IPRH Newsletter 2009

Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities

From the

D i rec to r If one could choose any time at all to begin directing a humanities center at a large public university, it might not be during a year of global economic crisis. It might not be during a year in which the threat of the financial collapse of the university became a looming specter. It also might not be during a year in which The New York Times repeatedly featured editorials by a select number of eminent humanists announcing—and based on various claims—the death or imminent death of the humanities. But then again, it might be. Crisis, after all, has its virtues and it begets specific types of opportunities. It forces assessment and the articulation or rearticulation of goals and values. Trite though it may seem, and despite a personal penchant for comfort over distress, the constraints imposed by extremely lean budgets and the possibility of eradication can serve as a catalyst for tremendous creativity. I am happy to report that despite a year characterized in many sectors by retrenchment, IPRH has grown in some important and substantial ways.

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Fa l l 2009

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Our core activities from the past remain in place, such as our

Dianne Harris

faculty and graduate student fellowship program, and I am

Carolyn Merchant, environmental ethicist Andrew Light, geog-

delighted to announce the addition of a new faculty fellow-

rapher Jake Kosek, anthropologist Julie Cruikshank, and writer

ship. Through the generosity of Dean Robert Graves, we have

Rob Nixon. Their engagement with this, arguably one of the

secured funding for a designated IPRH/FAA Faculty Fellow-

most pressing issues of our time, demonstrates the important

ship. You can read about this years’ recipient, Professor Oscar

role the humanities can play in helping us understand everyday

Vázquez from the Program in Art History, in our profiles of

decisions, human action, and their implications on public

faculty Fellows in the pages that follow. With this addition, and

policy, human health, and the future. As Franke also stated,

the continuation of support generously provided by the College

“A citizenry exposed to the humanities is able to identify and

of Liberal Arts and Sciences’ Nicholson Endowment, we are

articulate the issues most important to their lives and, in turn,

now able to offer seven faculty fellowships and eight gradu-

make decisions with greater clarity…by questioning how a

ate fellowships annually. Due to budget constraints, we have

problem is framed and critically analyzing its evidence, the hu-

temporarily suspended funding for our reading groups, but we

manities serve as a safeguard to the public sphere.”1 Although

continue to provide administrative support, to advertise the

we need not always do so, humanities scholarship can—and

reading groups on our website, and to provide a venue for read-

sometimes must—ask questions that can be brought to bear

ing group meetings in the IPRH building. It is my hope that we

on the socially and politically urgent issues of our time. This

will be able to reinstate funding for the reading groups as soon

is precisely our aim in bringing the “Climate Change and the

as possible since we consider them an essential component

Humanities” series to campus. I extend my sincere thanks to

of our mission. The reading groups contribute in important

Wes Jarrell and to Dick Warner for their support of this series.

ways to the incredible vitality that characterizes the humanities and arts at the University of Illinois and we will look for new ways to sustain and nurture them in the coming year. We’ve also begun to make their activities more widely accessible by providing links to reading group blogs on the IPRH website.

We hope you’ll take a few moments to check out the blogs and see what your colleagues are discussing.

ars to lecture on campus including environmental historian

Given the times in which we live, and emerging and continuing discussions about the role of the humanities in the 21st century, it seems increasingly wise to embrace the “Do Both” approach recommended by Robert Weisbuch in his ACLS report of 2006.2 We must preserve the great traditions of scholarship in the humanities that allow us to ask and answer questions that lead us to knowledge for its own sake and that

With funding generously provided by the Environmental

leads us along pathways not yet defined. We must treasure

Change Institute and by the Center for Sustainability, we have

and nurture the scholar who requires little more than time to

organized a lecture series on “Climate Change and the Humani-

read and to think, a laptop, and a rare book or set of docu-

ties” for the coming academic year. Scientific research on cli-

ments in order to produce fresh scholarship on matters that

mate change tends to emphasize data analysis, and scientists’

may not appear to have immediate relevance to 21st-century

conclusions are limited to what can be learned from that data.

life. Simultaneously, we must also find ways to facilitate

As Richard Franke has recently pointed out, humanists can

and foster the work of a growing number of humanists who

play an important role in climate change research by helping us

require advanced technologies to manage and analyze large

understand and prepare for the social, ethical, and other human

data sets that may have complex ramifications in space and

consequences of climate change, asking questions now that

time, or whose work relies on sophisticated visualization tech-

can help us understand what may be coming—both locally and

nologies to facilitate new interpretations and to elucidate new

globally. To that end, we’ve invited a group of renowned schol-

meanings. These digital humanists may ask questions similar

| on the Cover | Page 13 IPRH celebrates 10 years Page 12 Bruce Cole, President and CEO, American Revolution Center at Valley Forge (and former NEH Chairman), spoke on campus Page 8

Giving to IPRH

Page 3

Kirsten C. Uszkalo joins IPRH as the first Digital Humanities Post-Doctoral Fellow

2 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | iprh.illinois.edu

to those working with more conventional materials and

To that end, we are this year hosting our first-ever digital humani-

tools but they are often managing information at a much

ties Post-Doctoral Fellow, Kirsten Uszkalo from Simon Fraser

larger scale, or they may be asking new kinds of questions

University in Vancouver. A specialist in 17th century literature,

facilitated by the technologies now at their disposal. At Il-

early modern culture, and women’s writing, Kirsten’s research

linois, we are uniquely positioned to become leaders in the

(among other things) uses digital tools to elucidate new aspects

digital arts and humanities—as we arguably already have

of the history of witches and witch trials in early modern Eng-

become—because we have at our disposal the powerful

land. Made possible through the generous support of Dean John

infrastructural support and leading scholars in digital arts

Unsworth and I3, Kirsten will be jointly hosted by the IPRH and

and humanities that are required to produce cutting-edge

the Department of History where she will also teach one course

digital projects. Both the scholar working with traditional

during the academic year. Also in collaboration with I3, we will

tools and the scholar working with digital tools have much

host a lecture by Dr. Johanna Drucker, a leading scholar of visual

to tell us about how we dwell and have dwelled in the

studies, digital aesthetics, and the history of visual information

world; both elucidate essential aspects of what it means to

design. As a recent digital humanities Fellow at Stanford Uni-

be human. And both will find support at the IPRH, where

versity’s Humanities Center, and as a faculty member at UCLA,

our core mission of supporting all endeavors related to the

Drucker has been working on a project titled “Diagramming

humanities persists. We will, to use Weisbuch’s term, “do

Interpretation” which she is also applying to research on the

both,” since embracing the new need not come at the

design of environments for digital scholarship.

expense of the old and familiar.

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| P o s t-D o c to r a l F e l lo w i n D i g i ta l H u m a n i t i e s /V i s i t i n g A s s i s ta n t P r o f e s s o r | The IPRH is delighted to welcome Professor Kirsten C.

Throwing Bones: A Semi-supervised Classification

Uszkalo as the first Digital Humanities Post-Doctoral

and GIS-based System for Early Modern Witchcraft

Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor – a position that

Trial Documents

carries a joint appointment with the Illinois Informatics Institute (I 3) and the Department of History. Professor Uszkalo will spend the 2009-10 academic year in residence at the University of Illinois, engaged in research and writing, and will offer a course, “Negotiations and Exploitations in Early Modern England” (History 200), in the Department of History during the spring semester 2010. For more information about the course, please contact Professor Uszkalo directly.

Kirsten C. Uszkalo

A bst r act Witches have begun to proliferate online and making one’s way to early modern witchcraft texts has never been easier.

