SEMINAR DESCRIPTIONS FOR THE 2009-10 ACADEMIC YEAR
American Studies
Chair: John Stauffer
A forum for current directions in American Studies research in a comparative international perspective. Our focus is on immigration, and ethnicity, race, and the languages of America.
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Architecture and Knowledge
Chairs: Alina Payne, Antoin Picone
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: Wai-yee Li
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 and Humanitarian Agents
Chairs: Jennifer Leaning, Doris Sommer, Michael VanRooyen
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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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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France and the World
Chairs: Verena Conley, Mylčne Priam
The sense of a globe that is interconnected within and beyond the nation has a long history in literature and culture. This seminar examines the points of contact, as well as the dialogue emerging from a diversity of points of view, that place the role of otherness and boundary crossing at the very center of literary history in France.
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Gender and Sexuality
Chairs: Joyce Antler, Robin Bernstein
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 hemispheric circulations of art, literature, and performance; concepts and practices of the family; pleasure, desire, and corporeality; citizenship, immigration, globalization, and the law; religion, morality, and ethics; militarism, war, and violence; academicism and activism.
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Hispanic Cultures
Chairs: Brad Epps, Luis Gíron
The 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, Robert Darnton, 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
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: Jeffrey Hamburger, Beverly Kienzle, Katharine Park, 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, Dimitrios Yatromanolakis
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
The Opera seminar is on hiatus for the academic year 2009-10.
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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
Chairs: Svetlana Boym, 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: Susan Dackerman, Katharine Park
The seminar explores 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 Art Museum in the fall of 2011. The work of participants in the seminar, including Harvard faculty and graduate students, will be published in the exhibition's catalogue, Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, and this year's seminar will be organized around discussions of their contributions.
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Psychoanalytic Practices
Chairs: Humphrey Morris, Frances Restuccia
Psychoanalytic Practices will devote this year to asking how, today, in our clinical and academic psychoanalytic communities, we receive and reply to the Freudian legacy. The seminar will be convened as an interdisciplinary group that will start out together by reading Freud’s late, revisionist work. Speakers may be invited once the group has had time to form its own culture. The first meetings will carry the title "Late Freud: Irreconcilable Conflicts, Foundational Disavowals."
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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: Laura Green, Kelly Hager, John Picker, John Plotz
This seminar takes an interdisciplinary approach to topics in literature, history, art, science, and popular culture in the Victorian period, featuring work both by members and visiting scholars.
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Visual Representation, Transmission, and Translation
Chairs: Robin Kelsey, Jennifer Roberts
A forum for current research and debate on visual, spatial and plastic forms of representation for those working in the history of art and architecture, literature, history, philosophy, or cultural studies. Areas of special interest include the imagistic or material negotiation in the visual arts of boundaries separating different media, communities, and cultures, the roles of chance, space, and the body in artistic production and reception, and new concepts of aesthetic experience.
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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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World Theater and Performance
Chairs: Julie Buckler, Biodun Jeyifo, Elizabeth Lyman
Theater and performance are by nature interdisciplinary, multicultural, and resistant to periodization. This seminar draws together resources and knowledge separated by structures of discipline, period, geocultural focus and institutional structure to develop and sustain an intellectual community among scholars with overlapping interests in performance who may nevertheless be unknown to one another or have few opportunities for meaningful collaboration or exchange.
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