Tableau

SPRING 2002

VOLUME 4

NUMBER 1

THE NEWSLETTER for the DIVISION of the HUMANITIES

at THE UNIVERSITY of CHICAGO FROM THE DEAN ON CAMPUS 1

DEAR ALUMNI ON CAMPUS 1 Artists on Campus 20 AND FRIENDS Showcasing the art of our faculty artists. 20 In the Theater of the Classroom his issue of Tableau both, we must offer compensation that is Analyzing Performance, Performing Analysis examines the life both competitive with our peers and indica- of the arts in the tive of the high regard in which we hold such T Division, as they human excellence. ALUMNI AFFAIRS are practiced and Yet another priority for the Division as they are studied. Throughout these involves bringing together two entities: the 4 Artists on Education pages, you will note recurring words that humanities and the public. The Franke Institute Alumni artists on their University of designate efforts in combi- for the Humanities and, Chicago experiences. nation—words like “conjoin,” now entering its seventh 22 Proof “conjunction,” “yoke,” and, illustrious year, the Master Gerald Kowarsky reviews David Auburn’s of course, “and,” with its of Arts Program in the acclaimed play. cousin, the ampersand. Our Humanities have been at students, past and present, the forefront of bringing 24 Onward & Upward recognize that rigorous work the Division’s work to a Recent Job Placements in different disciplines with larger public in Chicago, distinct methodologies often the nation, and the world. requires crossing bound- As they increase and 4OFFICE HOURS aries and bringing seem- refine their efforts, they ingly disparate areas of will require resources for ART AND SOCIAL CHANGE knowledge together. programming and growth 12 Social Change and Contemporary Chinese Art More than this, how- that keep pace with the By Wu Hung ever, the insistent presence scope of their missions. of conjoining terms in this We are very grateful 13 Poetry,Politics, and War By Lauren Berlant issue points to our recent efforts to bring the for the loyal support of our alumni and arts more centrally into our intellectual friends, and look forward to a continued enterprise. One of the most exciting markers partnership as we enter this exciting moment FACULTY FOCUS of this effort is also a priority of the in the Division’s history. University’s recently announced fundraising initiative: a new performing arts center, With cordial greetings, 8 Painting and Literature located adjacent to Midway Studios. Besides Three faculty members explore the relationship renovation of the sadly dilapidated but between two art forms. historic and vibrant Midway Studios, the 11 What Matters to Me and Why ARTISTS ON CAMPUS ARTISTS performing arts center will make available JANEL MUELLER By Philip Gossett new music practice rooms and rehearsal spaces, a medium-sized (500-seat) theater 16 Another Chicago School Cinema and Media Studies for student productions, and dedicated Janel Mueller is Professor of English and of the facilities for film- and video-making. By Humanities and William Rainey Harper Professor 23 Richard Stern conjoining a number of arts facilities in one in the College. She has been teaching at Chicago Writer, Teacher, Chicagoan location, the center will also make possible since 1967. Her publications include The Native the kinds of exciting collaborations that char- Tongue and the Word: Developments in English acterize contemporary artistic endeavors. Prose Style (University of Chicago Press, 1984), S TUDENT SPOTLIGHT As a priority, the arts center joins other The Second Part of the Countess of Montgomery’s Urania, edited with Suzanne Gossett (Renaissance Divisional objectives that, while more ACROSS THE MIDWAY PLAISANCE, the five faculty-artists on the Committee on English Text Society, 1999), and Elizabeth I: 18 Underworlds familiar, are no less crucial to sustaining the Collected Works, edited with Leah Marcus and The Secret Lives of Photographs18 excellence of the Humanities Division at Mary Beth Rose (University of Chicago Press, the Visual Arts combine a deep commitment to their craft with an equally large commitment to Chicago: faculty endowments and graduate 2000). She was awarded the University of student fellowships. It is difficult to think Chicago Award for Excellence in Graduate a of these separately. Students come to the teaching. In the following pages, we focus on a single piece from each artist and reflect Teaching in June 1998. Division to work with the best minds in their fields; faculty want to work with the most BY WILLIAM ORCHARD Cover: Detail from Laura Letinsky, Untitled, Rome, 2001. Morning, and on some of the ideas and concerns that animate their work. >>>> promising students in the nation. To attract Melancholia #32. Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York. 2 ALUMNION CAMPUS AFFAIRS ALUMNION AFFIARSCAMPUS 3

Space is often dismissed as mere empti- bine with the architectural features as they ness, or it is mapped in the abstract coor- do in George’s “Spaceholds,” a series of unfelt presence, is metaphorically, if not liter- dinates of x and y axes. Yet, the effects of angular wooden structures with rounded ally, a protean figure. It can refer to the sinis- experienced space on the individual viewer metal planes that make salient the force ter underside of an individual consciousness can be transformative. Certainly such that these spatial formations exert on the or to an aspect of personality that refuses soli- effects were evident to Herbert George individual consciousness. tude (“me and my shadow”); it can signal a during a Fulbright Fellowship in England While Chamisso’s Bottle suggests slight- cultural heritage, or it can mark a negative, in 1967, as he studied gothic architecture ness of volume when approached from the divisive influence. at first hand. In his words,“The experience front, its substantiality becomes apparent For T. S. Eliot, in “The Hollow Men,” the of these enclosed volumes of space within when the plywood structure is viewed shadow falls between the idea and reality, Sthe cathedrals made the exquisite stone from the side or rear. From these vantage between conception and creation, between sculptures seem less present.” points, it extends into space, projecting emotion and response. Eliot images this In the succeeding years, George’s sculp- backward: the shadow of some phantom shadow as distancing things from each other ture has undertaken to establish a balance object. Many mistake the silhouette of an and as obstructing unity and creative move- between the object created and the space object for its shadow, whose lightless vol- ment. In George’s rendering, by contrast, evoked. Chamisso’s Bottle (1988) joins ume expands from the object.“Thought of shadows take on a creative life, evoking absent enclosed volume with sculpture, bringing this way,” George writes, “both the shadow forms and bringing new ones into existence. them into harmonious coexistence in a and a spatial volume are different aspects Perhaps because the shadow hovers on the work that visually invites the viewer to step of the same thing—both define volumes, threshold of so many different possibilities, inside. The curves of this sculpture com- one revealed by light and the other defined simultaneously all and none of them, the Standing at the edge of the 110 blue triangles Helen Mirra, NE 1/3%, detail from Sky-Wreck (2001). 40’ x 80’. by light.” medium of sculpture—which, as George made of cotton cloth woven in India, the Indigo cotton cloth. Herbert George, Chamisso’s Bottle (1988), Plywood, Chamisso’s Bottle alludes to the author notes, “exists in a form world that extends far assemblage that comprises Helen Mirra’s Sky- 79” x 60” x 30”. Permanent Collection, Detroit Institute of of Peter Schlemihl, whose eponymous beyond naming and knowing”—can emerge Wreck,a viewer ponders the etymology of an intersection of thought. Although Mirra is Fine Arts, Detroit, Michigan. character sells his shadow to the devil for a as the shadow’s most compelling mode of the word textile and its permutations. Woven, often termed as a conceptual artist, the label bottomless purse. The shadow, a normally representation. web, text, context, textuality (the list goes does not quite fit, if only because it suggests a on . . .). What secrets have been caught in this single concept at play. Mirra’s work can be web of reiterated shapes that act on the senses likened to carbon, submitted to high pres- like a visual mantra? The cool blue against the sure, and then expertly cut and polished. The HERBERT GEORGE HERBERT hardwood floor—the blue the Russians have material under pressurization can lead to any a word for, the color of a pigeon’s egg or a number of forms: here a song or a poem, Scloudless sky—momentarily suggests a body there an installation or a film, or all around of water as one anticipates the triangles rising some dizzying mixture of them all. and falling in a continuous loop of rhythmic Certain themes recur: the sea, childhood, I show a friend Laura Letinsky’s Untitled, Rome, waves. But, as the seams creep into view, we landscape. Her recording Field Geometry 2001, the thirty-second piece in the Morning, remarks on how the photographs capture “the realize we are looking down on something (2000) features acoustic-guitar playing that and Melancholia series. In the center fore- familiar and estranged traces that desire leaves on normally obscured from view. The material is refers to and translates the educational exer- ground is a glass vase, filled with murky water, the landscape.” The Morning, and Melancholia being pulled this way and that, as if in some cises of Friedrich Froebel, the inventor of the with a wilted lily climbing out and then falling images similarly reveal these traces in objects that, pre-Socratic debate about the elemental com- kindergarten system that emphasized creative HELEN MIRRA alongside it. The white background is barely as Letinsky notes, “form the texture of intimacy.” position of natural objects. Our expectations education through practical work and the distinguishable from the white tablecloth that But, if these images are familiar, they also evoke shift. Now we want to see the structure billow direct use of materials. announces its presence only through its folds, an unfamiliarity, an Unheimlichkeit, that again upward into a geodesic dome, to realize the Mirra is currently working on a project suggestive of recent use. The whites combine recalls Freud. The familiar in these photographs utopian dreams of Buckminister Fuller, entitled Elm /Angle of Repose (to be exhibited Iwith the blue-patterned china in the back- becomes uncanny, perhaps, because they are whose designs and efforts to conserve mater- this autumn at the Whitney Museum in New ground to evoke the familiar palette of homely and because we are unused to locating the ial resources partially inspire this project. York), which takes the history of the American Annunciation paintings. So painterly is the beautiful in the aftermath of display and con- Minimal forms radiate profuse ideas, so elm tree as its subject, to consider expan- scene that one is surprised to learn it is a pho- sumption. Popular assumptions locate domestic much so that we feel them crash down upon sionism, colonization, and environmental tograph. In both theme and representational My friend regards the photograph: “It’s nated during Letinsky’s stay in East Berlin, beauty in the kind of pristine presentation that us with the force of falling atmosphere, and destruction. The installation includes a wool mode, the work recalls the great Dutch and beautiful. It makes me sad.” where the unfamiliar context made her aware Martha Stewart or Ethan Allen would commend, we love the experience. felt floor sculpture, text work on two walls LAURA LETINSKY Flemish still-life painters. If the photograph Letinsky’s title, with its sly pun on an essay of her own material and cultural relationship but these photographs emphatically suggest that A mixture of dense ideas conveyed in that provides both a context for the sculpture seems oddly out of time—potentially a of Freud, seems to anticipate this response. to food. Berlin’s inviting nightlife often post- domesticity is most beautiful and most suggestive deceptively simple forms is a signature of the and a faint horizon line, and a sound piece painting emanating from the sixteenth cen- While Freud is concerned with loss and the poned the normal clearing of dishes and of its participants when this presentation is dis- artwork of Helen Mirra, an artist of growing that reiterates the sensibilities of the tury or possibly a photograph from our proper and improper reactions to it, Letinsky countertops until early the next day, when mantled. Or, perhaps, our sense of the uncanny international reputation. The minimal, sim- project. As in Sky-Wreck, the materials in own—the ten stray Cheerios on the white refers to the moment (or “morning”) after Letinsky would discover unexpectedly beauti- results from our habit of closing our eyes to ple forms are never minimizing or simplistic; Elm/Angle of Repose conspire to reveal the tablecloth underscore its contemporariness. desire’s fulfillment, when shadows of what has ful tableaux bathed in morning’s kind light. In intimacy and its contours, instinctively looking instead they are acts of precision that arrive at beautiful and its underside. been enjoyed and consumed haunt the scene’s an introduction to Letinsky’s last series, Venus away and processing it through other senses. Here, Laura Letinsky, Untitled, Rome, 2001. Morning, and debris. Here desire disappears even as the Inferred (University of Chicago Press, 2001), the camera looks for us, discovering beauty in Melancholia #32. Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York. scene inspires a nostalgia and longing for which shows couples in moments of love- what remains. what has passed. The project partially origi- tenderness, desire, and regret, Lauren Berlant 4 ON CAMPUS ALUMNI AFFAIRS 5