Many of the projects that are currently available help to demystify early modern English witchcraft tracts by allowing researchers to navigate through a plethora of documents, organizing them by author and title, and exploring their contents through date, author, ESTC number, keyword searches, and paratextual inclusions. How can we build upon these resourc-

Prior to her arrival at the U of I, Professor Uszkalo held a one-

es toward a system that takes advantage of the digitization

year appointment in the English Department at Simon Fraser

of early English witchcraft tracts to help scholars effectively

University, and she received her Ph.D. in English from the Uni-

analyze the evolution of witches in early modern England and

versity of Alberta in 2006. She is a specialist in 17th century

produce new research on their continued cultural resonance?

literature, early modern cultural studies, and women’s writing.

Her current work combines theories taken from cognitive science and neuroscience with tools and research practices borrowed from digital humanities to help elucidate issues of spiritual messiness in early modern England. She has received numerous grants and awards for her work, including a prestigious 2009 grant from Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. She is an active collaborator on numerous national and international digital humanities projects, and a regular participant in conferences, workshops, and colloquia related to digital humanities scholarship.

This project will create an interface for semi-supervised classification of witchcraft trial texts, in a system called “Throwing Bones.” Throwing Bones will allow users to select a number of texts, run a semantic clustering algorithm, then search for results in the clusters. The results will be shown visually, as representational objects on the screen. This kind of interaction will allow users to deal with the texts simultaneously on multiple levels (pick up, move around, shuffle, drop), and allow the texts to speak back, telling a kind of story that might otherwise remain obscure under the auspices of standard date, author, and keyword search terms.

“At IPRH we nurture knowledge for knowledge’s sake because we know that by doing so, we are investing in the common good.”

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Antoinette Burton, Department of History

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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | iprh.illinois.edu | 3

| I P RH FA C U LT Y F E LL O W S 2009-10 |

Faculty Fellows receive one semester of release time in the semester of their

E st h e r K im L ee

choice during the fellowship year. IPRH Faculty Fellows are also asked to teach

Theatre/Asian American Studies

a course – during the fellowship year or the year immediately following – on a

Performative Representation and Diplomacy During and After Commodore Perry’s Expedition to China and Japan

subject related to the fellowship project. Through these courses, the Fellows illustrate the connection between exceptional research and outstanding teaching, and continue the dialogue on the fellowship topic long after the year has ended. Descriptions of the courses proposed by the following IPRH Faculty Fellows can be found on the IPRH website.

Through the generosity of Dean Robert Graves and the College of Fine and Applied Arts, the IPRH is pleased to announce that Professor Oscar Vázquez has been appointed as the first IPRH/FAA Faculty Fellow.

J ane D esm o nd Anthropology/Gender and Women’s Studies When the Artist is an Ape: Visual Arts, the Challenge of Representation, and Political Subjectivity “When the Artist is an Ape” explores the striking phenomenon of representational paintings produced by captive apes, specifically those who can communicate with humans through sign language or lexigrams, and thus name their own paintings and comment on them.

These paintings, like Koko’s “Bluebird,” stand at the edge of the category of representational art, referencing flowers, emotions (“Love”), and even other animals. They draw into question the human/animal divide while challenging current “theories of mind” developed by primatologists and cognitive psychologists. I argue that, ultimately, such representational abilities may require an expanded notion of political subjectivity, thus supporting the concept of a radically post-humanist world.

C la r ence L ang African American Studies/History

The project examines the ways in which Commodore Perry of the U.S. Navy used performative representation and diplomacy during his expedition to China and Japan in the mid-19th century. Perry’s employment of blackface minstrel shows and other displays of race will be studied in comparison to Asian representations such as sumo wrestling. The project will also focus on Chinese and Japanese characters in American popular culture in the context of Perry’s expedition and the establishment of diplomacy with East Asia. Relying on both primary and secondary documents, I plan to juxtapose and compare the performative representations of culture with the actual diplomatic representations of nations.

L o r i H u mp h r e y N ewc o mb English Representing Shakespeare’s Popular Audience: The Vernacular of Performance, 1576-1642 The plays created for early modern London’s public stages were at once complex pieces of representation and successful products of popular culture. Yet critical estimates routinely assume that most members of the paying audience could barely comprehend the plays.

This project argues that popular audience members, simply by living through the Reformation crisis in the relationship between bodies and words, acquired the multimodal literacies demanded by the new hybrid representations onstage.

England’s unusually protracted Reformation made its congregants into audience members, fluent in a vernacular of performance that could ground artistic and even political participation.

The Black Working-Class Public and the Urban Midwest: African American Nationality and Cultural Representation in the Late Industrial Period Beyond the social movements African American workers waged for social change, their daily activities, associational lives, and institution-building figure centrally in the larger history of the black working class during the 20th century. Using an interdisciplinary approach, this project examines the development of black working-class culture in the urban-industrial Midwest, and the evolution of a black working-class public sphere. It argues that this sphere provided the taproot of a distinct African American national identity that cohered in the late industrial period following the Second World War.

Ric h a r d T. R o d r í g u e z English/Latina and Latino Studies Subject to Fantasy: Sexuality, Space, and the Politics of Latino Male Representation This project investigates an array of interlocking representations of Latino masculinity in contemporary American society. Drawing from various critical trajectories – literary and cultural studies, queer theory, and visual analysis in particular – the project examines a cluster of texts that enable discussion beyond well-rehearsed debates about Latino masculinity to track its articulation at the intersection of race, class, and gender. By linking masculinity with sexuality, the project aims to trouble the heteronormative presumption underpinning common perceptions of Latino manhood. Furthermore, it renders masculinity as a category of analysis for investigating ongoing concerns pertaining to racism, immigration, gentrification, and the cultural politics of gender.

“There is no place on. campus except IPRH where academic excellence and openness to all levels of learners occur on a regular and ongoing basis.”

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Sharon Irish, School of Architecture, and an IPRH Faculty Fellow 2000-01

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S pence r S c h affne r English (Center for Writing Studies) [Unintelligible]: the Art of Writing Beyond Meaning This project explores how unintelligibility can be part of representational systems. By studying written texts that are unintelligible because they are illegible, hypergraphically diffuse, or based on hidden codes, I explain how disrupted systems of representation make meaning. My inquiry engages with scholarship in the disciplines of neuroscience, psychology, art and art history, and writing studies. The ultimate purpose of the project is to counter a regime of correctness in the field of writing studies that privileges hyper-legible textuality over all other forms of written expression. This project will suggest ways that unintelligible writing can be strategically expressive.

Osca r E . Vá z q u e z – I P RH / F A A F ell o w Art History Graffiti’s Palimpsests: A brief moment in the history of representation (1970-2008) My project is a book-length manuscript examining graffiti’s definitions and functions and the relation of these to representation in the last decades of the 20th century. It explores graffiti as a palimpsest; as a practice read through pre-existing models of social, historical, or visual theory. This will be a history of graffiti not as a chronological development of pictorial styles, or of writing, but rather (borrowing from Rosalyn Deutsche) of “uneven developments,” of advantaged moments and responses by various groups in the face of competing discourses – discourses that argued over how to “read” graffiti as representation, and over what graffiti represents.

| I P RH G r a d uate S tu d e n t F E LL O W S 2009-10 | Graduate Student Fellows receive a $7,000 stipend and a tuition/fee waiver if

L e ï la E nna ï li

one is not otherwise provided by their home department.

