Fall 2005
Annual Theme 2005-06 Belief IPRH Annual Conference: March 30-31, 2006
Letter from the Director Few topics are more pressing at the current geopolitical
decades ago, after all, that the prophets of enlightenment
moment than the status of belief. Religion, it seems,
reason were confidently predicting victory in their epic
is everywhere.
fight against religion. Secularism, they thought, would
In the United States, the country of exurban megachurches
prevail; science, they were certain, would be triumphant. It
and the now annual blockbuster The Passion of the Christ,
seems to have come differently.
it animates conservative politics as much as demands for
This year, the Illinois Program for Research in the Human-
multicultural diversity. It organizes debates on gay marriage
ities will devote much of its programming to an exploration
and stem cell research. And by most accounts, it is on the
of this state of affairs. Under the theme of “Belief,” we
rise. Over 95% of Americans believe in God or a higher
will address developments in particular communities as
power.
well as the trajectory of religion on a global scale. We will
Elsewhere in the world, the role of belief is just as prom-
debate whether we are witnessing the end of enlighten-
inent. Religion, especially evangelical Christianity, is on a
ment and ponder whether such a development should
rapid rise in Latin America and East Asia. India and Israel,
be welcomed or feared by progressive intellectuals, many
meanwhile, are seeing revivals of Hindu and Jewish funda-
of whom have spent their careers critiquing modernity’s
mentalism. Radical Islam, for its part, is said to be gaining
repressive structures.
ground among Muslims from Europe to South-East Asia
We are especially keen to rethink the status of secular-
and everywhere in the Arab world. The perceived threat of
ism. We will do so during a one-day conference co-orga-
terrorism only heightens the stakes of this development.
nized with the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory.
To a visitor from a not-too-distant past, this global state
“Rethinking Secularism in an Age of Belief” will be held
of affairs might well seem perplexing. It was only a few
on Saturday, October 8, creating a pressing conversation among scholars with expertise ranging from African-Amer-
ican popular culture to the role of women in Islamist
humanistic scholarship. He will be an invaluable addition to
movements.
the program, helping to administer our ever-increasing ac-
This conference will be complemented by numerous
tivities and exploring opportunities for external fundraising.
smaller events, addressing such varied topics as the role of
As always, however, I want to close by reiterating our com-
Muslim intellectuals in the United States and the everyday
mitment to serve UIUC’s faculty and graduate students.
experience of youth in Israel and Palestine.
The IPRH continues to be a site for interchange and dis-
We are also planning events beyond the theme of Belief.
cussion. Associate Director Christine Catanzarite, Assistant
Working closely with the Krannert Center for the Perform-
Director John Marsh, and I are committed to maintaining
ing Arts and the Krannert Art Museum, we will engage
the program as an open forum. We welcome and invite
such topics as multi-media performance and surveillance in
ideas and suggestions from the campus community as
video art. In the spring, we will collaborate with OPEN-
we continue to pursue excellence and relevance for the
SOURCE Art on an initiative on realism in art and literature.
humanistic scholarship of the 21st century.
We are thrilled to extend our sponsorship of IPRH Reading Groups. They continue to function as a crucial site of intel-
Sincerely,
lectual engagement and community formation on campus exactly what the IPRH hopes to foster. We are delighted to see yet another growth in the number of groups to 43. I also have the great pleasure of welcoming John Marsh,
Matti Bunzl
who joins the IPRH in the newly created position of Assistant Director. John comes to us with a Ph.D. in American literature and an enormous enthusiasm for engaged
Annual Theme 2006-07 – Beauty The question of beauty has been a mainstay of humanistic
on this critique of kitsch, identifying ideologies of beauty as
thought across space and time. It features prominently in
central sites of systemic oppression. But while the pursuit
Plato’s theory of mimesis and Confucius’s teachings on
of beauty was antithetical to serious creative work for much
enjoyment in moral and political education. It preoccupied
of the 20th century, it seems to be making something of a
Aquinas and was a guiding principle in medieval Japan. It
comeback in the 21st. In a postmodern world where com-
became systematized in western thought with the formal
posers return to tonality and artists rediscover painting, the
development of aesthetics, the philosophical study of
distinction between high and popular culture has effectively
beauty and taste. To this tradition, we owe an ongoing pre-
evaporated. Whether the attendant retreat into aesthetics
occupation with judgment and criticism, the sublime and
should be critiqued as a reactionary move or celebrated
the ugly, imagination and pleasure. While thinkers like Kant
as a strategic response to the geopolitical transformations
and Schiller emphasized the unencumbered play of the
of the post-9/11 order is just one of the many questions
imagination, a contrasting tradition, reaching from Hegel to
beauty continues to pose today.
Bourdieu, stressed historical and cultural specificity. Such tensions between universalism and particularism complicate any inquiry into the basic epistemological question: how can we know that something is beautiful? With modernism, moreover, the very ideal of beauty came under attack. Much 20th-century art, music, and literature actively defied the beautiful. In theoretical terms, this position was codified by Marxist critics like Benjamin and Adorno, who regarded certain forms of beauty with political and aesthetic suspicion. Feminist and anti-colonial thinkers expanded
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The IPRH welcomes applications from all disciplines and departments. We seek faculty and graduate students in a wide variety of areas of humanistic inquiry whose projects reflect on the question of beauty in all its varieties. The topic should also provide an opportunity for artists and writers to consider the relevance of beauty in their creative practice. The IPRH encourages applications from all sectors of the university with an interest in interdisciplinary and humanities-inflected research.
IPRH Faculty Research Fellows 2005-06 IPRH Faculty Fellows are asked to teach a course — during the fellowship year or the year immediately following — on a subject related to the Fellowship project. Through these courses, the Fellows illustrate the connection between exceptional research and excellent teaching, and continue the dialogue on the Fellowship topic long after the year has ended. Description of the courses proposed by the following IPRH Faculty Fellows, as well as the Illinois Humanities Post-Doctoral Fellows, can be found on the IPRH website.
Thomas Albrecht School of Art and Design Project Title: Extremities: Bodies and Belief Making Abstract: The human body, depicted in both word and image, has a complicated history amidst the world’s major monotheistic belief systems. This project will focus attention on the fundamental role of the body in establishing belief via ritual gestures and movements, focusing on concepts of pilgrimage and devotional practice within the Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Final visual works will contemplate the foundational character of ritual in connecting human beings with the corporeal world in which they physically move and act, and will examine individual movements of feet and gestures of hands that function to establish structures of belief within community as part of a cyclical, transactional process of human touch.
Peggy Miller Speech Communication/Psychology Project Title: Self-Esteem in Folk Theory and Practice: How American Parents Embrace and Personalize a Cultural Ideal Abstract: This project examines self-esteem as a cultural ideal and childrearing goal embedded in a particular folk theory that circulates widely in American society. Drawing upon an ethnographic study of diverse parents’ beliefs and practices, the study aims to identify the variety of meanings and practices associated with self-esteem and to envision how parents and children create an early moment in a developmental trajectory toward self-enhancement. The work illuminates several theoretical issues – the relationship between beliefs and practices, the consciousness/unconsciousness of beliefs, and the personalization of collective meaning systems – that have abiding importance for a wide range of topics.
Andrew Pickering Department of Sociology Project Title: Cybernetics, Spirituality and Technologies of the Self Abstract: One can characterize modernity in terms of a “modern settlement” between science and religion, in which scientific and religious beliefs are agreed to relate to disjoint realms: intersubjectively testable facts of nature and matters of faith and inner experience, respectively. From this perspective, cybernetics is of great interest as a “non-modern” formation in which distinctive scientific and technical practices (in brain science, psychiatry, robotics, engineering, and many other fields) were constitutively entangled with specific spiritual beliefs and practices (aligned with Eastern philosophies and religions) and with various “technologies of the self” (some novel, some ancient) that gave rise to inner experiences that themselves serve as foundations for belief. The aim of this project is to explore in detail the scientific-technical-spiritual intertwinings of cybernetics in the work of leading practitioners.
Junaid Rana Asian American Studies Project Title: Islamophobia and Racism: An Ethnographic Study of Muslims in Chicago Abstract: This project is an ethnographic study of the contemporary racialization of the Muslim community in Chicago through the concept of Islamophobia. Chicago is home to one of the largest communities in the geography of Muslim America. As an examination of Islamophobia this research will examine how this historical process manifests itself in everyday life as a form of racism. Thus, this study will examine how the racialization of Islamophobia is ethnographically present in popular culture and state policies. Secondly, through an engagement with community activists, this work elaborates how these communities organize against such racism.
