in the humanities.
12 • OTHER GLASSCOCK CENTER EVENTS
F aculty and Graduate
COLLOQUIUM SERIES
FACULTY COLLOQUIUM SERIES
GRADUATE COLLOQUIUM SERIES
JAYSON BEASTER-JONES | Assistant Professor, Department of Performance Studies “Introduction to Bollywood Sounds”
FIONA WILMOT | Department of Geography “Making Mangroves: Ecologies of Mangrove Restoration in El Salvador, 2011-2013
STEFANIE HARRIS | Associate Professor, Department of International Studies “Developing Stories: Photography in Postwar German Fiction”
MARSHALL YOKELL | Department of History “Developing German Influence in Peru, 1901-1914
BRIAN LINN | Professor and Ralph R. Thomas Professor in Liberal Arts, Department of History “From Davy Crockett to GI Blues: Elvis Meets the Atomic Army” JASON PARKER | Associate Professor, Department of History “Hearts, Minds, Voices: Cold War Public Diplomacy and the Genesis of the ‘Third World’” TASHA DUBRIWNY | Assistant Professor, Department of Communication and Women’s and Gender Studies Program “’The Original Desperate Housewife’: Betty Friedan and the Politics of Postfeminist Nostalgia” ADAM SEIPP | Associate Professor, Department of History “Buchenwald Stories: Testimony, Concentration Camp Liberators, and the American Encounter with the Holocaust” NANCY KLEIN | Associate Professor, Department of Architecture “Sacred Architecture of the Athenian Acropolis before the Parthenon” WENDY MOORE | Associate Professor, Department of Sociology “The Legal Alchemy of Racial Apartheid” FELIPE HINOJOSA | Assistant Professor, Department of History “Sacred Spaces: Race, Resistance, and the Politics of Chicano and Latino Religious History” VIOLET SHOWERS JOHNSON | Professor, Department of History, Director of the Africana Studies Program “The Wallet Protest in Guinea, West Africa: An Example of the African American Radical Tradition Abroad”
STACI WILLIS | Department of Anthropology “Tie It Firmly, Bind It Fast: Investigations into the Social Factors that Influence the Preservation of the Laced Tradition of Ship Construction” HULYA DOGAN | Department of Anthropology “The Dilemma of Belongingness: Ethnic Identity Formation Process and the Adaptive Strategies of Meskhetian Turks in the U.S.” T.J. KASPERBAUER | Department of Philosophy “What Makes Ethical Theories Psychologically Plausible?” BETHANY SHOCKLEY | Department of Political Science “Political Openness and Administrative Responsibility: Local Representational Attitudes of Mayors in Ecuador” MICHAEL BUNCH | Department of Architecture “The Identification of Values Which are Appropriate to Determine What Should be Protected and Conserved at Three WWII U.S. Army Air Bases in S.E. Texas” CAROLINA MANRIQUE | Department of Architecture “Dark Tourism Issues in the Preservation of Alcatraz Island” NICHOLAS MIZER | Department of Anthropology “One Must Silly Walk Into Mordor: The Role of the Contingent, Mundane, and Silly in Mythologizing through Role-Playing Games” HARRIS BECHTOL | Department of Philosophy “Inflections of the Event: Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-Luc Marion” HEATHER LEE BROWN | Department of Geography “Governing Water Scarcity in the Twenty-first Century” SWETHA PETERU | Department of Geography “Shifting Meanings of Nature and Labor through Biodiversity Conservation in Peru”
FACULTY AND GRADUATE COLLOQUIUM SERIES • 13
INTERNAL FACULTY RESIDENTIAL FELLOWS Four Faculty Fellows received a semester’s release from teaching and a $1,000 stipend to pursue their research projects while in residence at the Glasscock Center. Fellows participate in the intellectual life of the Glasscock Center by being in residence at Texas A&M University during the release semester and by occupying the office provided in the Center. Recipients of the award participate in the Faculty Colloquium Series (along with the Faculty Research Fellows) during the year in which they hold the fellowship and present their work-in-progress during the semester in residence. Projects are chosen on the basis of their intellectual rigor, scholarly creativity, and potential to make a significant impact in the candidate’s career and field. STEFANIE HARRIS | Associate Professor in the Department of International Studies, Texas A&M University
NANCY KLEIN | Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture, Texas A&M University
Stefanie Harris was in residence during the spring 2014 semester. During her fellowship, Dr. Harris worked on her book, Developing Stories: Photography in Postwar German Fiction during her spring 2014 residency at the Glasscock Center. This project examines the depiction of photography and photographic practices in German and Austrian literature to show the interrelation of media practices, literary aesthetics, and the representation of social and individual memory. Following a theoretical introduction, the book is structured chronologically, grouping authors according to the privileged site of the photographic triad: the subject of the photograph, the photographer, and the viewer of the photograph. Rather than a survey of post-war fiction that takes up photography thematically, the temporal framework Harris employs serves to situate the aesthetic, formal, and theoretical concerns of successive generations of writers within specific socio-political contexts. The project engages critical questions defining the field of contemporary German studies: the construction of personal and national identity, the problem of historiography, and the relationship between literature and other media. Although these areas are usually explored individually, Professor Harris’ work shows how these questions are in fact intimately connected. Although the book will focus almost exclusively on German and Austrian fiction of the postwar era, this interdisciplinary study will make a significant contribution to understanding how images shape cultural awareness and the narrative construction of social histories and national identity.
Nancy Klein conducted research on “Sacred Architecture on the Acropolis of Athens” during her residency in spring 2014. Her research project examines the pre-classical architecture of the Acropolis of Athens, Greece, and its role in defining religious identity and constructed memory both in the past and present. Dr. Klein has examined hundreds of blocks and fragments and made detailed observations on the characteristics of each one, which allows her to answer questions not only about individual buildings, but also about the development of monumental architecture in the service of religious faith and the history of the sanctuary on the Acropolis. Klein’s preliminary conclusions indicate that the rebuilding of the Acropolis by Pericles was also an expression of constructed memory. The classical replacements of damaged or redundant buildings can be seen as “countericonoclasm” because they supplanted the standing ruins, they replaced what was no longer completely present, and ultimately suppressed the memory of the damage done to the sanctuary. But the display of architectural elements from temples destroyed by the Persians in the north wall of the Acropolis overlooking the city was intended to serve as “the imprint or drawing in us of things felt,” a definition of memory offered by Aristotle, and as a rallying point for prosecuting the war against the Persians and subsequently rebuilding the Acropolis.
