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HUMANITIES 10 60 INSTITU 10 50 TEFORTHE 10 40 HUMAN I T I E S 10 30 UNIVERSITYOF 10 25 MICHIGAN ANNUAL 10 20 REPORt 2007–08 CELEB 10 15 RATING TWENTY YEARS OF IN 10 12 TERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH & 10 COLLA B ORATIONS I N T H E H U M A N I T I E S 10 10 AND THE ARTS 5 20 20 FROM THE DIRECTOR This has been our twentieth anniversary year, a year for We have seen the departure of two key people from the celebration. We are secure in our endowments and this Institute this year. Mary Price, the Institute’s assistant year we have grown stronger through the generosity director, retired in October 2007. Mary has been of our many friends and Fellows. We are known as a crucial player in our development, and has served innovative by our peer institutions, and have a lively the Institute with dedication, vision, and Yankee profile within the University. Our Fellows are as good sense. Mary is identified with our many years wonderful as ever. There has been much to celebrate. of fine public outreach and with the burgeoning of It has also been a year for scrutiny of purpose, the the Institute into a larger circle of friends and “family.” taking of stock, a year for rumination on where we are Also, Cody Engle completed his term as chair of and where we are going. our Board of Visitors. Cody orchestrated our partnership with I have also this past year started the Chicago Humanities Festival, my second term as director, and helped us think about how we thought hard about where I for might grow in a way that expands one would like the Institute to be our fellowships and programs, in five years. I want our graduate while also taking care of our funding to be complete so that the staffing needs, and departed with fifty Michigan graduate students the gesture of seed funding who apply every year for five or a new project: the Emerging six places will have eight precious Scholars Prize in the Humanities fellowships available. I want the dedicated to the generation that Institute to be living a second will carry forward the humanities life on the web that is as robust into new times. He is replaced as its current life on dry land. I by Jim Foster, who has already want our museum-quality gallery taught us the direct art of public 1 to be a component of every major communication and is taking our 27 project we do. And I want our Board in new directions. dialogues with the arts, medicine, law, public policy, and the social The report that follows will sciences to be more sustained, and be a little unusual, bespeaking of greater international scope. To this our twenty year mark. this end I engaged Chinese colleagues in the second of We will narrate the events of the year: endeavors, what will be three workshops, all published, around celebrations, successes. But I will also return later in the question of the state of the humanities in China the report, in the voice of a ruminator, to review the (see p. 16). And I furthered connections with African Institute’s twenty-year history with an eye to drawing colleagues in my role as part of Mary Sue Coleman’s the kind of lessons that might be learned about our presidential trip to Africa in February. original—and ongoing—purpose (see p. 23). I welcome your thoughts on any or all of these things. Do please write. Daniel Herwitz Director and Mary Fair Croushore Professor of Humanities TWENTY/TWENTY This year the Institute celebrated its twentieth anniversary. It was a year for looking back to where we were twenty years ago, where we are now, and where we might be twenty years hence. We called it Twenty/Twenty because it was bi-focal: focused close up and far away (towards the past and future). If there was one theme of the year it was the young: raising graduate fellowships, celebrating the new generation of emerging scholars with a prize, bringing back our Graduate Fellows to speak of where they are headed, taking stock of our past so that we may reinvent (in the manner of young people) the terms of the Institute for present and future. Twenty/Twenty had NINE components: THE EVENTS FIRST, we hosted a full day Our academic symposium (Octo- symposium featuring almost ber 5) had three panels. The first 1entirely our current and former kicked off our year-long series Faculty Fellows. “What Happened to…?” with Michael Steinberg (Director, SECOND, the symposium Cogut Center for the Humani- kicked off our year-long Brown ties, Brown University) speaking 2Bag Lecture Series called “What about historical studies over a Happened to….?,” the most twenty year period, Tobin successful we ever had. Siebers (Chair, Comparative Literature) to disability studies, THIRD, we put on a public and Michael Schoenfeldt (Asso- outreach event called “Intellect in ciate Dean for the