Social
Science and Cultural Studies Spring Speakers Series
This semester offers another round of engaging and important speakers. Here is a listing of whose on tap for Spring 2013:
1. Brendan Fernandes
February 5th, 5:00Location TBD
 |
| Encomium, 2011. |
2. Professor Claudio Lomnitz
Campbell Family Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Columbia University
Bio: I work on the history,politics and culture of Latin America, and particularly of Mexico. I
received my PhD from Stanford in 1987, and my first book, Evolución
de una sociedad rural (Mexico City, 1982) was a study of politics and
cultural change in Tepoztlán, Mexico. After that I developed
an interest in conceptualizing the nation-state as a kind of cultural
region, a theme that culminated in Exits from the Labyrinth: Culture
and Ideology in Mexican National Space (California, 1992). In that
work, I also concentrated on the social work of intellectuals, a
theme that I developed in various works on the history of public
culture in Mexico, including Modernidad Indiana (Mexico City, 1999)
and Deep Mexico, Silent Mexico: An Anthropology of Nationalism
(Minnesota, 2001). Around 10 years ago I began working on the
historical anthropology of crisis and published Death and the Idea of
Mexico (Zone Books, 2005), a political and cultural history of death
in Mexico from the 16th to the 21st centuries. I am currently
finishing a book on anarchism, socialism and revolution in Mexico (c.
1910) that inspects the cultural and political history of
transnationalism.
3. Nona Shepphard
(co-sponsored with Humanities Department) with 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).
More information: http://www.rada.ac.uk/about-rada/rada-introduction
4.
Professor Lisabeth During and Professor Ross Poole
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.
More Information: http://www.pratt.edu/academics/liberal_arts_and_sciences/social_science/faculty_and_staff/bio/?id=lduring
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.
More information: http://www.newschool.edu/nssr/faculty.aspx?id=10380
More information: http://www.newschool.edu/nssr/faculty.aspx?id=10380
5.
Professor Amy Gansell
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.
More information: http://www.pratt.edu/academics/art_and_design/history_of_art_and_design/faculty_and_staff/bio/?id=agansell
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 Critical & Visual Studies and Sustainability Student Lunch in 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Dekalb Hall
March 26th 5:30 Formal Presentation, Library Alumni Reading Room
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 David Harvey
Professor of Anthropology, CUNY Grad
Center
Date
and Location TBD
More information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Harvey_%28geographer%29
8.
Professor Josiah Brownell
Assistant
Professor of History, Pratt Institute
April
24th, 5:00 pm
Seminar
Room 2nd Floor Dekalb
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.
More information: http://www.pratt.edu/academics/liberal_arts_and_sciences/social_science/faculty_and_staff/bio/?id=jbrownel