“I greatly appreciate the opportunity to be a faculty fellow. It allowed me the opportunity to begin work on this book project in a collegial and exciting intellectual environment.” ~ Dr. Brian Linn
14 • INTERNAL FACULTY RESIDENTIAL FELLOWS
BRIAN MCALLISTER LINN | Professor in the Department of History, Texas A&M University
WENDY LEO MOORE | Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, Texas A&M University
Brian McAllister Linn was in residence at the Glasscock Center during the fall 2013 semester. Professor Linn pursued the research topic “From Davy Crockett to GI Blues: Elvis Meets the Atomic Army,” culminating in the first scholarly monograph on the US Army’s social and military “transformation” in the early Cold War. The book, Elvis’s Army: Creating the Atomic Soldier, under contract with Harvard University Press, connects traditional military history with the humanities’ focus on socio-cultural factors, while exploring two major questions. The first is how the Army responded to the post-World War II national defense environment and in particular to the challenges of nuclear weapons, international commitments, personnel turbulence, and the Soviet military threat. The second question is why and how the Army became the “school of the nation,” teaching not only military skills, but also providing educational and technical skills that would improve GI’s lives once they left the service. Elvis Presley’s life provides a prime example through which to interrogate these questions, as he personified both military and social transformation processes. Professor Linn’s research is an innovative and unique effort to combine military and social history that will have important implications for both fields.
Wendy Leo Moore was in residence during the spring 2014 semester. Professor Moore examined the premise of a post-civil rights formal equality, the emergence of a radically transformed legal structure. The still-existing deep structural racial inequality present in the United States has sparked a multitude of discussions and debates, all underpinned by one consistent theme: the postcivil rights era is a new legal era characterized by “formal legal equality.” This ideology suggests that legal changes occurring in the late 1950s and 1960s fundamentally transformed the United States' legal structure—altering it from one that legally sanctioned racial inequality to one that provided equality under the law for all individuals regardless of race. Through a critical discourse and frame analysis of the Supreme Court’s case law on race and racial (in)equality, Moore’s work examines the racialized narratives and legal frames of the Court in connection to structural racial inequality. Informed by both the theoretical interventions in race scholarship and methods of critical discourse analysis emerging from the work of social theorist Michel Foucault, her method of analysis connects race discourse and the racial structure. Her research illuminates the process by which the United States Supreme Court has facilitated the legal maintenance of white domination. Interdisciplinary in character, this research combines critical race theory, literary theory, critical legal studies and social scientific research on racial hierarchy to illuminate the process of what legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw has called “racial retrenchment” in the post-civil rights era. Through this process Moore both challenges contemporary assumptions about formal legal equality and provides a new frame for interrogating the role of law in the reproduction of racial inequality in a democratic society.
“The Glasscock Fellowship offered me the opportunity to spend concentrated time on this project...and the Glasscock Faculty Fellows presentation both provided exceptional feedback which had allowed me to clarify and organize the book in a way that I think will make it appealing to publishers.” ~ Dr. Wendy Moore
INTERNAL FACULTY RESIDENTIAL FELLOWS • 15
GLASSCOCK FACULTY RESEARCH FELLOWS Up to eight fellowships valued at $5,000 each are awarded per year. These fellowships are designed to address a need for funding for research that could not be accomplished otherwise in order to complete a book project, major article or series of articles, or other research project that makes an impact in the field. Money can be used for travel, conference, archival/fieldwork, or other normally reimbursable expenses. Recipients of the fellowship participate in the Faculty Colloquium Series, which functions as a working group for these works-in-progress. Projects are chosen on the basis or their intellectual rigor, scholarly creativity, and potential to make a significant impact in the candidate’s career and field. JAYSON BEASTER-JONES | Assistant Professor, Department of Performance Studies
TASHA DUBRIWNY | Associate Professor, Department of Communication and Women's and Gender Studies Program
Jayson Beaster-Jones worked on a book project entitled Bollywood Sounds. This project focuses on the musical underpinnings, composers, producers and musicians of Indian film songs. Professor Beaster-Jones provides an overview of the social, economic, and historical contexts of film songs and the ways in which they have retained their status as the dominant popular music in India. Through musical and multimedia analysis of Indian film songs and their accompanying picturizations, he argues that composers of Indian film songs (i.e., music directors) have drawn from a variety of musical styles, instruments, and performance practices from inside and outside of India. In so doing, they created a distinctly local music genre that has always had cosmopolitan orientations. Drawing from the semiotic theory of C.S. Peirce and later adaptations of his theory in linguistic anthropology to develop a theory of “musical mediation,” this project provides a broad framework for understanding how cultural material with diverse origins is transformed to make it suitable for new audiences.
Tasha Dubriwny worked on a project entitled, “(Re)Making Feminism: Public Memory and the Feminist Art Revolution.” This project is part of a larger book manuscript tentatively titled The Legacies of the Second-Wave: Public Memory and Women’s Rights in the 21st Century. The manuscript addresses the public memory of second-wave feminism from two angles: the negative and reductive public memory of the second-wave and the growing movement of second-wave feminist who are strategically attempting to reshape that public memory. This particular project focuses on feminist art exhibits, one of the most visible sites of commemoration of second-wave feminism. Although much of the research on feminist art has been relegated to the field of art history, feminist artists during the secondwave combined art production with activism and were central to expanding a key feminist tenet: “the personal is political, and all representation is political.” This work on public memory and second-wave feminism will address a substantial gap in rhetorical public memory studies, and it will make an additional contribution by theorizing how counter-memories are produced and sustained by alternative voices.
SARAH DEYONG | Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture Sarah Deyong worked on a project entitled “The Reinvention of Modern Architecture at Mid-Century: Colin Rowe’s Double Edge.” This project examines the work of architectural historian and theorist, Colin Rowe (1920-1999), in order to shed new light on the intellectual framework of his seminal critique of modern architecture at mid-century. In a body of work that subsequently influenced postmodern architecture, Rowe challenged the prevailing myths of the modern movement, its didactic formulation of Functionalist and its mystical belief in a new Zeitgeist. In so doing, he expanded the purview of architectural study to include precise formal readings of its processes and products. While Rowe’s legacy is well known, there is to date no monograph on his work that explores the background of his theoretical framework and the intellectual sources behind his thinking.
16 • GLASSCOCK FACULTY RESEARCH FELLOWS
FELIPE HINOJOSA | Assistant Professor, Department of History Felipe Hinojosa worked on a project entitled “Faithful Resistance: Latino Evangelicals and the ‘War on Poverty’ in New York and South Texas, 1964-1971.” This project documents the ways in which Latino evangelical organization partnered with President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” in order to establish anti-poverty programs in the 1960s and 1970s. His work shows how the civil rights era was an important moment for Latino evangelicals. During this time they organized movements to pressure white religious leaders and government officials to be more responsive to the cultural, educational, and political needs of Spanish-speaking communities. Like African Americans, Latinos merged their biblical understandings of justice with their own experience of marginalization as they organized faith-informed movements for social justice in the church.
WENDY JEPSON | Associate Professor, Department of Geography Wendy Jepson worked on a project entitled, “Colonias Biopolitics: Mobilizing a ‘Health Crisis’ for Water Development.” This project examines the situation of low-income Mexican-American laborers, mainly farm workers, who lived in abject poverty in the Lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas in the early 1970s. It traces the health and disease discourses used by Chicano grassroots organizers in their unsuccessful challenge of the powerful farmer-controlled water districts over the lack of domestic water provision. Professor’s Jepson’s research specifically focuses on how the ‘biologicalization’ of social conditions through health discourse operates as anti-politics, rendering technical social problems, such as lack of potable water and sanitation. The project draws from contemporary theories of biopolitics to examine colonias water infrastructure legislation and development, and will eventually lead to a chapter in a monograph on the politics of colonias domestic water provision, entitled, Quiescent Waters: Politics, Neoliberal Subjectivity, and the State in Drinking Water Provision for South Texas Colonias.