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Bruce Rosenstock Religious Studies Project Title: Skepticism and its Pathologies Abstract: The American philosopher Stanley Cavell has identified skepticism – about the existence of the world, about other minds – as a disease afflicting modern philosophy since Descartes. For Cavell, skepticism is also a symptom of modernity’s deepest moral malaise, a monstrous dehumanization of humanity. Cavell’s reflections on skepticism bear striking resemblance to Hannah Arendt’s discussion of modern “world-alienation,” first appearing in Cartesian doubt’s withdrawal of trust in the world, but ending in the obliteration of the human world under totalitarianism. The therapy for skepticism and world-alienation is the recovery of belief in the everyday world and its reality. My project traces the convergences of thought between Cavell and Arendt and argues that for both of them philosophy alone can shelter the world from the monstrous deformations brought on by skepticism.
Gillen D. Wood English Project Title: Sacred Music, Sacred Nation: Handel, George III, and the Making of British National Culture Abstract: The English oratorios of George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) inaugurated a wholly new relation between Church, State, and ceremonial art in Georgian Britain, and as such speak clearly to the theme of “Belief.” The Handelian libretti traversed the bridge between sectarian belief and national mythification by anglicizing their Old Testament texts: they emphasized social rather than religious virtue and represented an accessible God with interest in the historical affairs of the Anglo-Israelite “nation.” Performed mostly at secular venues, and on occasions of national rather than religious celebration, the oratorios served as a ritual form of nation self-affirmation in the aftermath of the disastrous sectarian conflicts of the seventeenth century. The nationalizing of Handel’s music is an example of how collective “belief,” be it in God or Nation or both, is most effectively affirmed by performative rather than simply doctrinal means.
IPRH Gradate Student Fellows 2005-06 Teresa Gale Photography, School of Art and Design Project Title: Stories of Truth, Stories of Fiction: Shifting Realities in Sound and Image Abstract: Conventional narrative vocabulary dictates that a story be characterized as “fiction” or “non-fiction.” I practice a kind of storytelling that resides between these two poles – wherein truth is not always distinct from fiction, perception affects reality, and personal beliefs are constructed, broken down, and reassembled. Through a series of sound- and video-based artworks employing autobiography, and the concepts of relationship, intimacy, and longing, I argue that a story’s success ultimately relies not on its veracity but its believability, that a listener or viewer should be able to surrender to and find truth in the story being told, whether or not it adheres to fact.
Robin E. Jensen Speech Communication Project Title: Challenging Beliefs about Sex: The Gendered Rhetoric of Sexual Education Campaigns during the Progressive Era Abstract: The 1920s saw the beginning of sexual education programs’ integration into U.S. public schools, a growing tolerance toward birth control, and an increase in acceptance of female sexuality outside of procreation. In my dissertation, I argue that these societal changes were due, in part, to the rhetorical efforts of several female reformers at the turn of the century. I analyze both the textual and visual rhetoric of women who spoke in support of sexual education during the Progressive Era and address the ways they sought to persuade their contemporaries to change their beliefs about sexuality and sexual education.
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Tzu-kai Liu Anthropology Project Title: Text, Power and Personhood: Engaging in Minority Identities in Post-Socialist China Abstract: Religious practices have long reached well beyond the spiritual and moral realms to influence social and political actions through usurpation by the state or strategic manipulation by practitioners. Moreover, in the period of post-socialist reforms in China what are known as acts of participation in minority religious practices have developed into a main arena of identity formation. By documenting and analyzing innovation in textual performance in Chinese minority communities, my research examines how Wa Buddhists’ textual performances, understood locally as acts of participation, are used to interrogate local notions of personhood and to negotiate Chinese official versions of religion and modernity.
David McDonald Musicology, School of Music Project Title: My Voice is My Weapon: Music, Nationalism, and the Poetics of Palestinian Resistance Abstract: This dissertation examines the dynamics of Palestinian nationalism as manifest through music and musical performance among Palestinians in Amman, Jordan. By focusing on three interrelated sites of musical production (local Palestinian weddings, national folkloric dance troupes, and popular resistance music Intifada Song) this project seeks to enhance our understandings of musical performance as an act of assertion – assertion of socio-political resistance, of national consciousness, or of self-determination and empowerment. I examine the various ways in which music has patterned and disseminated markers of a distinct Palestinian identity, and investigate how this identity is then articulated through various local, national, and transnational contexts.
Kate Roark Theatre Project Title: Republican Beliefs and Racial Ideology: Jonathan and Jim Crow on Antebellum American Nationalism Abstract: In the first half of the nineteenth century, two popular stage-types – Yankees (often named Jonathan) and blackface characters (often named Jim Crow) – gained international recognition as distinctly American cultural products. My dissertation project examines these two antebellum American theatrical forms as competing expressions of nascent American nationalisms, focusing primarily on how racial ideologies were utilized in these two comedic theatrical forms to naturalize and/or contest the varying degrees of inclusion/exclusion in that imagined community of American nationalism along the divides of rich and poor, rural and urban, north and south, and most notably, black and white.
Michael K. Rosenow History Project Title: Casualties in the United States’ Industrial Army: The Rituals of Dying and the Politics of Death among Workers, 1877-1918 Abstract: My dissertation analyzes American workers’ relationships with death and dying from 1877 to 1918. I argue that the physical and cultural space of death provided workers a unique site to foster distinct beliefs and reflect upon social relations. Workers negotiated race, ethnic, class, gender, and religious identities through rituals and left important clues about what they held important in life through commemorating the dead. By looking at the cultures of class and beliefs that shaped workers’ experiences, the project challenges and advances interpretations of industrialization, immigration, and urbanization, while providing a bottom-up understanding of the industrial era.
Deadline for application for 2006-07 fellowship awards: December 1, 2005
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Illinois Humanities Post-Doctoral Fellows 2005-06 The IPRH is pleased to welcome the following recipients of the Illinois Humanities Post-Doctoral Fellowship awards, Erica Lehrer and Robert Yelle, who will spend the year at UIUC engaged in research and writing, and will teach one course each on a subject related to the fellowship project in the spring semester. Course descriptions can be found on the IPRH website; questions about the courses should be addressed to the Fellows.
Erica Lehrer Ph.D. Anthropology, University of Michigan, 2004 Project Title: “Shoah-business,” Holocaust Culture, and Salvage Ethnography in a Post-Jewish Landscape: An Inquiry into the Ethnic Self after Genocide Abstract: This project illustrates how a moral burden of history is made manifest in social relationships, cultural processes, and material products. Specifically, it argues that what appears to many as a superficial, commercially-motivated revival of Jewishness in Poland is also a significant joint venture between non-Jewish Poles and Jewish visitors to Poland exploring the possibilities for inter-ethnic memory-building and reconciliation. The findings are based on 18 months of ethnographic research in the historical Jewish quarter (Kazimierz) in Krakow, Poland, with further research in Israel and the United States among diaspora Jews. My research reveals that the notion of uniform “Holocaust tourism” disguises a movement to contest “lachrymose” conceptions of Jewishness as victimhood. I document a sense of Jewish connection to Poland – overlooked in mainstream discourses – that animates new generalizations of Jews and Poles to seek each other out. Similarly, much of the “Jewish” revival in Kazimierz is orchestrated by non-Jewish Poles. I show how they use Jewishness to reconfigure their own identities and their visions for a pluralistic Poland. I conclude that (1) popular culture products, practices, and spaces can be important manifestations of, and tools for, moral reckoning; (2) identification with “someone else’s” ethnicity/religion (often called “appropriation”) can be understood as an enlargement of, rather than an escape from, the self; and finally I suggest that (3) Kazimierz in Krakow represents the cutting edge of Polish-Jewish relations via local culture brokers who use Jewishness to expand the Polish “universe of obligation.” Erica Lehrer will teach a course on “Culture, Memory and Reconciliation” in the spring semester 2006; the course will be offered by the Anthropology Department.
Robert A. Yelle Ph.D. History of Religions, University of Chicago, 2002 Project Title: The Disenchantment of Language: The Influence of Protestant Literalism on Modern Law and Religion Abstract: My project scrutinizes the secularization or, as Max Weber termed it, “disenchantment” of modern society through a new lens: the history of language and linguistics. Drawing on an array of British and colonial Indian sources from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, I plan to describe how modern theories and practices of language reflect the influence of the Protestant Reformation. Protestant literalism not only embraced the literal interpretation of a canon of scripture, but also excluded certain uses of language that were determined to be “idolatry.” The originally religious opposition between canonical and idolatrous forms of language served as the model for several ostensibly “scientific” and non-theological disciplines that emerged in the nineteenth century, including Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian jurisprudence and Friedrich Max Mueller’s comparative mythology. Ironically, religion itself, or rather a particular interpretation of Christianity, facilitated the evacuation of religion from many areas of culture and language. These historical developments had repercussions as far away as India, where colonial projects for the codification of law, religion, and other cultural genres disrupted traditional understandings of language and redrew the boundary between religion and the secular. Robert Yelle will teach a course on “Secularity and its Disenchantments: Modernity and/as Religion” in the spring semester 2006; the course will be offered by the Program for the Study of Religion.
