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N E W S L E T T E R The Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities April - May 1998 Betwixt and Between Thanks to the vagaries of the academic calendar, the last Newsletter of the academic year appears in medias res. As a historian, I usually prefer looking back. In this case, however, the awkward timing actually fits the year’s focus at the Center on versions and visions of the future. Our burgeoning spring schedule forecasts more things to come in scholarship, literature, and the arts. It anticipates much talk (something the humanities have to spare), but also musical performances, readings, and exhibitions, a revamped website, and a commission for Chancellor Berdahl’s official inauguration. In an ancient adage Fortune leads the willing and runs over the rest. The Center is not underfoot yet. We have already addressed the future in millennial thinking, historical studies, the art world, architectural design, scholarly communication, and literary history. By the middle of May, though, we’ll certainly be ready to let the future rush ahead and to take stock of the Center’s tenth year. The Great Move to our new space in Stephens Hall, the Marian E. Koshland endowment, and new alliances on campus and in the wide world will be high on the list. As for the future of the humanities, at least one conclusion is already clear enough to guide the willing, and that is, to borrow from the Greens, that we need to be thinking globally while acting locally. Of course Berkeley has never been shy or the least bit modest about this; neither, for the most part, have the humanities. But even without invoking the mantras of “globalization,” we do seem to be making, if we haven’t already made, a quantum leap of interconnectedness that calls for reflection, interrogation, and understanding. This will be one of the Center’s major projects next year. Our visitors in residence will include South African writer and scholar J. M. Coetzee, Irish poet Seamus Heaney, and Japanese Nobel Prize novelist Kenzaburo Oe. We will be reaching out to establish working connections with national and international study centers on some of the issues that unite and at the same time divide us. I’m thinking, for example, of comparative perspectives on birth and death, of what Stanley Fish has called “Rights Talk,” or of the academy’s role in the digital age. The Center already has considerable experience along these lines, but we are preparing to launch new initiatives, if not (yet?) to embrace the latest buzz word, “globality.” Randolph Starn, Director Marian E. Koshland Distinguished Professor in the Humanities 1 A Web-Based counselor at the Berkeley Free Clinic, I Working Group wanted to use culture theory and linguistic analysis to intervene in a practical way in One of the worst frustrations of being a the emerging field of prevention Berkeley graduate student writing a counseling and community organizing dissertation is the feeling of isolation, not around safer sex and harm reduction. only from others on campus but from the so called “real world.” The Townsend Unexpectedly, the Managing Desire Center Working Groups address this Conference, sponsored by our group in problem by encouraging interdisciplinary April, 1996, became an important step in cross-fertilization, and by offering our move toward a web site. By resources to facilitate meetings, mini- publicizing the conference over email lists conferences, and so on. Now that several I was able to generate considerable interest Working Groups are considering both from the local prevention community establishing web sites as well, I want to and from places as far away as Australia describe here how the Interdisciplinary and Europe. Although attendance at the Working Group on HIV/AIDS actual conference was disappointing Representations and Practices (about one hundred people over two days), (INWOGOHARP) has been using its web I had made many contacts over various Contents site to disseminate work by researchers email networks. Once the conference was Betwixt and Between and activists in the field of HIV prevention over, it became clear that a web site would 1 and education. offer the best possibility of publishing the A Web-Based Working Group 2 papers presented at the conference, and of Good News The idea for the Managing Desire web site adding new submissions from people who 3 (http://www.managingdesire.org) was a had not presented at the original Townsend Center Grants 5 particularly attractive one for a group that conference. Self-publishing on the web Working Groups aimed to create a dialogue between eliminates the space and time limitations 7 academic AIDS researchers at UC and imposed by traditional conference formats Calendar 12 providers and activists doing prevention and publishing deadlines. Moreover, the Events work in the Bay Area. This linkage is conference is accessible around the clock. 18 especially important for AIDS research Conferences 21 since patients, activists, and researchers all The only problem was that I didn’t know Announcements keep up with cutting edge clinical science, anything about the web or creating web 26 and to a surprising degree, with academic pages. I bought an HTML word processing theory on sexuality and gender as well. In program called Adobe PageMill 2 (http:/ my own work, having been an HIV test /www.adobe.com) and within a month, 2 largely through trial and error, I had Software, it can deliver extremely compact, Good News figured out how to post the web pages on postscript quality documents in Portable the internet. The real challenge was not so Document Format (PDF). Since a PDF file This year, we begin on a positive note the much learning HTML, since PageMill printed on any computer will look as if it annual spring meditation upon humanities created the tables and codes for me, but in had been done on the computer from fellowships. A recent article in the “Arts devising a navigational scheme suitable for which the document originated, HIV test and Ideas” section of the New York Times different audiences, laypersons, clinics and outreach workers can easily informed us that the American Council of researchers, and service providers. Rather print out and then xerox brochures for their Learned Societies had received some $10 than try to emulate the architecture of other clients. Similarly, multimedia presentat- million toward the support of its web sites using complex designs such as ions, such as the audio from a lecture fellowships programs. The news is good, frames or java, I kept it simple so that I captured on tape, have also become the first of its kind to come along in a long could focus more on content and less on relatively simple to post on the internet while, and it will surely make a difference design. using software from Real Networks when the fall ACLS Fellowships deadline (www.real.com). For example, I posted the rolls around. It is important to remember that the web audio from the entire Sex Panic Summit on is a visual medium, more akin to a tabloid the Managing Desire Site. It is also possible In April, of course, we are thinking not so magazine than to a book. Therefore, in to synchronize lecture slides with the audio much of ACLS and other programs with designing a web site, academics must think —a technology well suited to academics fall deadlines, but rather of the annual in more visual and interactive terms. For who use slides or who need to refer to May 1 deadline for the NEH Fellowships example, the confession box on my web passages of text, transcripts or images competition. NEH remains the single site is based on an analogy I make in my during their on-line lecture. largest source of humanities research dissertation between HIV test counseling support. Successful applicants in the and religious confession rituals. When Making possible the sharing, and spring competition will receive grants of visitors to the web site experience the distribution, of research is the goal of up to $30,000 and may take up their awards analogy by performing the ritual of INWOGOHARP’s web site. In developing for six months or a year within the period confession, I communicate a point that the site and its capacities, we have found January 1999-June 2000. In short, for at takes a rather dense fifty pages in my that writing a dissertation need not be an least some readers of this newsletter, May dissertation chapter on confession rituals isolated activity. 1 will be an important date to keep well in in the history of sexuality. Of course, Nicolas Sheon mind. (Tenured UC faculty should also should visitors want to read more, a short Medical Anthropology Program, remember that application for the UC article and my entire chapter are also Associate Producer, HIV InSite: President’s Fellowship in the Humanities linked to the confession box. Gateway to AIDS Knowledge in the fall requires proof that the proposal (http://hivinsite.ucsf.edu) has been submitted to another agency as The Managing Desire web site is also a site well; NEH can be for many faculty the for distribution or “publication.” Using, for other agency.) example, Adobe Acrobat Exchange 3 The good news at the ACLS and the and homogeneous; quality is established beginning of fellowships season at the through peer review, results are NEH are reminders, however, that along communicated through institutional with its obvious value to the individual channels, and individual creativity is held scholar, funding is also part of a larger in high regard. process of knowledge production and dissemination: how our fellowships In short, “mode 1” criteria are pretty much systems work says a good deal about what those that proposal-writers will have to we do.