ADAM SEIPP | Associate Professor, Department of History
VIOLET M. SHOWERS JOHNSON | Professor, Department of History and Director of the Africana Studies Program Violet M. Showers Johnson worked on a project entitled, “The Wallet Protest in Guinea, West Africa: An Example of the African American Radical Tradition Abroad.” This project considers the 1999 NYPD shooting of twenty-three-year-old Amadou Diallo, an undocumented alien from Guinea, West Africa. The officers claimed that Diallo was acting suspiciously and had reached for a gun. It turned out that what he had reached for was his wallet. Using Amadou’s non-lethal wallet as a rallying symbol, African American activists and their allies, led by seasoned leaders like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Johnnie Cochran, quickly launched the “Wallet Civil Disobedience Campaign.” Professor Johnson’s project focuses on the extension of this campaign from the U.S. to Guinea, which was, importantly, not the first time that Guinea became a receptacle of the African American radical tradition. This project is part of a larger ongoing study intended for a monograph, tentatively entitled When Blackness Stings: African and Afro-Caribbean Immigrant Encounters with Race and Racism in Late TwentiethCentury America.
Adam Seipp worked on a project entitled, “From the Ashes: Occupation, Urban Life, and West Germany’s ‘Democratic Miracle,’ 1945-1950.” This project examined the postwar experience of Rosenheim, Germany, a mid-sized industrial city east of Munich in Bavaria. As an industrial center that was heavily damaged in the war and a prime example of the family firm-dominated model of industrial development, Rosenheim witnessed the structural transformation of the postwar economy. This project, which will lead to the writing of a scholarly monograph and several articles, situates the roots of West Germany’s “democratic miracle” in the experience of the occupation following World War II.
GLASSCOCK FACULTY RESEARCH FELLOWS • 17
BROWN GRADUATE FELLOWS Three stipends of $3,000 each were awarded to support doctoral graduate student research in the humanities. Brown Graduate Fellows are provided offices in the Glasscock Center for the duration of the fellowship year. These grants were made possible by the generous gift of Maggie and Corey Brown ’92. STACI WILLIS | Department of Anthropology, Texas A&M University
FIONA C. WILMOT | Department of Geography, Texas A&M University
Staci Willis, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology, worked on a dissertation investigating the development and preservation of the tradition of sewn boats in the North Adriatic during the Roman Empire. Several sewn boats have been discovered in the river systems and along the coastal zone of the northern Adriatic Sea; these represent a distinct form of craftsmanship within the Roman Empire. She examined excavation reports and photographs, excavated boat remains, epigraphic sources, contemporary texts, and modern ethnographies of various crafts in order to contextualize Adriatic sewn boats within the broader social background of the Roman Empire. Her goal is to forge a link between the physical boat remains and the cultural identity of the boat builders while answering the question of why this particular local tradition was preserved in a relatively small geographic region over an extended period of time.
Fiona C. Wilmot, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Geography, worked on a dissertation entitled “Making Mangroves: Ecologies of Mangrove Restoration for ClimateChange Mitigation in El Salvador, 2010-2013.” She used interpretive methods such as discourse analysis of archival documents and coded and transcribed interviews to examine the question of how being a ‘rescatista’ (peasant mangrove restorer) for climate change mitigation produces new meanings about nature and place. She also analyzed the governance of ecosystem restoration for climate-change mitigation, the material circumstances of the ‘rescatistas,’ and the question of whether “carbon colonialism,” or the use of developing countries as sites of carbonfixing, describes the practices in El Salvador. Wilmot aimed to explore the repercussions of the ‘rescatista’ restoration experience for other places where carbon-fixing demands labor.
“The support of the Brown-Kruse Fellowship has greatly aided the progress toward my doctoral degree and facilitated my dissertation research by providing the necessary funds to collect additional data in the field and an interdisciplinary atmosphere to develop my ideas.” ~ Staci Willis
18 • BROWN GRADUATE FELLOWS
MARSHALL A. YOKELL | Department of History, Texas A&M University Marshall A. Yokell, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History, worked on a dissertation studying the members of the Imperial German diplomatic corps in South America and investigates their impact in this sphere of diplomatic activity. He examines the early stages of German globalization, especially the nation’s attempt to extend its influence by developing the infrastructure of its colonies in areas such as South America. In his efforts to explore the themes of race, trans-nationalism, globalization, and how the European states viewed and depicted “developing nations,” he studies correspondences both between German diplomats and the German Foreign Office and between the diplomats and their networks with military officials, businessmen, religious and educational leaders, and the Germans who lived in South America,
“The Glasscock Center has given me the opportunity to develop research ideas beyond the scope of my dissertation, as well as stimulated new avenues to explore through exposure to new literatures and conversations with cultural scholars at the Latin American Democracies three-year seminar lead by Professor Alberto Moreiras. I am truly grateful to all at the Glasscock Center and to the Brown and Kruse families for this enriching experience.” ~ Fiona Wilmot
BROWN GRADUATE FELLOWS • 19
GLASSCOCK GRADUATE RESEARCH FELLOWS The Glasscock Center for Humanities Research annually funds up to ten Graduate Research Fellowships at $2,000 each. The outcome should be a dissertation or a thesis, or a significant portion thereof. These students, along with the Brown-Kruse Fellows, make up the community of graduate scholars who populate the Graduate Colloquium Series and use it as a tool to improve their own writing and projects and help each other to improve the quality of the work being produced as a group. HARRIS B. BECHTOL | Department of Philosophy
HULYA DOGAN | Department of Anthropology
Harris B. Bechtol, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Philosophy, is working on a project titled, “The Eventfullness of Being in the Work of Martin Heidegger.” This project focuses on Heidegger’s conceptions of Ereignis (the Event) and Gelassenheit (letting-be) and the ways in which this is taken up by later continental philosophers, particularly through the notion of the gift in Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion. Harris expands on this these considerations to examine the phenomenon of death as a figure of event, and argues that death discloses the self to the vigilant one who engages in phenomenological examination of death.
Hulya Dogan, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology, is working on a project titled, “Ethnic Identity (Re)formation Process of Meskhetian Turks in the US.” In considering Meskhetian Turks, a group who have experienced multiple displacements for more than seventy years, this project contributes to the theoretical understanding of ethnic identity formation processes and the interdependencies of gender and generation with ethnic identity construction. The data for this study was collected utilizing qualitative methods, including unstructured, open-ended interviews, in-depth life history and family interviews, and participant observations.