porn by numbers; porn to be wild; a but also artistic realm. Here, the motion of the Connecticut statehouse but sometimes produce incompre- pornucopia of chromatic delights; not to the figures almost embarrassingly reminds composedofold newspapers— hension. Peters’s art is invested mention all the double entendres relating to the viewer of his or her own sexual self. reporters of past dialogues, their in examining how the social “Nutcracker.” This type of joking is not Ruttan’s art, in the critic Laura Kipnis’s term, shifts, their ephemerality. conventions of discourse calcify ancillary to Ruttan’s work. Indeed, it may “re-functions” the pornographic image by Peters’s installation exceeds thought, blunt perception, and be central. She uses humor to draw changing it into something that reflects the the gallery space. At satellite com- mediate subjective experience. us close to the image ponents throughout Hartford, The works often pursue a different Chromophilia:love ofcolor. The word is a but then twists and podiums with “magic slates” (a kind of conversation, one aimed fitting title for Alison Ruttan’s digital ani- flips our expectations black wax tablet with a gray plastic at bringing disparateC objects and mation, consisting of blue and gold and understandings. cover on which one writes and then views together so as to expose the patches undulating in time with the music Is the benign Disney- erases by lifting the cover) gave categories that structure our of Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker Suite” and like animation as citizens opportunities to assume experience. His installation pieces, projected onto a wide, horizontal screen. benign as we like to the authority of the podium as they comprised of different media The colors evoke several images: the think? Do the abstract wrote their responses to various brought into dialogue, attempt benign forms of children’s cartoons, the images require the questions. Disassembled, the result- pointedly to erode the barriers modernist shapes of abstract painting, the kind of formal initia- ing black wax slates were brought between artistic activity and the outlines of Matisse’s dancers, the random tion that some elitists into the gallery and hung on the public sphere. It will occasion no figures of Hans Arp. While the shapes would require? And is Bob Peters, Museum of National Dialogue, 1996. Manuscript Room. walls of the Manuscript Room, a surprise that Peters often collabo- demonstrate chromophilia, the motion of the distance between murky archive of past and poten- rates, and that his collaborators the animated masses suggests that the col- an inviting children’s Something’s fishy. Serious issues are argued without nuance, in tial dialogues in which the latest are often non-artists. These collab- ors may be—well, in love with themselves, cartoon and a formi- extreme oppositions. Media outlets offer packaged debate: view, voices speak over and obscure orations attempt to resuscitate maybe a little too in love. Taking focus in dably “difficult” work earlier ones. The outside world of normal communication by pro- the repeating movements of these colored counterview, shouting match, roll credits. The script filters the par- ALISON RUTTAN of “high” art as great ticulars. The spectacle overrides the voices. Anything like an animated, the public enters the art space. ducing work in which different homunculi, as we watch, is the body of a as we are trained to S If The Museum of National conventions of thought interact woman astride a man in a noticeably open-ended “national dialogue” may be dead, a creature more at believe? Dialogue suggests that a national and intersect. home in the cemetery or the museum. Bob Peters’s installation, aroused state. At least, we hope that is the Ruttan’s work also takes a novel and Alison Ruttan, Chromophilia (2001), digital animation. The Museum of National Dialogue (1996), suggests as much, with its conversation may be dead, Peters’s Peters will join other Chicago case. Otherwise, what would we say about refreshing stance in relation to the porno- camouflaged halibut lying suspiciously on the floor of its works appear more optimistic activist artists in the Smart the state of our minds? With no small mea- graphic image. Public discourse about artist’s interests in abstract painting, and yet Manuscript Room. Something’s fishy indeed. about the idea of conversation Museum’s upcoming exhibition, sure of relief, we discover that, yes, Ruttan’s pornography often reduces to legal ques- recalls the humorous, awkward motion that The Manuscript Room is one of three rooms that comprise itself. The conversation that inter- Critical Mass (see page 26). His digital creations do use pornographic films tions of obscenity or to feminist critique. In characterizes the beautiful, clumsy sex of Peters’s Museum, an installation exhibited at the Real Art Ways ests Peters is not the anaesthetized contribution will engage the ques- to create abstractions that follow the move- both domains, sex nearly disappears as youth. As Ruttan notes of her own creations, Gallery in Hartford, Connecticut. The aforementioned halibut speech of dilettantes, evoked in tion whether aesthetic experience ment of the live action. abstractions come to dominate the discus- “these playful abstractions suggest that sex is blends into the checkered flooring, patterned to resemble that of T. S. Eliot’s lines on those “who can be measured, challenging Once the pornographic elements in the sion. By contrast, Ruttan’s work moves truly in the mind.” come and go, talking of Michel- those who undertake to represent video are identified as such, our minds discussion about pornography from a angelo,” nor is it the pronounce- vital experiences in rigid catego- become receptive to a number of bad puns: distanced abstraction back into a sexual BOB PETERS ments of specialists which can rizations.

ARTISTS ON EDUCATION

LEON BOTSTEIN, AB’67 | CONDUCTOR My own particular debt to the University, with respect to protect the arts in theory and practice that have no competi- DEBORAH DRATTELL, Ph.D.’82 | innate interest in the effects on musical My administrative skills were devel- AMERICAN SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA music, is perhaps greatest on the practical side. I was offered tive viability in commerce and the marketplace. OPERA COMPOSER theory of philosophical thinking by such oped through my assistantship as manager an opportunity to play and to conduct and to work closely with At the University, music evolved for me not only into luminaries as Adorno, Kant, and Hegel of the Contemporary Chamber Players, y four years as an undergraduate at the University composers, theorists, and musicologists who, themselves, an essential language of meaning and expression, but a he reputation of the University of Chicago is one of great in courses offered by the Committee on because as a student I was given the oppor- of Chicago have exerted a lasting influence on my did not separate the study of music from its recreation in live form of life at the center of critical inquiry and experience. emphasis on rational argument. Why, then, is it attract- Social Thought. Of course, my compo- tunity to learn how to run a performing arts M work as a musician. Through the prism of its con- performance. And most important for many aspiring It is ironic that in 1966, at the end of my junior year, I was T ing students who hope to dedicate their lives to the arts? sitional studies with Ralph Shapey organization. This was valuable back- struct of general education, making music and thinking about musicians, contemporary music was at the center of the interviewed by the alumni magazine of the University and I was such a student, and I am forever grateful that a great deal have served as a basic foundation for ground for the work I did at the New York music as part of history and culture acquired an intellectual active musical life in which we asked to articulate of my future life was formed at the University, because the arts my work, and, without a doubt, my City Opera when I inaugurated and ran for context that might have been absent elsewhere. I was forced participated. We did not feel my ambitions. Look- cannot flourish without logic and discipline. Of course, there compositional thinking has been three years the “Showcasing American to connect music to language and to the visual. Further, I was ourselves imprisoned in a ing back at that are exceptions to every rule, but I can vouch for the fact that a greatly influenced by the intricate Composers” program, which meant dealing permitted to pursue the links between music and the study of museum of the musical past. interview, it is both musical composition is not merely forged by divine or not-so- polyphonic technique he taught. not only with scores but also with budgets, society. But, perhaps more important, the popular perception The moral (if there is one) of frightening and heart- divine inspiration but by a great deal of discipline—sitting The University also offered me unions, fundraising, and logistics. of a gap between art-making as purely intuitive and the my experience is that the ening that the goals I down and developing a given musical theme, orchestrating it, practical applications, because my And finally, by living in Chicago, I was conducting of scholarship or research as intellectual and University has an obligation to set for myself during editing what has been written, and sometimes having the music was performed by the Contemporary Chamber Players, exposed to the very best there is in the arts, because, through therefore reflective, was exploded not only by what we as integrate the making and my undergraduate courage to destroy it. through a commission from the Fromm Foundation for this student tickets, I was able to hear the finest performances in undergraduates studied, but also by how we were taught with study of the arts into the cur- days are uncannily In my case, the University of Chicago not only gave me ensemble. Another practical application involved my per- concerts by the Chicago Symphony, in opera by the Lyric Opera close attention to detail and how we, as students outside riculum, not as an aspect of the very ones I am the tools to learn my musical craft, but it also strengthened forming as both a violinist and conductor with the University of of Chicago, in recitals by visiting music ensembles, and in the of the classroom, tried to penetrate surface interpretation, decoration, but as an essential struggling to reach the muscle that is my brain by exposing me to other disciplines. Chicago Symphony and working as an assistant conductor to theater. Chicago and the University of Chicago played a very the limits of theory and conventions in repertoire and component. Also, it must use more than three In addition to the intensive musical training in theory and Henry Mazer, then the Associate Conductor of the Chicago important part in shaping my life and career. performance practice. its resources to nurture and decades later. composition that I received at the University, I pursued my Symphony Orchestra. 6 ALUMNI AFFAIRS ALUMNI AFFIARS 7

