H.I. Community Initiatives
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Community Initiatives
Humanities Institute Initiatives
Celebration of the Book Series
Reading Between the Lines for Adults Reading Groups
Annual Conference
The Humanities Institute Annual Conference
Buffalo Film Seminars
The Buffalo Film Seminars series will take place at 7 p.m. on Tuesdays,during the academic year in the Market Arcade Film and Arts Center, 639 Main St., in downtown Buffalo . Hosting the series are Diane Christian, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of English, College of Arts and Sciences, and Bruce Jackson, SUNY Distinguished Professor and Samuel P. Capen Professor of American Culture in the departments of American Studies and English.
Celebration of the Book Series
Tom Toles "On the Front Lines: Journalists Challenge the New Censorship" September 30, 2006 |
In conjunction with the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library and Just Buffalo Literary Society, the UB Humanities Institute presents the Celebration of the Book Series held annually featuring locally written and produced books, and those of University at Buffalo's humanities faculty and alumni. |
Digital Humanities Initiative at Buffalo
http://digitalhumanities.buffalo.edu/index.php/Main_Page
The Digital Humanities Initiative at Buffalo functions as an applied think-tank for the humanities and related areas. It is designed to serve as an intellectual hub for scholars involved in innovative research and instruction at the intersection of the humanities, computing, and other emerging digital technologies and to provide an environment in which faculty are encouraged to experiment and develop digital solutions to challenges in research and instruction, or to experiment with digital technologies that may lead to new applications and project challenges.
At the local level, the DHIB serves in part to coordinate the multiple sites of excellence in digital technology, computing sciences, and humanities research already developed at UB in order to provide efficient management of shared resources, especially hardware, software, and technological expertise. This platform for shared information and cutting edge research across disciplines in turn grounds communication among members at the DHIB’s regular meetings, roundtables, and workshops. The DHIB will also sponsor conferences and lectures to bring in outstanding international practioners of digital Humanities scholarship and provide training in new digital technologies for members of the DHIB.
At the national and international level, the DHIB will serve as a leader in the development, application and interpretation of research in the Humanities and related areas. The outstanding collections in the UB Libraries will bring affiliated scholars to the Initiative, and the cutting edge research of UB faculty will draw postdoctoral fellows and scholars to participate actively in the DHIB community.
Joyce in Buffalo
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The
Joyce in Buffalo initiative promotes the major James Joyce assets here
in Buffalo, which include the annual Bloomsday Buffalo celebration, the
Finnegan's Wake Reading Group, and the Ulysses Circle, and one of Buffalo's
richest treasures, the James Joyce collection in the University Libraries'
Poetry and Rare Books Collection. This
incredible collection includes portraits, manuscripts, notebooks, corrected
galley proofs, first editions, and much more, once owned by Sylvia Beach,
the publisher of the first edition of Ulysses. HI-sponsored Joyce events, in collaboration with riverrun,
inc., Bloomsday Buffalo,
the University
Libraries and the Irish
Classical Theatre include: |
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New Faculty Seminar Series
Humanities Institute Open House
The Open House is part of the Humanities Institute mission to develop and strengthen the University at Buffalo's ties to the community. It consists of a lecture by a UB humanities faculty member, followed by a discussion and reception. Institute Fellows are expected to attend, and other faculty actively participate in the discussion and engage with the audience.
Featured Speakers:
2006 Spring Jack Peradotto, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus, UB Department of Classics
The Greeks Revolutionize the Alphabet
2006 Fall Kathleen Woodward, Director, Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington at Seattle
Memory, Mood and the Fort-Da of Old Age: Communications Technology and the Aging
2007 Spring Robert Daly, Distinguished Teaching Professor, UB Department of English
Why We Have to Read (and Worse Yet, Think About) This Stuff: New Work on the Practical Value of Literature and Even Theory
2007 Fall Georg Iggers, Emeritus SUNY Distinguished Professor of History & Wilma Iggers, Emeritus Professor of History, Canisius College
2008 Spring David Schmid, Associate Professor and Associate Chair, UB English Department
Click Here to Listen to a WBFO Radio Interview with Dr. Schmid Feb. 19, 2008 :
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wbfo/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=1230708§ionID=1
The Humanities Institute supports existing interdisciplinary reading groups in the humanities and encourages the formation of new groups. Research Workshops include faculty and/or graduate students from diverse disciplines and focusing on a variety of topics.
- Early Modern Research Workshop
The Early Modern Reading Group offers a wide range of expertise and a variety of courses in the literature and culture of the Western world from 1500-1830, including intellectual history, historical studies of genres and authors, detailed readings of canonical and popular texts, and various topics in cultural studies. It is comprised of UB faculty in English, Comparative Literature, History, and Modern Languages, and supplemented by course offerings available through our membership in the Folger Shakespeare Library Institute.