MICHAEL BUNCH | Department of Architecture
TYLER (T.J.) KASPERBAUER | Department of Philosophy
Michael Bunch, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Architecture, is working on a project titled, “How Do We Develop A Systematic Set of Legacy Values Guidelines to Assist in the Preservation of WWII Army Air Base Facilities in Southeast Texas?” This project explores issues related to the preservation of cultural heritage and the on-going efforts to sustain the legacy and memory of seminal WWII events in southeast Texas. This work will contribute to an overall understanding of what is truly significant about the built environment and what criteria can be used to preserve the cultural and historical legacy of WWII Army Air Base construction.
Tyler (T.J.) Kasperbauer, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Philosophy, is working on a project titled, “Perceiving Nonhumans: Human Moral Psychology and Animal Ethics.” This project considers the psychological obstacles to convincing others that animals are deserving of moral concern. It questions what ordinary people would have to be convinced of for them to decide that animals deserve moral consideration. T.J. interprets recent evidence coming from the social sciences, primarily psychology, in order to help animal ethicists evaluate how others ought to treat animals.
“Thank you so much for selecting me as a recipient of this fellowship. I could not have begun this project without the helps of this grant.” ~ Harris Bechtol
20 • GLASSCOCK GRADUATE RESEARCH FELLOWS
DHANANJAYA KATJU | Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences
NICHOLAS MIZER | Department of Anthropology
Dhananjaya Katju, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences, is working on a project titled, “The Political Ecology of Noncompliance: Encroachment, Governance, and Avian Conservation in the Manas Tiger and Biosphere Reserve (India).” This project identifies and interprets the socio-environmental factors that enable and constrain rural producers illegally occupying PA land, government authorities, and researchers in the ever-important struggle to maintain rural livelihoods and biodiversity value on fertile, productive agro-forest landscapes. By detailing understanding of linkages between immigration, local economies, government policies and agendas, and the environment, Dhananjaya’s research takes a critical step towards informing forms of governance that will move closer to developing more progressive policy outcomes with relevance to tropical forest agroecoystems and the livelihoods they sustain.
Nicholas Mizer, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology, is working on a project titled, “Trajectories of Narrative, Space, and Play in Dungeons & Dragons.” This project aims to understand the processes by which players of Dungeons & Dragons develop shared narratives about their play practices in the context of space. Through participant observation, interviews, and recording game sessions this study develops a robust body of data regarding the evolution of relationships between plays, narrative, and space. The synthesis of these data will produce more than simply a description of a specific play subculture; it will draw needed attention to an under-studied strategy for living in the contemporary globalized world.
HEATHER LEE | Department of Geography Heather Lee, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Geography, is working on a project titled, “Governing Water Scarcity in the Twenty-First Century.” This project uses a case study of water governance in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato where farmers are particularly reliant on overexploited groundwater resources for agricultural production. This research uses multi-method qualitative inquiry, and its overall coding objective is to identify how water manager, market actors, and scientists describe and represent information about the sources of and responses to water scarcity.
SWETHA PETERU | Department of Geography Swetha Peteru, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Geography, is working on a project titled, “Shifting Meanings of Nature and Labor Through Biodiversity Conservation in Peru.” This study proposes to examine agricultural and environmental knowledge systems of communities living in targeted agro-forestry conservation sites and how the conservation projects have shaped perceptions and understandings of nature and labor. Based on results from preliminary fieldwork, Swetha argues that these environmental educational programs of “best practice” and work requirements for conservation are reconfiguring both the meaning of nature and social relations in communities.
GLASSCOCK GRADUATE RESEARCH FELLOWS • 21
GLASSCOCK UNDERGRADUATE SUMMER SCHOLARS PROGRAM The objective of the program is to expand undergraduate research in the humanities by providing an intensive summer research experience in which students are introduced to important research questions, trained in methods of research and analysis, and guided in the development of critical thinking, independent learning, and communications skills. The students enrolled in a two-week intensive seminar taught by faculty directors. In the seminar the students were immersed in a focused topic and developed a research question that they continued to investigate under the mentorship of the faculty member for the remaining eight weeks of the summer and at the end of the academic year produced a thesis. Students attended writing studios created especially for this program through the Writing Center on topics including: How to Use the Library; How to Formulate a Research Question and Answer It (methods, research); Writing a Proposal Topic; and Peer Review of Draft.
War, Memory, and Diversity in Contemporary France FACULTY DIRECTOR: NATHAN BRACHER | Professor of French, Department of International Studies UNDERGRADUATE SCHOLARS: STEPHANIE COURTRIGHT | Department of English MIKAYLA HALL | Department of International Studies MASON MORGAN | Department of English During the first two weeks of this Glasscock Undergraduate Summer Scholar Seminar, the participants engaged in an intensive study of a number of films, literary texts, and historical studies illustrating the various ways in which the coexistence of peoples of widely varying cultural, linguistic, religious, and national origins in mainland France today stems from colonization, world war, and colonial uprisings from the era of the French Revolution up until the first decade of the twentyfirst century. Thus immersing themselves for more than four hours per day, morning and afternoon, each scholar then set out on a path of individual research on a topic related to the various themes of war, memory, and diversity discussed during that initial period.
“This opportunity has been a highlight of not just college but my entire academic career.” ~ Mason Morgan
Photos (L-R): Mikayla Hall, Mason Morgan, Stephanie Courtright, Chris Black, Desirae Embree, Michael Gonzales, Jessi Green, Thomas Sekula
22 • UNDERGRADUATE SUMMER SCHOLARS PROGRAM
The Enlightenment and the Jewish Question FACULTY DIRECTOR: CLAIRE KATZ | Professor, Department of Philosophy and Women’s and Gender Studies Program UNDERGRADUATE SCHOLARS: CHRIS BLACK | Department of Philosophy DESIRAE EMBREE | Department of Philosophy and International Studies (French) MICHAEL GONZALES | Department of English and the Women’s and Gender Studies Program JESSI GREEN | Department of Philosophy THOMAS SEKULA | Department of Philosophy The two-week seminar focused on the German Enlightenment and its limits. The readings could be divided into three categories: Readings addressing the question “What is Enlightenment?” (18th century German philosophers, e.g., Kant, Mendelssohn, Hamann); readings that addressed the failure of the Enlightenment: Arendt, Horkheimer/ Adorno, Levinas, Levi, Amery; readings that recouped the values from the Enlightenment to argue for a return to humanism through humanities education (e.g., Martha Nussbaum). The students were asked to consider how the “self” is described in the enlightenment and what it means for a new description of the self that enlightenment ethics failed in the most spectacular way in the 20th century.
Dr. Claire Katz's research group
“The ability to have an office with my own computer in the center of campus was amazingly beneficial to my studies and enhanced community with other scholars.” ~ Michael Gonzales
UNDERGRADUATE SUMMER SCHOLARS PROGRAM • 23
GLASSCOCK THREE-YEAR SEMINARS Organized and led by faculty directors from departments in the College of Liberal Arts and programs affiliated with the Glasscock Center, these three-year seminars provide a forum for a wide variety of faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students from the humanities and social science disciplines to present and discuss research in progress, invite speakers, and host symposia. These seminars meet regularly during the three-year cycle, and participants are expected to define and complete a major project by the end of their three-year term. Outcomes might include but are not limited to: edited volumes, a series of articles, a database, or other project that makes a major impact in humanities. Grants of $3,000 are provided each of the three years that the seminars are in existence.
