1. Brendan Fernandes
Artist, Brooklyn
February 5th, 5:00
Alumni Reading
Room, Pratt Libaray
"Talking
Identities: The Art of Brendan Fernandes"
Bio: Born
in Kenya of Indian heritage, Brendan Fernandes immigrated to Canada
in 1989. He completed the Independent Study Program of the Whitney
Museum of American Art (2007) and earned his MFA (2005) from The
University of Western Ontario and his BFA (2002) from York University
in Canada. He has exhibited internationally and nationally including
exhibitions at The National Gallery of Canada, Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum, The Museum of Art and Design New York, the Musée d'art
contemporain de Montréal, The Art Gallery of Hamilton, The
Studio Museum in Harlem, The Andy Warhol Museum, The Art Gallery of
York University, Manif d’Art: The Quebec City Biennial, The Third
Guangzhou Triennial and the Western New York Biennial through The
Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Fernandes has participated in numerous
residency programs including The Canada Council for the Arts
International Residency in Trinidad and Tobago (2006), The Lower
Manhattan Cultural Council’s Work Space (2008) and Swing Space
(2009) programs, the AIM Program at the Bronx Museum (2009), The New
Work Residency at Harvestwork, NY (2009), the Gyeonggi Creation
Center Residency at the Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Korea (2009)
and ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany. He held the position of Artist in
Residence at The School of Visual Arts, NY, in the graduate program
for computer arts (2008). He was the recipient of a New Commissions
Project through Art in General, NY (2010) and was the Ontario
representative for the 2010 Sobey Art Award. His works is currently
featured in “Oh Canada” the largest survey of contemporary
Canadian art ever produced outside Canada at the MASS MoCa.
Fernandes’ work was recently acquired by the National Gallery of
Canada. He is based between Toronto and New York.
His work is
represented by Diaz Contemporary, Toronto >
www.diazcontemporary.ca
2. Professor David Harvey
Professor of
Anthropology, CUNY Grad Center
February
26th-Alumni Reading Room
Bio:
He is the Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate
Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). A leading social
theorists of international standing, he received his PhD from
University of Cambridge in 1961. Widely influential, he is among the
top 20 most cited authors in the humanities. His work has contributed
greatly to broad social and political debate; most recently he has
been credited with restoring social class and Marxist methods as
serious methodological tools in the critique of global capitalism. He
is a leading proponent of the idea of the right to the city, as well
as a member of the Interim Committee for the emerging International
Organization for a Participatory Society. In 2007, Harvey was listed
as the 18th most-cited intellectual of all time in the humanities and
social sciences by The Times Higher Education Guide.
3.
Nona Shepphard
(co-sponsored with Humanities Department) Tracie Morris
Associate Director
of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts
February 28th
5:30 Alumni
Reading Room in conversation with Gregg Horowitz
Bio:
Nona Shepphard is a playwright, actress, and Associate Director and
Creative Director of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA). She
is also a freelance writer, director and deviser with over 150
productions and 40 commissioned plays to her credit. Her plays for
young people, which have received several awards, have been seen in
the USA, Canada, Europe and Russia. Her recent writing includes Signs
of a Star-Shaped Diva (GraeaeTheatre Company at the Theatre Royal
Stratford East).
4.
Professor Amy Gansell (Cisco)
Visiting
Assistant Professor of Art and Design, Pratt Institute
March
6th, 5pm
Seminar
Room 2nd Floor Dekalb
Bio:
Amy Gansell is a Visiting Assistant
Professor in Pratt's History of Art and Design department. She
is a specialist of ancient Mesopotamian visual and material culture,
c. 3000 to 500 BCE. Her areas of scholarly interest include ancient
aesthetics, figural representation, ivory sculpture, dress, and
landscape. She has written a number of essays and articles, as well
as contributed to museum catalogues and educational publications. She
is currently writing a book about female beauty in ancient
Mesopotamian royal court during the early first millennium BCE.
Topic: "Concepts of Feminine Beauty and Adornment in Ancient Mesopotamia Illuminated through Near Eastern Cultural Practices of the Twentieth-century to the Present"
Abstract:
If
beauty is in the eye of the beholder, how can we recuperate notions
of beauty from the depths of the past? While we cannot ask the
ancient Mesopotamians what they see as beautiful, interdisciplinary
research can uncover multiple facets of their aesthetics. In an
effort to interpret ancient Mesopotamian ideals of feminine beauty, I have examined surviving artworks, texts, archaeological remains, and Near Eastern cultural practices of the twentieth century to the present. A primary theme of my investigation, across media and disciplines, is adornment. In relation to
ancient evidence, this paper particularly discusses my field research, conducted in 2003 and 2006, on traditional Syrian bridal costume and earlier ethnographic reports documenting regional values of feminine beauty.
5.
Professor Lisabeth During and Professor Ross Poole
(May Joseph)
Lisabeth
During: Associate Professor of Philosophy, Pratt Institute
Ross
Poole: Professor of Political Science, New School
March
19th, 5pm
Seminar
Room 2nd Floor Dekalb
Bio:
Lisabeth
During is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pratt Instittue.
She studied theology at Cambridge University, taught for many years
in the Philosophy Department at the University of New South Wales,
and now works at Pratt Institute of Art and Design in Brooklyn. She
has published on Hegel, Artaud, George Eliot, Surrealism and André
Bazin. Most
recently, she co-edited with Lisa Trahair a special issue of
Angelaki:
Journal of the Theoretical Humanities
on Belief
in Cinema
which revisits themes from André Bazin (17.4, December 2012).
