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N E W S L E T T E R The Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities February 2002 Research “Bridges” In a unique and innovative program, the Townsend Center for the Humanities and the Academic Senate’s Committee on Research will collaborate in funding Townsend Research Bridging Grants, a category of grants specifically for tenured faculty whose proposed research projects have a clear and significant Humanities focus. As with the regular COR Research Bridging Grants, the proposed project must reflect new research in areas that are substantially different from the applicant’s scholarship to date. The Townsend Bridging Grants differ from the regular COR Bridging grants, however, in their recognition of the particular needs of Humanities faculty, for whom intensive research time, rather than equipment or collective research assistance, may be most important. The Townsend Research Bridging Grants, offering support of up to $25,000, may be used for the typical budget items eligible for funding through COR’s Faculty Research Grants competition; but they may also be used, with the consent of the awardee’s Chair, to support one semester of relief from regular teaching duties. Applicants need not be in the Humanities, but their proposals must in all cases make the project’s humanistic import clear. Because this release time is intended to benefit teaching as well as research, the Townsend Center and COR remind Bridging Grant recipients that all Berkeley faculty who wish to teach interdisciplinary courses with a humanistic component are eligible to apply to teach one of the Townsend Center’s Graduate or Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Seminars. These seminars, which include a $3000 budget for course-related expenses, can be taught during or following the two-year grant period. The general conditions and deadlines of the Townsend Research Bridging Grant are the same as those of the regular COR Research Bridging Grant. The purpose of both Bridging grants is to assist tenured faculty wishing to pursue research significantly different from the work in which they have regularly been engaged. Although there is no set requirement that the projects be interdisciplinary, the Townsend Center is particularly interested in proposals that promote conversations across disciplines and divisions. The research proposed may be derived from current work. It must, however, require significantly 1 Research “Bridges,” different theoretical content, Past, Present, Future continued application, or experimental approach, taking the researcher into unfamiliar Using a title originated by the Committee intellectual terrain. A few examples might on Research, Candace Slater has already be the literary critic whose interest in described an important new “bridge”: the novels about disability raises questions grant program intended to take tenured whose answers lie within the realms of faculty from one research place to another. public health and medical anthropology; The language, bespeaking movement, the geographer or forestry expert who finds seems especially appropriate to the him or herself increasingly drawn to Newsletter that marks the beginning of a graphic or literary representations of new semester but also picks up from the deforestation; or the medieval historian term just completed. In February–-and in who has begun to develop an interest in newsletters–-time connects. “We tend to contemporary secular or religious plan in the fall and enact in the spring,” a pilgrimages. We welcome joint proposals colleague recently remarked. It’s not from faculty in different departments, entirely true, but as a busy semester gets desiring to undertake interdisciplinary truly underway, it feels true. research in a new area. Events at the Center The Bridging grant, true to its name, offers February is a very active month for the faculty a rare opportunity to explore a new Townsend Center this year. research area or methodology, to undertake Complementing the exhibit entitled a project that may not yet be at the stage Transitions, The Photographs of Sebastião Contents where external support can be sought. The Salgado, on view at the Berkeley Art Townsend Center is highly gratified to Museum January 16-March 24, the Research "Bridges" 1 work with COR in offering this innovative Townsend Center hosts noted Past, Present, Future research option. For details and guidelines, photographer Sebastião Salgado as this 2 I urge you to consult the Program section year’s Avenali Professor in the New & Continuing Programs 7 of the Newsletter. Humanities. Sebastião Salgado will Working Groups Activities Candace Slater, Director deliver the Avenali Lecture, “Migrations: 11 Marian E. Koshland Distinguished Humanity in Transition,” on Monday, Professor in the Humanities Calendar 18 February 11, at 7:30 pm in Wheeler Events Auditorium. A follow-up discussion with 22 Sebastião Salgado; T.J. Clark, History of Announcements Art; Nancy Scheper-Hughes, 30 Anthropology; and Michael Watts, 2 Novelist and writer Nicholson Baker visits as journalist, activist, lawyer, and art the Townsend Center