Past Event Category: Seminar
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Jan 26Hagakure and “The Way of the Samurai”
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Sarah Thal Resident Fellow (2014-2015) History, UW–Madison “The Way of the Samurai is death.” This iconic phrase, originally found in the 1716 Japanese work Hagakure, exhorted Japanese to die during World War II and has since flourished in popular media around the world. This project both situates this renowned formulation of Japanese …
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Dec 8Mountain, Water, Rock, God: Shiva’s Abode of Kedarnath in the Twenty-First Century
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Luke Whitmore UW System Fellow (2014-2015) Philosophy, UW-Stevens Point In June of 2013 early monsoon rains of unexpected intensity hit the Himalayas in the Indian state of Uttarakhand. Floods and landslides washed away thousands of lives and decimated the economic landscape of the state. One public face of this disaster has been …
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Dec 1The Place With No Edge: Boundaries and Permeability in the Mississippi River Delta, 1845-2010
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Adam Mandelman Dana-Allen Dissertation Fellow (2014-2015) Geography, UW–Madison Even after Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana residents have struggled to make the problem of subsidence and land loss in the Mississippi River delta a visible, national crisis. My research examines the history of both that crisis and its invisibility by focusing on the uncertain boundaries …
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Nov 17Wakf and the Social Logics of Urban Development in Zanzibar
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Stephen Pierce Dana-Allen Dissertation Fellow (2014-2015) History, UW–Madison This seminar is based on my dissertation, which examines the historical role played by Islamic charitable endowments in Swahili cities during the late precolonial to early colonial period (roughly late 1700s to early 1900s). Specifically following the development of wakf (Islamic endowments) in the …
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Nov 10Spiritism and Progress: A Study in Otherworldly Utopia
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Louis Betty UW System Fellow (2014-2015) Languages and Literatures, UW-Whitewater The Spiritist movement that emerged from the work of Hippolyte Rivail in 1850’s France is not the typical fodder of scholars interested in the utopian and progressive spirit of the nineteenth century. Relying on the revelations of “spirits” speaking through mediums to …
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Nov 3Style, Subjectivity, and Male Sexuality in Early Modern Drama
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: James Bromley Solmsen Fellow (2014-2015) English, Miami University As the population and economic activity of early modern London rapidly increased, dramatists explored and shaped the way early modern Londoners related to each other, to dominant ideologies of gender and sexuality, and to material culture. This book project zeroes in on the representation …
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Oct 27Conversion and Empire: Byzantine Narratives and Imperial Christianity across the Frontier, 300-900
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Alexander Angelov Kingdon Fellow (2014-2015) Religious Studies, The College of William & Mary The work of Byzantine missionaries between 300 and 900 extended Christianity into such disparate regions as the Caucasus, Nubia (modern Sudan), Himyar (modern Yemen), and the Balkans. According to modern tradition, these foreign conversions brought about Eastern Orthodoxy’s largest …
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Oct 20Song and Mediation in Early Modern England
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Scott Trudell Solmsen Fellow (2014-2015) English, University of Maryland, College Park Trudell’s current book project traces the development of verse with a musical dimension in the poetic and theatrical cultures of early modern England, beginning with the renewed interest in musical humanism among Sidney and his peers, and continuing through Milton’s fascination …
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Oct 13Tricky Business: Divorce and Diaspora in Mao’s China
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Shelly Chan Resident Fellow (2014-2015) History, UW–Madison This seminar draws on a larger book-in-progress, entitled “Diaspora’s Homeland: Modern China in the Age of Global Migration,” and a forthcoming article in The Journal of Asian Studies (February 2015), entitled “The Case for Diaspora: A Temporal Approach to the Chinese Experience,” to rethink “diaspora” …
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Oct 6Legalizing a Social Movement: The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and the Evolution of an Ethnic Identity
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Benjamin Marquez Race, Ethnicity, and Indigeneity Fellow (2014-2015) Political Science, UW–Madison This project examines the role of cause lawyers in the history of Mexican American identity politics by analyzing the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF). Created in 1968, MALDEF has emerged as the legal voice of Latino rights, yet …