SEMINAR DESCRIPTIONS FOR THE 2006-2007 ACADEMIC YEAR
Architecture and Knowledge
Chairs: Alina Payne, Antoine Picon
This seminar explores architecture from three perspectives: historically, as it interacted with the sciences, humanities and the arts; practically, as a performative activity that seeks to reconcile epistemological and objective aspects of building; and theoretically, as a distinctive form of understanding of the world.
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Buddhist Studies Forum
Chair: Janet Gyatso
The Harvard Buddhist Studies Forum provides an opportunity for faculty, students, and participants to discuss approaches to Buddhist studies that are as diverse as philology, intellectual history, anthropology, art history, literary studies and religious studies. In addition to being interdisciplinary, our lectures discuss Buddhism within a variety of geographic contexts, including South, Southeast, Central, and East Asia.
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Celtic Literature and Culture
Chairs: Catherine McKenna, Tomás Ó Cathasaigh
Seminar topics include aspects of the Celtic literatures from ancient to modern times. In addition, the seminar topics seek to make connections with other European literatures, both medieval and modern, as well as folklore and oral tradition.
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China Humanities
Chair: Wilt Idema
Covering the whole span of Chinese experience predating the modern era, this seminar addresses all aspects of Chinese civilization—literature, history, philosophy, religion, art history, and the performing arts.<
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Civilizations of Ancient Greece and Rome
Chairs: Francesca Schironi, Richard Thomas
Considering topics reflecting the entire range of classical studies, papers and discussions in this seminar will examine Greek and Roman literature, philology, history, religion, archeology or philosophy, the application of literary and cultural theory to classical texts, and various other aspects of classical literature and culture, including its reception by and intersections with other related fields.
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Classical Traditions
Chairs: Christopher Johnson, Christopher Krebs
This seminar explores the reception of the Greek and Latin classical traditions in the middle ages, Renaissance, and beyond. It treats the study of the reception and imitation of the "ancients" as at once a philological, cultural, conceptual, and ideological endeavor.
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Cognitive Theory and the Arts
Chair: Anna Henchman, Alan Richardson, Elaine Scarry
Poetry, music, and painting are all products of the imagination, and also make visible the way the imagination works. This seminar draws on the verbal, visual, and auditory arts, as well as models and findings from the mind sciences, to deepen our understanding of aesthetic processes and artifacts. We are interested in the ways art, neuroscience, and cognitive theory illuminate one another.
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Cross-Cultural Poetics and Rhetoric
Chairs: Tom Conley, William Granara
A seminar for those interested in comparative approaches to native traditions (Arabic, Chinese, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Sanskrit, and others).
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Cultural Agents
Chair: Doris Sommer
Engaged humanists and artists reflect on the relationship between aesthetic and political effects. As cultural agents both contribute to positive social change through arts, interpretation, and teaching. The Cultural Agents Series during 2007-08 will include conversations on "Visible Rights: Photography as Art and Agency;" Eric Slauter on the U.S. Constitution as a collective work of art; African Hip Hop and HIV; Roberto Jacoby on militant happiness in Argentina, Eryn Johnson relate her experience in Guatemala with ArtCorps Additionally, we also plan to host a series on “Fashion For the Future: Designers Collaborate with Indigenous Artisans”, beginning with Mexican artist Carla Fernández.
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Ecology/Technology/Cybernetics
Chair: Verena Conley
This seminar focuses on the relations between ecology in a broad sense and technologies. Emphasis will be placed on relations between the humanities and the technosciences, on the transformations of culture, politics, and subjectivities under the impact of globalization, technological change, and rapid urbanization of time and space. Presentations will range from theoretical discussions of ecological and technological issues to specific readings in fiction and film.
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Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture
Chairs: Susan Lanser, Ruth Perry
A forum for new work about the literature, history, politics, culture, science, philosophy, music, and art of the long eighteenth-century from diverse theoretical, methodological, and national standpoints. We hope to foster an interdisciplinary community of scholars in the greater Boston area who study the many cultures of the eighteenth century.
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Ethnomusicology
Chairs: Virginia Danielson, Kay Kaufman Shelemay, Richard Wolf
This seminar provides a forum to consider recent research on the ethnography of music in ethnomusicology and sister disciplines. Speakers address theoretical issues and repertories drawn from music traditions around the world. The unifying theme for the 2007-08 Ethnomusicology Seminar is "Music and Boundary Problems."
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French and Francophone Studies
Chairs: Virginie Greene, Francis Abiola Irele, Christie McDonald
An interdisciplinary seminar concerned with French languages, peoples, ideas, literatures, and cultures, from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century.
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Gender and Sexuality
Chairs: Brad Epps, Judith Surkis
The seminar focuses on topics in gender and sexuality studies; feminism; gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender studies, and queer theory and is designed to foster interdisciplinary dialogue on the significance of gender and sexuality. A diverse array of issues will be considered, including: citizenship, immigration, globalization, and the law; concepts and practices of the family; pleasure, desire, and corporeality; religion, morality, and ethics; psychology and psychoanalysis; medicine and public health; militarism, war, and violence; academicism and activism; art, literature, and cultural production.
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Hispanic Cultures
Chairs: Luis Fernández-Cifuentes, Mariano Siskind
The Hispanic Cultures seminar hosts presentations and discussions on literary and other expressions of the diverse communities, past and present, that make up the Hispanic world, with an emphasis on interdisciplinary, international and cross-cultural approaches.