French

Two of the graduate fellowship recipients – Jennifer Lieberman and Martha

Representation of Foreigners and Immigrants in 20th Century French Literary and Filmic Narratives

Althea Webber – have been designated as Nicholson-IPRH Fellows for 2009-10.

The Nicholson Endowment is a gift of Grace W. Nicholson, who pursued undergraduate studies in LAS, and Professor Emeritus John A. Nicholson, a faculty member in the Philosophy Department at the U of I for 33 years. The Nicholson Endowment, which was established in 1999, provides support for the academic programs in LAS and excellence in the study of the humanities on campus.

J ennife r B aldwin Anthropology/College of Medicine “Society Saw Me as Expendable:” Representing the Experience of War-Acquired Disability and the Politics of Caring for Wounded Veterans With large numbers of soldiers returning with disabilities, there is a need to understand the veteran’s disability experience, as well as the space that these soldiers’ bodies and lives represent within the nation. This project examines how veterans enact disabled subjectivities within the contexts of veterans’ care and discourses on the war and veterans’ rights. By examining the experience of war-acquired disabilities in relation to the politics of providing care for veterans, this project aims to inform understandings of disability. Moreover, this work assesses the efficacy of care for veterans, thus potentially contributing to improvements in services for veterans with disabilities.

The representation of foreigners and immigrants in 20th century French literature and films offers an angle from which to understand current debates on the redefinition of national identity. This project aims at understanding how otherness is constructed in fictional narratives and how it is also undermined. Representation is approached from four different angles: memory, the relations between the foreigner and the “French,” the body of the foreigner, and the spatial dimension in which he evolves.

S u san N . J o h ns o n - R o e h r Architecture (Il)legible Landscapes: Representations of Knowledge and Power at the Astronomical Observatories of Sawai Jai Singh II, 1721-1743 This project investigates the representation and control of astronomical knowledge in historical landscapes of varying geographic scales. Based on twelve months of archival research and field work, my project considers the ways in which specific locations and geographies contributed to or undermined representations of knowledge and power in Northern India during the first half of the 18th century. This work expands on current disciplinary methodologies not only by mobilizing space as a critical analytic in my examination of the astronomical observatories built by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II, but also in its reconsideration of the patron’s (in)ability to control the representational qualities of both local and transcontinental scientific institutions.

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| I P RH G r a d uate S tu d e n t F E LL O W S 2009-10

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J ennife r L . L iebe r man – N ic h o ls o n / I P RH F ell o w

M a r t h a A lt h ea W ebbe r – N ic h o ls o n / I P RH F ell o w

English

English (Center for Writing Studies)

Power Lines: Electric Body Politics in American Literature and Culture, 1889-1953

Crafting Citizens, Sewing Subjects: Democratic Action, Nongovernmental Organizations, and Transnational Craft Literacy

My dissertation analyzes fictional and historical accounts of lived electrical experiences, arguing that written representations – including literature, newspaper articles, and scientific texts – shaped American perceptions of electricity, and that electrical technologies changed how writers perceived and practiced their art. At this intersection of literary studies and technological history, I analyze representations of electricity as an agent for social change, specifically focusing on how historically-minoritized groups, such as women and African Americans, imagined that electricity might be used to equalize American social landscapes.

Fundamental to my project are questions about how representations shape technological experience and, consequently, how they might incite social action.

This dissertation examines the organized production of sewn handicrafts as they interact with transnational spaces of democratic participation; specifically, the spaces for democratic action opened up for participants and facilitators of the Amazwi Abesifazane South African national quilt project. I argue these quilt workshops, organized under the theme “What Democracy Means to Me,” present limited but strategic opportunities for their participants, who are largely marginalized women of color from rural areas. Through critical ethnographic fieldwork and archival research, my dissertation analyzes the representational practices surrounding the national quilt project and the function of handicraft NGOs in the “global South.”

S a r a D . L u ttf r ing English Designing Women: Representing the Female Reproductive Body in Early Modern England, 1600-1660 During the early modern period, it often fell to women to interpret their bodies and the bodies of their offspring for men, and to construct legible narratives about reproduction through their words, behavior, and appearance. My project examines the effects of women’s narratives about their bodies on sexual and national politics by analyzing points of contact between representations of the female reproductive body and the patriarchal state. These contact points demonstrate the crucial role women’s bodily narratives played in the representational crises and competition that determined the sexual and textual forms through which gender and state politics were produced and reproduced.

C h ia - r o ng W u Comparative and World Literatures Encountering Spectral Traces: Ghost Narratives in Chinese American and Taiwanese Fiction and Film This research project explores the topics of ghost narrative and the spectral representation as cross-cultural phenomena in the contemporary literary and film production from Chinese America and Taiwan. Ghost narrative refers to the storytelling wedded to the motives of ghost haunting and the figurative manifestation of ghosts in fiction and film. This project aims to examine the spectral representation from two diverse perspectives regarding history and gender figuration. In analyzing the spectral manifestations in the contexts of Chinese America and Taiwan, I attempt to unpack the historical, social, and psychoanalytic implications behind the ghostly representation in a global context.

M elissa R o h de History Working America’s Enchanted Lands: American Indian Tourism Labor, 1900-1950 Between 1900 and 1950, American Indian communities engaged in tourism work as a means to adapt to changes in the political, economic, and natural environments.

My dissertation looks at two case studies of Native American communities’ incorporation of tourism work: Anishinaabeg in northern Wisconsin and northern Pueblos in New Mexico. The intersection of work and recreation in tourism influenced representations of American Indians by popularizing commodified visions of “Indianness.” Tourism also became a tool communities used to create and build tribal industries and labor opportunities, to restructure communities’ labor systems, and to exert a voice in regional and national politics.

Deadline for 2010-11 IPRH Faculty and Graduate Student Fellowship Applications: Wednesday, December 2, 2009

“The IPRH Fellows program offers immersion in an interdisciplinary community of scholars that fosters intellectual engagement in ways that are unattainable elsewhere on campus.”

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Victor Pickard, Institute of Communications Research, and an IPRH Graduate Student Fellow 2007-08

6 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | iprh.illinois.edu

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| C l i m ate C h a n ge a n d t h e H u m a n i t i e s |

Thanks to generous funding from the Environmental Change Institute and the Center for Sustainability, the IPRH has organized a lecture series focusing on humanities perspectives on climate change. Each of our five featured scholars brings a unique perspective to our understanding of the human dimensions and to the projected lived consequences of climate change as it is expected to progress in the coming decades. We are delighted to welcome the following lecturers to campus:

November 10: Julia Cruikshank, Professor Emerita of Anthropology,

University of British Columbia, Vancouver

February 10: Andrew Light, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and Director

of the Center for Global Ethics, George Mason University

February 22: Carolyn Merchant, Professor of Environmental History, Philosophy and Ethics,

University of California, Berkeley

March 9: Rob Nixon, Rachel Carson Professor of English, University of Wisconsin, Madison

March 16: Jake Kosek, Associate Professor of Geography, University of California, Berkeley

More details about these speakers and their presentations can be found on the IPRH website,

and in e-mail announcements that will be sent throughout the year. We hope you’ll join us for

these important events as we consider the future these scholars will present.