Critical Childhood Studies
Continental Philosophy
SEMINAR CO-DIRECTORS: LUCIA HODGSON | Assistant Professor, Department of English CLAUDIA NELSON | Professor, Department of English
SEMINAR DIRECTOR: DANIEL CONWAY | Professor, Department of Philosophy
Critical Childhood Studies is an interdisciplinary field that focuses on figurations of the child in the humanities. The field embraces the study of social constructions of childhood, children’s literature and culture, the child in legal theory, the social agency of the child, the child’s experience across national and historical boundaries, and child development theories in the social sciences, among other topics. The Seminar’s ongoing activities include regular meetings of faculty, graduate students, and members of the larger community to discuss topics in childhood studies scholarship, as well as a discussion series aimed primarily at undergraduates and focused on issues relating to childhood in popular culture. The Seminar assisted in developing a volume of essays from a June 2012 symposium on “The Image of the Child in Chinese and American Children’s Literature” held in Qingdao, China, co-sponsored by various Texas A&M entities (including the Glasscock Center) and Ocean University of China.
26 September 2013 “The Hunger Games: A Call to Teens for Violent Political Action?" 1 March 2014 Symposium: “Childhood in the Humanities”
Continental Philosophy is a multi-disciplinary field that takes its bearings from the seminal insights and influential theories that emerged in the fertile, post-Kantian period of European philosophy (roughly, 1800- present). Major figures of influence include Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx, Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Freud, Husserl, Heidegger, Bergson, Sartre, Beauvoir, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, Arendt, Derrida, Deleuze, Badiou, and Agamben. Traditions and developments central to the field of Continental Philosophy include: German idealism, existentialism, phenomenology, post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, Lebensphilosophie, deconstruction, post-colonial studies, Holocaust studies, negative theology, and liberation theology. Students and scholars of Continental Philosophy may be found in any number of academic disciplines and settings at contemporary colleges and universities. The Seminar in Continental Philosophy includes, develops, and builds on the activities of the Continental Philosophy Study Group and focuses its energies and resources on the following activities: Organizing and hosting conferences, workshops, and other events in Continental Philosophy, including an annual conference attracting leading scholars to the TAMU campus in College Station; Promoting original contributions to disciplinary and interdisciplinary scholarship in the field of Continental Philosophy; Serving as an institutional home and clearing-house for teaching and research initiatives pertaining to the field of Continental Philosophy; Enhancing graduate and undergraduate mentoring within and across participating disciplines; and Engaging in global outreach via various working groups and networks within the field of Continental Philosophy.
26 September 2013 Film Screening of Hannah Arendt 10 December 2013 Text Seminar "Levinas, Humanism of the Other (selections); Katz, Levinas and the Crisis of Humanism" 7 February 2014 Author Meets Reader Roundtable "Levinas and the Crisis of Humanism and and An Introduction to Modern Jewish Philosophy" 21 February 2014 Interactive Reading Seminar “Gender, Judaism, and the Limits of Forgiveness”
24 • THREE-YEAR SEMINARS
Contemporary Latin American Democracies
1914 and the Making of the Twentieth Century
SEMINAR DIRECTOR: ALBERTO MOREIRAS | Professor, Department of Hispanic Studies
SEMINAR DIRECTOR: ADAM SEIPP | Associate Professor, Department of History
The proliferation of new left-wing governments in Latin America over the last fifteen years marks the breakdown of the Washington consensus and the subcontinental end of the dominance of the neoliberal policies that had marked the states of Latin American democracy since the public debt crisis of 1982. Latin America confronts today the possibility of various populist revolutions, variously termed under the concepts of the “Communal State,” “Andean Capitalism,” a resurgent “Peronism,” or even so-called “Movement Communism” by some of the political agents to the left of governing configurations.
“1914 and the Making of the 20th Century” includes a major international conference that was held in College Station on 18-19 September 2013 and a publication timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of World War I’s outbreak in 2014. The conference sought to move beyond historical studies of the war and offer an assessment of the conflict’s impact on the world of the twentieth century and beyond.
The possibilities for a deterioration of the Latin American political system are therefore at least equal to the possibilities for a reinvention of Latin American democracy on a large scale. What is behind all of this is not simply a realignment of political and social elites, but a veritable pressure from below in a situation of epochal crisis in social and political legitimacy. The traditional conceptual pair “persuasion + coercion” that established the political system of modernity is giving way, in public perception, to a situation of contested domination. As a region defined by its colonial and postcolonial history and with endemic social inequality, it is only natural that Latin America has become today a symptomatic point of pressure for the political future of humanity as a whole. This seminar studies the contemporary situation in Venezuela under (post)chavismo, the neoextractivist policies for economic development in Correa's Ecuador and Morales´ Bolivia, the fight for control of the media in Kirchner's Argentina, the narcowars in Mexico and Central America, student revolts in Chile, and other situations. It investigates the political implications of the notion of posthegemony, in counterpoint to Laclau's hegemony theory, as the limit of the political itself. It studies the reverberations of contemporary political and theoretical discussions for cultural production in the arts, in literature, and in social networks. In sum, it focuses on contemporary problems in Latin American democracy.
This project is rooted in history, but brings practitioners from a range of other disciplines including, agriculture, anthropology, art history, conflict archaeology, epidemiology, international relations/security studies, literature, medicine, philosophy, political science, psychology, sociology, and women’s and gender studies.
17-19 September 2013 "1914 and the Making of the Twentieth Century" Conference
15-16 November 2013 Workshop: “Democracy in the Andes: The Work of Alvaro García Liñera” 28 February 2014 Panel Discussion: "Arguedas/Vargas Llosa Dilemas y ensamblajes" MABEL MORAÑA | Professor of Spanish and International and Area Studies, Washington University in St. Louis 28 March 2014 Symposium: “Soberanías en suspenso: Imaginación y violencia en América Latina” SERGIO VILLALOBOS | Assistant Professor of Spanish and Latin American and Latino Studies, University of Arkansas 23 April 2014 Symposium: “Populism and Democratic Theory” YANNIS STAVRAKAKIS | Aristotle University of Thessaloniki THREE-YEAR SEMINARS • 25
OTHER FACULTY GRANTS Ad Hoc Faculty Stipendiary Fellowship
Buttrill Ethics Curriculum Enhancement Grant
The Glasscock Center awarded two grants of $1,000 each to support humanities research projects conducted by lecturers, visiting and adjunct faculty.
The Buttrill Ethics Curriculum Enhancement Grant supports interactions between faculty and students focused on investigations of ethical issues or ethics in general. Efforts may be channeled through existing or new courses, free-standing seminars, panel discussions, symposia, workshops, visiting speakers, or other events. Proposed courses and events must directly address and wrestle with ethical questions – past or present – pertinent to contemporary societies, cultures, and individuals.