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History of the Book
Chairs: Ann Blair, David D. Hall, Leah Price
This seminar considers the numerous conditions governing the production, circulation and reception of texts. The seminar focuses principally, but not exclusively, on print culture in Europe and America. Major themes include publishing and distribution, censorship, authorship, copyright and reading.
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Italian Studies
Chair: Francesco Erspamer, Lino Pertile
The papers presented at the seminar cover fields such as Italian literature and criticism, Dante studies, medieval and modern Italian history, art, music and cinema, in addition to occasional readings of fiction and poetry.
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Jewish Cultures and Societies
Chairs: Shaye Cohen, Avi Matalon
We seek to create a forum for approaches to Jewish cultures and societies. The goal of the seminar is to bring together research in the study of the expressions of Jewishness from various disciplines and across intellectual boundaries.
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Medieval Studies
Chairs: Beverly Kienzle, Katharine Park, Elly Truitt, Nicholas Watson
A forum for the presentation and discussion of scholarly papers in medieval studies, with emphasis on comparative and interdisciplinary approaches. Working closely with Harvard’s Committee on Medieval Studies and in conjunction with the Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies, the seminar fosters dialogue between established medievalists, both local and visitors, and graduate students.
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Modern Greek Literature and Culture
Chair: Panagiotis Roilos
Transhistorical and cross-disciplinary explorations of aspects of Greek literature and culture from the fifteenth century to postmodernity. Presentations, which vary in theoretical approach, situate Modern Greek studies within comparative contexts: ancient and medieval Greece, Western, Balkan, and Mediterranean cultures.
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Modernism
Chairs: Peter Norhnberg, John Paul Riquelme
The seminar focuses on new work in modernist studies, that is, in the wide range of scholarship that is emerging concerning twentieth-century literature, arts, and culture in England, Ireland, and North America.
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Opera
Chairs: Jane Bernstein, Alessandra Campana, Anne Shreffler
Opera, an art form that began more than 400 years ago and remains vital today, offers a unique combination of dramatic, musical, and visual experiences. It can be intensely moving as well as intellectually stimulating; it offers interior monologues and thrilling virtuosity, a private aesthetic experience and public display. It has flourished in different cultures and has served a wide variety of interests. Opera is a multi-media genre, combining music, literature, drama, movement, and the visual arts. To create a forum devoted to this most hybrid art, the seminar invites interdisciplinary scholars who cross the boundaries among musicology, theater and film studies, literature, art history, psychoanalysis, cultural and gender studies.
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Philosophy, Poetry, and Religion
Chairs: Marty Cohen, Peter Sacks
This seminar explores ways philosophy can benefit from a fuller encounter with the profusion and varieties of experience evidenced by art and religion, as well as ways art and religion can be informed by modes of philosophical knowing and not-knowing.
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Politics, Literature, and the Arts
Chair: Susan Suleiman
In this seminar, literary and artistic works are analyzed in terms of their cultural and political significance or effects, and the ways in which such works have reflected or reacted to important historical and political events. The theme of the seminar for 2007-08 will be 'Cities and the Urban Imaginary.'
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Prints and the Production of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe
Chairs: Mario Biagioli, Susan Dackerman, Katharine Park
The seminar will explore the knowledge projects of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century artists, artisans, and scientists and the role of printed images in the construction and dissemination of knowledge of the natural world. It will culminate in a major exhibition at the Harvard University Art Museum in 2009-10.
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Psychoanalytic Practices
Chairs: Humphrey Morris, Frances Restuccia
Psychoanalytic Practices promotes discussion of theory and practice among diverse academic and clinical psychoanalytic communities. Our range is broad, from the treatment setting itself to arenas such as politics, history, philosophy, feminism, queer theory, and art.
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Renaissance Studies
Chair: Tom Conley
Focused on the early modern period in Europe, the seminar explores a range of topics and issues at the intersection(s) of history, literature, music, philosophy, politics, popular culture, history of science, and visual arts. Next year’s seminar will continue its work on space and subjectivity. It intends to include papers on English, Spanish, Italian, and German cultures and to work on relations of geography and nationhood.
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Shakespearean Studies
Chairs: William Carroll, Coppélia Kahn
Designed to explore the broadest range of approaches to Shakespeare’s texts, including post-structuralist, feminist, traditional, and performance-based criticism, the seminar will also consider the relation of Shakespeare’s plays to early modern culture.
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Victorian Literature and Culture
Chairs: James Buzard, John Picker, John Plotz
This seminar will discuss works-in-progress of invited speakers and members, taking an interdisciplinary approach to topics in literature, history, art, science, and popular culture.
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Visual Representation and Cultural History
Chair: Robin Kelsey, Ewa Lajer-Burcharth
A forum for current research and debate on visual, spatial and plastic forms of representation for those working in history of art and architecture, literature, history, philosophy, and cultural studies. Areas of focus include problems of visual representation in new cultural history, the new concepts of aesthetic experience, especially the notion of materiality of form, the question of space and body in the production and reception of art and other forms of visual representation.
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Women and Culture in the Early Modern World
Chairs: Diana Henderson, Marina Leslie
This seminar considers how gender is implicated in the formation of the political, social, and artistic cultures of the early modern period. Topics addressed include religious and allegorical representations of and by women; the economic and legal status of women in specific communities; representations of male and female bodies in literature, art, and science; and applications of competing theories of gender, sexualities, and feminisms.
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