| I P R H ON T H E WE B – www.i p r h.i l l i n o i s. e d u | The IPRH website has undergone a recent

symposia, lectures, panel discussions, and arts

redesign and expansion, so that it can be a more

initiatives organized by the IPRH; and other IPRH

comprehensive resource for IPRH activities and

projects, from reading groups to collaborations

humanities-related announcements – and we invite

with other campus units

you to visit the site regularly for updated information about the IPRH and its programs. In addition to details about upcoming events and application deadlines, the site features the following: External Opportunities – an extensive list of resources for humanities-related funding, including visiting positions and residential fellowships; non-residential grants and virtual groups; library, archive, and museum funding; calls for papers; and other short- and long-term funding opportunities IPRH Blogs and Downloads – blogs of IPRH events by our HASTAC blogger, and by select reading group organizers; podcasts of lectures and panel discussions organized by the IPRH; and, beginning this fall, video recordings of select events IPRH History – publications by past IPRH Faculty, Graduate Student, and Post-Doctoral Fellows; a roster of Fellows and Advisory Committee members from 1997 to the present; conferences,

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | iprh.illinois.edu | 7

| Gi v i n g to IPRH | Whether you are one of our many past Fellows, a faculty member who enjoys attending our events, a member of an IPRH-sponsored reading group, or someone who wishes to support the humanities, we hope you’ll consider making a gift to the IPRH. Contributions support the full range of our endeavors, and can help support funding for post-doctoral fellows, additional named campus fellowships, an endowed and named lecture series, or as a contribution to the IPRH endowment. We also welcome support for improvements to the IPRH facilities.

Donations can be made using the link on the IPRH website, by contacting the Director, or by contacting the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Office of Advancement. We are very grateful for your support and hope you will consider making a donation.

“I’ve participated in numerous IPRH events over the years – as a presenter, performer, responder, moderator, panelist, ongoing colloquium member, vested audience member and outright novice student – and I’ve learned countless lessons ranging far beyond my own field. The topics covered by these have spanned a map as large as human endeavor. A great deal of what I’ve learned from these interactions has made its way into my books. The IPRH is, for me, the premiere forum on this campus where humanists, social scientists, artists and concerned scientists can emerge from the confines of their personal research and enjoy robust and dynamic, reciprocal inspiration and instruction. I’ve benefitted from that forum more than I can say. ” - Richard Powers, Department of English

“From the outset, the IPRH brought together faculty and graduate students from across the disciplines, and sponsored collaborative work in seminars and reading groups. That creation of intellectual community and fostering of comparative research is increasingly rare in the humanities, where research is most often undertaken in isolation from other scholars. Beyond the campus, the IPRH earned itself a national reputation in a matter of years, and this was crucial in two respects. First, it helped to establish the U of I’s reputation in an area where Illinois’ strengths were not widely enough known; and second, our lecture series and conferences brought the work of our graduate students and junior faculty to the attention of leading scholars in the field, with materially beneficial results for those students and faculty – and, indeed, to the intellectual community of the campus as a whole.”

- Michael Bérubé, Paterno Family Professor of English, Pennsylvania State University, and IPRH Founding Director 1997-2001

“Through its fellowship program, reading groups, round tables, and other public events, the IPRH offers a range of services that often educate and inspire, and always make you think.”

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Julia Sienkewicz, Program in Art History, and an IPRH Graduate Student Fellow 2006-07

8 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | iprh.illinois.edu

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| Re a d i n g G r ou p s 2009-10 | The following Reading Groups will meet regularly throughout the year and frequently organize public events on topics of interest to a broad range of disciplines. Descriptions of the groups can be found on the IPRH website. Please contact the Reading Group organizers (listed below) directly for more information about the groups and their activities.

African Cinemas Reading Group

Korea Workshop

Contact: Mahir Saul (m-saul@illinois.edu) and Maggie Flinn

Contact: Nancy Abelmann (nabelman@illinois.edu) and

(mflinn@illinois.edu)

Jungwon Kim (kimjw@illinois.edu)

Centers and Margins in East Asian History and Culture

Labor and Working Class History

Contact: Jing Jing Chang ( jjchang1@illinois.edu) and Yoonjeong

Contact: Janine Giordano (jgiord2@illinois.edu) and James

Shim (yshim@illinois.edu)

Barrett (jrbarret@illinois.edu)

Community Literacy and Service Learning Research

Language and Social Interaction

Contact: Martha Althea Webber (mwebber2@illinois.edu)

Contact: Andrea Golato (golato@illinois.edu)

Comparative Politics Workshop

Late Antiquity After Hours and Underground (LAAHUG)

Contact: José Antonio Cheibub (cheibub@illinois.edu)

Critical Technologies of Race Contact: Fiona Ngô (ngo@illinois.edu)

Designmatters Contact: David Weightman (diw@illinois.edu)

Digital Literacies Contact: Gail Hawisher (hawisher@illinois.edu), Patrick Berry (pberry2@illinois.edu), and Amber Buck (abuck2@illinois.edu)

Drugs, Culture, and Society Contact: Daniel Larson (dmlarson@illinois.edu)

Dynamics of Language Variation and Change Contact: Anna Maria Escobar (aescobar@illinois.edu) and Zsuzsanna Fagyal (zsfagyal@illinois.edu)

East Asian Language Pedagogy Contact: Misumi Sadler (sadlerm@illinois.edu) and Jeeyoung Ahn Ha (j-ahn3@illinois..edu)

Eastern Europe Contact: Jovana Babovic (babovic1@illinois.edu) and Keith Hitchins (khitchin@illinois.edu)

Experimental Pragmatics Contact: Marina Terkourafi (mt217@illinois.edu) and Tania Ionin (tionin@illinois.edu)

Geographies of Risk

Contact: Danuta Shanzer (shanzer@illinois.edu) and Ralph Mathisen (ralphwm@illinois.edu)

Medicine/Science Contact: Michelle Kleehammer (kleehmmr@illinois.edu) and Leslie J. Reagan (lreagan@illinois.edu)

Oral History Contact: Susan Davis (sgdavis@illinois.edu) and Christine D’Arpa (cdarpa2@illinois.edu)

Politics, Ethics, and the New Formalisms Contact: Carrie Dickison (cdickis2@illinois.edu) and Katherine Skwarczek (skwarcze@illinois.edu)

Queer Studies: Sexualities, Races, Nations Contact: Richard T. Rodríguez (rtrodrig@illinois.edu)

Research Libraries: An enduring value?

Contact: M. Kathleen Kern (katkern@illinois.edu) and Linda Smith (lcsmith@illiois.edu)

Rhetorical Studies Contact: John Murphy (jmmurphy@illinois.edu)

Trans-East Asian Cinema Contact: I-In Chiang (ichiang2@illinois.edu) and Mei-Hsuan Chiang (mchiang3@illinois.edu)

Youth, Literature, and Culture Contact: Christine Jenkins (cajenkin@illinois.edu)

Contact: Javier Irigoyen-García (irigoyen@illinois.edu) and Eleonora Stoppino (stoppino@illinois.edu)

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | iprh.illinois.edu | 9

| I P RH C a l e n da r of E v e n ts a n d De a d l i n es 2009-10 |

September

November

9

6

Mary Beth Rose (Professor of English and Director of the Institute for the Humanities, University of Illinois at Chicago) 4:00 p.m., IPRH, Humanities Lecture Hall The Dead Mother Plot: The Family and Authority in Early Modern Texts

10

Julie Cruikshank (Professor Emerita of Anthropology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver) 7:30 p.m., Levis Faculty Center, Third Floor Melting Glaciers and Emerging Histories in America’s Far Northwest

12

IPRH Film Series – Brazil followed by gallery conversation in conjunction with the Krannert Art Museum exhibit Under Control 5:30 p.m., Krannert Art Museum, Room 62

IPRH Fall Reception 7:00 – 9:00 p.m., IPRH, Humanities Lecture Hall

11 NEH Summer Stipend application deadline, 5:00 p.m.

Application guidelines can be found on the IPRH website.