ELEANOR OWICKI | Assistant Lecturer in Theater Arts, Department of Performance Studies “Staging a Shared Future: Performance and the Search for Inclusive Narratives in the ‘New’ Belfast” KRISTA STEINKE-FINCH | Lecturer, Department of Visualization “The Day the Sky Fell”
JYOSTNA VAID | Department of Psychology “Research Method in Psychology: Ethical Issues”
Publication Support Grant The Glasscock Center makes available grants to faculty of up to $1,000 each to be used toward the costs of publishing a manuscript of humanities-related scholarship. This grant is intended to cover costs for substantive enhancements to the manuscript which are required for publication (graphics, maps, tables, permissions, subventions, figures, translation costs, and the like). LAURA ESTILL | Department of English Dramatic Extracts in Seventeenth-Century English Manuscripts: Watching, Reading, Changing Plays University of Deleware Press, 2015 HOI-EUN KIM | Department of History Doctors of Empire: Medical and Cultural Encounters Between Imperial Germany and Maiji Japan University of Toronto Press, 2014
26 • OTHER FACULTY GRANTS
ADA PALMER | Department of History Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance Harvard University Press, 2014 KRISTI SWEET | Department of Philosophy Kant on Practical Life: From Duty to History Cambridge University Press, 2013
OTHER GRADUATE STUDENT GRANTS Cushing-Glasscock Graduate Award
Graduate Research Matching Grant
This award supports research projects in the humanities that are based on the collections of the Cushing Memorial Library and Archives. The committee awards funding for up to two projects in the amount of $2,000 each. This award is made in conjunction with the Cushing Memorial Library and Archives. Recipients conducted their research in the Cushing Library and Archives during the summer of 2013 and presented their research at the Cushing-Glasscock Award Presentations on 25 October 2013.
Research Matching Grants supplement competitively awarded humanities research grants of up to $5,000 secured from sources external to Texas A&M University. The Glasscock Center awards grants of up to $1,000. MICAH WRIGHT | Department of History "Puerto Rico and U.S. Empire in the Caribbean"
JARED MIRACLE | Department of Anthropology “Come a Good Punch-Up: Robert W. Smith and the American Invention of Asian Martial Arts” Jared Miracle’s research focused on the transformation of the American sporting landscape and the popularization of Asian martial culture in the United States, specifically the influence that Robert W. Smith, one of the “founding fathers” of this culture, had in the history and background of the shift in public awareness and practice of martial arts. By working in the library’s Robert W. Smith Collection, Jared investigated the the dynamics of this cultural shift in America brought about by Smith and his colleagues that resulted in general public knowledge of a previously-marginal tradition by examining the correspondence between Smith and other core members of their group.
LEAH SANDLIN | Department of English “Tracing European Attitudes on African Spirituality from the Early Explorations to the Age of Imperialism” Leah Sandlin’s research focused largely on early nineteenth-century travel narratives, specifically the portrayal of African spirituality and religious belief by travel writers of the Victorian era. Explorers of this era write about how African natives worship English clothing and gadgets and how Africans regard these things as fetish objects. During her residence at the Cushing Library, she expanded her research to include earlier writings on Africa, where she intends to trace the development of European attitudes toward African religion and spirituality in order to determine whether or not Victorian travel writers’ focus on African fetish is simply a trope of nineteenth-century exploration or was already an established tradition.
OTHER GRADUATE GRANTS • 27
CO-SPONSORED EVENTS Co-sponsored Symposia and Small Conferences
Notable Lectures
The Glasscock Center supports the humanities at Texas A&M University by providing support for symposia and small conferences that showcase and promote scholarship and research in the humanities. 17-19 SEPTEMBER 2013 "1914 and the Making of the 20th Century" Conference 27 SEPTEMBER 2013 "Breaking Free, Breaking Down: The New Chicana/o History of the 21st Century" Conference
8-9 FEBRUARY 2014 "Machiavelli between Past and Future: Reflections on the 500th Anniversary of The Prince and the State of Machiavelli Scholarship" Conference
~ Guilluame Bogiaris-Thibault, Machiavelli Between Past and Future Conference
21 FEBRUARY 2014 “Gender, Judaism, and the Limits of Forgiveness” Breaking Free, Breaking Down: The New Chicana/o History in the Twenty-First Century A ONE-DAY CONFERENCE AT TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY • FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2013
Friday, September 27, 2013 • 8 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research Glasscock Center Library, 311 Glasscock Building, Texas A&M University
PRESENTERS:
AMERICA:
EMPIRE OR UMPIRE, AND AT WHAT COST? ELIZABETH COBBS HOFFMAN Award-winning historian and novelist
Monday, 28 October 2013, 4 p.m. Glasscock Center Library, 311 Glasscock Building, Texas A&M University Lecture is free and open to the public, and refreshments will be served.
Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman earned a Ph.D. in American history at Stanford University, and now holds an endowed chair at San Diego State University. Her books have won four literary prizes, two for American history and two for fiction. Elizabeth has been a Fulbright scholar in Ireland and a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C, and is currently a National Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. From 1999 to 2005, she served on the Historical Advisory Committee of the U.S. State Department, advising on transparency in government and the declassification of top secret documents. Hoffman’s most recent book, American Umpire (Harvard University Press, 2013), represents a stirring and controversial reimagining of both the history and future of America's role in the world. She is also author of The Rich Neighbor Policy: Rockefeller and Kaiser in Brazil (Yale, 1992), which won the Allan Nevins Prize and the Stuart Bernath Award, and All You Need is Love: The Peace Corps and the Spirit of the 1960s (Harvard, 1998). Her next project is a novel based on the remarkable life of Alexander Hamilton and his courageous wife Eliza Schuyler, who survived his tragic death and raised their seven children alone.
American Umpire Harvard University Press, 2013
In this lecture Hoffmann expects to challenge much of the prevailing scholarship on American foreign relations in claiming that "empire" is a misnomer when applied to the United States, which she argues, has been far more devoted to establishing laws and customs meant to level the international playing field. Lecture co-sponsored by the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research and the Department of History at Texas A&M University.
THE MELBERN G. GLASSCOCK CENTER FOR HUMANITIES RESEARCH 305 Glasscock Building • Texas A&M University • 4214 TAMU • College Station, TX 77843-4214 Phone: (979) 845-8328 • Fax: (979) 458-3681 • glasscock@tamu.edu The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a federal anti-discrimination statute that provides comprehensive civil rights protection for persons with disabilities. If you believe that you have a disability requiring accommodation, please contact us at (979) 845-8328.
