Past Events
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Sep 23Standard Deviation: The Calculus of Normativity in Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Le Voyeur
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Richard Goodkin Senior Fellow (2009-2014) French and Italian, UW–Madison What sort of narrative might result from the implausible marriage of mathematics and literature? As an example of such an unlikely union, in this seminar, I will discuss Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Le Voyeur (1955), whose hero, a watch-salesman named Mathias (“Math” for short), spends …
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Sep 16Why Was Spinoza Excommunicated?
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Steve Nadler Senior Fellow (2013-2017) William H. Hay II Professor of Philosophy, Philosophy, UW–Madison In July of 1656, the twenty-three year old Baruch de Spinoza received the harshest writ of herem (excommunication) ever issued by the Amsterdam Portuguese-Jewish congregation. Full of vitriol and curses, the ban was final; Spinoza never reconciled with …
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Sep 9What’s the Place of “Place” in the Humanities?
University Club, Banquet Hall (lower level)
Panel Discussion: Speakers: Susan D. Bernstein, English, Gender and Women’s Studies, Center for Jewish Studies, UW–Madison Thomas Dale, Art History, UW–Madison Tomislav Longinović, Slavic Languages and Literature, UW–Madison Yi-Fu Tuan, Emeritus Professor of Geography, UW–Madison Louise Young, History, UW–Madison Michel Foucault predicted in 1967 that the coming age would be “an epoch of space” …
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Sep 9Environmental Studies in the Time of the Anthropocene
University Club, Room 212
Fall 2013 Faculty Development Seminar: Rob Nixon Senior Fellow (2009-2012) English; Center for Culture, History and Environment This seminar has two goals. First, it will explore the vital role of the environmental humanities in reimaging the intellectual priorities of environmental studies. Compared to forty years ago, when scientists dominated America’s first environmental studies programs, …
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Apr 29Medieval Riverlogues: Crossing and Contestations along the Oxus Borderland
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Manu P. Sobti UW System Fellow (2012-2013) School of Architecture & Urban Planning, UW-Milwaukee Manu Sobti shall present an extract from his forthcoming book with Brill Press entitled The Sliver of the Oxus Borderland: Medieval Cultural Encounters between the Arabs and Persians. Positioned within the context of the Arab invasions on Central …
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Apr 22Education, Entertainment, and Exploitation: Adventures in Attempting to Promote an Appreciation for the Humanities Among the General Public
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Gregory Aldrete Honorary Fellow (2012-2013) History and Humanistic Studies, UW-Green Bay In an era when a “business model” is dominant in higher education and there are increasing demands by the public and politicians to steer students towards majors that supposedly lead directly to jobs, it is vital for humanists to articulate to …
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Apr 15Practicing Theory: FauHaus and Sensiotics
University Club, Banquet Hall (lower level)
Monday Seminar: Henry Drewal Senior Fellow (2010-2014) Art History; Afro-American Studies, UW–Madison Faisal Abdu’Allah Artist The theory and method called sensiotics, coined in 2003 by Henry Drewal, explores how the senses are engaged in the creation and reception of the arts, and the making of culture. Sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste, and motion continually …
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Apr 10New Digital Humanities Approaches to Renaissance Studies: Manuscript Imaging and Research Outsourcing in the Florentine Archives using the Bía Platform
University Club, Room 212
Workshop: Brian Sandberg History, Northern Illinois University The Bía Platform of the Medici Archive Project offers Renaissance scholars new approaches to digital humanities research. This online platform presents high-resolution digitized manuscript documents and a searchable interface to the massive Mediceo del Principato collection at the Archivio di Stato di Firenze. The Bía platform functions …
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Apr 8Five Ways to Look at a Corpse: The Dead in Normandy, 1944
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Mary Louise Roberts Senior Fellow (2010-2014) History, UW–Madison We prefer to think of war as producing heroes, not corpses. Perhaps for this reason, military historians have rarely focused on the dead. In the Normandy invasion of 1944, the bodies of American G.I.s were often not visible. This is because, in an effort …
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Apr 1Setting Plato Straight: Translating Ancient Sexuality in the Renaissance
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Todd W. Reeser Solmsen Fellow (2012-2013) French and Women’s Studies, University of Pittsburgh As fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Humanists read, digested, and translated Plato, they found themselves faced with a fundamental problem. On the one hand, the rebirth of the Ancients implied a “fidelity” to the words and the sense of Greek texts. …