17 IPRH Film Series – The Truman Show

5:30 p.m., Krannert Art Museum, Room 62 21

Faculty Grant/Fellowship Workshop 4:00 p.m., IPRH, Humanities Lecture Hall Participants: Dianne Harris, Christine Catanzarite, Lori Williamson (Institutional Advancement), Nancy Abelmann (Associate Vice Chancellor for Research)

22

Graduate Student Grant/Fellowship Workshop 5:00 p.m., IPRH, Humanities Lecture Hall Participants: Dianne Harris, Christine Catanzarite, Deborah Richie (Graduate College), Ken Vickery (Graduate College)

23

Roundtable: Conceptualizing/Theorizing Catastrophe (co-sponsored by the Department of History and the IPRH) 4:00 p.m., 307 Greg Hall Participants: Spencer Weart (History of Physics, American Institute of Physics), Paula Treichler (Institute of Communications Research, U of I), Gillen Wood (English, U of I), Peter Fritzsche (History, U of I), Mark Micale (English, U of I)

October 8

Irit Rogoff (Professor of Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths, University of London) 7:30 p.m., Levis Faculty Center, Third Floor Additional information about this event can be found on the IPRH website.

15 IPRH Film Series – A Face in the Crowd

5:30 p.m., Krannert Art Museum, Room 62 22

Johanna Drucker (Martin and Bernard Breslauer Professor of Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles) Co-sponsored by the IPRH and the Illinois Informatics Institute 7:30 p.m., IPRH, Humanities Lecture Hall Format and Function: The legacy of the book in the design of information spaces

27

Panel Discussion: Virtual Worlds: The Business and Recreation of Gaming Culture 4:00 p.m., IPRH, Humanities Lecture Hall Panelists: Guy Garnett (Music/Illinois Informatics Institute, U of I), Kevin Hamilton (Art and Design, U of I), Lisa Nakamura (Asian American Studies/Institute of Communications Research, U of I) Moderator: Mimi Thuy Nguyen (Asian American Studies/Gender and Women’s Studies, U of I)

29 IPRH Film Series – The Great Dictator

5:30 p.m., Krannert Art Museum, Room 62

10 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | iprh.illinois.edu

December 2

IPRH Faculty and Graduate Student Fellowship application deadline 5:00 p.m.

Guidelines can be found on pages 18 and 19.

February 1

IPRH Faculty and Graduate Student Fellowships Announced

10

Andrew Light (Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and Director of the Center for Global Ethics, George Mason University) 7:30 p.m., Levis Faculty Center Ethics and Climate Change

22

Carolyn Merchant (Professor of Environmental History, University of California, Berkeley) 7:30 p.m., Levis Faculty Center, Third Floor Melting Ice: Climate Change and the Humanities

March 1

Anne Enke (Associate Professor of History, University of Wisconsin, Madison) Co-sponsored by the IPRH and Gender and Women’s Studies 5:00 p.m., IPRH, Humanities Lecture Hall Carded at the Door: Contested Space and the Consolidation of the Feminist Subject

9

Robert Nixon (Rachel Carson Professor of English, University of Wisconsin, Madison) 7:30 p.m., IPRH, Levis Faculty Center, Third Floor Slow Violence and the Drama Deficit of Climate Change

16

Jake Kosek (Associate Professor of Geography, University of California, Berkeley) 7:30 p.m., Levis Faculty Center, Third Floor The Nature of the Beast: On Honeybees and the Biopolitics of Terror

19

IPRH Prizes for Research in the Humanities application/nomination deadline 5:00 p.m.

Guidelines can be found on page 17.

| F r o m t h e D i r e c to r

continued

|

These things are new, but we will this year also continue our

coming years, we hope to find ways to increase our commitment

tradition of using an annual theme to structure our fellow-

to the public humanities and to extend our reach more broadly

ship program. To kick off our “Representation” year, we will

across campus and into the community. To that end, we will

welcome Irit Rogoff to campus this fall. A Professor of Visual

henceforth be posting podcasts and video captures of our events

Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, Dr. Rogoff will

on the newly redesigned IPRH website. We hope you’ll look for

deliver a keynote address and spend a day in workshop with

these and find ways to use them in your teaching and research.

our Fellows. As a scholar who writes about the intersections of contemporary art, critical theory, colonialism, cultural difference, and performativity, Rogoff’s research delves into a wide range of concerns that are at the heart of humanistic inquiry. After this year, we will suspend the use of an annual theme, not as the conclusion of what was ever a bad idea, but as a suspension of what was a productive idea that may have come to its natural conclusion. The annual themes were useful because they implied that the Fellows shared common intellectual ground. The themes facilitated discussion based on a shared body of assumptions, of the “already known,” but they could also lead to an avoidance of discussions centered on difficult topics or of subject areas not shared in

In the coming years, IPRH will continue to create the conditions necessary for important dialogue, and to serve as a venue for the discussion of difficult questions and issues that are central to our understanding of the human condition. We will continue to be a platform for discussions about the humanities on this campus and beyond, and we will reiterate and find imaginative new ways to articulate the significance of our endeavors to the widest possible audience. I hope you’ll join us as we embark on another exciting year—keep an eye on our calendar and keep looking for our electronic event announcements—and I welcome you to stop by our offices for a chat.

Sincerely yours,

common. Instead, we want to embrace those difficult topics, and to make sure that the IPRH fellowships are accessible to the broadest range of scholars in the humanities on our campus. Our selection of Fellows for the 2010-11 year will, as always, be based on scholarly excellence.

1

Richard J. Franke, “The Power of the Humanities and a Challenge to Humanists,” Daedalus, Winter, 2009, pp. 20-21.

2

Robert Weisbuch, “The Silence—and the Noise—of the Humanities,” in The Humanities and its Publics, ACLS Occasional Paper, no. 61, ACLS, 2006, p. 20.

It is with great pleasure that the IPRH continues to support the Odyssey Project, and the Education Justice Project for which we provide space and some infrastructural support. In the

| REFLECT I ONS ON THE IPRH F E LL O W S HIP E X P E RI E N C E | Feisal Mohamed, English IPRH Faculty Fellow, 2008-09 One makes suit to the IPRH in the hope of having a precious term to oneself, but earns upon receiving a fellowship equally valuable membership in a scholarly community of the highest caliber. In 2008-09, the Fellows’ Seminar covered topics ranging from the creation of a center for musical study in Argentina to antiquarianism in southwestern China, from Tatum O’Neal’s precocity to Tom Waits’s sometimes dubious masculinity. Under the deft guidance of Dianne Harris, each session generated lively discussion driven by the questions uniting humanities disciplines: the relationships obtaining between individuals and societies, spaces, and cultural moments, and the ways in which meaning is both an outgrowth of and eruption from charged contexts.