LIBERAL ARTS TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY MELBERN G. GLASSCOCK CENTER FOR HUMANITIES RESEARCH
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Luis Alvarez "Utopian Rhythms, Interracial Blues: Towards a Relational and Transnational Chicana/o Cultural History"
To call the current state of Chicana/o history strange or curious is an understatement. Today, controversy about Chicana/o history and
Carlos Kevin Blanton "Breaking Free, Breaking Down: Explaining the Promising Problem of Chicana/o History in the Twenty-First Century"
especially Chicana/o Studies is heightened and seemingly a new front in the age-old "culture wars" that have defined this nation's political
Perla M. Guerrero "Chicanas/os in Arkansas, Chicanas/os in the South: Immigrant, Refugee, and Multiethnic History as Southern History" Sonia Hernández "Chicanas in the U.S-Mexican Borderlands: Trans-Border Conversations of Feminism and Anarchism" Felipe Hinojosa "Sacred Spaces: Race, Resistance, and the Making of Chicano and Latino Religious History" Michael A. Olivas "The Accidental Historian or, How I Found My Groove in Legal History" Lisa Y. Ramos "The Longue Durée of Black-Brown Relations in Texas" Marc Simon Rodriguez "Getting it Wrong: The Longue Durée, Ethnic Mexicans, and the Lost Middle Ground in Mexican American Historical Praxis" Ana Elizabeth Rosas "Finalmente, Contestaron Mis-Nuestras Preguntas/Finally, They Answered My-Our Questions...: The Historical Underpinnings of Intergenerational Divisiveness and Harmony across the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1964-1990"
culture for several decades. But this is counter-balanced by the new approaches, fresh insights, and rich diversity of interpretive perspectives allowing Chicana/o historians today to break free from older perspectives. Breaking down traditional categories—race, discrimination, gender, class, education, identity, and community formation—and embracing transnationalism, multiple and overlapping identities, and a heightened sense of comparative perspectives typify the approaches of the participants of "Breaking Free, Breaking Down: The New Chicana/o History in the Twenty-First Century." These outstanding scholars are eager to take on the rapidly expanding diversity of historical imagination in Chicana/o history.
Free and open to the public For more information, visit glasscock.tamu.edu/programs/co-sponsored-events/bfbd2013 or contact Dr. Carlos Blanton at ckblanton@tamu.edu.
Conference co-sponsored by: Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research Department of History Department of Multicultural Services Office of the Vice President and Associate Provost for Diversity
14 NOVEMBER 2013 “The Dilemma of Diversity: Justice and the Primacy of Voices” FRED EVANS | Duquesne University
“We succeeded in creating fruitful dialog between all participants and attendees, and integrating the younger scholars to the group of more established professors we had invited...[Texas] A&M students seemed to have learned a great deal from these scholars, and the conference drew a great deal of visibility to humanities at A&M.”
17-18 OCTOBER 2014 “Virtual Ethnography: Exploring Religion in Digital Worlds” Lecture and Workshop GREGORY GRIEVE | Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of North Carolina Greensboro
4-5 APRIL 2014 "The Presents of the Past" Symposium
The Glasscock Center supports notable lectures by speakers of pre-eminent interdisciplinary reputation that will both promote the humanities and contribute broadly to the intellectual community.
LIBERAL ARTS TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY MELBERN G. GLASSCOCK CENTER FOR HUMANITIES RESEARCH
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a federal anti-discrimination statute that provides comprehensive civil rights protection for persons with disabilities. If you believe that you have a disability requiring accommodation, please contact us at (979) 845-8328.
CO-SPONSORED EVENTS Co-sponsored Lectures The Glasscock Center supports the humanities at Texas A&M University by co-sponsoring public lectures, performances with a humanities research component, and scholarly presentations by visitors from outside the university. 3 OCTOBER 2013 AND 4 OCTOBER 2013 “Aristotle’s Worst Idea: Momotelism and Aristotle’s Rhetorodicy” JOHN THORP | University of Western Ontario 28 OCTOBER 2013 “America: Empire or Umpire, and at What Cost?” ELIZABETH COBBS HOFFMAN | Professor of History, San Diego State University 14 NOVEMBER 2013 “Don’t Hurry Me Down to Hades: Soldiers and Families in America’s Civil War” SUSANNAH URAL | Associate Professor of History, Co-Director of the Center for the Study of War & Society, The University of Southern Mississippi 27 FEBRUARY 2014 Lecture: “Heroic-Idyllic Philosophizing: Epicureanism in Modern European Philosophy” KEITH ANSELL-PEARSON | University of Warwick (UK) and Rice University 27 FEBRUARY 2014 Workshop: “Philosophy as a Way of Life?: The Reception of Epicurean Teaching in Nietzsche and Bergson” KEITH ANSELL-PEARSON | Professor of Philosophy, University of Warwick (UK), Senior Visiting Research Scholar, Humanities Research Center, Rice University
Cultural Enrichment and Campus Diversity Grant The purpose of this grant is to enhance the campus climate by nurturing collegiality, diversity, pluralism and the uniqueness of individuals through activities that include things like performances and speakers. This grant differs from the Co-sponsorship Grant in that the focus is not necessarily strictly a scholarly presentation, but should fulfill the mission of creating learning through activities that foster multicultural enrichment. Active political campaigns are not sponsored. 24 SEPTEMBER 2013 “Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of the American Debate” GREG LUKIANOFF | President of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) 21 MARCH 2014 “Leadership and Legal Systems in the Light of Justice: Walter Echo-Hawk on Native Americans in a Global Context” WALTER ECHO-HAWK (PAWNEE) | author, attorney, tribal judge, law professor and activist 28 MARCH 2014 Keynote Address for the Communicating Diversity Student Conference “Narrating the Closet” Tony E. Adams | Assistant Professor, Northeastern Illinois University
21 FEBRUARY 2014 “The Limits of Forgiveness: Judaism, Justice, and the ‘Other’” DEBORACH ACHTENBERG | University of Nevada 24 MARCH 2014 “Empire of the Air: Aviation and the American Ascendancy” JENNIFER VAN VLECK | Professor of History, American Studies, and the History of Science and Medicine, Yale University 23 APRIL 2014 “Coworking: A New Phenomenon or the Resdiscovery of Community?” TIM BUTCHER | Director, Undergraduate Programs in the College of Business, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
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HUMANITIES WORKING GROUPS The Glasscock Center encourages interdisciplinary research and scholarship by providing up to $1,500 in annually renewable support to selfconstituted groups of faculty and students engaged in exploration of thematically-related research questions in the humanities. Participants share the goal of stimulating intellectual exchange through discussion, writing, viewing, reading, and other activities that further their inquiries into common scholarly concerns. Brains, Learning, and Animal Behavior (BLAB) Convenor: Dr. Gary Varner, Philosophy BLAB is an interdisciplinary group that discusses studies of behavior, cognition, and consciousness in nonhuman animals. The group facilitates bridge-building between philosophy and scientific disciplines, widening the conceptual framework for all participants, particularly by bringing humanistic methods of reflection and analysis to bear on questions that are of broad interest to all.
Cognoscenti Convenor: Dr. Jyotsna Vaid, Psychology Cognoscenti is an interdisciplinary forum for intellectual exchange on issues concerning mental functioning in humans and other species. Among the topics of interest are language and culture, figurative language processing, bilingualism, memory blocking, infant perception, reasoning, philosophy of mind, categorization, aesthetics, creative thought, and the mind-brain interface.
