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N E W S L E T T E R The Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities September 1999 Counting Down and Moving On Before people worried about computer bugs, a new millennium was supposed to herald a “fullness of time.” Never mind that Y1K was a dud or that Y2K, correcting for old mistakes, should have arrived three or four years ago. Millennium or not, our plans for 1999-2000 are already close to full and overflowing. On my own calendar this will be my fourth and final year as director of the Center. Now and then during the year I’m going to take lame duck liberty to say something about the directions in which the Center has been moving—or not. The academic year’s first Newsletter is a good opening. It gives real content to a standing mission “to gather the diverse energies of the humanities and the arts,” but it also points in new directions. The “gathering” metaphor was Christina Gillis’s happy inspiration and is still perfectly apt. As we were reminded on the occasion of the Center’s tenth anniversary, the founding principle was that the Berkeley campus should have a combination of switchboard, forum, workshop, and occasional funding source to link the humanities disciplines and related fields in the arts, human sciences, and professions. Parallel institutions were being established elsewhere around the same time for reasons ranging from interdisciplinary interest to administrative hedging against diminishing resources, but in the ecology of the humanities at Berkeley this one would draw on traditionally strong departments that were likely, precisely because of their strengths, to lack the connections that a humanities center could build and thrive on. With a broad and deep academic hinterland, it did not need and certainly could not expect its own faculty appointments, external fellows, research and teaching agendas, or extensive staff. To tweak the metaphor a little, the Townsend Center was a “hunter-gatherer” on the graph of academic evolution. This proved to be a winning recipe for institution-building of a cumulative sort. Costs were relatively modest and, until regular funding was secured, pegged to start-up resources rather than to the fever chart of grantsmanship. The mission was broad but open-ended so that programs could be added as needs and possibilities beckoned. There are no fewer than twelve program rubrics on our website, from the core fellows group to working groups, Center-initiated or co-sponsored events, visiting 1 professorships, publications, programs on Belief, joins the oldest of odd couples in “public values,” support for the humanities and questions charged interdisciplinary seminars, and with contemporary relevance. Scholars information for faculty and students. workingin different fields will bring their Of course the Center did not “just own definitions, dge & e ter B l n f grow” without generous infusions of e o e approaches, and w C r l i o d t e n n h e f hands-on and minds-on effort, and e concerns to bear on s K n H w u o m T a n s i t e 1 i evolution also works by leaps, not just by 0 the subject. This is a 9 0 9 0 gradual steps and stages. The Center can 9 2 good reason for a travel more lightly than academic divisions interdisciplinary center to or departments; it has openings and foster an exchange among them; another obligations to forge new combinations and is that received answers and indeed ways venture into new territory. Just within the of posing the relevant questions are in Contents last few months, for example, we some disarray, not for the first time of Counting Down & Moving On concluded a year of programs on course. How are we think through the 1 international perspectives in the claims of science and religion, proof and Sepember Song 3 humanities, won a national grant from the persuasion, certainty and opinion, nature Townsend Center Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and made and culture at this end of the century and Fellowship Group 6 fresh alliances close to home with the new the millennium? What can be learned 1999-2000 Humanities campus Consortium for the Arts, the across cultural differences and historical Funding Update 11 Institute of International Studies, the analogies over and perhaps against the International Working Center for Japanese Studies, and our contemporary drumbeat that insists our Group Program 14 thriving offspring, the Human Rights problems of knowing and believing are Working Groups Center. These partnerships will bring new global and unprecedented? I realize that 15 initiatives and, beginning in the fall of 2000, these are still sketchy lines of inquiry. I Calendar 16 the first post-doctoral fellows to the Center. won’t try to elaborate on them further Townsend Center Events At the same time, the Marian E. Koshland here, however, because that is what I 23 endowment has given the Center a source