GREG KOTIS, AB’88 | PLAYWRIGHT devastation, oppressed populations, collu- and madmen that I came to know as a student BERNARD SAHLINS, AB’43 | for one’s own ends; that academic degrees assistant), who became for all of us the sion between big business and government, at the U of C that formed my thinking as much FOUNDER, SECOND CITY THEATER do not make us ethical and that there is a embodiment of their subjects. We started he University of Chicago is still very charismatic leaders that haplessly lead people as any book. necessary place for integrity in the world of out adrift in the sea of knowledge, not much a part of who I am and what I to ever-greater miseries, and an apocalyptic Finally, there’s the extent to which the Everything changes knowing, which is what breeds the trust knowing where to look or what to look for. T write. The most obvious influence is the vision appropriate for an age of over-popula- U of C was unusually hard on its students but the avant-garde — P AUL VALERY between artist and audience; and the great- We came to admire the “being” of our sheer breadth and depth of ideas we were all tion and over-consumption. All the ideas that remains a central defining experience est lesson of all: that the special value of art teachers, and sought to acquire that being. exposed to as students there. I majored in presented in Urinetown have their roots in for me. The U of C, as we all know, is fairly he University had no theater depart- lies not in what it makes of the world but what This came through identification and Political Science, which turned out to be a the dorms, classrooms, and library coffee grueling. Doing theater while a student was ment. It offered no courses on technical it makes of the knower. imitation. We saw with their eyes, valued fine background for an aspiring satirist. I shops of the University of Chicago, as will be a refuge, a place to socialize and play. The T theater. Yet it managed to produce a How did the University teach us? By with their standards, reacted with their read a lot of political philosophy and a lot of evident to any alum who sees it. quarterly cycle of fresh beginnings, mid- significant number of theater professionals. exposure to great works over 3000 years sensibilities, then added our own. It became papers on international relations. I discov- Another influence is the particular terms, and finals was, for me, almost always What did the University of Chicago teach of history, and to ways of thought, and to a matter of course to work at the top of one’s ered for myself a worldview tempered as university culture we were all a part of there. nearly unbearable. Theater gave me a place us that accounts for this? ideas unfolding through time. By maintaining skill, to respect the audience, to serve art. much by classical thought as by what I read in For me, Hyde Park felt very much like an to be anarchic and childish in ways I never First, the preeminence of values in a and encouraging the highest level of And finally, we learned from each other, the newspaper. island of misfits, an outsider’s place, which is could in the classroom. So, I suppose, it was world of facts. Then, a respect for the past discourse. By mercilessly countering our from that great, diverse pool of talented Urinetown is also very much a product of also a fine starting place for satire and the- the grimness and strictness of the academic along with the essential idea that the past is youthful tendencies to correct history with- students who had the good sense and the that education. The play is an allegory; it’s a ater. It can be a great advantage for an artist experience that made me appreciate theater always subsumed in the present. It taught us out knowing anything about it. By not having good grades and the great good luck to enter parable intended to be self-contained. My to stand apart from his subject. The U of C had all the more, and made me want to stay in to maintain the spirit of inquiry especially a football team. the University. hope is that Urinetown’s political science cre- the added advantage of allowing one to feel theater even after most indications sug- when it comes to one’s own shibboleths; In all this the curriculum was important, dentials become more apparent upon closer like an outsider among outsiders. In other gested the choice was folly. taught us the greater joy that comes from yes, but equally important were the exam- inspection. The story deals with ecological words, it was the intellectual malcontents serving the art than from manipulating it ples of great teachers (with never a teaching

DAVID RAY, AB’52, AM’57 | POET history. My own teaching is always Brown, Paul Carroll, Reuel Denney, Beth G. Fawkes, Isabella SUSAN SONTAG, AM’51 | WRITER following?” You were expected to be able to education and then go back to the dormitory enriched by frequent reference to the Gardner, Ruth Herschberger, Galway Kinnell, John London, develop an argument orally and, when it was and write stories. Creative writing is a differ- he University of Chicago was a great classics. Elder Olson, David Riesman, Isaac Rosenfeld, Philip Roth, don’t think I would have been any questioned, defend it with precision. ent way of thinking. (Writing comes from challenge, for my Murphy Scholarship Opportunities for students abounded. George Starbuck, and Richard G. Stern. different if I hadn’t gone to Chicago. Yet it We were taught to be very close readers; a kind of restlessness and dissatisfaction. T had to be supplemented with a series Though I became editor of the Chicago I was writing for various publications, including The I was a pleasure to be in a place where we were taught incredible reading skills: to And I was so satisfied at Chicago.) Besides, of jobs—in the Billings Hospital pharmacy Review at a troubled time in its history, Nation, The Progressive, and The New Republic; and, as I do there was nothing to ignore. This was a be able to examine a text thoughtfully word participating in the courses in the College was and admitting office, at a service station on when its funding was threatened, the today, I was turning out essays and letters to editors based on place where all one was supposed to do by word. . . . It was the best education for a full-time job—not to mention the classes in 47th Street, and in various places as a typist. work was a chance to use my resource- concerns that I realized, after I became a Quaker, were was study. . . . learning how to read that one could imagine. the Divisions I was not enrolled in but audit- The distractions of earning a living made fulness for the magazine’s survival and inspired by leadings. Such an essay was one I wrote in The We were taught to be reasoners. We were But we were not taught to write. At Chicago, ing, concerts on campus and screenings at meeting the intellectual challenge more to sharpen my editorial judgments. That Nation about Robie House. I was told it helped persuade Frank encouraged to participate in class discussion, no attention was paid to writing skills. Of Doc Films, and occasional forays to the Art daunting than I would have liked. practice proved invaluable for my later Lloyd Wright to come to Chicago to save his creation. and one’s contribution to discussion was course, some of us became writers anyway, Institute and the opera. I had no creative Every class presented new revelations. stints as editor of anthologies as well as Professor Donald Bond, at the last meeting of his judged by a very high standard. We were because the kind of people attracted to powers at all during that period. The univer- The professors offered original ideas, of Epoch at Cornell and of New Letters at Eighteenth-Century Literature class, asked us to jot a few expected not to “answer” a question, but to that sort of education are often lovers of sity annihilated them. provocative suggestions for changing the the University of Missouri-Kansas City, lines about our professional futures. Thinking I was overstat- present an argument. You would be asked to language. I had been writing stories in high school, world, and reverential devotion to the clas- where my wife and I also founded and ing my possibilities, I wrote down “Writing, Editing, and compare Aristotle’s and Aquinas’s ideas of I had been writing—stories, poems, and I started writing again when I left sics. I cannot imagine what my life would have been without developed the N.P.R. radio program, New Letters On the Air. Teaching.” But like the old man bucking hay for the horses in virtue. You’d raise your hand and deliver a and plays—from the age of about seven. But Chicago. But the university was a total situa- immersion in great books inspired by the Hutchins curriculum, Still a good read and deserving reprinting, The Chicago Review Gary Snyder’s poem, that’s just what I’ve gone and done. reasoned exposition that would go on for during the time I was so sated and happy a tion, a benevolent dictatorship. Which was still a sharp contrast to the usual American teaching of Anthology brought together a host of discoveries from around several minutes. The professor would listen student at Chicago, writing was postponed. fine with me.* summarized answers to problems and condensed rehashes of the planet as well as U of C writers including Frank London and say, “How would you consider the One couldn’t give oneself to this exhilarating