Adopting the term "early modern" signals a practice of a theoretically-grounded cultural studies, and interest in a number of historical phenomena that resist inclusion within earlier period designations: the complex literary and extra-literary debates over gender identity that permeate literature, politics, and family life; the emergence of a new public sphere of theater, print, literary culture, and the marketplace; literature's role in constructing a myth of cultural identity for the emergent modern state; the way in which a new bourgeois semiotic and material economy created the novel (and vice versa); the transformation of scientific epistemology and practice; the transatlantic formation of radical political rhetorics and practices such as puritanism, republicanism, and jacobinism; the discursive practices by which the "Old World" redefined itself through the encounter with the "New World."
For more information, contact Amy Graves, RLL, acgraves@buffalo.edu
- Empires and Diasporas (E&D)
Housed in the Department of African-American Studies, E&D provides a forum for discussion of recent academic work examining the intersections and overlaps of two broad interdisciplinary fields of contemporary academic inquiry: imperial and colonial history, policy, and practice, and global migrations and the attendant transnational political and cultural movements that have emerged alongside these modern experiences of diaspora. E&D’s approach will be interdisciplinary and comparative but our main concern is on the status and role of what is referred to as the “Global South”– on the place of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America and the Caribbean – within discussions of empire and diaspora.
For 2008-2009 year, E&D will begin with Vijay Prasad’s revisionist account of Third Worldism, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World (NY: The New Press, 2007) before turning to a classic of transnational solidarity – either Richard Wright’s The Color Curtain (1956) or the essays collected in W.E.B. DuBois on Asia: Crossing the Color Line, edited by Bill V. Mullen and Cathryn Watson (Baton Rouge: UP of Mississippi, 2005). In the winter semester, we will consider the lives and work of two figures – Claudia Jones and Audre Lorde – who stand at the crossroads of pan-Africanism and feminism. We will read the recently-published critical biographies of Jones and Lorde by, respectively, Carol Boyce Davies (Left of Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones (Durham: Duke UP, 2008)) and Alexis De Veaux, (Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde (NY: Norton, 2006)).
In addition, in collaboration with the Transnational Critical Studies Workshop, E&D will also be inviting a number of guest speakers to UB.
For more information contact Peter James Hudson, Department of African-American Studies, pjhudson@buffalo.edu
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Graduate Group in Cultural Studies (GGCS)
The primary purpose of the GGCS is to draw together the community of cultural studies scholars across disciplines at UB and in the community. Membership includes faculty, staff and students from approximately 15 UB departments.
For more information contact Tim Bryant at tbryant3@buffalo.edu.
- Philosophical Reading Group
This semester the Philosophical Reading Group will meet on Fridays, from 3:00 to 5:00 , in Clemens 640. Our text is Augustine's CONFESSIONS. Either the Chadwick translation ( Oxford , $8-10) or the more recent Gary Wills translation are recommended. There is also, of course, the two volume Loeb Classical Library edition with English and Latin on facing pages. This will run about $45-50 for the two volumes.
The CONFESSIONS are divided into 13 books, with the longest, book 10, on memory, running about 42 pages. Most are about 25-30. There are a total of 14 Fridays in the semester, beginning 31 August and ending 7 December. It is suggested that the group read one book per week and that they meet briefly, to assign the chapters, on the first Friday, 31 August.
For more information, contact David Johnson at dj@buffalo.edu
- Research Workshop for Queer Theory
"Queer theory" encompasses a heterogenous body of critical interrogations of identity and the normalizing technologies of power that, as an effect of their operation, pathologize other forms of sociality, subjectivity, embodiment and erotic proactice. This research workshop seeks to continue the production of robust critiques and renders queer theory itself as an object of critical inquiry.
For more information, contact Steven Ruszczycky, English, sr223@buffalo.edu
The Reading Group on Cultural Studies of Space brings together faculty and graduate students to discuss social theories of space, especially as concerns globalization and culture. The foundations of this Reading Group rest in intellectual curiosity and a desire to expand our understnading beyond the bounds of sometimes too narrowly defined academic discioplines, rather than in any institutional directive.
For more information, contact Justin Read, RLL, jread2@buffalo.edu.
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Time and Memory Research Workshop
The Time and Memory Research Workshop brings together different conceptions of time and memory across the disciplines of socio-cultural anthropology, history, American Studies, and archaeology to stimulate interdisciplinary cross-fertilization.