The year’s rubric explored how ‘disciplinarity’ is itself mired in such contexts in its fraught claims of critical distance, a discussion illumined significantly by a lecture and all-day seminar with James Chandler. All of this was complemented significantly by a series of special events extending such questions beyond the seminar, including a film series and an all-day conference on John

Feisal Mohamed

Milton, and where the Fellows’ conviviality found fuller expression. Perhaps most importantly, all of the year’s events, and more broadly the kind of forum provided by this active humanities center, encourage us to scrape away the thick crust of narrowly specialized concerns and to expose the deeper human questions more worthy of our energies. That prompting will exercise salutary effect long after a Fellow relinquishes the keys to 805 West Pennsylvania.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | iprh.illinois.edu | 11

| I P RH Y e a r i n Re v i ew 2008-09 |

S y m p os i u m Humanities Research and Government Funding: Perspectives on the United States, China, and Beyond Distinguished Guests: Bruce Cole, Chairman, National Endowment for the Humanities (2001-09) and Guozuo Zhang, Director, National Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Sciences, Beijing Participants: Rayvon Fouché (History), Alma Gottlieb (Anthropology), Lisa Rosenthal (Art History), Mara Wade (Germanic Languages and Literatures), Gary Xu (East Asian Languages and Cultures), Kai-Wing Chow (History/East Asian Languages and Cultures/Spurlock Museum) Co-sponsored by the Center for Advanced Study, the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies, the

(left to right) Yan Wang, Dianne Harris, Guozuo Zhang, Christine Catanzarite, Bruce Cole, Kai-Wing Chow

Department of History, the Program in East Asian Languages and Cultures and the Program in Art History

Lectu r es Bruce Cole (President and CEO, American Revolution Center at Valley Forge), Aunt Gertrude to Sydney J. Freedburg: My Provenance James Chandler (English and Cinema Studies, University of Chicago), Functions of Criticism: “English” and “Media Studies” Among the Disciplines Martin Mueller (English and Classics, Northwestern University), The Book of English” Intertextuality in the Second-Generation Digital Library

P a n e l D i scuss i o n s The Media and the Election Dispatches from the New Hollywood: A Conversation with Lynn Harris Election ’08: Rhetoric, Politics, and Public Affairs Her name is Sabine: Documentary Film and the Ethics of Institutions Imagining Cuba’s Future: A Roundtable Opportunities in Digital Humanities Research

Exposure, Robert Wood

Climate Change and the Humanities Girls, Women, Princesses, and Queens, in Two Dimensions and Three Who Does She Think She Is? – Feminist Futures and Documentary Film

Exhibitions Learning To Speak Irish: There is no “yes” or “no” in the Irish language, Barbara Kendrick (Art and Design), September 9 – October 31 Exposure: Dance and Photography in Dialogue; or Emanation: Anthropologie of Dance in Photography; or Exposure: Emanations of Choreography in Photography, Robert Wood (dancer/choreographer, New York), November 11 – December 12 A Decade of the Humanities at IPRH, opened February 11; ongoing Learning to Speak Irish, Barbara Kendrick

IPRH F i l m S e r i es 8 ½ Sunset Boulevard Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse

My Favorite Year

Ed Wood The Freshman Singin’ in the Rain

Enchanted

“The IPRH epitomizes commitment to adventuresome and intelligent interdisciplinary scholarship on the U of I campus.”

|

David Roediger, Department of History

|

12 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | iprh.illinois.edu

| I P RH at T E N | In February, the IPRH officially celebrated its tenth anniversary with a gala reception and exhibit opening in the Humanities Lecture Hall. The very well-attended event included remarks by Provost Linda Katehi, and the exhibit featured numerous books and journal articles produced by former IPRH faculty and graduate student Fellows, as well as by past Directors Michael Bérubé, Suvir Kaul, and Matti Bunzl, and by current Director Dianne Harris.

The anniversary celebration presented an opportunity to assess the IPRH’s impact in its first decade on faculty research and on graduate student productivity. The result of the assessment was the production of an extensive bibliography of publications, exhibitions, and performances; concrete evidence that IPRH has made a profound impact on the proliferation of humanities and arts-related research and scholarship at the University of Illinois. The anniversary also provided an opportunity to thank the past directors, as well as Senior Associate Director Christine Catanzarite, for their foundational work in establishing the centrality of the IPRH to the intellectual life of the campus.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | iprh.illinois.edu | 13

| T h e O dyssey P r o j e c t | The Odyssey Project will launch its fourth year in Champaign-Urbana this fall with a new group of faculty and students.

The IPRH is delighted to announce that Dale Bauer, Professor of English, begins her term as the Odyssey Project Coordinator this year; Professor Bauer has long been an advocate of Odyssey, and we are pleased to welcome her in this new role. The project is also supported by the efforts of graduate assistants Michael Burns, Kerry Pimblott, and Tara Lyons. As the Odyssey Project enters this new phase, we would also like to recognize John Marsh, the Project Coordinator during the first three years of the program, for his significant contributions to the development and growth of Odyssey.

The Odyssey Project is a yearlong, college-accredited course in the humanities offered at no cost to adults in the community living below or slightly above the federal poverty level. The purpose of the course is to introduce students to the humanities and to help them reenter the world of higher education.

The program offers instruction in five discrete disciplines in the humanities: literature, philosophy, art history, U.S. history, and writing and critical thinking. The course is hosted by its community partner, the Douglass Branch Library. There is no tuition fee, and books, transportation vouchers, and child care are also free to all students. Students who complete the course receive six hours of college credit, which can then be transferred to other two- or four-year colleges.

The Odyssey Project is a joint undertaking of the IPRH and the Illinois Humanities Council. Funding for the course is also provided by the U of I Office of the Chancellor and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Odyssey Faculty for 2009-10 Dale Bauer, Literature Sarah Ross, Art History Michael Burns, Critical Thinking and Writing James Barrett, U.S. History Todd Kukla, Philosophy

May 9 graduation ceremony, featuring the presentation of diplomas, a student speaker, and a commencement address by U of I Professor of Educational Policy Studies James Anderson (right).

| T h e E d uc at i o n J ust i ce P r o j e c t | The Education Justice Project (EJP) celebrated a major milestone in 2008-09, offering its first on-site classes to incarcerated students at a local state prison after two years of planning and development. The Project offers a strongly humanities-based curriculum, in the belief that humanities study best equips students to grapple critically and honestly with vital questions about the world and their places in it. The year also saw the opening of the University of Illinois’ Resource Room at the prison, a combination library, computer lab, and tutoring center.

EJP receives support from a range of on- and off-campus groups, including the IPRH, the Odyssey Project, the Illinois Humanities Council, and the Office of Public Engagement. Graduate students and faculty from the Colleges of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Fine and Applied Arts, and Education teach, tutor, and otherwise support EJP, which is a unit of the Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society.

14 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | iprh.illinois.edu

Christine Catanzarite

| l e t t e r f r o m t h e S e n i o r A s s o c i at e di r e c to r | The humanities disciplines have always provided opportuni-

And what continues? Again, the list is long and exciting:

ties to examine the past and the present, to envision new

our faculty and graduate student fellowship programs

models for the future, to index transformation and resilience

(we are delighted to introduce this year’s Fellows on

in people and ideas and events. And the IPRH is always

pages 4 through 6, and the guidelines for our upcom-

perched on that boundary between the past and the future

ing 2010-11 fellowships can be found at the back of

– informed by the events and programs and processes that

this newsletter); the exciting and varied public lectures,

have come before, but always looking ahead to new ways of

panel discussions, and symposia that have been at the

thinking and doing and being. This year’s IPRH schedule is

heart of the IPRH’s mission since 1997; and the IPRH

thus a combination of the familiar and the new.