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IPRH Reading Groups The IPRH awards financial support to interdisciplinary faculty and graduate student Reading Groups, which meet regularly throughout the year and frequently invite speakers to address the group and the campus on topics of interest to a broad range of disciplines. Reading Groups may be formed around any topic or theme whatsoever; they need not be coordinated with the IPRH theme for this or any other year. Reading Groups should aim to foster collaborative study in the humanities, and to investigate questions of sufficient breadth to draw scholars from a diverse array of intellectual traditions. The IPRH will consider proposals for Reading Groups for the 2006-07 academic year in late winter 2006; full application guidelines can be found on the IPRH website in January 2006, and the proposal deadline will be Monday, March 27. The following groups have been awarded support by the IPRH for 2005-06. Please contact the Reading Group organizers (listed below) directly for more information about the groups and their activities.
Asian American Ethnography
consumerism, popular culture, gender and sexuality.
We will explore recent scholarship on ethnography and Asian Americans
Contacts: Andrew Asher (aasher@uiuc.edu) and Junjie Chen (jchen1@uiuc.
in terms of theoretical and methodological considerations. Ethnography
edu)
as a method will be extended beyond anthropological conventions to understand how Ethnic Studies approaches elaborate traditional disciplinary
Comparative Working Class Studies
frameworks such as history, literature, politics, and sociology. Our guid-
Is the notion of social class still a viable category of analysis in humanistic
ing questions will focus on how these works inform understandings of
research? How does it function in today’s scholarship in relation to other
concepts such as race/racism, religion, sexuality, class, ethnicity, diaspora,
categories of difference and identity? In what sense have the US and other
community, empire, militarism, etc. Hence, how do ethnographies of Asian
societies been shaped by class? We will consider historical and contem-
American communities contribute to anthropological knowledge produc-
porary investigations of class identity and experience in the United States
tion? How does ethnography reveal power relationships, and what role
and elsewhere – at work, in the community, in the household, and in the
does this knowledge play in community based social movements?
political realm. Discussions function comparatively across national lines and within societies across boundaries of race, ethnicity, and gender. We
Contact: Junaid Rana (jrana@uiuc.edu)
will focus mainly on reading and discussing one another’s research.
Blackness and Belief
Contacts: Jim Barrett (jrbarret@uiuc.edu) and David Roediger (droedige@
This reading group explores five diverse “communities of belief” informing
uiuc.edu)
Black intellectual-political thought and action over time: Black Nationalism; Black liberal-integrationism; Black radicalism; Black feminism/womanism;
Communication History
and Black conservatism. The group considers how these traditions ebb
The group will bring into dialog the many different research traditions
and flow in relation to one another, and how sociohistorical contexts
around historical studies of communication, including but not limited to
condition their specific articulations. While the Black experience in the U.S.
media history, journalism history, the history of advertising and consumer
nation-state is the point of departure, this reading group also examines how
culture, film history, the history of popular culture, the history of print
these five tendencies have manifested themselves in African continental
culture, the history of technology, and the history of the public sphere. In
and Caribbean contexts, and within the overall “Black Atlantic.”
order to explore the convergence of these different fields, we intend to read recently published research, especially work with a programmatic
Contacts: Clarence Lang (celang@uiuc.edu) and Karlos Hill (kkhill@uiuc.edu)
bent, to consider the intersections of these various histories, and to
Comparative Post-Socialist Studies
discuss the possibility of identifying a canon that can bring the various
Post-/late-socialist studies constitute one of the most rapidly growing
histories associated with communication into dialog.
areas of research and scholarly interest throughout the social sciences.
Contacts: James Hay (jameshay@uiuc.edu) and John Nerone (jnerone@
Our reading group seeks to further expand the conceptual framework of
uiuc.edu)
post-socialist studies and move toward a more comparative and integrated approach to this field. By challenging conventional area and thematic splits,
Critical British Studies – “Sovereignty”
and by making rigorous comparisons between geographically disparate
“Sovereignty” is a loaded political and philosophical term of increasing
regions, we endeavor to achieve a broader understanding not only of states
relevance to theoretical and empirical work across the humanities, and
and societies experiencing varying post-socialist repercussions, but also of
it is also a crucial concept for an inquiry into the meaning of “Britain” as
processes such as globalization, ethnicity, nationalism, language, religion,
an historical and geographical notion. This reading group explores British
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sovereignty within the internal heterogeneity of England, Ireland, Scotland,
tents. The expansion of Europe into the western hemisphere in 1492 initiated
and Wales, as well as the imperial past and postcolonial present. We will
a dynamic exchange of people, goods, and ideas that connected even the
explore sovereignty in four main contexts: state and religious power; “alle-
most peripheral places to expansive networks. Research in comparative
giance” and/versus “sovereignty”; internationality and cosmopolitanism;
empires, old world source cultures, and other themes that bear on Africans,
and the sovereignty of the individual versus the multitude.
Europeans, and Native Americans in conflict and encounter throughout the broader Atlantic world fit within the purview of our group.
Contacts: Matthew Hart (matthart@uiuc.edu) and Renee Trilling (trilling@
Contacts: Max Edelson (edelson@uiuc.edu) and Richard Ross
uiuc.edu)
(rjross@law.uiuc.edu)
Critical Studies of South Asia This reading group approaches the study of South Asia through the lens of
Eastern European Reading Group
gender. Our interest emerges from a joint recognition on the foundational
The Eastern European Reading Group brings together faculty and graduate
and endlessly productive role of gender in fomenting social change in
students who are engaged in the interdisciplinary study of Central, East-
South Asia. Examining the multi-sited nature of the gendered moderni-
ern, and Southeastern Europe. The purpose of our group is to stimulate a
ties crafted by the history of colonialism, nationalism and postcoloniality,
dialogue across different departments throughout the campus, including
we further seek to open the study of South Asia to the wider world. The
history, sociology, comparative literatures, political science, and Russian and
emphasis on gender, and the recognition that area based knowledges
East European studies, among others. Our group explores and debates
are being rapidly re-negotiated in the postcolonial and globalizing present,
the latest articles and books in our areas of interest, analyzes the works
together provide the bedrock for our interests.
in-progress of our members (including faculty and graduate students), hosts discussions with visiting scholars, and examines films produced in and about
Contact: Shefali Chandra (sc23@uiuc.edu)
the Eastern European region.
Decolonizing Native American Communities
Contacts: Mihaela Wood (gainusa@uiuc.edu) and Fedja Buric
One of the defining issues for Indigenous (or, American Indian) studies is
(buric@uiuc.edu)
to interrogate historical and ongoing colonialism and fortify movements for social justice and dignity that unite Indigenous Peoples and their (our) allies.
Ethics and Psychology
This reading group will feature the scholarship of Indigenous academics
The intersection of ethics and psychology has become an area of increas-
who are at the forefront of theorizing self-determination struggles capable
ing popularity in the past decade or so. This reading group will explore this
of mounting resistance to colonialism. Participants will have opportunities
intersection from diverse approaches. We will read and discuss articles in
to think through the scholarship and its implications for academic decoloni-
theoretical ethics and empirical psychology, focusing on questions of moral
zation in order to consider ways of forging links of resistance, dismantling
development, moral responsibility, and the possibility of an “empirical ethics”
the colonial state, and guaranteeing the right to be recognized as human
(and what that might mean). We will welcome grads and faculty from any
whatever one’s difference.
discipline, particularly philosophy, psychology, and related disciplines (such as cognitive science and educational psychology/ policy).
Contacts: D. Anthony Tyeeme Clark (tyeeme@uiuc.edu) and Wanda Pillow (pillow@uiuc.edu)
Contact: Charles Byrne (bcharles@uiuc.edu)
Design and Emotion
Film, Society, and Power
Design emotion is a timely topic with appeal to a broad university coalition.
Acknowledging the cultural prominence of film, our reading group seeks to
Stakeholders include faculty and students of architecture, engineering, art,
engage dialogues of power as displayed and performed in particular cine-
life sciences, design, anthropology, advertising, consumer science, psy-
matic narratives. As such, we will watch a series of avant-garde and critical
chology, music, philosophy, cognitive psychology, women and minorities
films and pair them with appropriate literatures in an effort to highlight key
and those in business/marketing. Architects are familiar with the term
social issues. The sort of films we are considering might include the work of
“gateway” to cities and “curb appeal” of homes. Homes without this
Wim Wenders, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro, and
requisite emotional attraction may only get a drive by glance and negative
Wong Kar-wai. However, the final selection of films and accompanying texts
emotions from perspective buyers. The emotional bond many consumers
are to be decided by the group, thus reflecting the varied perspectives of our
have with products can be so strong as to defy logic.
interdisciplinary orientation.