Humanities) 3Motion,” focused on our current to literary studies. Second, and former Graduate and younger we wished to underscore our Faculty Fellows. commitment to arts and letters 2 in the broadest sense and hosted 27 FOURTH, we hosted an exhi- a panel on creative fiction and bition of work by our current and non-fiction, with poet Linda 4former Art & Design Fellows. Gregerson, translator and writer of creative non-fiction Christi FIFTH, we commissioned an left to right: Michael Steinberg, Michael Schoenfeldt, Tobin Siebers, Linda Merrill, and Eileen Pollack exhibition of ceramic work by a Gregerson, Eileen Pollack, and (Director, MFA in Creative 5noted French artist who Christi Merrill Writing) reading from a short transposed the poetry of our piece of non-fiction (she is most former and current poetry Fellows into designs on well known for her short stories). The day ended with a large ceramic plates. panel about the future of the humanities. Valerie Traub (Director, Women’s Studies) addressed institutional SIXTH, a former dance Fellow curated a selection changes over a twenty-year period in the study of of dance works at the Chicago Humanities Festival women and gender, the field’s interconnections to the 6(with which we are partnered). humanities, and the trend toward the social sciences in gender studies. Elaine Gazda (Classical Art and SEVENTH, so that our twentieth year would have Archaeology/History of Art) highlighted new forms an international component we hosted a workshop of representation for ancient things, featuring her 7(the second of three) with Chinese colleagues, the work on the ancient city of Antioch of Pisidia and the topic being the humanities in China and the state of way she has utilized new technologies to render and Chinese scholarship in the U.S. interpret that city. Thomas Finholt, Dean for Research and Innovation in the School of Information and a EIGHTH, we inaugurated a new kind of award in lively partner in digital/collaborative adventures in recognition of our anniversary year, generously seeded the humanities, explored the way new possibilities for 8by Cody Engle: the Emerging Scholars Prize (see the representation and circulation of information are page 4). bringing about new work in the humanities. NINTH, we turned to building our graduate endow- 9ment in a big fund-raising effort. TWENTY/TWENTY Two weeks later we hosted mural up the wall next to our “Intellect in Motion” for a gallery dedicated to having public outreach audience. This NOTHING TO SAY (the work’s featured emerging ideas in the title); Tirtza Even having a great humanities: an exhibition, perfor- deal to say or otherwise show in mances, scholarship, and literary her video work Once a Wall, or readings from current and Ripple Remains, about the wall former Graduate Fellows and erected by Israel to separate it from young faculty. The weekend the West Bank and Gaza; Edward (October 19–20) brought back West returning with photos from Erica Lehrer from Concordia his project on persons of color; University, where she is Research and others (see Exhibitions, Professor in History, to speak p. 17). Twenty Years, Twelve Poets: about her anthropological work Ceramics by Rachid Koraïchi on new tourism in Poland for brought the internationally Jews wishing to explore “the old known ceramist and sculptor country” and get a taste of what as our Jill S. Harris Memorial life might have been like before Fellow to work with the School those communities were wiped of Art and Design in transposing out during the Second World poetry to ceramic plate (again see War. Lehrer is a public intellectual Exhibitions, p. 17). whose research has led to her own activist involvement in such Next we sponsored an inter- heritage site creation and tourism. national conference, The New Yofi Tirosh, currently a law fellow Humanities in China, on the at New York University, spoke to occasion of the LSA China problems with how law (in Israel Theme Year in addition to our 3 and the United States) addres- twentieth anniversary (see p. 16). 27 left to right: Dean Terry McDonald; Valerie ses “identities.” Anne Fisher Traub, Thomas Finholt; Jim Cogswell, Developed with the critical (Williams College) described her Diane Kirkpatrick; Tobin Siebers, assistance of Haiping Yan, in work on Russian/Soviet writers Nicholas Delbanco, and Tom Trautmann residence as the distinguished Il’f and Petrov. Ronit Ricci (Asian Norman Freehling Visiting Studies Institute, University of Professor in the Institute (and Singapore) discussed the career Professor at UCLA and the of an Islamic text staging a debate East China Normal University between Jews and Muslims in Shanghai), the conference as it migrated through South convened major scholars from Indian languages and down China and the United States to into Indonesia.