PHILIP ROTH, AM’55 | WRITER editor (and later my first editor, at Houghton fanatical student—I was fanatic about writing KURT VONNEGUT, AM’71 | WRITER Later on, I was living on Cape Cod and needed Harvard, without a degree, and I had stopped Mifflin). Chicago Review published one of and books. I couldn’t understand ordinary to make a living. I wanted to teach high school, bothering Chicago. I received a letter from a guy hen I got to Chicago, I was thrilled my first terrible short stories—my first publi- life. I didn’t know what satisfactions it could thought a hell of a lot of the University of but I had no college degree. Since Chicago had at Chicago who had taken over the Division of by all the kindred souls. And there cation outside of the Bucknell College literary possibly yield. Nor did I think my fanaticism Chicago and Chicago didn’t think a damn turned down my thesis [after he completed the the Social Sciences. W was a city—and I hadn’t lived in a magazine. It’s a story by someone who’s was extraordinary. I was in a community I thing about me. I was a very fringe character coursework for the master’s degree], I had about He wrote, “I have just become Dean of Social city since I was a kid in Newark. It was all twenty years old. That’s all you can really say where it wasn’t extraordinary. Hyde Park’s in the Anthropology Department. . . . seven years of college and no degree. So I wrote Sciences here, I was looking through a file, and exhilarating: the university, the new city, my about it. . . . the last place I lived where books seemed at I look on the University of Chicago the people at Chicago a letter saying, “Hey, look, I found an enormous envelope with your name new friends, manly independence. I felt that I had nothing to do with any but literary the heart of everything. . . . community as a folk society—and I felt like an you guys, I’m way past a bachelor’s. Won’t you on it. So I read it.” And he added, “I am pleased I was a man—and I began to write. or bookish people. I should say bookish men. I prefer the writer I was in Chicago at outsider in it. I felt excluded by that bunch in the at least give me a bachelor’s degree?” to tell you that under the rules of the university, For the one year I was a student at With women I was more ecumenical. twenty-three, even if I can’t read his writing. department, although they had admitted me. And they said, “No. We’re sorry, but you you have always been entitled to a master’s Chicago, I took the standard master’s degree Neurotic classmates? I suppose I would But who doesn’t? Who wouldn’t? Unguarded! I wasn’t treated badly, but they already had would have to come back here and take a degree, for having published a book of quality.” program in literature. Good courses with qualify. High-strung. Volatile. Opinionated. I was actually unguarded. Hard for me to a family. course.”. . . There was no chance of my doing Cat’s Cradle is what qualified me for a Elder Olson, Morton Dauwen Zabel, and Argumentative. Playful. Animated. Quarrel- believe. I didn’t know who might be inspired by My ironic distance as a novelist has a lot to that; by then I had six kids. master’s degree. Napier Wilt, but also bibliography, historiog- some. I’m sure I was as neurotic as any class- my writing to want to smash me one right in the do with having been an anthropology student. So there I was, without any degree. The novel was anthropology, but invented raphy, Anglo-Saxon. Those classes were not mate I had. face, so I walked around with my kisser in the Anthropology made me a cultural relativist, Otherwise I would have become a teacher. I was anthropology: in it, I wrote about an invented for me. I was instinctively fanatical about seri- air as though I’d never heard of custard pies. which is what everybody ought to be. People the quite angry about it. society. I got to know the people who ran the ousness. Chicago didn’t make me like that, You know what I was? I was stupid! It was world over ought to be taught, seriously, that I wrote another thesis, about the mathemat- So I had been entitled to an M.A. all along. Chicago Review. George Starbuck was poetry but it sure didn’t stand in my way. I wasn’t a wonderful.* culture is a gadget, and that one culture is as ical shapes of stories. That one was rejected, too. Anyway, I like the University of Chicago. arbitrary as another. . . . It got worse. Finally I was on the faculty at They didn’t like me.* * Full versions of the essays by Roth, Sontag, and Vonnegut appear in Molly McQuade, ed., An Unsentimental Education: Writers and Chicago (University of Chicago Press, 1995). 8 FACULTY FOCUS FACULTY FOCUS 9

THE STROKE OF THE PAINTBRUSH ON A FRESH WHITE CANVAS.

The scratch of a pen on the blank page. The initial acts of painting and writing bear a strong resemblance to each other, but the result-

ing productions are quite different. On one hand, the painting freezes a moment of perception and hangs motionless in the gallery,

requiring those who would partake of its impact to travel to it (or, if it is more generous, it makes the trip to its viewers). On the other,

the work of literature circulates, falling into many hands and often propelled further by the kinesis of narrative. The poet Zbigniew

Herbert has noted the impossibility of translating between these two media. One thousand words do not paint the picture, and

a picture will never fully capture a given thousand words. Yet, the two arts have been engaged in a centuries’-long conversation.

painting and In one direction, the nature of that sis that assigns her the role of Venus in conversation is clear: literature provides Botticelli’s Primavera.Second, he depicts an archive of stories for painting to her playing the zampoña,a wind instru- represent. In the other direction, however, ment that is not only symbolically at odds literature the conversation is more varied and with her chastity but also the instrument Icomplicated: how does painting inform played by Polyphemus, the cyclops who is literature? Three scholars in different depart- enamored of her, in the painting by Sebastiano ments in the Division presently have their ears del Piombo that hangs adjacent to Raphael’s tuned to this conversation, examining episodes Triumph.Combined with a blush that Cervantes in this exchange from early modernity through bestows upon his Galatea, the effect of these the late twentieth century. overlapping references, in De Armas’s reading, ::::::::: examines Cervantes’s early play La Numancia sustains Galatea’s chastity toward men while In the late months of 1569, a twenty-two- and considers how its form, structure, and subtly incorporating her into a transformed year-old Spaniard named Miguel de Cervantes themes are influenced by Raphael’s Vatican homosexual tradition that acknowledges erotic y Saavedra ventured to Rome and entered into paintings and the interpretations of antiquity currents between women. This complexity is the service of the man who would become offered in those artworks. representative of Cervantes’s technique, which Cardinal Acquaviva. During his brief sojourn in De Armas’s current project, Quixotic never resorts to simple imitation but rather Italy, Cervantes was exposed to the art of the Frescoes: Cervantes and Italian Renaissance Art, plays upon the features of the archive, fashion- great Renaissance painters, which beautifully broadens the scope of his original investigation ing something novel and creating an alternative yoked the pagan with the Christian in a way that by examining the influence and appearance museum in language. would excite the young poet who lived under of a range of painters in Cervantes’s work, from Two upcoming exhibits at the University are the repressiveness of the Counter Reformation. his early pastoral La Galatea (1585) through advancing De Armas’s investigations. He and According to Frederick A. De Armas, the his posthumously published romance Persiles y Smart Museum Mellon Projects Coordinator Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Spanish in the Sigismunda (1617). Cervantes uses Raphael’s Elizabeth Rodini will curate an exhibit called Department of Romance Languages and Litera- Triumph of Galatea to fashion the eponymous “The Painted Text: Picturing Narrative in tures, this early journey left an indelible impres- heroine of his pastoral romance. Sharing the European Art,” which will be shown at the sion on Cervantes, whose work exhibits a per- work’s Neo-Platonic aesthetics which exalt Smart Museum from spring through summer sistent desire to return to both Italy and the Galatea’s chastity over Venus’ carnality, 2003. With Alice Schreyer, Director of the Renaissance. In Cervantes, Raphael, and the Cervantes’s Galatea departs from Raphael’s in University of Chicago Library’s Special Classics (Cambridge UP, 1998), De Armas two ways. First, he situates Galatea in an ekphra- Collections Research Center, De Armas will 10 FACULTY FOCUS FACULTY FOCUS 11