Film Series, which was launched in fall 2000 and which

What is new? Many things – including the newsletter that

continues to screen free films for campus and local

you are holding in your hands, which has been redesigned

audiences throughout the year.

this fall, and which we hope you will use as a resource and

Above all, what continues is this: the IPRH remains a

starting point for the programs and activities that we have

hub of activities and events that supports humanistic

planned for the coming year. We also invite you to visit our

endeavor on our campus and generates exciting and

recently upgraded website throughout the year for additions

productive new projects that enliven humanities schol-

and updates to our calendar of events – including detailed

arship on the U of I campus and beyond. The IPRH

information about our speakers, podcasts and video record-

offers numerous opportunities for engagement – some

ings and blogs that capture and preserve our events, and an

of them familiar, some of them new – and we invite

archive of past IPRH Fellows and programs. Our year will

you to add your voice to the conversation.

also be structured by exciting new partnerships (including those that have made our “climate change and the humanities” lecture series and our Digital Humanities Post-Doctoral

Yours truly,

Fellow possible); by a new initiative that will award prizes for outstanding research in the humanities to faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates; and by a new IPRH course that will be offered in the spring semester by the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, featuring the works of the IPRH Fellows for 2009-10.

| HASTAC B l ogs f o r I P RH | The Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC) maintains a fellowship program that allows nominated and qualified graduate and undergraduate students to create a virtual network for HASTAC by making the events on their campuses available to an international audience using a range of digital technologies and network applications.

During the 2008-09 year, Anthony Arrivo, a senior in the History Department and a HASTAC scholar, served as a blogger for the IPRH. Anthony attended most of our events during the year and faithfully blogged about them. If you missed any of last year’s events and wish to know more about them, look for Anthony’s blogs, which can be found as links on the IPRH website. We hope to have another HASTAC blogger at our events this year, whose postings and/or tweets will help make IPRH events accessible to a broad audience who can, if they wish, keep the discussion going long after the event has ended.

“The IPRH provided a unique, indispensable place for the kind of multidisciplinary conversations which enhanced “Insert New not only myquote.” own teaching and scholarship, but also the intellectual life of the university.”

|| David R. Jonathan Roediger, Moore, Department ReligiousofStudies HistoryDepartment, | Grinnell College, and an Illinois Humanities Post-Doctoral Fellow 2004-05

|

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | iprh.illinois.edu | 15

| F ILM SERIES - Re p r ese n tat i o n |

All films will begin at 5:30 p.m. in Room 62, Krannert Art Museum Like the annual theme with which it is coordinated, the IPRH Film Series for 2009-10 takes up a broad range of interpretations. The fall semester lineup, below, considers representation as it relates to governments and institutions – from the creation of images and ideologies to the fine but critical distinction between the world and the ways of representing it. The spring schedule, to be announced later in the year, will consider the subject of representation from a social and cultural perspective.

All of these films confront the complex issue of representation through a wide variety of lenses. They bear watching (or re-watching) because of the theme, but also regardless of it. The series is free and open to the public; we hope to see you there.

September 17 | The Truman Show (1998, dir. Peter Weir; 103 min.) starring Jim Carrey, Ed Harris, Laura Linney In the age of Twitter, webcams, and YouTube, people regularly broadcast the everyday details of their lives to a global audience.

But, in the picturesque town of Seahaven in the not-so-distant past, Truman Burbank (Carrey) goes about his life, working as an insurance salesman by day and returning home each night to his home and to his loving wife, unaware that his friends and family have been carefully cast in their roles, his world is an elaborate set, and his life is a long-running television show. What might be a dream come true for a contemporary tabloid star becomes, for Truman, a series of questions, with one big question at its center: What is real?

October 15 | A Face in the Crowd (1957, dir. Elia Kazan; 125 min.) starring Andy Griffith, Patricia Neal, Walter Matthau, Lee Remick Griffith plays a coarse backwoods folk singer and petty crook (a far departure from his amiable Mayberry persona) who is discovered by an Arkansas radio producer eager for new talent. His low-key charm as a radio personality soon leads to a wider national audience on the fresh new medium of television, where his manufactured brand of charismatic rebellion makes him a national folk hero. Kazan’s meditation on the seductive nature of fame and the gullibility of the audience now seems decades ahead of its time.

October 29 | The Great Dictator (1940, dir. Charles Chaplin; 125 min.) starring Charles Chaplin, Jack Oakie, Paulette Goddard Chaplin’s first talkie, made during the early days of World War II, aims its bitter jokes at Hitler, fascism, and anti-Semitism. Chaplin plays dual roles: Adenoid Hynkel, the vicious dictator of the fictional Tomania, and his lookalike, a humble Jewish barber who lives in the ghetto. As Hynkel tangles with rival leader Benzino Napaloni (Oakie) of the neighboring country Bacteria, a case of mistaken identity propels the barber into the spotlight – and provides an unforgettable opportunity for Chaplin – so famous for being silent – to make his voice heard.

November 12 | Brazil (1985, dir. Terry Gilliam; 132 min.) starring Jonathan Pryce, Robert De Niro, Ian Holm, Michael Palin, Bob Hoskins Gilliam’s cult-classic black comedy is set in a dystopian, Orwellian industrial world where the machines that control everything are prone to tragic mishaps – a world in which, but for a random clerical error, a Mr. Buttle can be punished for the crimes committed by a Mr. Tuttle. Sam Lowry (Pryce) is a menial office worker who gets tangled up in a messy bureaucratic nightmare, but whose daydreams transport him to an idyllic world where he can soar above the system and envision a happy ending.

Immediately following the film, there will be a gallery talk organized in conjunction with the Krannert Art Museum exhibition Under Control.

“I was constantly impressed with the productivity of the dialogue between faculty, students and distinguished visitors, and that these conversations enabled humanistic scholarship to become even more vital and urgent.”

|

Suvir Kaul, English Department, University of Pennsylvania, and IPRH Director 2001-02

16 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | iprh.illinois.edu

|

| I P RH To R e c o g n i z e E xc e l l e n c e i n H u m a n i t i e s R e s e a r c h | The IPRH has recognized outstanding humanities research in numerous ways during the past decade: from fellowship awards that provide release time and stipends, to support for reading groups that investigate matters that are central to the humanities, to conferences and symposia that disseminate humanities scholarship to wide academic and general audiences, the IPRH has always been committed to the support and advancement of humanities research in the broadest sense.

This year, the IPRH is pleased to announce the inaugural IPRH Prizes for Research in the Humanities. These prizes will recognize excellence in humanities research at the University of Illinois, with awards given at the undergraduate, graduate, and faculty levels.

The awards will be presented at a reception in late spring 2010. Submissions are invited from scholars in all sectors of the university with focus on the humanities and humanities-inflected research.

Eligibility: The awards are open to all full-time U of I students and faculty Application deadline: Friday, March 19, 2010 The awards will be determined by a selection committee comprised of three members of the IPRH Advisory Committee. Submissions will be judged in a blind review process; names and other identifying details should not be included in the essay itself. The essays will be evaluated on their scholarly merit, the intellectual rigor of the questions being posed, and the quality of the writing. All submissions must be accompanied by a completed nomination form, which can be downloaded from the IPRH website.

Faculty: $500 (awarded as research funds) * Submission must be typed, double-spaced, with a length of 15-25 pages. * Submissions must have been published between January 1, 2009 and the application deadline in a book, journal, edited collection, or peer-reviewed electronic or online publication; the submission may be an excerpt of appropriate length from a longer work. * The submission may be nominated by a full-time U of I faculty member, or self-nominated.