Her
“The Book of Chastity: Studies in an Ascetic Ideal” will be out
soon.
Bio:
Ross
Poole is the author of Morality
and Modernity
(Routledge, 1991), Nation
and Identity
(Routledge, 1991) and many articles and book chapters. Recent work
includes 'Two Ghosts and an Angel,' Constellations
16(1)
(2009) and 'Misremembering the Holocaust: Universal Symbol,
Nationalist Icon, or Moral Kitsch?' in Memory
and the Future,
ed. Amy Sodaro et al. (Macmillan Palgrave, 2011). He teaches
philosophy and politics at the New School for Social Research.
Topic:
'Rape
and the Republic: Lucretia, Livy, Augustine, Machiavelli'
Abstract:
"RAPE AND THE REPUBLIC"
The
story of Lucretia is well known. She was the virtuous wife of a Roman
nobleman who committed suicide after being raped by Sextus
Tarquinius, the son of the king. Her body was displayed in the forum
and the enraged citizens, led by Junius Brutus, expelled the Tarquins
and established the Roman Republic. Slightly less well known is the
story of Virginia. Fifty or so years after the rape of Lucretia,
Claudius Appius, a patrician with tyrannical ambitions, attempted to
enslave the daughter of a respected plebeian in order to have his way
with her. When all seemed lost, her father seized a butcher’s knife
and killed her -- to ‘make her free,’ as Machiavelli had it.
After Virginia’s body was displayed in the forum, the citizens and
the army forced Claudius Appius into exile, and the republican order
was restored.
What
do these stories tell us? What is it about rape that demands a
political response?
Why is republican rule established – and then re-established –
through the death and display of a woman? Do these stories tell us
something, not merely about republican forms of political order, but
about the nature of sovereignty as such? In addressing these
questions, we will consider, not merely the canonical account of
Livy, but also the interpretations of later writers, especially St.
Augustine, Machiavelli, and Lessing.
We
will also consider, though more briefly, whether these ancient
stories have anything to say to contemporary liberals anxious to keep
the state out of their bedrooms, or to fathers ready to murder
daughters in the name of honor.
6.
Professor Hanna Rose Shell
Leo
Marx Career Associate Professor of Society, Technology, and Society,
M.I.T.
March
26th 9:30 Talk in Carl Zimring's Sustainability Class
March
26th 12:30 Crit Viz and Sustainability Student Lunch in 2nd Floor
Seminar Room, Dekalb Hall
March
26th 5:30 Formal Presentation, Library Alumni Reading Room
Bio:
I
work on the skins of things, excavating histories of technology and
media from the surface layers of natural and man-made objects. I use
tools from the fields of the history of science and technology, media
production, art history, media studies and material culture studies
to analyze the production, use, and transformation of
often-overlooked, even marginalized, material artifacts located at
the interstices of the found and the fabricated.
Through my analysis, I break down increasingly untenable divides
between production and consumption, art and technology, and invention
and reuse. From camouflage netting, old clothes, decomposing
vegetable matter, and other artifacts of creative repurposing, I
uncover historical shifts in modern epistemologies of self, nature
and representation. Through my work, I not only contribute to the
academic fields in which I am based, but also provide a vital
historical and creative context for present-day concerns with the
engineering of sustainable environments through innovations in
transformational and biomimetic technology.
Critical media practice is a working method that both guides my
analytic framing and provides interpretive data. As an example, my
film Blind (2009) and my site-specific installation
Camoufleurs (2008) accompany the book Hide
and Seek. Producing the film and the
installation, as well as the feedback I received from viewers and
other participants, was crucial to the development of my theoretical
and historical argument.
More information: http://web.mit.edu/sts/people/shell.html
7.
Professor Josiah Brownell
Assistant
Professor of History, Pratt Institute
April
24th, 5:00 pm
Seminar
Room 2nd Floor Dekalb
Bio:
I
am an assistant professor of history at the Pratt Institute in
Brooklyn, NY. I have a law degree from the University of Virginia
and a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in
London. My research focuses primarily on comparative settler
colonialism, in particular the law and politics of race and
state sovereignty in 20th
century Africa. I
have a monograph published by IB Tauris in 2010 titled: The
Collapse of Rhodesia: Population Demographics and the Politics of
Race,
and have had articles published in The
Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History,
The
Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History,
The
Journal of Southern African Studies,
and The
Canadian Journal of History.
Topic: "Selling
Settlerism: The Propaganda of the Katangan and Rhodesian Lobbies in
the United States, 1960-1980"
Abstract:
This
paper will analyze the propaganda discourses of the US-based Katanga
and Rhodesia lobbies. It is a part of my larger research project
comparing the province of Katanga’s attempted secession from the
Congo with the colony of Southern Rhodesia’s fifteen year secession
from the British Empire. Though separated by several years and
several hundred miles, these two secessionist movements make for a
natural comparison, but it is a comparison that has not been
adequately studied by historians. Deconstructing their propaganda
gives a view as to how these regimes and their American supporters
viewed independent Africa, the modern West, the United Nations, and
the international state system. Among other things, it will
highlight the tension between these lobbies’ rhetoric highlighting
the affinities between their regimes and the West and their rhetoric
which emphasized these regimes’ authentically ‘African’
character. In addition, this analysis will compare and contrast the
differences between the rhetoric employed by these two lobbies, and
argue that even though they both began within the same decade these
two secessionist movements were born into very different regional and
global contexts.