April 15-19 as Una’s historian, he approaches environmental Lecturer in the Humanities. Baker will topics such as the fate of the giant trees in deliver two lectures under the title Tasmania. Bonyhady’s most recent book, “Shelving History.” The first, to take place Colonial Earth, won the prestigious New on Monday, April 15, at 7:30 in the South Wales Premier’s Prize for History. Sebastião Salgado, The Beaches of Vung Tao, Vietnam, 1995 Morrison Room at Doe Library (an He is also the author of The Colonial Image: Geography and Director, Institute for appropriate location for a writer who has Australian Painting 1800-1880. International Studies, will take place on castigated the loss of print sources, Wednesday, February 13, at 4 pm in the particularly newspapers, to microfilm) is As announced in September, UCLA Maude Fife Room, 315 Wheeler Hall. The titled “Bombs and Bibliographies: The Professor of Urban Planning Susanna panel will be chaired by Townsend Center Secret Life of the Library of Congress.” The Hecht visits the Townsend Center on May Director Candace Slater. second, scheduled for Wednesday 1 to present the final talk in this year’s afternoon at 4 pm in the Geballe Room at Grounding the Humanities series. Professor Even as a Magnum photojournalist the Townsend Center (please note change Hecht will focus her presentation on her covering news events, Sebastião Salgado of venue) will be titled “The Lost Art of longstanding interest in the Brazilian was drawn to in-depth documentary the Newspaper.” essayist Euclides da Cunha, author of a projects with broad human scope. In Other series of luminous and perplexing essays Americas (1986), he explored peasant Continuing Programs on the Amazon. cultures and the cultural resistance of The spring semester brings two more Indians and their descendants in Mexico speakers to Grounding the Humanities, the Supported in part by the Academic and Brazil; in Sahel: Man in Distress (1986), Townsend Center’s series of talks by Geriatric Resource Program (AGRP), he drew on his work in the drought- scholars with particular interests in the Humanities Perspectives on Aging continues stricken Sahel region of Africa with the place of indigenous people within this semester with two programs focusing French aid group Doctor Without Borders; contemporary debates on the environment. on the representation of aging in the arts. in Workers (1993), his work documented Australian art historian, lawyer and On March 13, at 4 pm in the Geballe Room manual laborers facing displacement with journalist Tim Bonyhady will be in at the Center, Richard Candida Smith, the advent of modern technologies and residence at the Center in the last week of Professor of History and Director of the machines; and in Terra: Struggle of the February, presenting on Monday, February Bancroft Regional Oral History Office, Landless (1997), Salgado captured the 25, a lecture entitled “The Colonial Earth: turns his attention to conceptions of life/ efforts of Brazilian natives fighting to Art, Law, and the Long History of age stages as they may be applied to the reclaim their land. Migrations, the body of Australian Environmentalism.” On the work of artist Jay DeFeo. Professor Smith’s photographs by Sebastiao Salgado following day, Bonyhady will speak lecture will be titled “‘The Light Foot Hears currently on exhibit at the Berkeley Art informally with the Center’s newly formed You and the Brightness Begins’: Museum, is a seven-year chronicle of mass interdisciplinary discussion group on the Encountering Mortality in Jay DeFeo’s Last migrations in more than thirty-five Environment, taking up the ways in which, Paintings.” countries. 3 Past, Present, Future, On April 11 artist and filmmaker Yvonne Digital Age. The discussion is sponsored Continued Rainer visits the Townsend Center to by the Townsend Center with support from present “Skirting and Aging: An Aging the Consortium for the Arts. Scheduled for Artist’s Memoir.” Rainer will explore her February 6, at 4 pm in the Geballe Room own transition “from moving body to at the Townsend Center, it brings together moving image” and discuss clips from panelists from fields as diverse as physics, Privilege, her film on female aging that has geography and art history who will drawn special attention in art, women’s consider, from their various disciplinary studies, and fields linking the humanities perspectives, the ways in which with issues in aging. On the following day, photography itself bridges science and art. April 12 (details to be announced in April Participants, in addition to curator Newsletter), Ms. Rainer will join Berkeley Jeannene Przyblyski, include Fritjof Capra, faculty and students for a discussion of her founding director of the Center for Yvonne Rainer work, particularly as it relates to aging. Ecoliteracy in Berkeley; landscape ecologist Robin Grossinger; and Berkeley Townsend Gallery faculty and graduate students Sharon In Everyday Constellations: Photographs, Corwin (History of Art), Richard Walker Photograms and Sunprints, on exhibit at the (Geography) and artist Susannah Hays Townsend Center January 22-March 15, (Environmental Design).