Contact: Deana McDonagh (mcdonagh@uiuc.edu)
Contacts: Ryan Blum (ryanblum@uiuc.edu) and Anna Nielsen (anielsen@ uiuc.edu)
Early America and the Atlantic World Our group provides an interdisciplinary forum for faculty and graduate
Globalization and Education in East Asia
students that focuses on the history and culture of North America and the
As elsewhere, the past decade has seen the rhetoric of internationalization
Caribbean, c. 1500-1815. The idea of an early modern Atlantic world shapes
and globalization assumes considerable prominence in education planning
our intellectual approach to varied studies of colonization and its discon-
and management in East Asian countries, often in ways that are radically
8
different from the United States. This inter-disciplinary reading group,
The Iconography of Higher Education
composed of faculty and graduate students, will read widely on the ways
The purpose of this group is to bring together scholars interested in engag-
in which education systems in East Asia have interpreted the requirements
ing and critiquing the many visual iconographies of higher education: their
of globalization, and sought to define and defend their role as agents of
imagery, rhetoric, and role in shaping historic and contemporary discours-
modernization. It will explore the interplay between internationalist ideals
es surrounding the purpose/function of higher education in the United
and modernization agenda in interpreting the global dominance of western
States. Potential projects include a historiography of visual representation
models of education in East Asia.
of higher education in the twentieth century, and an exploration of the visu-
Contacts: Fazal Rizvi (frizvi@uiuc.edu) and Nancy Abelmann (nabelman@
al rhetoric of contemporary representations. We will also bring the results
uiuc.edu)
of this (and other) qualitative inquiry into dialogue with quantitative data pursuant to emerging trends in higher education student demographics,
Globalizing China
retention, and completion.
China continues to be one of the most rapidly growing areas of research and
Contact: Rashid Robinson (robinson@uiuc.edu)
scholarly interest within the humanities and social sciences. Employing the context of global capitalism and neoliberal governmentality. Comparing
Intergenerational Conflicts over Resource Allocations
China cross-culturally and historically, we aim to provide a theoretically rich
The purpose of this faculty – graduate student reading group is to facilitate a
and conceptually clear understanding of many issues including globalization,
better understanding of the complex moral/ethical, social, and policy issues re-
capitalism, nationalism, religion, and gender and sexuality. Through carefully
lated to inter-generational conflicts over resource allocation, both domestically
chosen readings and seminars with guest scholars, we strive to create a
and internationally, and most especially in developing nations. Topics to be ex-
dynamic and friendly environment on
amined include access to resources, the role of the government and foreign
campus for a critical engagement with globalizing China.
policy, and the distribution of scarce resources among the generations.
Contacts: John Cho (songcho@uiuc.edu) and Huisheng Shou
Contacts: Noreen Sugrue (nsugrue@uiuc.edu) and Wynne Korr (wkorr@
(hshou2@uiuc.edu)
uiuc.edu)
History of Education
Japanese Studies
This bimonthly reading group brings together scholars from various disci-
This reading group will provide an opportunity to enlarge understanding of
plinary backgrounds to critically engage in the meaning of the history of
Japanese history and culture for graduate students who are interested in
education, broadly conceived. As such, traditional modes of historical inquiry
Japan. We offer the following two programs: classical Japanese reading
(through the examination of primary and secondary sources) as well as
and contemporary Japanese article reading. The former course focuses
literature and film will be explored. The goal is to broaden and deepen the
on learning how to decipher Japanese classical manuscripts, and the latter
understandings of the range of scholarship in the history of education, but
one pursues interdisciplinary learning of Japanese study. A participant can
with a disciplinary focus in history. It will be used as a time for analysis of
choose a proper course according to his or her purpose and level of Japa-
seminal and new texts, advancement of theoretical arguments, and develop-
nese language skill.
lens of various disciplines, we seek to resituate China within the dynamic
ing a community of scholars.
Contact: Do Young Park (dpark8@uiuc.edu)
Contacts: Yoon Pak (yoonpak@uiuc.edu) and Christopher Span (cspan@uiuc.edu)
Jewish Studies Workshop
The Homogenization of American Culture
which to explore emerging issues in Jewish Studies. Reading materials,
After the Civil War, America underwent tremendous changes in both cultural
usually works-in-progress, are circulated prior to meetings, with the actual
and industrial production and consumption. For the first time people across
event serving as a forum for discussion. In addition to inviting UIUC faculty
the nation were reading and working as part of a larger integrated system,
and graduate students, each semester we invite a number of guests, ranging
a phenomenon that helped create a new national space and thus, a new
from key figures in Jewish Studies to exciting junior scholars. This “Renegade
nationalism. We hope to develop an intellectual framework to examine how
Jewish Studies” group reaches out to other departments and units and
the mass production of cultural materials and the expansion of corporate
seeks to open Jewish Studies to scholars across a broad range of interests.
The Jewish Studies Workshop provides an interdisciplinary forum through
power together homogenized American culture at large. Our investigation
Contact: Brett Kaplan (bakaplan@uiuc.edu)
would look to reposition theoretical and critical perspectives on nationalism and corporation-controlled consumerism, with an emphasis on late nine-
The Korea Workshop
teenth century America.
The Korea Workshop is an interdisciplinary group of university constituents
Contacts: Scott Campbell (scampbll@uiuc.edu) and Mandy Wescott
with interests in the Koreas. 2005-06 will be our fifth year; previously we devoted our workshop to examination of Korean colonialism, the politics of
(mwescot@uiuc.edu)
contemporary culture, transnational Korea, and Korea-Japan comparison.
9
For 2005-06 we will focus on the Koreas in Asia: Structural and Geopolitical
work in progress by the presenters. The group also invites guest speakers
Transformations. We will welcome 6 off campus visitors: John Feffer (Sep-
from other campuses on occasion, sometimes in cooperation with other
tember 9); Laura Nelson (October 14); Hyun Ok Park (November 4), Bruce
reading groups or programs at the University. The Migration Studies Group
Cuming, Samuel Kim, and Katherine Moon Additionally, we look forward to
continually welcomes new members.
workshop sessions by UIUC students and faculty.
Contact: Dorothee Schneider (schndr@uiuc.edu)
Contact: Nancy Abelmann (nabelman@uiuc.edu)
Modern Art Colloquium
Latina Feminisms
The Modern Art Colloquium, founded in as a forum for discussing presen-
This reading group will explore Latina feminist theories and methods
tations by faculty and graduate students related to modern art, focuses on
through an interdisciplinary lens ranging across disciplines including
20th century and contemporary art. We meet from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. on
literature, sociology, education, communications and anthropology. The
the last Monday of the month during term time in room 133 of the Art &
reading group will be focusing on germinal Latina feminisms texts, with
Design Building and welcome both occasional and regular participants. The
a focus on discourses of intersecting identities, namely race, ethnicity,
participants have been from across campus, with papers or informal works
class and sexuality and will attempt to situate Latina feminism within larg-
in progress presented by graduate students and faculty in such fields as
er feminist thought. Works in progress are also welcome for discussion
Communications, Comparative Literature, History, Landscape Architecture,
during group meetings.
Romance Languages, Urban Planning, and other programs in addition to Art History and Art Studio Practice.
