CONTENTS DEPAUL HUMANITIES CENTER 1 FROM THE DIRECTOR 2 2010-2011 SPEAKERS 5 FACULTY FELLOWS 19 JEFF CARTER DONALD L. OPITZ ALEX G. PAPADOPOULOS JOHN SHANAHAN MARGARET STOREY EVENTS 29 FEATURE COMMENTARY 31 BY STEVEN E. JONES FROM THE NETWORK IS EVERTING REGINALD GIBBONS 37 SLOW TRAINS OVERHEAD CLASSICS IN CONTEXT 38 JOHN SHANAHAN ON RICHARD POWERS On the Cover: DEPAUL POETRY INSTITUTE 39 Illustration of C. P. Snow by Matt Collins BRUTE NEIGHBORS Reprinted with permission of artist DEPAUL HUMANITIES CENTER FROM THE DIRECTOR The DePaul Humanities Center, Our goals are to: founded in 1999, serves as a • Support and nourish humanities site for discussion and research scholarship and teaching Our theme at the Humanities Center this year was Literature in the arts and humanities at throughout the university; and Science. A series of lectures by Terry Eagleton, Anne Mellor, and DePaul University. • Support interdisciplinary work in Nicholson Baker helped frame a discussion of the ways in which Bringing together faculty, the humanities; science and literature have come to co-exist, not always comfortably, staff, students, scholars, • Increase public visibility of work in the academy. C.P. Snow ignited a fi re storm when he fi rst community leaders, and artists, in the humanities conducted by the Center engages our university faculty, staff, and suggested that the education of a humanist and scientist were communities in the most students; recent and impressive almost incommensurable, challenging any literature professor to scholarship in the humanities. • Initiate and encourage the name Heisenberg’s second principle of thermodynamics. Terry Central to the Center’s consideration of contemporary community engagement is the problems and solutions from the Eagleton explored the debate between Snow, an erstwhile exchange of ideas across vantage point of humanistic novelist and popularizer of scientifi c ideas, and F.R. Leavis, whose thinking; disciplines, the communication Great Tradition infl uenced a generation of literary critics. Anne Mellor of interests through active • Build and strengthen links with outreach, and the chance to other institutions, community further explored the tension between science and literature through learn from those outside of groups, and educators. the academy. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, explaining how recent discoveries in genetic engineering make Shelley's novel as relevant today as it was 200 years ago. Her vivid account of Mary Wollstonecraft's death at Humanities Center Staff Executive Committee the hands of misguided doctors brought home, to students and faculty Glen Carman alike, the achievements and limitations of science. Nicholson Baker Director Associate Professor discussed the technology of print by considering the reading Jonathan Gross, Modern Languages Professor, English experience created by iPads and other handheld devices. His recent Frida Furman book, Human Smoke, like Double Fold, explores the moral Professor Associate Director Religious Studies implications of technological advances, showing how the destruction Anna Vaughn Clissold, Ph.D. Darrell Moore of newspapers (by microfi lm) threatens to make the historical past Associate Professor itself disappear. Center Assistant Philosophy A highlight of this series was our round-table discussion of C.P. Alecia Person Lucy Rinehart Snow’s The Two Cultures (1957). In attendance were a variety of Associate Professor and faculty members from the College of Arts and Sciences (now the Student Worker Department Chair, English Stefani Chow College of Arts and Social Sciences) including Michael Mezey Eric Selinger (Political Science), Lynn Narasimhan (Mathematics), and Ted Anton Associate Professor English (English). Attendance at our parallel lecture series, in Digital H. Peter Steeves Humanities, was also rewarding, as the audience listened to two Professor different viewpoints on the benefi ts of technology: Michele Rubin, Philosophy of Writer’s House, explained the environmental downside of Apple, Google, and Kindle, while Steve Jones showed positive aspects of this brave new world, excerpts of which are included in this report. The outreach work of our fi ve faculty fellows was particularly imaginative and vigorous this year. The cohort (for lack of a prettier 1 word) worked well together, offering informative and carefully 2 prepared power point presentations, as well as drafts of forthcoming economy continues to reel from the digital revolution. Hoeveler, who articles and books. Seasoned teacher and scholar Margaret Storey has done extensive research on the Gothic novel, spoke about her offered a full-day seminar at the Newberry library, attended by recent book, Gothic Riffs, and her forthcoming study that explores Chicago-area high school teachers, on the opposition to Abraham representations of Catholicism in gothic novels. Her innovative Lincoln in the North. Storey included items from the Newberry’s focus on chap books promises to change the fi eld of gothic studies collection and surveyed, masterfully, the entire fi eld of Civil War and shows the efforts of a lifetime dedicated to this