CENTER for the HUMANITIES UC BERKELEY September/October 2008
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TOWNSENDCENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES UC BERKELEY September/October 2008 Conference on African and Afro-Carribean Performance, see p.21 upcoming EVENTS 17 David Simon, writer and creator of “The Wire” 18 Una’s Lecture: Quentin Skinner Depth of Field Film + Video 23 Seymor Hersh, pulitzer prize-winning journalist Series, see p.27 Townsend Newsletter The Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities SEpTEMBER/October 2008 at the University of California, Berkeley STAFF DIRECTOR Anthony J. Cascardi, Professor of Comparative Literature, Spanish, and Rhetoric TABLE OF CONTENTS ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR Teresa Stojkov 3 Welcome! FACULTY DIRECTOR OF PROGRAMS Anthony J. Cascardi, Director of the Celeste Langan, Associate Professor of English Townsend Center FINANCIAL MANAGER Joshua Levenson 5 What Makes Culture Black? OFFICE AND EVENTS ASSISTANT Bryan Wagner, Assistant Professor, English Julie Van Scoy 7 Digital Humanities Notebook WEB AND COMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST Angela Veomett 8 program News FELLOWSHIPS AND GRANTS COORDINATOR Rachel Mullis FACULTY ADVISORY COMMITTEE Daniel Boyarin, Near Eastern Studies and Rhetoric 16 Calendar of Campus Events Janet Broughton, Philosophy, and Dean of the Division of Arts and Humanities (ex officio) Judith Butler, Rhetoric and Comparative Literature 31 Exhibits T.J. Clark, History of Art Susanna Elm, History and Program in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology Charles Faulhaber, Spanish and Portuguese and Director, The Bancroft Library Marian Feldman, Near Eastern Studies Catherine Gallagher, English Percy Hintzen, African American Studies TOWNSEND CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES George Lakoff, Linguistics University of California 220 Stephens Hall, MC 2340 Anthony Long, Classics, Philosophy, and Rhetoric Berkeley, CA 94720-2340 Donald McQuade, English TEL.: 510/643-9670 Paul Rabinow, Anthropology FAX: 510/643-5284 Kaja Silverman, Rhetoric and Program in Film Studies EMAIL: [email protected] WEB: http://townsendcenter.berkeley.edu Marc Treib, Architecture Michael Watts, Geography TOWNSEND CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES | SEpTEMBER/OCTOBER 2008 Welcome! ON SEpTEMbER 5, 2008, THE Townsend CENTER will officially versity of Cambridge economist Anthony Lawson will bEgin THE academic year with OUR annual RECEption for hold a Townsend-sponsored residency in the philosophy faculty, fellows, and friends. Please join us for wine and department. Professor Lawson, the academic leader of hors D’oeuvres, music, AND conversation at 7 p.M. ON THE the School of Critical Realism in the Methodology of terrace OF STEpHENS HALL! Economics, will deliver a lecture at the Center in late September. In October the Forum on the Humanities and the Public World and Cal Performances will co-sponsor a talk by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh. In Spring 2009 we will host Tzvetan Todorov (“Memory, a Remedy for Evil”) and South African artist William Kentridge, who will be appointed Avenali Chair in the Humanities. We continue the second year of our Project on Disciplin- ary Innovation: Course Threads, funded by the Mellon Foundation. The first “threads” were inaugurated last spring by groups working on “Cities, Historical and Mod- ern,” led by Professors Olga Matich and Jesus Rodriguez- Velasco, and on “Cultures in Transit,” led by Professors Charles Briggs and Deniz Gokturk. An overview of aims and goals of the “Course Threads” project is available on the Townsend Center website. We are encouraging We are looking forward to a year of new programs and faculty proposals for new interdisciplinary “threads,” with events in addition to our ongoing activities. Some of our funding available for spring, 2009. major events will follow soon after the September recep- This year we will introduce a major new effort to stimu- tion. Author, journalist, and television writer-producer late collaborative interdisciplinary research and teaching: Dave Simon of the HBO series “The Wire” will speak the Collaborative Research Seminars. By arrangement on “The Audacity of Despair” on September 10 as part with the Divisions of Arts and Humanities and Social of the Center’s Forum on the Humanities and the Public Sciences, Berkeley faculty will now be able to propose World. The very following week Professor Quentin Skin- and participate in teaching collaborative graduate semi- ner of Cambridge University and Queen Mary College, nars under the auspices of the Townsend Center. Our London, will deliver this year’s Una’s lecture, entitled immediate goals are to take advantage of the breadth “The Genealogy of Liberty.” Also in September, Uni- TOWNSEND CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES | SEpTEMBER/october 2008 3 