Contact: Jillian Baez (jbaez@uiuc.edu)
Contacts: Jonathan Fineberg (fineberg@uiuc.edu) and Jordana Mendelson
Law, Economics, and Institutions in East Asia
(jmendels@uiuc.edu)
This reading group will focus on contemporary East Asian political econ-
Museums Writ Large
omy, paying special attention to the growing role of law in East Asian eco-
This reading group considers museums as sites where identities are
nomic governance. In capitalist Northeast Asia, there are signs of a shirt
asserted, contested, and negotiated within dynamic social, political, national,
away from relational forms of capitalism and developmentalist states
and/or religious contexts. We interrogate the social, historical, and economic
towards more formal contracting practices, more transparent regulatory
conditions that generate the collections housed in museums as well as the
systems, and a greater role for law and courts in economic ordering.
architectural frameworks and academic and historical practices deployed
Southeast Asian economies have undergone similar reforms. In China,
for the collection and display of objects and “Others.” Potential topics for
too, law is assuming greater importance in economic life. The group will
discussion include: cultural heritage advocacy and management through
jointly read a series of materials exploring the causes and consequences
local museums including their publics and communities; archaeological
of these shifts.
and historic sites, landscapes, and urban centers as open-air museums;
Contacts: Tom Ginsburg (tginsbur@uiuc.edu) and Glenn Hoetker (ghoet-
museums and memory; museums and cultural tourism; art museums as a
ker@uiuc.edu)
specific form of museum. Contacts: Helaine Silverman (helaine@uiuc.edu) and D. F. Ruggles (dfr1@
Medicine/Science
uiuc.edu)
This interdisciplinary reading group focuses on the historical and cultural analysis of human health, medicine, and science. We read history, cultural
New Marxisms
studies, sociology, and anthropology and, from time to time, view videos
Our group will investigate recent writings in the Marxist tradition and the ap-
as well. Topics have included AIDS, the worldwide thalidomide disaster,
plication of new Marxist thought to scholarly work in the humanities. We will
condoms, and end-of-life care. Faculty and graduate student members
look carefully at Marxist thought that breaks significantly with the canons
come from a variety of disciplines, perspectives, and regions of the world.
of “Western Marxism” as established by the works of Lukács, Gramsci,
The core group comes from History, the Institute of Communications
the Frankfurt School, and Althusser. We will also investigate Marx with new
Research, and the Medical Scholars Program. We welcome those with
eyes in the context of his antecedents, contemporaries, and near-contempo-
related interests in other disciplines.
raries; for example, we want to reexamine Marx in the context of Spinoza,
Contacts: Jim Wrzosek (jwrzosek@uiuc.edu) and Leslie Reagan (lreagan@
Kant, and Bergson. Simultaneously, we intend to consider Marx alongside
uiuc.edu)
such recent thinkers as Lacan, Foucault, Deleuze, Grosz, Agamben, and Badiou.
Migration Studies
Contacts: Franklin Ridgway (fridgway@uiuc.edu) and Alan Borst
The Migration Studies Group consists of faculty and graduate students in
(borst@uiuc.edu)
the humanities and social sciences who work on aspects of human migration. The group meets about eight to ten times a year to read and discuss
10
Participatory Media
contemporary scholarship’s project that has yet to be fulfilled. Beginning as
This reading group will provide therefore a space in which to examine, in a
an intellectual movement in Great Britain, radical orthodoxy has garnered
focused manner, the various issues raised by participatory media. It is en-
international, scholarly and popular interest. In radical orthodoxy, thinkers
visaged that participants will bring not just a variety of academic perspec-
such as Catherine Pickstock, John Milbank, and Graham Ward build upon
tives, but also their varied experiences of participatory media. We will read
the thought of those such as Rene Girard, Jacques Derrida, and Alasdair
texts in the field, our own writings, and related theory in an attempt to aid a
Macintyre, as well as earlier philosophers such as Augustine, Bonaventure,
theorization of this neglected field of study and enable a deeper under-
Thomas Aquinas and Vico.
standing of the field. We also envisage hosting a small number of talks by
Contacts: Carl Nelson (chnelson@uiuc.edu) and Synthia Sydnor
visiting speakers who are producing important academic work in this area.
(syndy@uiuc.edu)
Contacts: Andrew O’Baioll (baiollo@uiuc.edu) and Paul Riismandel (p-riism@uiuc.edu)
Resistance and Empire
Performance Studies Working Group
questions of empire, globalization, and transnationalism, especially from the
The Performance Studies Working Group (PSWG) seeks to facilitate
vantage points of post-colonial and ethnic studies, the views of the Other
conversations among faculty and graduate students divided by disciplinary
that have been largely left out of these larger discourses. This year we are
training and/or period of specialization but united by a common interest
interested in reading Eric T. Love’s Race Over Empire (2004), Patrick Wolfe’s
The Resistance and Empire Reading Group has been concerned with
in the emergent field of performance studies. Encompassing everything
Settler Colonialism (1999), and Jeremy Suri, Power & Protest: Global Revo-
from theatre studies, to music and dance, to art, architecture and art
lution and the Rise of Detente (2003). We are involved in bringing renowned
history, to sociology and anthropology, to the philosophies of language and
Yale Law professor Amy Chua to campus in spring 2006, and plan to show
space, and beyond, the field of performance studies remains vast and,
several new films.
at times, intimidating in its scope. PSWG thus seeks to provide a forum
Contacts: Augusto Espiritu (aespirit@uiuc.edu) and Fred Hoxie
for exchanging knowledge about performance from across the various
(hoxie@uiuc.edu)
disciplines, while tracing the continuing emergence of this field. Contact: Julia Walker (jawalker@uiuc.edu)
Russian Studies Circle
Queer Affect
of faculty and graduate students interested in the interdisciplinary study of
The Queer Affect Reading Group will meet to discuss new works in
Russia and the Soviet Union. The Kruzhok seeks to stimulate engagement
queerness, affect, and politics. Our goals for the year include developing
across disciplines by bringing together students and faculty from different
and discussing our own projects related to queer affect, as well as inviting
departments – including history, literature, political science, music, Russian
at least two speakers, and engaging in biweekly discussions of readings.
and East European studies, and others – by choosing readings that allow us
Contacts: Karen Kelsky (kelsky@uiuc.edu) and Cris Mayo (cmayo@uiuc.edu)
The Russian Studies Circle (the “Kruzhok”) is a reading and discussion group
to engage theoretical as well as interpretive questions in the disciplines and across them. Formats include reading critical new work, discussions with visiting scholars, discussing the work of members of the group, and examining
Queering “Non-West” Histories
literature and film.
Despite important exceptions, queer theory has remained vastly Euro-
Contacts: John Randolph (jwr@uiuc.edu) and Harriet Murav
centric in terms of its most basic assumptions and historical studies of
(hlmurav@uiuc.edu)
non-normative gender and sexuality, especially in the non-west, have been strikingly resistant to theory. Our reading group interrogates the
The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Eurocentric biases of queer theory, while exploring how and why histories,
What are the ways in which teaching and learning are connected? Through
especially of Latin America, Africa, and Asia, have ignored the advances of,
a systematic investigation, we can begin to ask what works, what doesn’t,
if not been resistant to, queer theory. In fundamental ways, we want to
and why. This interdisciplinary group meets in a forum that provides a rich
explore whether “queer” operates as a meaningful category outside the
environment in which to discuss readings, provide feedback for research
western homo/hetero/bisexual trichotomy.
studies in progress, and develop cross-disciplinary collaborations (see http://
Contacts: Jean Allman (jallman@uiuc.edu) and Ryan Jones (rmjones@uiuc.edu)
www.cte.uiuc.edu/Did/SOTL/ReadingGroup.htm). As a value for all will be the opportunity to build their knowledge of pedagogy to teach more effectively. In addition, members of this group have presented their SoTL work at
“Radical Orthodoxy” in Christian Theology
national conferences.
The radical orthodoxy tradition argues that a theological sensibility and
Contact: Cheelan Bo-Linn (cbolinn@uiuc.edu)
a sense of the sacred lies at the root of all knowledge work, and that the task of understanding and revitalizing such relationships is part of
11
The Signifying Body: Dismemberment, Body Parts, and Embodiment
Theorizing the Early Modern
This reading group provides a forum for careful consideration of the cultural
Early Modern scholars on campus. “Early Modernist” encompasses
products of the medieval period which use the body and its parts as sign
all those working on any aspect of literature, culture, history, and the
and symbol in a variety of interesting ways. Our dynamic discussions of the
arts and sciences from 1450-1800 in any area of the globe. We plan on
language of the body and its parts also have allowed entry into the questions of
discussing the latest, overarching developments in scholarship on the pe-
how and why medieval thinkers built signs and symbols. The readings for this
riod, as well as current research interests. Our meetings are structured
discussion group pair medieval texts and images with current critical discus-
around broadly conceived themes, beginning with the nation, the family,
sions, including works-in-progress by group members and visiting scholars.
and the debate about public vs. private sphere.
Contact: Valerie M. Wilhite (vwilhite@uiuc.edu)
Contact: Stephanie Hilger (hilger@uiuc.edu) and Marcus Keller (mkeller@
The aim of this reading group is to provide a cross-disciplinary forum for
uiuc.edu)
Southern History The Southern History reading group has met monthly for more than a decade.
