The Cogut Center for the Humanities 2007/08 Annual Report
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Brown University The Cogut Center for the Humanities 2007/08 Annual Report Operations, Programs, Events 1 “We nurture specialized and precise knowledge and identify this knowledge with fields, specializations, departments and disciplines. At the same time … we participate in the overall life of the university by linking together these specific identities into a shared purpose of advancing knowledge and solving problems.” MICHAEL P. STEINBERG Cover photo: “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” (Katharina Wagner, Bayreuth) © Enrico Nawrath From the Director discussion of 20th-century Cuban culture. Rachel’s students will be studying Students and faculty members have multiple homes within the university, the work of Cuban thinkers who will speak to them from Havana, where and multiple ways of linking our university careers to the world at large. they will be guests in Adrián’s classroom. Our Medical Humanities initiative We nurture specialized and precise knowledge and identify this knowledge in partnership with the Warren Alpert Medical School enjoys a similarly with fields, specializations, departments, and disciplines. At the same time, exciting trajectory. In August 2008, second-year medical student and however, we participate in the overall life of the university by linking medical humanities concentrator David Washington spent a week in Spain together these specific identities into a shared purpose of advancing with Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, writing an knowledge and solving problems. Often we work alone: reading, thinking, ethnographic report on the question of “music and social medicine.” learning languages, writing books. Just as centrally, we depend on each other for ideas, corrections and new perspectives. In 2008-2009 we dedicate our new facility in Pembroke Hall. We will welcome 28 semester- or year-long fellows from all ranks, from Brown’s Cogut Center for the undergraduate and graduate student fellows to senior Brown University as Humanities connects the well as visiting faculty members. We will introduce a series of Humanities disciplines to the university and Seminars to the undergraduate curriculum, with graduate seminars planned to the world, while also linking for 2009-2010. In 2008-2009 we will co-sponsor (with the Committee on scholarship’s solitary dimensions Science Studies) a year-long series on evolution’s impact on the sciences and to its collective ones. Scholarly the humanities, and a second series (with the Office of Internationalization) originality, quality and on globalization and the humanities. importance come from both kinds of experience, just as We prepare this report as we move into our new home in Pembroke Hall— research and teaching are a stunning facility that will enable our programs to continue to grow and fundamentally connected. Our thrive. Please visit us there often. fellows and programs serve the central mission of the university, participating centrally in the Sincerely, growth and transformation associated with the Plan for Academic Enrichment. In 2007-2008 we welcomed four postdoctoral fellows in the inaugural year of an International Humanities postdoctoral program: a cornerstone of the university’s internationalization initiative. In the fall semester 2008, one of Michael P. Steinberg our International Humanities fellows, Adrián López Denis, leads Brown’s Director, Cogut Center for the Humanities inaugural student semester in Havana, Cuba. His classroom will be Barnaby Conrad and Mary Critchfield Keeney Professor of History electronically connected to the Brown campus classroom of our Mellon Professor of Music Foundation postdoctoral fellow Rachel Price, for a combined weekly 1 Named for Craig M. Cogut ’75 and Deborah Cogut in recognition of their About the Cogut Center generous support, the Cogut Center for the Humanities was launched in the The humanities today include ever-vital traditional disciplines such as fall of 2003 as the Brown Humanities Center to support collaborative history, philosophy, language and literary studies, and religious studies. research among scholars in the humanities. Today, through its fellowship, They also include the newer disciplines of art history, musicology, the grant, and distinguished visitors programs, and regularly scheduled events, interpretive dimensions of the social sciences such as anthropology and the Cogut Center strives to: political science and more recently, interdisciplinary initiatives such as gender and sexuality studies, media studies and Nurture disciplinary and interdisciplinary growth in the humanities digital humanities. and in cooperation with the social and natural sciences Encourage and enable faculty and departmental development OFFICES Brown has played a key role in the pioneering of Cogut Center new and interdisciplinary work, while at the same Inspire a new interconnectedness between teaching and research, for the Humanities time developing and advancing the frontiers of between undergraduate and graduate teaching Box 1983 knowledge within the humanistic disciplines. 