{PAINTING AND LITERATURE} Istudy nineteenth-century Il trovatore,to the dismay of colleagues ductors and companies who don’t care, WHAT Italian opera, and I teach it to working out tone rows in Webern’s twelve- who won’t change a note or an expression my students, both undergrad- tone compositions.) After learning what it mark in a score they have already learned MATTERS organize an exhibition entitled “Writing for the upon what Shallcross terms a “journey of the eye”: of English manufacture and reproductive uates and graduates, because meant to do scholarly research, I sailed (some of them—musically illiterate—by Eyes from Antiquity to the Renaissance” which the poet visually absorbs the work and, with technologies made it possible for middle-class TO ME I love it: I love the emotions (literally) to Paris for a doctoral dissertation rote). Leave us alone; don’t tell us; we don’t and dramaturgical intensity on the adventures of Italian composers in want to know. will run from April to October 2003. visionary perception, goes into and through it. consumers to own objects aspiring to the category & WHY ::::::::: Far from the frozen instant of modernist epipha- “Art”. W hile influenced by excursions abroad, of its characters; the beauty, the French capital. I soon learned that in What seemed frivolous in 1965 seems The peregrinations of poets and the artwork they nies, Herbert’s experience is languorous and the PRB was focused on the more proximate grace, and power of its music; the 1965 very little was known about this so no longer. My experiences, though, have encounter on these travels is also the topic of a sustained. He surveys the work’s surface, rejecting social and aesthetic stakes of art. Like the narrator complex culture that fostered it and music. Every time I picked up a manu- sensitized me to the limits of my own forthcoming work by Boz˙ena Shallcross,Associate the text in the painting that begs to be interpreted of the poet Mark Doty’s “The Ruined Boat,” exported its masterworks throughout script or printed edition of the same opera expertise (even in Italian opera). As teach- Professor of Polish in the Department of Slavic as an allegory on restraint. Instead, his they didn’t “need to Europe and America. My passion for this there were surprises: here one aria, there ers we must provide encouragement and Languages and Literatures. In Through the Poet’s eye scrutinizes the three vessels in the go anywhere” because repertory dates back to my teens and has another, here a happy ending, there a tragic support for students in avenues they wish Eye (Northwestern UP,2002), Shallcross traces the foreground, the spectral bridle haunt- “description itself [was] only intensified through the years. When I one, here a heroic tenor, there the same to pursue, give them tools, and get out of travels of Polish poets Adam Zagajewski and ing the middle field of vision, and a kind of travel” and told my own teachers in graduate school role sung by a mezzo-soprano en travesti. their way. When I served as Dean of the Zbigniew Herbert through New York and the dark void of the black back- they could “study all that I wanted to work on bel canto opera Before long I realized that someone had to Division of the Humanities, I wanted to Amsterdam, respectively, and of Russian poet ground: a passage from visibility to day in an orient of Joseph Brodsky through Venice. While each of invisibility. The black background— color.” these writers from “the Other Europe” has estab- silent, solitary—inspires the same But, they did not lished a reputation in poetry, Shallcross turns our feelings in the poet and resonates with study in just color: attention to their equally accomplished prose the illumination he cannot express, words were a major philip gossett which chronicles their encounters with art abroad. a presence marked only by a void. component of their Prose is sometimes seen as a degradation of the ::::::::: artistic production as poet’s art. Brodsky suggests as much when he While Herbert moves from the still well. For Elizabeth When I told my own teachers in graduate school that writes that a “poet turning to prose ...is like the life into a void, the Pre-Raphaelite Helsinger, the John shift from a gallop to a trot, a time-exposure pho- Brotherhood moved in a reverse path. Matthews Manly Dis- I wanted to work on bel canto opera... they looked at tograph of a monument, or Apollo’s one-year ser- In the soaring void of the great gothic tinguished Service Pro- me with bewilderment, as if to say: “Why is a bright vice as a shepherd for the flocks of King Admetus.” cathedrals illuminated by the glow of fessor in the Depart- As Wordsworth notes, the prison of a more con- stained glass, the members of the PRB discovered ments of English and Art History, the proximity of young man like you ruining his career?” stricting form no prison is. It may be those very a stilled attentiveness, not unlike the “unheard visual and literary forms in the works of the PRB things that Brodsky figures as loss—the slower music” Keats discerns in his reflection on the and within the oeuvres of its individual members (the works of Rossini, Bellini, and approach to an object more distant in memory as Grecian urn. William Morris and Dante Gabriel makes them ripe for examining anew the relation- Donizetti) they looked at me with bewil- well as purpose—best suit the expression of epipha- Rossetti, the PRB’s leading figures, also recognized ship between art and literature. In her current book derment, as if to say: “Why is a bright nies experienced by these poets in foreign locales. this quality in the paintings they encountered project, Pre-Raphaelite Arts: Poetry, Painting, young man like you ruining his career?” More metaphysical than spiritual, these experi- abroad. In such works as Hans Memling’s Mystical Collection, and Design in the 1860s, Helsinger Study Beethoven. Study Renaissance ences are of a distinct order. In contrast to Marriage of St. Catherine and Giorgione’s Fête reflects on Morris and Rossetti’s artistic ambidex- music. Study Mozarabic chant (you might the Joycean epiphany in which deep spiritual Champêtre in which the detailed, realistic visual terity,following their minds as they think simulta- become President ...).But I persisted in understanding follows from serendipitous rendering transported the viewer out of his senses neously about art (including particular works my wayward desires. encounter with trivial objects, these “artistic by making visible the sound of music or a person’s of art) through poetic and visual forms. Rossetti, Not that I knew what I wanted to do epiphanies” require the stimulus of a visual touch, Rossetti and Morris detected an antidote for instance, described the stilled attentiveness he with this music. I had been listening to masterpiece. The visual masterpiece conjoins with to the ills of their historical moment, just as discovers in Memling in a sonnet and, in a paint- Metropolitan Opera broadcasts from an sort out these confusions. I’ve been sorting Philip Gossett is the Robert W. Reneker the movement of travel and the poet’s visionary Cervantes did in the paintings of Raphael. Unlike ing like his Annunciation,attempted to convey the early age, and I spent many Saturday after- ever since: the editions of the works of Distinguished Service Professor of Music and sensibility to release a rush of emotion and under- Cervantes who felt rescued from Counter- same quality of attention by depicting a just- noons as a high-school standee at the Old Rossini and Verdi, of which I am general the Humanities. From 1989 to 2000, he served standing which seems, on the one hand, to short- Reformation repression by the pagan excess and awakened Virgin shrinking away from an intrud- Met. As an undergraduate, first as a physics editor, are the fruit of collaborative as Dean of the Division of the Humanities. circuit the writer’s poetic sensibility but, on the refined composition of Renaissance paintings, the ing, muscular Gabriel. Helsinger focuses on areas major, then (after seeing the light) as a research with wonderful colleagues from other, to beg for some approximate expression PRB traced the staleness of modern life to the ide- of Pre-Raphaelite inventiveness, examining, among music major, I sang through operas, read Edinburgh to Tokyo, from Los Angeles to ensure that every student and faculty in language. alizations that Raphael helped inaugurate, discov- other things: how they employed color as an librettos, wrote warmed-over-lightly-Kurt- St. Petersburg. member in this Division (and throughout The artworks that propel these writers into ering in the work of Giorgione and Memling a expressive, tonal, and structuring feature; how Weillish theater scores, accompanied at the What has been most exciting about this the University) was convinced, as I have epiphanic contemplation are often not the mas- naturalism that challenged the self-consciously Morris used pattern in visual design, as a principle piano choruses and individual singers, and work is that it has put me into daily contact been for thirty-five years, that the Univer- terpieces enshrined in canons of Western art. classical tastes of the Royal Academy. of literary composition, and as way of compre- played chamber music. My trusty tape with singers, conductors, directors. Our sity of Chicago is second to none in Herbert, for instance, passes over the Mona Lisa But in the gothic cathedrals and medieval illu- hending art’s social function; and, the effects recorder provided inexpensive operatic new editions attract the attention of supporting the best, most innovative with a yawn, but is catapulted into seizures minated manuscripts, the PRB also discovered intimate relationships exerted on the productions listening for cold nights with Kierkegaard Riccardo Muti, James Levine, Claudio scholarly and critical work both in well- of insight by Torrentius’ Still Life With a Bridle,a something beyond the aesthetic: a moment, of this fraternity. The PRB made art about art, and and partial differential equations. Abbado, Riccardo Chailly, Renée Fleming, tilled fields and in fields yet to be discov- modest work that was once used to cover a barrel as Ruskin notes in “The Nature of the Gothic,” because they did so in a double sense, their works I never took a course in which Italian Marilyn Horne, Sam Ramey, Dario Fò, and ered. It has been an institution that under- of beans. Traveling through the National Museum when art was (in Morris’s words) “the expression in different media seem to comment on each IN HIS OWN WORDS opera was highlighted. (Once, in an under- Jonathan Miller, to name only a few of the stands my passion and makes my in Amsterdam, Herbert is arrested by the still life’s of man’s pleasure in labor.”The PRB’s understand- other in slightly different languages, prodding us graduate analysis seminar, I insisted on remarkable artists with whom I have scholarship and teaching possible. I am “suspicious simplicity.” If he stops, it is only phys- ing that labor and object are both part to think differently about the relations between studying the tonal structure of Verdi’s worked. There are also frustrations: con- very fortunate. So are we all. ❏ ically, for, in his moment of arrest, he embarks of art’s “work” came at a time when the success word and picture. ❏ 12 OFFICE HOURS OFFICE HOURS 13

ART AND SOCIAL CHANGE Art is sometimes seen as a special reserve, a pastoral scene into which we retire otherwise unspoken, find articulation. Wu Hung considers how Chinese art since the late 1970s has been a to assuage the harsher edges of modern life. In times of crisis and great social upheaval, it often operates in this way barometer of the social and economic changes introduced by Deng Xiaoping's reforms and open-door policy, by offering familiar images which feel strangely out of time. But, as the writers acknowledge in the while Lauren Berlant examines why Americans turned to the writing and reading of poetry as a therapeutic response following essays, art also becomes in these moments a medium through which political and social arguments, to September 11. art & social c hange