WELCOME! of high-level faculty expertise at Berkeley in order to ad- images drawn from works in our Depth of Field video se- dress large, cross-disciplinary topics; to expose advanced ries, now in the curatorial hands of graduate student Kris graduate students to forms of Schiraldi/HBO Paul by Photo Fallon (film studies). collaboration not usually found We also begin the year with within the humanities or social three new appointments to sciences; to stimulate the devel- the Townsend Center Faculty opment of new areas of research; Advisory Committee: Profes- and to open paths of inquiry sors Daniel Boyarin (Rhetoric about questions that are simply and Near Eastern Studies), too large to be confined within Kaja Silverman (Rhetoric and disciplinary boundaries. More Film Studies), and Michael detailed information is available Watts (Geography). We also on page 8 of this issue of the welcome three new members to Newsletter and on the Townsend the Townsend Center staff: Julie Center website. Van Scoy (front office and events Through December, 2008, the assistant), Rachel Mullis walls in the Center will display (fellowships coordinator) and “Vanishing (Portraits) the col- Angela Veomett (web and laboration of photographer communications specialist). Stephen Sharnoff and Professor Finally, a word of thanks: to of French Suzanne Guerlac: the Dean of Arts and Humanities exhibit interlaces texts on time Janet Broughton for her and memory with photographic ongoing enthusiasm about the images of memorial portraits Center’s activities and for her from the cemeteries of Southern institutional support; and to France. Neuroscience graduate Associate Director Teresa student and painter Julie Opper- Stojkov and to Financial man will concurrently exhibit Manager Josh Levenson, who “Portals” a collection of small wa- worked tirelessly over the tercolor paintings. In these paint- summer to get ready for the new ings, Julie borrows imagery from academic year. textile patterns, wallpaper designs, I look forward to seeing you all and other decorative arts, creating and wish you the best for the a collage of these elements that coming academic year. draws the viewer into an imagi- native world of colors, patterns Cheers! and shapes. In addition, the lobby Anthony J. Cascardi, Director monitor at the Center will display 4 TOWNSEND CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES | SEpTEMBER/october 2008 What Makes Culture Black? by Bryan Wagner MaybE the greatest challengE in writing About black formula from the eve of decolonization, we might say that vernacular aesthetics IS REMEMbering that Africa AND its blackness indicates a situation where you are anonymous diaspora ARE MUCH OLDER THAN blackness. Blackness does to yourself. Reduced to what would seem its essential not COME from Africa. Rather, Africa AND its diaspora trait, blackness is a kind of invisibility. bECOME black at A particular stagE in their history. It sounds a little strange to put it this way, but the truth of this description is widely acknowledged. Blackness is an adjunct to racial slavery. No doubt, we will continue to discuss and disagree about the factors that made black- ness imaginable as well as the pacing of their influence. That process is quite complex, mixing legal doctrine from ancient slave systems with customs from the history of enslavement between Christians and Muslims to produce a new amalgam that would become foundational to the modern world. Blackness is a modern condition that cannot be conceptualized apart from the epochal changes in travel, trade, communication, consumption, industry, technology, taxation, labor, warfare, finance, insurance, government, bureaucracy, science, religion, and philoso- phy that were together made possible by the European systems of colonial slavery. Due to this complexity, we will likely never be able to say Alan Lomax, Prisoner with guitar, at compound no. 1, with certainty whether blackness starts before or during Angola, Louisiana the sugar revolution, or consequently whether slavery fol- Taken seriously, these facts about blackness are enough lows from racism or racism follows from slavery. We can to make problems for anyone who wants to talk about say, however, what blackness indicates: existence without blackness as founding a tradition. Conceptualized not as a standing in the modern world system. To be black is shared culture but as the condition of statelessness, black- to exist in exchange without being a party to exchange. ness would seem to deny the perspective that is necessary Being black means belonging to a state that is organized to communicate a tradition. To speak as black, to assert in part by its ignorance of your perspective—a state blackness as a perspective in the world, or to argue the that does not, that cannot, know your mind. Adapting a existence of the black world is to deny the one feature by TOWNSEND CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES | SEpTEMBER/october