Past Events
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Oct 29At the Threshold of New Political Communities: The Nollywood Epic
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar Matthew Brown Dana-Allen Dissertation Fellow (2012-2013) African Languages and Literature, UW–Madison Many of the most popular genres of Nigeria’s “Nollywood” video film industry have histories that predate the advent of video filmmaking. The “epic” genre, in particular, draws on expectations generated by the Nigerian state television bureaucracy, which itself draws on expectations …
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Oct 22Myth in the Landscape: Ancient Heroes and Hellenic Culture in Imperial Asia Minor
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Janet Downie Solmsen Fellow (2012-2013) Classics, Princeton University The purpose of my current book project is to understand the role of landscape in the articulation of Hellenism in Imperial Asia Minor. In this presentation I will focus on a particular feature of the mythic landscape of the region: large mounds that dotted …
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Oct 15Restoring Memory: German Legacies and Polish Politics of Commemoration in Łódź after 1989
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Winson W. Chu Honorary Fellow (2012-2013) Modern Central European History, UW-Milwaukee The search for German legacies in Poland today serves local, national, and international agendas. As a result, the German past is often deployed in ways that seem contradictory. This development is apparent in the city of Łódź, which embodies many of …
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Oct 10The Birth of ‘Literati’ Painting in the Song and Yuan Dynasties: How to Think About What We Do and Do Not Know
Conrad A. Elvehjem Building, Room L140
2012 Burdick-Vary Event: Jerome Silbergeld P.Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Professor of Chinese Art History, Princeton University Every study of later Chinese painting history tends to establish two overarching categories into which all paintings are expected to fit: literati and not literati, the latter including court, ecclesiastical, and popular works. All modern viewers are …
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Oct 10The Holocaust and the Ethics of Witnessing: Polish Writers Look at the Ghetto
Conrad A. Elvehjem Building, Room L140
2012 Focus on the Humanities Distinguished Faculty Lecture: Rachel Feldhay Brenner Max and Frieda Weinstein-Bascom Professor of Jewish Studies; Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature; Senior Fellow, Institute for Research in the Humanities (2009-2011), UW–Madison Rachel Feldhay Brenner is Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature in the Department of Hebrew and Semitic Studies, and Max and …
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Oct 8Always Already Again: Trauma Tourism and the Politics of Memory Culture
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar Laurie Beth Clark Resident Fellow (2012-2013) Art, UW–Madison Always Already Again: Trauma Tourism and the Politics of Memory Culture is a transnational, comparative study of the discourses that surround the production and consumption of memorials. It considers sites on five continents that have been established or are in the process of being …
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Oct 1Angels of the Underground: A World War II Story of Love, Resistance, and Survival
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar Theresa Kaminski UW System Fellow (2012-2013) History, UW-Stevens Point This book project centers on the complex tale of two ordinary and flawed American women propelled by the extraordinary circumstances of World War II into acts of heroism. Margaret Utinsky, petite and redheaded, caustic and cautious; Claire Phillips, a willowy brunette, big-hearted, with …
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Sep 24The Militancy of Gender and the Making of Sexual Difference in Anglo-Saxon Literature, c.700-1100 AD
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Stacy S. Klein Solmsen Fellow (2012-2013) English; Women’s and Gender Studies, Rutgers University It is a long-standing truism that Old English literature rarely addresses sexual difference or erotic life, and is instead obsessed with chronicling blood feuds, heroic battle-quests, and inter-familial strife. Klein’s project examines the lexical and thematic intersections between warfare …
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Sep 20Repossessing the Past: Refurbishing the Cultural Patrimony at the Courts of Song-Dynasty China
Conrad A. Elvehjem Building, Room L140
2012 Burdick-Vary Event: Maggie Bickford Art History (Emerita), Brown University Chinese emperors of the 12th and 13th centuries created a new body of masterworks to stand in for lost famous paintings by the early Great Painters of China. The measure of their success is that we still use these Song-Dynasty creations as touchstones in …
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Sep 17Enacting State Persecution: France, 1940-1944
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Ivan Ermakoff Resident Fellow (2012-2013) Sociology, UW–Madison This talk will be centered on the factors that shape state agents’ decision to collaborate in, or subvert, the implementation of inhumane policies. A modern state cannot persecute vast groups of people without relying extensively on its civil servants. However, unless these civil servants have …