t is a truism for today’s art historians that experimental artists themselves were rapidly inter- or many in the U.S. who continue to tional. This is to say that post-traumatic narra- the course of art is inevitably affected by nationalized. Some of these artists emigrated and witness the events surrounding 9-11-01, tive always fails to contain the overwhelmed external factors, among which social gained fame abroad; others remained local while with its crashing planes, falling bodies, feeling that motivates it: we follow the rhythm I cultivating global ties. Numerous books and mag- F of trauma rather than orchestrating it like so SOCIAL CHANGE change looms large. The recent development of weeping officials, performing celebrities, flag- Chinese art offers dramatic evidence for such azines on contemporary art have been published studded raiments, commemorative CDs, and many maestros. causality: not long ago this art was reduced to over the past twenty years, and many experimen- POETRY, troubled survivors, the concept of trauma can After the events of 9-11-01, the U.S. press AND Communist propaganda posters and Mao’s por- tal exhibitions have been staged in all sorts of pub- describe a new boundary, marking a new space of pointed out repeatedly that Americans en masse traits, but now young “experimental” Chinese lic and non-public spaces. Clashes between the POLITICS, collective and individual experience. In psycho- were “working through” the experience by writing CONTEMPORARY artists travel to every major exhibition in the avant-garde and political authorities have never analytic terms, trauma occurs when an event that and reading poetry. “Working through” describes world from Venice to Sydney with government- ceased. But to many observers, two government- AND WAR happens anywhere within your purview cuts you the practices people establish in order to come to CHINESE ART issued passports. From a sociological point of sponsored contemporary art exhibitions during off from yourself, as though splitting you into terms with overpowering events. W. H. Auden’s view, this startling transformation of art is itself the past two years—the 2000 Shanghai Biennale selves that seem to live simultaneously in incom- “September 1, 1939,”was cited in particular as the part of a broad transformation of Chinese soci- and the 2001 Living in Time in Berlin—reflect a mensurable historical moments. Post-traumati- most read and resonant piece: “I sit in one of the ety brought about by Deng Xiaoping’s economic new level of normalization of Western-style con- cally, you are now what you could not have been dives /On Fifty-Second Street /Uncertain and reforms and open-door policy: one can trace the temporary art in China. before, and you can never again be what you afraid /As the clever hopes expire /Of a low “social changes” in Chinese art step by step from The close relationship between contemporary were, but you can also never stop being the person dishonest decade.” It sounds here like Auden, the late 70s, when these reforms were first put Chinese art and the country’s sweeping transfor- who was once irreducibly different. After all, the evincing a serious lyrical cosmopolitan despair, WU HUNG into practice. mation has encouraged the compilation of a LAUREN BERLANT traumatized subject has a sensual memory of a almost mourns the passing of an era of shallow To summarize some basic facts: unofficial art macro-history of this art, which interprets artists change that is both personal and depersonalizing: cleverness. But this is the same Auden who wrote, HARRIE A. VANDERSTAPPEN societies and exhibitions appeared in 1979, fol- and artworks against large social and political PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF trauma enters your body through your senses and of Yeats, movements. Taking a textual form and largely lowed by a nationwide “avant-garde” movement your thoughts; in its wake you remain you while ...Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry. DISTINGUISHED SERVICE PROFESSOR reflecting an academic interest, this historical nar- ENGLISH LANGUAGE in the middle to late 80s. The 90s saw the emer- also dying a little, and entering a new way of Now Ireland has her madness rative contributes to our knowledge of contempo- IN THE DEPARTMENTS OF ART HISTORY gence of commercial galleries and private muse- AND LITERATURE; being. Trauma’s changes are thus both direct and and her weather still, rary art by documenting specific conditions and ums of experimental art—a radical branch of indirect. This is why a veritable alphabet of adjec- For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives AND EAST ASIAN LANGUAGES stimuli for the creation of art in a Communist DIRECTOR, THE CENTER FOR contemporary art that self-consciously challenges tives for characterizing the post-traumatic In the valley of its making where executives country, which is nevertheless attracting numer- AND CIVILIZATIONS official, academic and popular art with its “cut- GENDER STUDIES national present has emerged: as an attempt to Would never want to tamper, flows on south ous overseas investors as well as a growing number ting-edge” media and controversial subjects. shape an event whose repercussions are unpre- From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs, Independent curators and art critics played of international curators. On the other hand, this dictable and whose dislocations are at once psy- increasing roles in advocating this art, and the Continued on page 14 chological, metropolitan, national, and transna- Continued on page 15

“I F CONTEMPORARY CHINESE ART HAS anything to do “ THIS IS TO SAY THAT POST-TRAUMATIC narrative with social change, such change cannot remain simply an external frame, but must be inter- always fails to contain the overwhelmed feeling that motivates it: we follow the rhythm of nalized as intrinsic features and qualities of this art.” trauma rather than orchestrating it like so many maestros.” 14 OFFICE HOURS OFFICE HOURS 15

WU—Continued from page 12 emphasize artists’ different responses to common the anxiety and silence adrift in these modern BERLANT—Continued from page 13 what makes something traumatic is that no par- shaped subjectivity even as they may also speak to social problems. urban ruins. ticular event can be said to have “caused” the the majority outsider public. In these forms there macro-narrative has little impact on these cura- To illustrate such responses we may take a brief Urban development pushes experimental Raw towns that we believe and die in; post-traumatic sense of personal and social nega- is a different aesthetic than that of event-related tors, who rarely select artists and works based on a look at a single aspect of recent Chinese art, which artists farther and farther to a city’s peripheries. it survives, tion that characterizes many individuals’ sense of trauma. More hardwired to everyday modes and textbook, but are guided, often spontaneously and is its often emphasized relationship with the trans- Although such movement is again a common A way of happening, a mouth. wounding. People on the bottom of racial, class, spaces, an aesthetic of ordinary violence is more intuitively, by what they find new and compelling formation of the city. This transformation is the experience of struggling artists around the world, (“In Memory of W. B. Yeats”) gendered, religious, ethnic, and regional hierar- likely to involve narrative forms that witness prob- in visual forms. context and content of many works created by the specificity of a particular place inspires chies, for example, are usually born into a world lems of survival in the time of living on. We must realize that such spontaneity and experimental artists, who have developed different specific works. Some of the most compelling per- Art, a way of happening, a mouth: a thing through that takes for granted, more or less, their devalu- At issue is the relation between the particular intuition, though alien to many academic art his- visual languages in a shared social environment. formance projects in contemporary Chinese art which the unofficial flows and spaces of history ation. In this sense environmental trauma is not event that has a date and that can be marked by torians, play crucial roles in advancing contem- For several years the photographer Rong Rong has were produced in the so-called Chinese East Village, speak. After 9-11, poems were placed all over the about surprise, the way event trauma is: it is clocks and on maps, and the global situation that porary art by leading to the discovery of new been obsessed with taking pictures of torn posters a tumbledown residential district on Beijing’s landscape near Ground Zero; the web makes new about the experience of structural subordination, requires different numbers. Let’s call this The styles and promoting new trends. For example, left in half-demolished houses which are too east fringe. From 1993 to 1994, a group of immi- archives of post-traumatic poesie written by the a condition that produces a sense of ongoing vul- Actuarial Imaginary. X number dead, x number this is how a European curator selected as many superficial to reflect any real existence of their pre- grant artists from the provinces founded their famous and anonymous. Additionally, almost nerability or powerlessness. People who come of planes, x amount insurance companies will have as twenty young experimental Chinese artists vious owners. The sculptor Zhan Wang is likewise community there. They were attracted to this immediately thereafter, New York galleries opened into being under these conditions tend to see vio- to pay out to x claimants, x number of dollars for the 1999 Venice Biennale, more than the fascinated by torn and broken forms, but his instal- garbage-filled place by its cheap housing as well as exhibitions of professional and amateur pho- lence as permeating potentially every space and the Congress gave to the airline industry, x number combined number of American and Italian par- lations emphasize the vanishing of the human sub- its ugliness, and conceived moving into the Village tographs witnessing the numbered events—9-11, social relation. Environmental trauma points of workers laid off by that industry, x number ticipants. More generally, visual spontaneity ject by staging manufactured “human shells” in as a form of voluntary self-exile. Deriving inspira- Ground Zero—and the responses radiating from thus toward ordinary relations of identity, power, of dollars the administration has earmarked for underscores any exhibition of experimental art: ruined buildings. tion from the Village’s “hellishness” in contrast to them, like circles of water from a dropped stone. and authority. corporate tax relief, x amount the economy’s

PROFESSOR WU HUNG PROFESSOR LAUREN BERLANT is the author of The Wu Liang Shrine: The Ideology of Early Chinese Pictorial is the author of The Anatomy of National Art (1989), Monumentality in Early Fantasy: Hawthorne, Utopia, and Chinese Art and Architecture (1995), and Everyday Life (1991) and The Queen of The Double Screen: Medium and America Goes to Washington City: Representation in Chinese Painting (1996). Essays on Sex and Citizenship (1997). He has curated many exhibits of Chinese She has also edited Intimacy (1998), art, including Transience: Chinese a special issue of Critical Inquiry, and, Experimental Art at the End of the with Lisa Duggan, Our Monica, Twentieth Century (1999) and Exhibiting Ourselves: The Clinton Affair and the Experimental Art in China (2000). Public Interest (2001).