important fi eld. An historiography, with particular attention paid to Copperheads, by excellent discussion between Miles Harvey and James Murphy ensued Jennifer L. Weber. Storey is the author of a ground-breaking Civil after Hoeveler's provocative lecture. Joseph Viscomi, creator of the War study, Loyalty and Loss: Alabama Unionists in the Civil War and masterful William Blake Archive, discussed Blake’s engraving Reconstruction. John Shanahan, an expert on 18th century drama techniques and how recent scholars have misunderstood them. and science, discussed David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas and other texts These humanities scholars have made the best use of old and new in his engaging research presentation at the Humanities Center. His technology, combining traditional archival work at the Corvey Institute outreach work included a screening of Werner Herzog’s 2005 fi lm, in Germany, for example--or the Tate Gallery in London--with digital The Wild Blue Yonder, and the 1995 anime fi lm Ghost in the Shell, presentation, enabling large numbers of people to read texts (with with panelists June Chung and Miho Matsugu. The liaison with the expert scholarly commentary), to which they might not otherwise have Music Box was our fi rst and attracted many members of the Chicago access. Thanks to Viscomi's important work, for example, students community. can now compare multiple editions of Blake's Songs of Innocence and Alexander Papadopoulos gave a lecture to an appreciative Experience, no longer taking Walter Benjamin's word for it that the audience of more than 60 people on Byzantine Cartography at the work of art has changed in the age of mechanical reproduction. National Hellenic Museum. He explored, in vivid detail, how little we 2011 saw the publication of Brute Neighbors, a collection of really know about the subject and how few material objects we have poetry, prose, and essays edited by Chris Green and Liam Heneghan. upon which to base our conjectures. Jeff Carter’s sculpture exhibition Here too we saw the intersection of literature and science, as at the Illinois Institute for Technology’s famous Crown Hall was equally contributors discussed Chicago in what would seem like an well attended. He explored, through masterfully designed models, the oxymoronic form, an urban nature anthology. Former DePaul aesthetic that informs IKEA, offering an ironic view of the Humanities Center fellow Dolores Wilbur contributed creative work, as mass-consumed object even as he reaffi rmed the value of Arts and did former fellow Liam Heneghan and Visiting Fellow, Chris Green. A Crafts through his own carefully worked models. His polished exhibit, launch party for the book took place at the Lincoln Tap with readings attended by Paul Jaskot and other members of the Department of from the participants, and the Reader offered high praise for essays by History of Art and Architecture, was a resounding success, covered Michele Morano ("Boy Meets World"), Miles Harvey (“17-Year Itch"), in New City (among other publications). Donald Opitz, who has been and other writers. Sally Berg and Mark Turcotte helped bring Chicago undertaking archival work at Windsor Castle and other locations, author Reginald Gibbons (also a contributor to Brute Neighbors) to presented his work to top scholars in the fi eld of Victorian science DePaul. Gibbons gave a reading from his most recent poetry at Cambridge University, including noted Darwin biographer James anthology, Slow Trains Overhead, which was attended by more than 70 Moore. He presented his research to DePaul faculty in a particularly people, including two creative writing classes. engaging way, which led to a fruitful discussion of Victorian science Our fellows’ programs would not succeed without the careful and subsequently to the launch of a 19th century studies group, led by review of proposals by Glen Carman, Lucy Rinehart, and Peter James Murphy, who was in attendance, along with Darrell Moore and Steeves, and we would like to thank them for their hard work. The Elena Boeck . Humanities Center wishes to thank faculty members (Paula McQuade, Continuing our efforts to reach DePaul students, we offered John Shanahan, Dan Stolar, Ted Anton, June Chung, Randy Honold) a one-day seminar on the Future of the Book, with archivist Nana who have gone out of their way to send classes to our lectures and Holtsnider, Diane Hoeveler, and Joseph Viscomi. The benefi ts of incorporate our work into their syllabi. digital technology were on display with Nana’s presentation of the Leigh Hunt letters, showing how digital archives will continue to offer Sincerely, scholars readily accessible texts, even as bookstores close and the Jonathan Gross 3 Director, DePaul Humanities Center 4 2010-2011 SPEAKERS It happens that, of all novelists, Dostoevsky is the one I know the best. When I was twenty, I thought The Brothers Karamazov was by a THE TWO CULTURES: long way the greatest novel ever written, and its author the most magnifi cent of novelists. Gradually, my enthusiasm became more SCIENCE AND LITERATURE REVISITED qualifi ed: as I grew older I found Tolstoy meaning more to me.