For more information, contact Peter Biehl, Anthropology, pbiehl@buffalo.edu
Reading Between the Lines for Adults Reading Groups
The New York Council for the Humanities selected the UB Humanities Institute as a partner in its Reading Between the Lines for Adults program, which enables members of the public in facilitated conversations about books chosen to illuminate significant themes in American history, culture and life. " The goal of the program is to encourage informed public discussion." These four-session public discussions are held at libraries, museums, historical societies and other community gathering spaces and are led by graduate students in the humanities who propose the series topics and syllabi through a competitive process managed by the Humanities Institute and the NYCH. The program is funded by the NEH-sponsored "We the People" initiative. |
Science/Technology/Arts
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The
science research campus located in downtown Buffalo (which includes Hauptman
Woodward Institute, the UB Life Sciences Building, and Roswell Park memorial
Cancer Institute) is the largest UB presence in the urban center of Buffalo
. It represents major investments in cutting edge scientific research
of international significance. The research has broad impact and interest
in the cultural and economic life of both the University and the city.
The Science/Technology /Arts series brings well-known academics to campus
for lectures and conferences, but has a strong public component as well.
The ongoing public event series creates opportunities not only to familiarize
the broader public with the scientific research but also to investigate
the interface between science, technology and the arts. Previous
events have included: |
- The Dark Side of the Universe: a lecture at the downtown Buffalo and Erie County Public Library by UB physicist, Dr. Will Kinney;
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Art Meets Science in Pluto's Cave: an interactive encounter between members of UB's Art and Physics departments based on the installation organized by UB artists Gary Nickard and Reinhard Reitzenstein. The installation illustrated how quantum physics predicates a world of unpredictablility and subjective self-questioning;
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Whitehead Today Symposium: an on-line conference between UB, Stanford, and Duke Universities, a major segment of which was devoted to the work of James Bono, UB professor of History and Medicine and member of the HI Faculty Council;
- Velvet Revolution at the Synchrotron: Technology, Meaning, Intervention lecture by Park Doing, Cornell University;
- Artificial Paradises: by British media artists Johathan Kemp and Martin Howse;
- Digital Humanities Lecture and Workshop by University of Georgia Professor Steve Ramsay
Humanities Institute Distinguished Scholar in Residence
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In Fall 2008 the HI proudly hosts Donald E. Pease Professor, Department of English, Dartmouth College Website: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~mals/
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Donald E. Pease received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and is presently the Avalon Foundation Chair of the Humanities at Dartmouth College. Pease is the author or Visionary Compacts: American Renaissance Writing in Cultural Context which won the Mark Ingraham Prize for the best book in the Hymanities in 1987. Pease is also the author of over seventy essays and the editor of eight volumes including: The American Renaissance Reconsidered, Cultures of US Imperialism (with Amy Kaplan), Revisionist Interventions into the American Canon, Postnational Narratives and Futures of American Studies (2002). The recipient of Guggenheim, Mellon, Ford, NEH, Dickey, Hewlett and Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships, Pease is the General Editor for the book series New Americanists at Duke University Press, the Founding Director of a Summer Institute for American Studies at Dartmouth, and the Head of Dartmouth's Liberal Studies Program.
Scholar Sessions
The Humanities Institute Annual Scholar session allows the Institute to showcase the work of UB's outstanding humanities faculty to the larger Buffalo community and at the same time ensures that highly distinguished scholars are aware of the significance of the scholarly work taking place in the humanities at UB. The program brings 2-3 renowned scholars to Buffalo to discuss the work of one of our most distinguished faculty members. Scholar Sessions take place in downtown venue, and include plenty of time for audience participation.
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In 2006 Dennis Tedlock, the James H. McNulty Professor, English & Research Professor of Anthropology, was honored. |
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In Spring 2008 we will be paying tribute to the work of philosophy professor, Carolyn Korsmeyer. |
Carolyn Korsmeyer, professor of Philosophy and author of Making Sense of Taste: Food & Philosophy, was interviewed on the Odyssey radio program distributed by WBEZ-FM, Chicago Public Radio, a National Public Radio member station, as part of a series, "The History of the Senses," in which she discusses the sense of taste. The interview may be heard by going to http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/programs/odyssey/odyssey_senses.asp and clicking on the headphone icon next to the title "Taste."
Theater Collaborations
International Theatre Project: High school students and teachers, theatre lovers, and the Spanish and French speaking communities in the Greater Buffalo area will enjoy annual performances from the International Artistic and Cultural Exchange Program of UB's Department of Theatre and Dance and La Théâtre de la Chandelle Verte.
Le Théâtre de la Chandelle Verte is a vibrant national educational theater company devoted to the performance of works for contemporary French theater. It was co-founded by Christian Flaugh, UB assistant professor of romance languages and literatures.
The Jewish Repertory Theatre and the Humanities Institute presented a performance and panel discussion in 2006 of the late, great playwright Wendy Wasserstein's The Sisters Rosenzweig. In Fall 2007 the Institute will partner again with the JRT as well as the Buffalo and Erie County Publioc Library for a Panel Discussion entitled Refugees and Rescues: Understanding the Children of the Kindertransport. The presentation will take place at the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library Thursday, November 15 from 5:00-6:30 p.m. Click here for more information