Trans-East Asian Cinema
The group brings together scholars from across disciplines and from various
This reading group focuses on the interactions among cinemas of
institutions to discuss themes pertinent to the study of the
China, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Hollywood. We will screen
American South. Over the years, the group has discussed a vast assortment
films, and read about and discuss issues such as the popularity of
of topics, but we usually concentrate on emerging scholarship. Papers range
Korean cinema, trans-regional co-productions, and the impact of China’s
from book chapters by faculty to dissertation proposals by graduate students.
marketization on East Asian national cinema. We seek answers to the
This reading group fosters collaborative study and provides opportunities
following questions: To what extent has the imagination of a unitary
for scholars from different disciplines to share perspectives. We know from
East Asian market influenced the style, aesthetics, and visual concepts
experience that the group always has ideas for diverse intellectual discussions.
of East Asian filmmakers? How is trans-East Asian cinema related to
Visitors are always welcome.
trans-Pacific and transnational cinema? What is the relationship between
Contacts: Vernon Burton (ovburton@uiuc.edu) and Gardner Rogers (jgrogers@
regionalism and transnationalism?
uiuc.edu)
Contacts: Gary Xu (garyxu@uiuc.edu) and E.K. Tan (engtan@uiuc.edu)
Syntactic Theory
Women and Work in Mexico
This reading group on Current Trends in Syntactic Theory will meet to discuss
This reading group aims to investigate the ways in which feminism in
and evaluate recent papers and proposals in the field of linguistics that contrib-
general, but especially in Mexico has left out a large sector of the female
ute to a greater understanding of the principles and mechanisms that underlie
population, namely working-class women, and how such exclusion
how the syntax of human language works and what makes it possible. Work
points to the trivialization of issues affecting their lives. In our monthly
within the framework of Noam Chomsky’s Minimalist Program will be a special
meetings, we will discuss the significance of the maid and/or nanny in
focus, but alternative perspectives as well as original work by group members
Mexican society as presented in literary works as well as in studies in
will also be considered.
politics, history, education, and economics. We will examine the ways in
Contacts: Brent Henderson (bhendrsn@uiuc.edu) and Karlos Arregi (karlos@
which working-class women are oppressed by the upper-class feminists who are otherwise very progressive.
uiuc.edu)
Contact: Brenci Patiño (patino@uiuc.edu)
Technology as Language We plan to examine how technology acts as a process of mediation that
Youth Literature
shapes human perception and consciousness and how its functional process
The Youth Literature Interest Group is an interdisciplinary collaboration
is associated to that of a language. The selected readings cover the important
of faculty from the Department of English, the College of Education, the
works of authors in the Canadian tradition of media study including Harold
Graduate School of Library and Information Science, and American Indian
Innis, Walter Ong, Marshall McLuhan, and Neil Postman. Our understanding of
Studies at UIUC, along with faculty from Illinois State University and
history and current societies can be improved by media study, especially with
Eastern Illinois University. We meet monthly to discuss texts and issues
respect to the relationship between communication technology and human
relevant to literature for children and young adults. In addition, we host a
civilization. This line of inquiry is especially important to those interested in how
research showcase in the fall led by rotating members of the group, and
media and other technologies shape our way of knowing and their implications
an annual lecture in the spring by a leading scholar in the field; both of
in education.
these events are open to graduate students and the public.
Contacts: Karen Ferneding (fernedin@uiuc.edu) and Rong-Ji Chen (rchen4@
Contacts: Betsy Hearne (ehearne@uiuc.edu) and Christine Jenkins
uiuc.edu)
(cajenkin@uiuc.edu)
12
IPRH Film Series – Fall 2005: Belief All screenings will begin at 5:30 p.m. in Room 62, Krannert Art Museum. (Please note that the IPRH Film Series will be held on Thursday evenings this year.) The IPRH Film Series is free and open to the public.
September 22 Pleasantville 1998, dir. Gary Ross; starring Tobey McGuire, Reese Witherspoon, William H. Macy, Joan Allen, Jeff Daniels (124 min.) A contemporary teenage loner and his sister are transported to a 1950s-era, Father Knows Best-style sitcom, where they find themselves inhabiting the bland roles of Bud and Muffin Parker. As they challenge the values and beliefs of the sitcom’s flat, black-and-white characters, peculiar things begin to happen – but some residents of Pleasantville resent the intrusion of a “colored” perspective into their carefully structured world.
October 6 Wings of Desire 1987, dir. Wim Wenders; starring Bruno Ganz, Solveig Dommartin, Peter Falk, Otto Sander (127min.) Two angels watch over the divided city of Berlin, listening to the thoughts of the city’s residents and providing solace where they can, in Wenders’ dreamlike reverie on life (shot by legendary cinematographer Henri Alekan). One of the angels (Ganz) becomes transfixed by a timid trapeze artist in a rundown circus, and is inspired to try life among the mortals – to be a part of the world, instead of just observing it.
October 27 The Passion of the Christ 2004, dir. Mel Gibson; starring James Caviezel, Maria Morgenstern, Monica Bellucci (127 min.) Mel Gibson’s deeply personal, graphically violent depiction of the last twelve hours in the life of Jesus of Nazareth (Caviezel) inspired fervent supporters, angry detractors – and record-breaking box office numbers. Immediately following the screening (which will be the original uncut, R-rated version of the film), there will be a panel discussion featuring UIUC faculty members David Desser (Cinema Studies), Gary Porton (Religious Studies), and Synthia Sydnor (Kinesiology).
November 10 The Last Supper 1995, dir. Stacy Title; starring Cameron Diaz, Ron Eldard, Courtney B. Vance, Annabeth Gish (92 min.) A group of liberal graduate students discover that their impromptu dinner guest is a hateful bigot; rationalizing that the world would have been spared much anguish if someone had killed Hitler when he was young, the students poison their guest and bury him in the backyard. This establishes a weekly ritual of inviting carefully selected guests to their house for a “last supper.” For more information, contact the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities at 244-3344 or on the web at http://www.iprh.uiuc.edu, or contact film series organizer Christine Catanzarite at catanzar@uiuc.edu.
Illinois Humanities Post-Doctoral Fellowships Since 2001, the IPRH has awarded two post-doctoral fellowships each year to external scholars who spend the year at the University of Illinois engaged in research and writing, and teach one course in the appropriate department. At press time, it was possible that the IPRH post-doctoral fellowship awards for 2006-07 would be reduced or suspended for budgetary reasons. For updated information about these awards, please visit the IPRH website. Please note that the IPRH will award fellowships to UIUC faculty and graduate students for 2006-07 as usual; application guidelines can be found on pages 18-19 of this publication.
IPRH on the Web
http://www.iprh.uiuc.edu
The IPRH website is updated throughout the year to include information about upcoming events and application deadlines, and also includes additional information about the programs and activities described in Human Interest. You will also find complete application guidelines for the Illinois Humanities Post-Doctoral Fellowships and, in early January 2006, information about submitting an application for IPRH Reading Group support for 2006-07. The website also includes more information about the IPRH Faculty and Graduate Student Fellows, and the Illinois Humanities Post-Doctoral Fellows, for 2005-06, including full descriptions of the courses that will be taught by the Faculty Fellows and the Post-Doctoral Fellows in conjunction with their fellowship projects. Finally, the IPRH website includes a page listing “External Opportunities” for fellowships, calls for papers, and other humanities-related activities sponsored by humanities centers at other universities nationwide.
13
Calendar of Events All IPRH events are free and open to the public. Please check the IPRH website for updates and additions to this schedule throughout the year. The complete schedule of the IPRH Film Series for Fall 2005 can be found on page 13.
September 12
Deadline for National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend applications, 5:00 p.m.
More information about the awards and the application process can be found on the IPRH website,
or contact Christine Catanzarite.
September 13
Workshop: Crafting a Fellowship/Grant Proposal for the Humanities
5:00 p.m., Humanities Lecture Hall, 805 W. Pennsylvania Avenue
Participants: Deborah Richie (Graduate College), Matti Bunzl (IPRH/Anthropology),
and Christine Catanzarite (IPRH/Cinema Studies)
Co-sponsored by the IPRH and the Graduate College; open to all UIUC graduate students
– no advance registration required
September 15
IPRH Open House and Reception
7:00 – 9:00 p.m., IPRH, 805 West Pennsylvania Avenue
The reception also celebrates the opening of an art exhibit by S.J. Hart, an artist
and co-director of OPENSOURCE Art.
September 16
Panel Discussion: Mass Culture and Modernist Studies
3:00 p.m., Humanities Lecture Hall, 805 West Pennsylvania Avenue
Panelists: Ed Comentale (English, Indiana University), Kevin Dettmar (English, Southern Illinois University),
Andrea Goulet (French, UIUC), and Elizabeth Lee (Art History, Wabash College);
Chair: Christine Catanzarite (IPRH/Cinema Studies)
In conjunction with the regional “Modernism Workshop,” hosted by UIUC and DePauw University;
co-sponsored by the IPRH, the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, and LAS
September 21
Performance: From Tel Aviv to Ramallah
7:30 p.m., Allen Hall
Performance by actor and beatbox Yuri Lane, accompanied by video artist Sharif Ezzat; organized by the IPRH,
with co-sponsorship from the Program in South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and the Program in
Jewish Culture and Society
September 28
Deadline for IPRH co-sponsorship requests, 5:00 p.m.