while the supposed novelty of such exhibitions Both artists are stimulated by the large-scale Above: Rong Rong, Untitled No. 1b, 1996–1997, black and white photograph, 20” What does it mean that these responses took the People do not tend to go straight to poetry to productivity plummeted, x degree of stock market defies historical determinism, their stimulating demolitions that have become part of normal life x 24”. Right: Her Blue-Moon Piano. © 2001 by Jill Casid & María DeGuzmán, form of art rather than, say, of opinion—a letter witness or survive this kind of suffering, though flux, x percentage cuts in the interest rate, x num- and often challenging display generates instanta- in Beijing and other Chinese cities since the early SPIR: Conceptual Photography (http://www.home.earthlink.net/~mdeguzman). to the editor, a public protest? What kinds of there is a long tradition of dissenting poetry that bers of citizens killed in Afghanistan, x number of neous response. An experimental art exhibition 90s. Following China’s “economic miracle,”invest- “heavenly” downtown Beijing, they identified experience does art provide for a public over- marks historical subordination. But members of people watching the news on y and z cable venue. thus always poses unanswered questions, but also ment poured into the country from Hong Kong, themselves with the place in their works. It is in this whelmed by news genres? How does the relatively subordinated populations are just as likely to seek It is easy for intellectuals and other skeptics to confines the viewers’ responses to the display Taiwan, and the West. Thousands and thousands spirit that Zhan Huan performed his now infa- contained space of the lyric mirror back post- performative consolation, going toward escapist make light of phrases we see on the news, like itself. (An excessive textual framing of a contem- of old houses have been destroyed to make room mous 12 Square Meters:covering his naked torso traumatic sublimity? How does it matter that the aesthetics whose content matters little: for example, “America’s lost innocence,” just as it is easy for porary art exhibition often effectively kills the for glittering hotels and shopping malls. Although with a foul-smelling substance to attract hundreds news and the artwork may have similar aims, to they might go to the cartoon grotesquerie of mass feminists to curl the collective lip at seeing, once exhibition by transferring authority from image demolition is a regular feature of any metropolis of flies, he sat motionless for an hour in the change people and the world by changing emo- culture, where the aesthetic performance of other again, the United States characterized as virgin to word.) From this approach, if contemporary in the world, the enormity of the destruction that Village’s dirtiest public toilet. tions about the world? How are we trained to people’s pleasure and pain provides a kind of soil that breeds innocent people who must be sur- Chinese art has anything to do with social change, China has experienced in recent years has had In addition to demolition sites and urban move toward art’s eloquence to mark what seems breathing room to release oneself from one’s own prised, all the time, by the violence of bad patri- such change cannot remain simply an external profound psychological impact on city residents “wasteland,” the emerging new cityscape has also beyond words? Could the poem that witnesses life or at least to diminish one’s anxieties. (See archal uncivilized men. We have heard this all frame, but must be internalized as intrinsic fea- and artists. In theory, demolition is a condition for generated unprecedented “art spaces.” Among collective or personal trauma now constitute Preston Sturges’s Sullivan’s Travels for a more or before: these are clichés of imperialism. In this tures and qualities of this art. Since I have pri- a city’s renewal; in actuality, large-scale demoli- such spaces is the basement. With the construc- mainly, as Adorno has suggested in another con- less literal exploration of this phenomenon.) The case soft patriarchy in the U.S. looks liberating, marily been conducting research on contempo- tions have brought about a growing alienation tion of numerous high-rise buildings in Beijing text, a form of pseudo-depth or pseudo-agency? phenomenon of subcultural art, which comes from practically nonexistent, compared to what is rary Chinese art through curatorial projects, I between the city and its residents: they no longer and Shanghai, broad basements with maze-like In other words, when does turning to poetry sub- the historical experience of collective social nega- shown to us of the Taliban. Clichés reveal which have been advocating this image-based approach belong to one another. Works by Rong Rong and interiors have added a new dimension to the stitute for turning to politics, as opposed to being tion, has mobilized and challenged the lyric form’s opinions have had the privilege of being repeated in relating this art to social change. This type of Zhan Wang do not represent demolition as a spe- existing urban spatial structure, as well as a new a way of engaging its scenes? convention of subjective universality: for example, into truths. This is why it matters what we say interpretation discards the overall framework of a cific event, but rather register a suspended tempo- source of artistic imagination. Works created and Another definition of trauma locates it not in rap music, women’s culture, and even Philip Roth’s even or especially when we speak conventionally, macro-history, but forges micro-narratives that rality between the past and the future, capturing Continued on page 25 an event, but in an environment. In this model novels, speak to a particular experience of history- Continued on page 25 16 FACULTY FOCUS FACULTY FOCUS 17

spectatorship. In her work, Stewart combines careful historical research on the physical condi- tions of film reception with an analysis of what Yuri Tsivian, Professor in the Department of Art ANOTHER History and in the Committee on Cinema and Media Studies, calls the “cultural reception” of cinema—those active reflections on film view- ing by cultural figures of the time. Since the Great Migration of 1916–19, in which large numbers chicago school of African-Americans migrated from rural Southern towns to Northern urban centers, coin- NOW IN ITS FOURTH YEAR as a Ph.D.-granting cept that will be further explored in an cides with the onset of the classical Hollywood program, the Committee on Cinema and upcoming international symposium spon- system, Stewart’s work depends heavily on the Media Studies (CMS) has witnessed contin- sored by the Committee on Cinema and nuanced notion of the classical described above. ual growth in student and faculty activity. Media Studies (see insert below).“Vernacular In a forthcoming article in Critical Inquiry, Regular events such as reading groups, film modernism” implies a broader understand- Stewart states: “I read black spectatorship as the series, and conferences organized in the past ing of modernist aesthetics—one that does creation of literal and symbolic spaces in which few years have fostered a formidable intellec- not limit itself to a lineage of artistic move- African Americans reconstructed their individ- tual environment for the creation of original ments such as Cubism or Futurism but ual and collective identities in response to the work in the field. One particularly rich area of rather includes a whole range of artistic and classical system, and in the wake of migration’s inquiry in the University of Chicago commu- cultural practices that emerged with mod- fragmenting effect.” Her book-length study of nity is the study of spectatorship in relation ernization and have shaped the everyday this topic entitled Migrating to the Movies: The to the culture of modernity out of which cin- sensory experience of modernity—such as Making of Black Urban Film Culture, 1893–1920 ema emerged—a concern that has become fashion, design, advertising, architecture, will soon be published by University of ❏ one of the signatures of cinema scholarship and the photographic media. As movie- California Press. at Chicago. Tom Gunning, Professor of Art going in growing urban areas around the History and in the Committee on Cinema globe was a central facet of this experience, Still from the film, and Media Studies, was one of the first to bal- the study of film reception provides a key to Lonesome (Paul Fejos, 1928) ance a concern with cinema’s narrative understanding the development of mod- dimensions with a concern for its appeal to ernism in this sense. spectators. In his influential essay, “The Hansen uses the concept of vernacular ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its modernism to rework the notion of classical Spectator and the Avant-Garde,” Gunning cinema which governed Hollywood produc- asserts that “[e]very change in film history tion from roughly the late teens to 1960. The ceeded as an international modernist idiom CONFERENCE implies a change in its address to the specta- more technical definitions aside, the system of on a mass basis,”Hansen argues,“it did so not tor, and each period constructs its spectator classical Hollywood filmmaking was defined because of its universal narrative form but CINEMA AS VERNACULAR MODERNISM in a new way.” by the imperative of telling a story and creat- because it meant different things to different Spectatorship is also a major concern in ing the impression of a closed fictional world. people and publics, both home and abroad.” MAY 17–18, 2002 Nthe work of Miriam Hansen, the Ferdinand The dominance of this system worldwide has She suggests that since at home Hollywood Schevill Distinguished Service Professor in been a key topic in academic film studies since had to forge a rather robust idiom to appeal The Committee on Cinema and of Lonesome (Paul Fejos, 1928) Dudley Andrew,Yale the Humanities and founding chair of CMS. the late 1960s. What Hansen questions is the to diverse ethnic constituencies in the domes- Media Studies will convene a at 6 pm at Max Palevsky Cinema. Edward Dimendberg, Michigan In her book Babel and Babylon, she has characterization of cinema as simply the most tic market, even as it practiced racial exclu- conference on May 17–18, 2002 In this stunningly photographed Rosalind Morris, Columbia traced the development of the relations “natural” way of engaging the viewer’s atten- sion, it offered a greater translatability to on the notion of cinema as romance, two people find and lose between film and spectator in terms of filmic tion, a universal and timeless mode of tell- diverse publics abroad than other national “vernacular modernism,” a concept one another on Coney Island only to Laura Mulvey, Birbeck College, London address and the actual conditions of recep- ing stories. Instead, she argues that many film industries. The study of the varied ways recently proposed by Professor discover that they had been living in Tejaswini Niranjana, Centre for Miriam Hansen (see main article). the same boarding house all along. tion, from cinema’s early years in five-cent Hollywood films offered their audience an in which diverse groups of spectators make the Study of Culture and Society, Conference participants will examine Director Fejos brings to life the sites theaters to the emergence of what is known aesthetic horizon that helped them recognize sense of particular stars, theater spaces, and Bangalore, India both inside and outside of film studies as and negotiate the historical experience of film genres shows how deceptive the mono- the implications and usefulness of work, love, and leisure in the of this concept in dealing with modern city. James Schamus, Columbia “classical Hollywood.” Her most recent work modernization. It is this ability—above and lithic conception of classical cinema can be. SPEAKERS AND DISCUSSANTS INCLUDE approaches these issues through the notion beyond the well-known economic and politi- Jacqueline Stewart, Assistant Professor in examples from both American More information on the confer- Lesley Stern, UCSD of film as “vernacular modernism”—a con- cal pressures—which enabled Hollywood to the Department of English and in the Tcinema and various cinemas ence may be obtained by contacting Jacqueline Stewart, Chicago dominate the world market, though not Committee on Cinema and Media Studies, around the globe. the Committee on Cinema and Media Zhang Zhen, NYU BY KAVEH ASKARI everywhere at the same time and in the same extends this inquiry to the historical and The conference will open on Studies at [email protected] Ph.D. Student, Cinema and Media Studies way. “If classical Hollywood cinema suc- theoretical questions of African-American Friday, May 17, with a screening or by phone at 773/834-1077. CINEMA AND MEDIA STUDIES ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ 18 STUDENT SPOTLIGHT STUDENT SPOTLIGHT 19