Digital Humanities Convenor: Dr. Richard Furuta, Computer Science The Digital Humanities Working Group provides a synergistic, interdisciplinary environment that develops new knowledge through informatics research and prepares the next generation of humanities scholars. It does so by facilitating communications among the campus scholars developing innovative computing tools, digital library collections, and hypertextual archives of broad and significant academic and educational value to the humanities. The group provides support for the public Digital Humanities lecture series, the Digital Humanities Graduate Certificate, and works to facilitate creation of an interdisciplinary community on campus centered around the Digital Humanities.
Early Modern Studies Convenors: Dr. Nandra Perry and Meghan Parker, English The Early Modern Studies Working Group provides a forum for those working in the literature, culture, and history of Early Modern Europe. It provides a foundation for new graduate students, a forum for the presentation and discussion of writing, and links between interested graduate students and faculty that promote academic mentorship and further the process of professionalization.
History of Art, Architecture, and Visual Culture Convenor: Dr. Nancy Klein, Architecture The History of Art, Architecture, and Visual Culture Working Group promotes collaboration and cooperation among faculty and students in fields such as anthropology, archaeology, architecture, arts education, gender studies, history, and visual studies. The working group will serve as a forum for the discussion of current research, as a means to share ideas and receive feedback from participants, and to develop opportunities to engage students.
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Indigenous Studies Convenors: Dr. Qwo-Li Driskill, English, and Dr. Angela Pulley Hudson, History The Indigenous Studies Working Group explores the challenges and rewards of engaging in Indigenous Studies, discovers and analyzes the similarities and differences between academic approaches to the study of Indigenous peoples, investigates trends and changes within the field of Indigenous Studies, supports and assists colleagues in undertaking innovative research.
Language Matters Convenor: Dr. Maria Irene Moyna, Hispanic Studies The Language Matters Working Group explores language issues for a thorough understanding of the human condition. The group brings together faculty and graduate students across different departments in and outside of the College of Liberal Arts whose work is connected with language as broadly understood. The group meets to discuss topics such as the sounds, grammatical structure, and lexicon of human languages, the pragmatics of language use and change across time and space, bilingualism, factors affecting language acquisition, and various other topics of communication through language.
Latino/a Studies Convenor: Dr. Lisa Y. Ramos and Dr. Felipe Hinojosa, Department of History The Latina/o Studies Working Group brings together those who study the Latina/o experience abroad and in the U.S. The group’s foci include hybridity, critical race theory, acculturation and transculturation, as well as other theoretical and methodological approaches. Our aim is to encourage members to broaden their knowledge of Latinas/os and promote interdisciplinary collaboration.
Literacy Studies Convenor: Dr. R. Malatesha Joshi, Teaching, Learning, and Culture The Literacy Studies Group includes faculty, professionals, researchers and graduate students from diverse backgrounds (psychology, sociology, neuroscience, linguistics, and education). The group meets to break artificial disciplinary barriers and to facilitate the exchange of information on the issue of literacy, a major concern in our technological society.
Medieval Studies Convenor: Dr. Britt Mize, English
Rhetoric and Discourse Studies Convenor: Dr. C. Jan Swearingen, English
The Medieval Studies Working Group invites the participation of all faculty and graduate students with academic interests in the Middle Ages, roughly defined as the period 500-1500 CE. The group provides a forum for dialogue about the field of medieval studies and any topic within it; supports participants’ own research with opportunities for constructive feedback; increases awareness of, and access to, interdisciplinary possibilities as we benefit mutually from one another’s more specialized interests and expertise; and continues to develop a sense of community among TAMU’s medievalists.
The Rhetoric and Discourse Studies Working Group uses discourse theory to address issues in composition, linguistics, cultural studies and rhetoric. It explores cross-cultural rhetorics, language in diasporic communities, environmental poetics, verbal art and cultural performance, interactional styles in the workplace, multicultural pedagogies, historical dialectology, and the role of gesture in communication.
Music, Movement and Cultural Performance Convenor: Dr. Emily McManus, Performance Studies
The SCPT Working Group is an interdisciplinary group of faculty and graduate students who are interested in theories of society, broadly understood. The group provides an intellectual center for work in contemporary social thought, intellectual history, cultural theory, and political thought from ancient times to the present day. Members use a variety of research methods including critical theory, ethnography, or textual analysis.
The Music, Movement, and Cultural Performance working group is an interdisciplinary group interested in the performance of culture, broadly defined. Areas of interest include music, dance, movement, theatre, comedy, poetry, spoken word, and other performative genres. Meetings provide members the opportunity to present new and established research and/or creative endeavors. The group seeks to reinforce collaboration between scholars at Texas A&M and other institutions.
New Modern British Studies Convenor: Dr. Robert Griffin, English The New Modern British Studies Working Group is an informal group of faculty members and graduate students working in British, Irish, and Postcolonial literary, historical, and cultural studies from the eighteenth century to the present.
Queer Studies Convenors: Dr. Daniel Humphrey, Film Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies Program, and Dr. Krista May, Associate Editor of World Shakespeare Bibliography The Queer Studies Reading Group is a research community of faculty and graduate students interested in the interdisciplinary field of Queer Studies, which questions the meaning of sexual identities, performances, discourses, practices, and representations. The group is particularly interested in engaging work that rejects and destabilizes essentialized ideas about sexuality, gender and race.
Religion and Culture Convenors: Dr. Heidi Campbell, Communication The Religion and Culture Working Group promotes discussion among faculty and graduate students interested in interdisciplinary investigations of the subject of religion both past and present. The group adopts broad-based theoretical approaches to the study of religion, understood in this context to include the material culture, modes of expression, philosophy, institutions, and experiences that are infused with spiritual or transcendent meaning.
Social, Cultural, and Political Theory Convenor: Dr. Daniel Conway, Philosophy
South Asia Studies Convenor: Dr. Nandini Bhattacharya, English The South Asia Studies Working Group focuses on the interplay and confrontation between dynamics of liberalization, globalization and nationalism in the South Asian region. Precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial periods of South Asian history will be studied using area, cultural, and women’s studies as well as other disciplinary perspectives on the politics and cultures of South Asia as a region.
War, Violence, and Society Convenors: Dr. Adam Seipp and Jared Donnelly, History The War, Violence and Society Working Group brings together faculty and graduate students who employ a variety of disciplines in the study of violence and the ways it impacts society. This working group considers the causes, courses, and consequences of violence, including conventional warfare, insurgencies, and state-directed violence. It benefits from the perspectives of specialists in the institutional, cultural, social, and gendered study of conflict in the human experience.
Women’s and Gender Studies Convenor: Dr. Claire Katz, Philosophy and Women’s and Gender Studies Program The Women’s and Gender Studies Working Group facilitates intellectual community among faculty and students conducting research on various aspects of gender. Participants include faculty and students connected with the Women’s & Gender Studies Program and the other members of the university community who are interested in this area of scholarship.
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