October 8
One-Day Conference: Rethinking Secularism in an Age of Belief
10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m., Levis Faculty Center
Participants: Dwight McBride (African American Studies, Northwestern), Saba Mahmood (Anthropology,
UC Berkeley), Gauri Viswanathan (English and Comparative Literature, Columbia U),
and Michael Warner (English, Rutgers)
Sponsored by the IPRH and the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory
October 22
Curtain Call Discussion, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts
following the 7:30 p.m. performance of Ethel
For tickets to the performance, contact the KCPA Ticket Office at 333-3280
14
October 27
IPRH Film Series and Panel Discussion – The Passion of the Christ
5:30 p.m., Krannert Art Museum Room 62
Panel discussion immediately following the film; participants: David Desser (Cinema Studies),
Gary Porton (Religious Studies), and Synthia Sydnor (Kinesiology)
November 10
Gallery Talk, Krannert Art Museum – “Balance and Power: Performance and Surveillance in Video Art”
7:30 p.m., Krannert Art Museum
Conversation with exhibition curator Michael Rush
November 13
Lecture: Martin Manalansan (Anthropology/Asian American Studies),
“Asian American Identity and Fusion Cuisine”
2:30 p.m., DePaul University (Lincoln Park), Student Center, Chicago
This event is presented by the Chicago Humanities Festival and the IPRH
Tickets are required, and can be purchased online at www.chfestival.org or by phone at (312) 494-9509.
December 1
Applications and supporting materials for IPRH Faculty and Graduate Student Fellowships for 2006-07
must be received by the IPRH by 5:00 p.m.
Application guidelines and additional information can be found on pages 18-19.
February 1
IPRH Faculty and Graduate Student Fellowship Awards for 2006-07 announced
February 2
Curtain Call Discussion, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts
following the 7:30 p.m. performance by the Pacifica Quartet
For tickets to the performance, contact the KCPA Ticket Office at 333-6280
March 6
Deadline for IPRH co-sponsorship requests, 5:00 p.m.
March 27
Deadline for IPRH Reading Group proposals for 2006-07, 5:00 p.m.
March 28
Curtain Call Discussion, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts
following the 7:30 p.m. performance of Kronos Quartet: Visual Music
For tickets to the performance, contact the KCPA Ticket Office at 333-6280
March 30-31
IPRH Eighth Annual Conference–”Belief”
The IPRH annual conference will feature a keynote address on March 30 at 7:30 p.m., and presentations
by the IPRH Fellows from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on March 31 at Levis Faculty Center.
A complete schedule of conference events will be available on the IPRH website in early February 2006.
15
IPRH Assistant Director–John Marsh The IPRH is delighted to welcome John Marsh, who joins the staff this fall as assistant director. John Marsh earned his B.A. from Ohio University in 1998 and his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in 2004. He briefly held a visiting assistant professor post at the University of Pittsburgh before joining IPRH. He is the editor of You Work Tomorrow: An Anthology of American Labor Poetry, 1929-1941 (forthcoming, University of Illinois Press), which collects some of the thousands of poems workers from nearly every craft and industry published in their union newspapers throughout the 1930s. He continues to research his primary area of scholarly interest, which is how work, workers, and working-class political movements influenced a diverse set of modern American poets between the two world wars. In his role as assistant director of the IPRH, John Marsh will participate in the intellectual leadership of the program, serve as a liaison to the IPRH Reading Groups and many co-sponsoring units, and engage in fundraising activities.
Requesting IPRH Co-Sponsorship Support The IPRH invites submissions requesting co-sponsorship support to meet one established deadline per semester (fall: September 28; spring: March 6). These deadlines will enable the IPRH to consider all requests for support on a competitive basis, and to determine how to most effectively allocate our co-sponsorship resources in a time of limited funding. The average amount that the IPRH will contribute to an event is $100-200. In addition, we can award support for up to three conferences/symposia per year at the $1,000 level. Proposals for conference support must be submitted by the deadline dates in order to receive consideration. Proposals for non-conference events will be accepted outside of deadline periods under special circumstances, but funding will be contingent upon availability. Requests for support should include the following:
The IPRH does NOT provide financial support
• A brief but specific outline of the proposed event,
for the following:
including dates and one-paragraph speaker biographies
• Events sponsored by current IPRH Reading Groups
where appropriate
• Events sponsored by registered student organizations
• An outline of the proposed budget for the event, including
• Events that take place less than three weeks from
any funding commitments that have already been secured
the date of application for support
Send all requests for support via e-mail to Matti Bunzl (bunzl@uiuc.edu) and Christine Catanzarite (catanzar@uiuc.edu), or by campus mail to: IPRH, 805 West Pennsylvania Ave., MC-057. Notification of support will be sent to all applicants within one week of the deadline date.
Art at IPRH The IPRH continues its initiative on the visual arts with plans for a series of exhibitions and related programming during the coming year. All works will be on display in the Humanities Lecture Hall, which is open to the public from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on weekdays. The fall semester will open with an exhibition by S.J. Hart, artist and co-director of OPENSOURCE Art, titled “I lloutuve wyou too.” The opening of the exhibition will be celebrated at the IPRH Fall Open House and Reception on September 15 from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. The second exhibition of the semester will feature works by Janie Paul, Assistant Professor and Director of Community Relations at the University of Michigan School of Art and Design; the opening for this show, “Belief, Wonder, and the Open Secrets of Nature,” will be held on November 8 from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. The spring semester will feature works by Champaign-Urbana painter Kim Curtis, and a collaboration with OPENSOURCE Art on realism in art and literature. Please check the IPRH website throughout the year for information on these and other upcoming exhibitions.
16
2004-05 In Review The Future of the Humanities
“Here Again” by Teresa Gale (Art and Design), on view at
This discussion, held at Foellinger Auditorium on October
the IPRH from March 2 through April 22
22, featured Stanley Fish (English, University of Illinois at
“Over + Over: Passion for Process” gallery discussion by
Chicago), E. Ann Kaplan (The Humanities Institute, SUNY-
exhibition organizer Kathleen Harleman (Director, Krannert
Stony Brook), and Cary Nelson (English, UIUC).
Art Museum), at Krannert Art Museum
Adam Pendleton, conceptual artist (New York)
“Mapping Sitting: On Portraiture and Photography” gallery
As part of the three-day visit by Adam Pendleton, the
Krannert Art Museum
IPRH hosted the installation “Being Here,” including live webcasts on WILL-TV-AM/FM, class visits, and three panel discussions featuring Pendleton and UIUC faculty members: Queer Art, Black Art, and Conceptual Art.
Paul Campos (Law, University of Colorado) This three-day visit by Paul Campos, author of The Obesity Myth: Why America’s Obsession with Weight is Hazardous to Your Health, featured class visits, a public lecture titled “Ask Your Doctor if Cultural Hysteria is Right For You: The Politics of ‘Obesity,’” and two panel discussions featuring Campos, UIUC faculty members, and visiting scholars: The Weight of the Media and The Racialized Construction of Fat.
discussion by artist and exhibition organizer Walid Raad, at
“Invisible Infrastructure: Maps and Photographs” by Christian Sandvig (Speech Communication, UIUC) and Hope Hall (documentary photographer, New York), on view at the IPRH from May 3 through July 22
Curtain Call This collaboration between the IPRH and the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts featured informal discussions, moderated by UIUC faculty and sometimes including members of the production, after the following performances at KCPA: Welcome Home Charley Patton, Ralph Lemon (world premiere) The End of the Moon, Laurie Anderson systems/layers, SITI Company and Rachel’s
Panel Discussions
Alladeen, The Builder’s Association and motiroti
The New Anti-Semitism
IPRH Film Series
The Tasks of Feminist Theory The Future of the Study of Foreign Literatures The Task of the Literary Critic
The film series presented ten films, two of them (Afro-Punk and Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control) accompanied by panel discussions featuring UIUC faculty as well as
The Future of Radical Politics
visiting scholars and filmmakers.