172 Meeting Street Scholars at Brown are known as innovators who Sustain and nurture international perspectives at Brown in an era of Providence, RI 02912 challenge and redefine the foundational categories increasing globalization 401/863-6070 of the humanities in the largest sense – by asking what it means to be human. Over the years, they Explore energetically and critically the history and effects of the STAFF have developed new modes of scholarship at the interstices of older disciplines and across the rapid growth of technologies of information and visualization Michael Steinberg Director boundaries of national cultures. Scholars of the ancient, medieval, and early modern worlds have The Cogut Center is poised to build on the strengths of Brown University at a moment of unique institutional distinction and growth, and at a time of Kit Salisbury been giving us new concepts and new ways to imagine and conduct research. Those working on particular national and global urgency. As a key player in Brown’s Plan for Department Manager Academic Enrichment, the Cogut Center is providing multiple programs to modern and contemporary cultures – on the language, literature, and culture of the post-colony, bring Brown faculty and students into regular and innovative contact with Leslie Uhnak each other, as well as with national and international scholars and Cogut Center Assistant or the complex and often self-contradictory messages with which new media bombard us – scholarship. In fulfilling its mission to the University and to the field of have continued to change the horizons of the humanities, the Cogut Center supports and enhances Brown's stellar humanities. reputation in the humanities. 2007-08 GOVERNING BOARD MEMBERS Michael Steinberg Lynne Joyrich Director Modern Culture and Media Susan Bernstein Kevin McLaughlin Comparative Literature English Sheila Bonde, ex officio Dietrich Neumann Dean of the Graduate School History of Art and Architecture Rey Chow CD Wright 2 Modern Culture and Media Literary Arts Program Fellowship Programs Karl Jacoby The Cogut Center sponsors semester-long fellowships for Associate Professor of History Brown faculty in the humanities. All regular Brown PROJECT TITLE: "Shadows at University faculty (i.e. lecturers, senior lecturers, tenure-track, Dawn: The Camp Grant “I found the experience and tenured faculty) are eligible to apply. Each year, four Massacre and the Borderlands fellowships are awarded for the fall semester and four for of History" most profitable and the spring semester. Recipients are relieved of their regular agreeable, and I am teaching responsibilities for the semester of the award. Applications are reviewed by the Center’s external enormously grateful for David Konstan fellowship selection committee and evaluated for both the opportunity it scholarly merit and the likelihood that a collective Professor of Classics experience will enhance and be enriched by the proposed PROJECT TITLE: "The Active offered me to learn new research project. Fellows attend a weekly seminar consisting Reader in Classical Antiquity" of a two-hour discussion of a pre-circulated essay or chapter things and advance my from work in progress. Cogut Center Faculty Fellowships for own research.” the 2007-08 academic year were awarded to: Kurt Raaflaub —Faculty Fellow Kurt Raaflaub Professor of Classics Peter Andreas Classics Associate Professor of Political Science PROJECT TITLE: "Early Greek Political Thought in its PROJECT TITLE: "Black Markets and Blue Mediterranean Context" Helmets: The Political Economy of War and Peace in Sarajevo" Cogut Center Faculty Fellowships for the academic year 2008-09 have been awarded to: Mary Ann Doane Michael Satlow Associate Professor of Professor of Modern Culture FALL and Media Judaic Studies PROJECT TITLE: "People of the Matthew Garcia, American Civilization PROJECT TITLE: "Bigger than Life: The Land: Jewish Piety in Late Philip Rosen, Modern Culture and Close-up and Scale in the Cinema" Media Antiquity" Michael Vorenberg, History Vazira Zamindar, History Susan Harvey SPRING Professor of Religious Studies Mark Swislocki Assistant Professor of History Elizabeth Bryan, English PROJECT TITLE: "Teaching Women: Biblical Dana Gooley, Music Women and Women's Choirs in Syriac PROJECT TITLE: "Culinary Nostalgia: Food and Cultural Timothy Harris, History Tradition" Ethan Pollock, History Memory in Shanghai" 3 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowships in the Humanities