anticipate from a Townsend Center series Major Lectures & Conferences 23 of “venture capital” that we have on knowledge and belief, beginning with Performances & Exhibits committed, among other things, to a new the panel of Berkeley scholars that will 25 Forum on Science, Technology, and the launch the series on September 28. Announcements 26 Humanities and to a series of annual Meanwhile let the countdown Townsend Center programs on issues that call for wide- begin…. Announcements 27 ranging exploration and engagement in the Randolph Starn, Director humanities. Marian E. Koshland Distinguished This year’s theme, Knowledge and Professor in the Humanities 2 September Song belief theme with two lectures scheduled for early November under the rubric, As depicted in a recent photograph of the “Conversion in Early Modern Europe: Two east terrace of Stephens Hall, the Studies.” The first lecture, “Conversion balustrade, dominating the near distance, and Astrology: Theory, Experience and seems to demarcate a kind of stage from Cosmology,” will take place on the evening (Genevieve Shiffrar) which one looks out to the shadowy trees of November 1, the second, “Conversion Studies), Susanna Elm (History), Jodi of Faculty Glade. Clear focus in the and Autobiography: Pattern, Experience Halpern (Joint Medical Program), and foreground contrasts with trees and sky and Salvation,” the evening of November Barry Stroud (Philosophy). On October 8, that are more suggested than defined. 3. Both lectures will be at Alumni House at 12 noon in the Geballe Room, Wendy There is a sense of expectation here, of at 8 pm. Doniger, Mircea Eliade Distinguished waiting for what is to come. Particularly Service Professor of the History of Avenali Lectures in September, we are reminded that the Religions at the University of Chicago, will In April, Bruno Latour, one of the major Center itself is a staging place where deliver a lecture entitled, "Are Carnal founders of the social studies of science people and ideas gather, and it is a site that Ignorance and Carnal Knowledge Cross- and a member of the faculty at the Centre provides both a lens and a focus on the Cultural Categories?" Future speakers will de Sociologie de l’Innovation at the Ecole activity that helps define the humanities include Steven Shapin, Professor of Des Mines de Paris, will hold the Avenali on the campus: on the conferences and Sociology at UC San Diego, who will be Chair in the Humanities attached to the symposia, residencies, lectures, working here in mid-February (specific date to be Townsend Center. Professor Latour, group meetings, and publication projects announced) to address “Vulgar author of a series of important books, that will all be part of this new year. Epistemology”; and Carlo Ginzburg, including Laboratory Life, a classic text Professor of History at UCLA, who will be exploring the different steps in the Knowledge and Belief at the Center March 6-7 to present construction of scientific facts, will spend Knowledge and Belief, this year’s program “Stendhal’s Challenge to Historians.” three weeks on the campus . In addition initiative begins, as Randolph Starn has Exploring the sometimes vexed territory to delivering the Avenali Lecture, which already mentioned, on September 28 at 4 of knowledge and belief, the Center also will take up the politics of nature, Professor pm in the Geballe Room (220 Stephens), plans in the course of the year various Latour will conduct a special seminar in with a panel entitled “Knowledge and events, including film screenings and which he intends to pursue what he calls a Belief: How Do We Decide? Perspectives discussions, taking up issues such as the “systematic analysis of information Across Cultures.” Participants in the “repatriation” of relics and remains. systems” (a “critique of pure panel, which has been organized under the information”). Further details on this Una’s Lecture Center’s ongoing emphasis, “Practicing year’s Avenali residency will be This year’s Una Lecturer, Anthony the Humanities at Berkeley,” include announced in a future newsletter. Grafton, Professor of History at Princeton, Aditya Behl (South and Southeast Asian contributes also to the knowledge and Studies), Daniel Boyarin (Near Eastern 3 Fellows Question of Philosophy,” a conference The Townsend Fellows Group meets where the “talking cure” of psychoanalysis weekly for lunch and presentation of work is intended to meet the “reason” of in progress. Details on the 1999-2000 philosophy, has been organized for Group appear in a special article on page September 25-26 by Professor Judith Butler six of this Newsletter. and the Department of Rhetoric. The conference will take place on September Working Groups 25-29 (see conference listing in this The Townsend Center Working Groups Newsletter). On the same weekend program remains one of the strongest of (September 24-25), the Department of our core programs.