The Ethics of Stem Cells Global Fundamentalisms The Corporate Humanities
“DIFFERENCE”
21st Century Bodies
IPRH Seventh Annual Conference
The Future of Ethnic Studies at UIUC
March 31-April 1
Art at IPRH
Keynote Address
The IPRH initiative on the arts featured exhibitions, artist
Suvir Kaul (English, University of Pennsylvania)
talks, and gallery tours by the following:
“Indifference”
“Virtual Works in Actual Space” by Jonas Downey (Art and Design), on view at the IPRH from September 1
Conference Panels
through October 6
Nations and their Differences
“People in Motion” by Wojtek Chodzko-Zajko (Kinesiology), on view at the IPRH from January 18 through February 25
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Different Arts Difference through Better Living
Application Guidelines– UIUC Faculty Fellowship Awards Applications are invited from UIUC faculty members for selection as IPRH Faculty Fellows for the 2006-07 academic year. The fellowship will provide release time for one semester in residence to enable Fellows to develop research projects related to the broad theme of “Beauty;” to teach one course, on the undergraduate or graduate level, that is related to the subject of the fellowship project; and to participate in the year’s activities, including the yearlong interdisciplinary Fellows’ Seminar and the IPRH annual conference in the spring. The IPRH is especially interested in fostering interdisciplinary work, and encourages the submission of joint applications from faculty members in different disciplines. Each applicant should submit two (2) complete sets of the following, in this order: • A completed IPRH application form, including a 100-word abstract (the form can be downloaded from the IPRH website) • A current curriculum vitae • A statement of 2,000 words describing the faculty member’s research on the proposed project • A description of the proposed course, including a tentative syllabus The applicant should arrange for the IPRH to receive two (2) letters in support of the application, and a letter of support from the executive officer of the applicant’s primary department, attesting to the department’s willingness to release the applicant from all regular teaching duties other than thesis direction for one semester in 2006-07. (Executive officers of campus units who submit an application to the IPRH must include a letter from the dean of their college, approving the application and any release time that would result from a successful proposal.) Accordingly, applicants should make certain that their teaching and research obligations do not prevent them from participating fully in IPRH activities, and should indicate in the narrative statement the relation of the fellowship to any other applications being made for either sabbatical leave or for other campus or external grants and fellowships. In the narrative statement, the applicant should describe his/her research in reasonable detail, explaining its relevance to the IPRH theme for 2006-07 and its significance to the broader scholarly community at UIUC and elsewhere. The statement should be prefaced by a project title and a brief abstract (no more than 100 words). The statement should also indicate the applicant’s willingness to participate in IPRH activities, especially the annual conference and the Fellows’ Seminar. Applications being made for joint projects should include all of the elements required of faculty applicants as described above, with the exception of the following: each applicant should complete a copy of the IPRH application form; the narrative statement should be 3,000 words and jointly authored to address both the collaborative nature of the project and the individual strengths brought to it by each applicant; and each applicant should arrange to have two support letters and the letters from their department’s executive officer sent to the IPRH. If the applicants intend to teach a joint course, the one course proposal and sample syllabus should be submitted; if each applicant plans to teach an individual course, then the applicants should submit two course proposals and syllabi. All IPRH Fellows are expected to maintain residency on the UIUC campus during the award year. Faculty members who have previously held an IPRH fellowship may not reapply to the IPRH for five years following the award. Faculty members are likewise prohibited from holding IPRH fellowships and Center for Advanced Study, Mellon, Humanities Release Time, or other campus release-time awards simultaneously. Completed applications must be submitted, and letters of support must arrive, by 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, December 1, 2005. Be sure that both sets of application materials are assembled and complete, and proofread all submissions carefully; changes or additions cannot be made after the application has been submitted to the IPRH. Send all materials to:
Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities
805 West Pennsylvania Avenue, MC-057
Urbana, Illinois 61801
Letters of support can be mailed to this address; sent via fax to (217) 333-9617; or e-mailed to Christine Catanzarite at catanzar@uiuc.edu.
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Application Guidelines– UIUC Graduate Student Fellowship Awards Applications are invited from UIUC graduate students for selection as IPRH Graduate Student Fellows for the 2006-07 academic year. The Fellowship will enable advanced graduate students to develop their dissertations or research projects related to the theme of “Beauty,” and to participate in the year’s activities, including the yearlong interdisciplinary Fellows’ Seminar and the IPRH annual conference in the spring. Graduate Student Fellows receive a $7,000 stipend and a tuition and fee waiver if one is not otherwise provided. Each applicant should submit two (2) complete sets of the following, in this order: • A completed IPRH application form, including a 100-word abstract (form can be downloaded from the IPRH website) • A current curriculum vitae, including a list of all graduate courses taken, papers published, presentations made,
and assistantships and fellowships held
• All graduate transcripts (official copies in the first set of materials, and duplicate copies in the remaining set) • A statement of 2,000 words describing the student’s research on the proposed project, including preparation to undertake this research and all progress on the project to date The applicant should arrange for the IPRH to receive two (2) letters in support of the application; these letters should speak to the applicant’s abilities and achievements, to his/her progress on the project, and to the intellectual value of the project itself. One of these letters should be from the faculty member supervising the student’s dissertation or equivalent research. Accordingly, applicants should make certain that their teaching and research obligations do not prevent them from participating fully in IPRH activities, and should indicate in the narrative statement the relation of the fellowship to any other applications being made for other campus or external grants and fellowships. In the narrative statement, the applicant should describe his/her research in reasonable detail, explaining its relevance to the IPRH theme for 2006-07 and its significance to the broader scholarly community at UIUC and elsewhere. The statement should be prefaced by a project title and a brief abstract (no more than 100 words). The statement should also indicate the applicant’s willingness to participate in IPRH activities, especially the annual conference and the Fellows’ Seminar. All IPRH Fellows are expected to maintain residency on the UIUC campus during the award year. Graduate students who have previously held an IPRH fellowship may not reapply. Graduate Student Fellows may also hold appointments as teaching/research assistants during the award year, but these appointments may not exceed one-third time (33 percent). Graduate students may not hold an IPRH fellowship and a Center on Democracy fellowship, or other similar campus or off-campus award, simultaneously. Completed applications must be submitted, and letters of support must arrive, by 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, December 1, 2005. Be sure that both sets of application materials are assembled and complete, and proofread all submissions carefully; changes or additions cannot be made after the application has been submitted to the IPRH. Send all materials to:
Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities
805 West Pennsylvania Avenue, MC-057
Urbana, Illinois 61801
Letters of support can be mailed to this address; sent via fax to (217) 333-9617; or e-mailed to Christine Catanzarite at catanzar@uiuc.edu. For more information about the IPRH Graduate Student Fellowship Program, please contact Christine Catanzarite at 244-7913 or catanzar@uiuc.edu. Awards will be announced on or about February 1, 2005. Please note:The IPRH will sponsor a fellowship proposal-writing workshop for graduate students, in conjunction with the Graduate College, on Tuesday, September 13 at 5:00 p.m. at the IPRH. This workshop will address the elements of a successful fellowship or grant proposal, with special emphasis placed on proposals submitted for on-campus awards for humanities graduate students. The workshop is free and open to all UIUC graduate students; no advance registration is required.
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 805 West Pennsylvania Avenue Urbana, Illinois 61801 http://www.iprh.uiuc.edu Telephone (217) 244-3344 Fax (217) 333-9617
Human Interest is published annually in the fall by the Illinois Program for Research
IPRH Staff
in the Humanities. More information about the IPRH and its activities can be
Matti Bunzl, Director
found online throughout the year.
bunzl@uiuc.edu, 333-3138
Editor: Christine Catanzarite Graphic Design: Scott Paceley, Office of Publications and Marketing
Christine Catanzarite, Associate Director catanzar@uiuc.edu, 244-7913
The Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was established in 1997 to promote interdisciplinary study in the humanities, arts, and social sciences. The IPRH grants fellowships to UIUC faculty and graduate students, and to external post-doctoral scholars, who work in yearlong symposia on thematic topics such as “Institutions of the Visual,” “Cities,” “The South,” “Violence,” “Difference,” and the theme for 2005-06, “Belief.” The program coordinates and hosts an annual conference, typically during the spring, coordinated with the annual theme and featuring presentations by the IPRH Fellows and invited speakers. The IPRH also provides financial support to faculty and graduate student reading groups, coordinates numerous lectures and panel discussions, sponsors exhibitions by campus and visiting artists in it lecture hall, and hosts a yearlong film
John Marsh, Assistant Director jemarsh@uiuc.edu, 244-3981 Pam Hall, Staff Secretary phall1@uiuc.edu, 244-7914 Stephanie Uebelhoer, Secretary suebelho@uiuc.edu, 244-3344
IPRH dvisory Committee 2005-2006 Marilyn Booth, Comparative and World Literature Jed Esty, English Karen Fresco, French
series coordinated with the annual theme. In addition to its own programming, the
Poshek Fu, History
IPRH shares its resources with other university departments and programs, serving
Barbara Kendrick, Art and Design
as a major co-sponsor of lectures, programs, and conferences on campus through-
Alejandro Lugo, Anthropology
out the year and coordinating its activities with other units wherever possible.
Jordana Mendelson, Art History
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