Past Event Category: 2015-2016
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May 6Global Reformations: Religion and the Making of the Modern World
University Club, Room 212
Religion is omnipresent in modernity, and in spite of twentieth-century theorists who saw secularization as intrinsic to the process of modernization, shows no signs of disappearing. After discarding secularization as a plausible historical model, how do we understand the changes in religion that made way for the experience of modernity around the globe? From India …
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Apr 25The Novelistic Individual in the Age of Microeconomics (1871-2008)
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Annie McClanahan UW System Fellow (2015-2016) English, UW-Milwaukee What does microeconomics—the study of small-scale consumer decisions—have to do with the modern novel? Microeconomics seems to have more to do with mathematical formalism than with literary form, and yet its emphasis on the desires and pleasures of the individual shares much with the …
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Apr 18The Translation of Foreign Religion in Herodotus
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Andreas Schwab Solmsen Fellow (2015-2016) Classics, Ruprecht-Karls-University of Heidelberg In his famous second book on Egypt, Herodotus (ca. 484-425 BCE), the so-called “father of history” and ethnographic writer from Halicarnassus (present-day Bodrum in southwestern Turkey), emphasizes that of all peoples, the Egyptians are “the most exceedingly religious/pious.” Yet what did the concept …
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Apr 15The Book that Made Philosophy Modern: the World of Descartes’s Treatise on Man
University Club, Room 212
2016 Burdick-Vary Symposium: Participants: Daniel Garber, Stuart Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, Princeton University Tad Schmaltz, Professor Department of Philosophy, University of Michigan Gideon Manning, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and History of Science, California Institute of Technology Harold Cook, Professor of History, Brown University Susanna Berger, Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts, …
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Apr 11Part for the Whole or Whole for the Parts: Body Parts in Twentieth-Century Women’s Writing
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Devaleena Das Honorary Fellow (2016-2017) University of Wisconsin at Whitewater, Department of Women’s and Gender Studies As Margaret Atwood writes, the female body has always seen as a “hot topic” in cultures across the globe. Thus regions throughout the world have employed standardized systems of mapping and dissecting the female body, and …
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Apr 6Come to Your Senses! – Sensiotics and Understandings of Art, Culture, and History
Conrad A. Elvehjem Building, Room L140
Focus on the Humanities Distinguished Faculty Lecture: Henry Drewal Senior Fellow (2010-2014) Art History and Afro-American Studies, UW–Madison In this talk, Drewal explores the vital role of the senses with an approach he calls sensiotics. While Drewal focuses on the Yoruba peoples of West Africa and their cultural sensorium, he argues that sensing is …
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Apr 4Forgotten Women in Forgotten Places: The Joan Little Rape-Murder Case and Prison Organizing in the 1970s
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Christina Greene Resident Fellow (2015-2016) Afro-American Studies, UW–Madison In 1974, Joan Little, a young, impoverished, African American woman killed her white guard in a Southern jail after he sexually assaulted her. Indicted for first degree murder and facing a death sentence if convicted, her case quickly became a national and international cause …
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Mar 31Le Président: Africa for the Future
Conrad A. Elvehjem Building, Room L160
2016 Germaine Brée Lecture: Jean-Pierre Bekolo Filmmaker and Activist Jean-Pierre Bekolo (1966, Yaounde) is an avant-garde filmmaker and socio-cultural activist whose imaginative work overturns stereotypes of Africa and African cinema. His entertaining films operate on multiple layers, engaging viewers with thrilling stories, biting humor and dramatic aesthetics. An advocate of artistic freedom, Bekolo is …
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Mar 28Angels and Archaeopteryx: Victorian Paleontology and the Moral Hierarchy of Deep Time
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar Caitlin Silberman Dana-Allen Dissertation Fellow (2015-2016) Art History, UW–Madison Narratives in which leather-winged demons or dragons face off against bird-winged angels and heroes have millennia of history behind them. In the nineteenth century, however, discoveries of fossil pterosaurs (flying reptiles) and Jurassic birds invited new interpretations of old tales. How did British …
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Mar 14Building Place and People in the 13th Century AD: Architecture, Cosmology, and Multi-Ethnic Community Formation at Jonathan Creek, Kentucky
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar Sissel Schroeder Race, Ethnicity, and Indigeneity Fellow (2015-2016) Anthropology, UW–Madison How can we begin to understand multi-ethnic community formation in contexts where there are no written records and only the faintest material traces of ancient lives have survived? What kinds of material practices, and the social, political, and ritual behaviors implicated by …