Graduate Student: $250 * Submissions must be typed, double-spaced, with a length of 10-20 pages. * The submitted essay must have been completed for a U of I course taken for credit during the 2009-10 academic year; the submission may be an excerpt of appropriate length from the graduate student’s thesis, dissertation, or equivalent research project. * The submission may be nominated by the faculty member of the course for which the paper was written; or self-nominated, with the signature approval of the supervising faculty member on the nomination form.

Undergraduate Student: $250 * Submissions must be typed, double-spaced, with a length of 10-20 pages. * The submitted essay must have been completed for a U of I course taken for credit during the 2009-10 academic year. * The submission may be nominated by the faculty member of the course for which the paper was written; or self-nominated, with the signature approval of the supervising faculty member on the nomination form.

Questions about these awards and the nomination procedures should be addressed to Christine Catanzarite.

Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities The IPRH publishes Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities each year in the early fall. Additional information is available throughout the year online, and through the IPRH mailing list. Contact Christine Catanzarite to be added to the mailing list.

Editor: Christine Catanzarite Project Manager: Sarah Williams Design: Scott Paceley Contact iprh@illinois.edu to be added to the mailing list.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | iprh.illinois.edu | 17

| FA C U LT Y GU I D EL I NES | Faculty Fellowship Awards | Application Guidelines Applications are invited from U of I faculty members for selection as IPRH Faculty Fellows for the 2010-11 academic year. The fellowship will provide release time for one semester in residence to enable Fellows to develop their research projects; to teach one course, at the undergraduate or graduate level, that is related to the fellowship project; and to participate in the year’s activities, including the yearlong interdisciplinary Fellows’ Seminar and other related programming. The IPRH is especially interested in fostering interdisciplinary work, and encourages the submission of joint applications from faculty members in different disciplines. (Please note that, for the 2010-11 year, the IPRH fellowship competition will not be guided by an annual theme; applications will be judged on the scholarly merit of the proposed research project.)

Each applicant should submit two (2) complete sets of the following materials, in this order: • A completed IPRH application form, including 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 2010-11. (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.) Applicants should make certain that their teaching and research obligations do not prevent them from participating fully in IPRH activities, and should identify in the narrative statement 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 significance to the broader scholarly community at the U of I and elsewhere. The statement should be prefaced by a project title and brief abstract (no more than 100 words). The statement should also indicate the applicant’s willingness to participate in IPRH activities, especially 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, then 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 U of I 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 year. Faculty members are likewise prohibited from holding IPRH fellowships and Center for Advanced Study, Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society, or other campus release-time awards simultaneously. Only full-time tenured and tenure-track U of I faculty are eligible to apply for the awards.

Completed applications must be submitted, and letters of support must arrive, by 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, December 2, 2009. 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 should be mailed to this address; sent via fax to (217) 333-9617; or e-mailed to Christine Catanzarite at catanzar@ illinois.edu. IMPORTANT: Please submit letters in one format only: if a letter is sent by e-mail or fax, do not also send a hard copy.

All applications will be acknowledged shortly following the deadline. Please do not contact the IPRH about the status of a file; because of the volume of applications that the IPRH receives, we cannot answer individual questions about materials that have been sent.

For more information about the IPRH fellowship program, please contact Christine Catanzarite at 244-7913 or catanzar@illinois.edu.

Awards will be announced on or about February 1, 2010.

18 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | iprh.illinois.edu

| G RAD UAT E S T U D E N T GU I D EL I NES | Graduate Student Fellowship Awards | Application Guidelines Applications are invited from U of I graduate students for selection as IPRH Graduate Student Fellows for the 2010-11 academic year. The fellowship will enable advanced graduate students to develop their dissertations or research projects; and to participate in the year’s activities, including the yearlong interdisciplinary Fellows’ Seminar and related programming. Graduate Student Fellows receive a $7,000 stipend and a tuition/fee waiver if one is not otherwise provided. (Please note that, for the 2010-11 year, the IPRH fellowship competition will not be guided by an annual theme; applications will be judged on the scholarly merit of the proposed research project.)

Each applicant should submit two (2) complete sets of the following materials, 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 must come from the faculty member supervising the student’s dissertation or equivalent research. Applicants should make certain that their teaching and research obligations do not prevent them from participating fully in IPRH activities, and should identify in the narrative statement 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 significance to the broader scholarly community at the U of I 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 Fellows’ Seminar.

All IPRH Fellows are expected to maintain residency on the U of I 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 any 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 Wednesday, December 2, 2009. 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 should be mailed to this address; sent via fax to (217) 333-9617; or e-mailed to Christine Catanzarite at catanzar@ illinois.edu. IMPORTANT: Please submit letters in one format only: if a letter is sent by e-mail or fax, do not also send a hard copy All applications will be acknowledged shortly following the deadline. Please do not contact the IPRH about the status of a file; because of the volume of applications that the IPRH receives, we cannot answer individual questions about materials that have been sent.

For more information about the IPRH fellowship program, please contact Christine Catanzarite at 244-7913 or catanzar@illinois. edu. Awards will be announced on or about February 1, 2010.

Please note: The IPRH will sponsor a fellowship-writing workshop for graduate students on Tuesday, September 22 at 5:00 p.m. at the IPRH. This workshop, which is co-sponsored by the Graduate College, 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 U of I graduate students; no advance registration is required.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | iprh.illinois.edu | 19

Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 805 West Pennsylvania Avenue Urbana, Illinois 61801 www.iprh.illinois.edu

The Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities at the University

IPRH Staff

of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was established in 1997 to promote

Dianne Harris, Director | harris3@illinois.edu | 244-3344

interdisciplinary study in the humanities, arts, and social sciences. The IPRH grants fellowships to U of I faculty and graduate students; and in fall 2009 welcomes the first Post-Doctoral Fellow in Digital Humanities, appointed jointly by the IPRH, the Illinois Informatics Institute, and the Department of History.

Christine Catanzarite, Senior Associate Director | catanzar@illinois.edu | 244-7913 Pam Hall, Office Manager | phall1@illinois.edu | 244-7914 Stephanie Uebelhoer, Office Support Assistant | suebelho@illinois.edu | 244-3344 The Odyssey Project Direct inquiries to the Odyssey staff | 244-3344

The IPRH coordinates and hosts numerous lectures, symposia, and panel discussions on a wide variety of topics, including a new series devoted to climate

Education Justice Project

change from a humanities perspective. The IPRH also organizes a yearlong film

Rebecca Ginsburg, Director | rginsbur@illinois.edu

series and related programming. In addition to its own programming, the IPRH shares its resources and facilities with other university departments and programs,

IPRH Advisory Committee 2009-10 Adrian Burgos, History

and coordinates its activities with other units wherever possible.

Cara Finnegan, Communication

The 2009-10 academic year marks the fourth year of the Odyssey Project, a free

Kevin Hamilton, Art and Design

nine-month humanities course offered to members of the Champaign-Urbana community who live at or near the poverty level. The course, which is supported by the U of I and a grant from the Illinois Humanities Council, is taught by U of I

Bruce Michelson, English/Campus Honors Program Robert Rushing, Comparative and World Literature Siobhan Somerville, Gender and Women’s Studies/English James Treat, Religion

faculty. The IPRH is also entering its second year of affiliation with the Education Justice Project, a prison education program supported by the Illinois Humanities Council and individual donors.

IPRH Contact Information Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 805 West Pennsylvania Avenue Urbana, Illinois 61801 www.iprh.illinois.edu Telephone: (217) 244-3344 Fax: (217) 333-9617 E-mail: iprh@illinois.edu

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