A WOMAN—her negligee slipped off her left shoulder, her fetishes transgress privately and criminal photographs legs encased in boldly striped stockings—sits on a chair, transgress publicly. leaning enough on a nearby table to angle her glance toward a Shelton was awarded a Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation glass of rye whiskey she holds up in her right hand, almost as Dissertation Fellowship, enabling her to perform the kind of though she were about to lead a toast, almost as though she empirical, archival work that, in the words of Berlant, make were making a connoisseur’s assessment. This image stares the project “persuasive and memorable.” Shelton investigates out from the pages of the New York Times Magazine,repro- three case studies from the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth duced for an article on a recent exhibition of E. J. Bellocq’s centuries. Victorian barrister and minor poet Arthur Munby photography at New York’s Julie Saul Gallery. Bellocq’s collected photographs of working women, most notably his “Storyville Portraits” consist of photographs that he took of maid-servant and lover, Hannah Cullwick. Victorian philan- prostitutes in New Orleans in the early twentieth century. In thropist Dr. Thomas J. Barnardo maintained a photographic discussing these photographs, the reporter studio at the heart of his charity for the Times incorporates Bellocq’s work empire of mission homes for street into a history of the prostitute’s appear- urchins. Finally, there is the aforemen- ance in art beginning with Manet’s cast- tioned Bellocq. “Who Framed Hannah ing of a recognizable courtesan as a Cullwick?: Authenticity and Anxiety in Titianesque Venus. But this proposed the Arthur Munby Archive,”the chapter history also insists on the naturalness of that resulted from Shelton’s research at the images (and, by extension, the trans- Cambridge University, was awarded parency of the photographic medium). the Center for Gender Studies’ Ruth For Emily Shelton,a graduate student Murray Essay Prize in 2000. in the Department of English Language Elaine Hadley, Associate Professor of and Literature, such accounts of these English, notes that, in addition to the images are blind to the their “secret uniqueness of the archive and the orig- under lives.” Bellocq’s “Storyville Portraits” inality of the ideas, Shelton’s work is These images reorganize what it means to LIVE, to desire, to have social value, worlds { producing personhood that is endangered and D ANGEROUS. . . {

—found unlabelled and defaced many marked by an artfulness of expression THE SECRET LIVES OF PHOTOGRAPHS years after his death—are examples of that recalls the critical writing of a images that come to renovate person- poet-critic like Susan Stewart. It will hood through an interplay between the not come as a surprise that Shelton has developing technology of the camera also recently completed her first novel, and the coming into visibility of “low” Memphis. Memphis is based on a true life. These images reorganize what it crime story of three socially outcast means to live, to desire, to have social adolescents from West Memphis, value, producing a personhood that is Arkansas, who were convicted of mur- endangered and dangerous, existing dering three seven-year-old boys as where the boundaries between public part of a Satanic cult ritual in a and private are flexible and desirably wooded area bordering Interstate 55, ambivalent. In Shelton’s reading, social known as the Robin Hood Hills. While and visual relations to the photographic researching the novel, Shelton made image are animated by a “melancholy several trips to Arkansas to attend realism” which, while born at the conjunction of photography’s court proceedings, conduct interviews (including several origins and the underground’s visual accessibility, finds further with Damien Echols, the central defendant who now sits on articulation in such contemporary genres as “true crime.” Death Row), and examine case files. She has already begun According to Lauren Berlant, Professor of English Language another novel, Alice Christie, about an inventor’s daughter and Literature, Shelton’s work “reconceives the history and who disappears in Battle Creek, Michigan in 1896 and the conventions of sensationalist discourse in the public sphere” two young women who surface in Detroit fifteen years later by asking what the norms are against which such things as claiming to be Alice. ❏ 20 ON CAMPUS ON CAMPUS 21

F OR THE UNCOUPLED,Valentine’s Day is Theater, who begins the class with a short anec- sink dripping tepid water; the sound of everyone consider the possible range of family formations simple kitchen table that will be the locus of some that the energy and enthusiasm that emerge perhaps rivaled only by New Year’s Eve as the dote about her own Valentine’s woes. She then reading and me wanting to talk.For Coleman, and how those might be represented in their par- catastrophe? in Coleman’s classroom are matched by “an most loathed day on the calendar. Although this steers the conversation to a different kind of love, such particular images bridge that crucial gap ticularity. Conversely, they consider what specific The entrance of a black-jacketed, fedora-hat- agility that combines frenetic theatrical inven- year has seen a mild winter in Chicago, the over- the love between family members, through an between the narrative urge to tell a story and the images allow us to know about a given family. ted figure slowly petting a cat begins to answer tion with an intense intellectual commitment cast grayness amplifies the holiday’s oppressive exercise that requires the class participants to share epistemological longing to know what is being Moving between these two poles of examination the question. With almost magisterial privilege, that is quintessentially U of C.” effects. Confusing expressions of love with an image or impression that evokes home. Sitting represented. is an experience familiar to participants in the figure sits behind the table and motions to In her short time at the University, Coleman exchanges in material goods (boxed candy, in a circle in the black-walled, black-floored These brief examples open into a considera- “Text and Performance,” a class that continually the others to enter. These figures, crowned in has sustained the successes of her predecessor, stuffed monkeys with red satin capes, Mylar bal- design lab behind the stage of the third-floor the- tion of the family, which is germane not only to asks how critical analysis can be a performative green fedoras (perhaps coloring the scene in longtime University Theater Director Curt loons with trite announcements emblazoned on ater in the Reynolds Club, the students return a the day’s theatrical text but also to the critical text practice and how performance can serve as a avarice’s hues?), escort a young man who takes Columbus, and has introduced a number of her their surfaces), the holiday seems a fitting time to barrage of staccato images: hair; entropy; cigarette that has been assigned, Claude Levi-Strauss’s The critical endeavor. a seat in front of the seated figure. The seated own innovations. One initiative that Coleman launch a discussion of Molière’s The Miser smoke; Louie the dog.Nodding at the replies, View from Afar.In chapters on family, marriage, By problematizing and defamiliarizing the figure speaks in a gravelly voice not unlike brings to UT this year is the Friday Afternoon (1668), whose eponymous character often con- Coleman prods her students toward further and kinship, Levi-Strauss explores how those family, the discussion prepares the students Marlon Brando’s Don Corleone, informing us Lab Series in which members of the University fuses love and money. specificity: Is the cigarette smoke stale or fresh? Is it categories are historically, economically, and for staging scenes from The Miser.Molière’s where we are: in the world of the mafia, another community meet with guest artists in a work- The appropriateness of this discussion on this from Marlboro Lights or Parliaments? The next geographically contingent, never “natural” in play presents the family in vexed terms: blood family structure superimposed upon the array of shop environment to discuss such things as day is not lost on Heidi Coleman, Lecturer in the round of replies takes up her challenge: peeled themselves but always occupying a core position ties fail to produce the expected familial feeling College and the new Director of University grapefruit on the kitchen table; dirty dishes in the in the structure of a given society. Students then while economic considerations and other com- mon interests do. The scenes are rarely straight Theater, then, becomes an experimental playground renditions of text. Instead, true to the course’s view of performance as an intellectual act, for working out ideas with other people, ANALYZING PERFORMANCE, PERFORMING ANALYSIS students put pressure on the text by adapting it to new situations and locales in ways that exceed an association which itself resembles a family. mere transposition. Translation is often associ- ated with loss and a movement away from original intentions and meanings. But, as the French thinker Michel de Certeau noted, transla- kinship structures already at play in Molière. The lighting, stage combat, and action dramaturgy. in the theater tion also “smuggles in a thousand inventions” Godfather, seated and directing the action, Among the artists brought to campus thus far OF THE CLASSROOM which transform the work “into a new creation.” becomes the figure through which the scene por- are Andre Pluess (AB ’96), the award-winning Theater, then, becomes an experimental play- trays the Miser’s absolute authority and the sound designer for the Court Theatre, who was ground for working out ideas stakes of his authority. The cat that he compul- recently featured in American Theatre, and Jim with other people, an associ- sively pets may at first project the Godfather/ Lasko, puppeteer and Artistic Director of the F ation which itself resembles a Miser as a figure of endearment, but the cat’s Redmoon Theater. Additionally, Coleman is family. increasingly apparent taxidermized state points working to revamp the School Partnership The last of the day’s scenes to the menace of the Miser’s avarice (in the play, Program, which hires UT students to teach is based on a moment in Act he steals oats from his horses). When the drama in area schools; expanding course offer- Four when Cléante, son of Godfather’s son finally proclaims, “I have loved ings to include such things as stage combat the miser Harpagon, pro- her since the day I saw her. I was intending just and ensemble acting; overseeing the expansion of claims his love for Marianne, now to ask your permission to marry her,” the UT physical spaces as a new offsite scenic lab has whom Harpagon plans to figures with green fedoras cast confetti into the become available as well as spaces in the newly marry (for reasons, of course, air and begin to dance around the lovelorn renovated Bartlett Dining Commons (formerly more avaricious than roman- Cléante. Love momentarily conquers all but the Bartlett Gymnasium); and organizing confer- tic). As the audience groups Miser. In the background, Frank Sinatra’s “That’s ences on issues related to performance and together at the side of the Amore” is heard, as the actor playing Cléante performance studies both within and beyond room (a fact not unimpor- breaks into enthusiastic song himself. It’s a beau- the University. tant since the expectations tiful, breath-taking moment, one that seems to With over 400 students participating, and orientation of the audi- be a special provenance of the theater classroom. University Theater is by far the largest student ence will figure largely in the Licensed by the text and scene, students are will- organization on campus. If University Theater post-scene analysis), the ing to take risks and enter into experience in a has sometimes functioned as something of a players quickly assemble the way that satisfies all who witness it. haven from the intellectual pursuits of the stage, consisting of a single The same excitement surrounds Coleman, University, Coleman’s presence, as Levin further table, illuminated by one which is apparent in the regard of both her stu- notes, demonstrates the compatibility of a bur- light. The stark table with its dents and colleagues. Students consistently geoning academic interest in performance single ominous light elicits a laud the way her pedagogy invites participation (perhaps best signaled by the recent formation of number of possible scenarios. and unleashes that elusive, and essential, quality an interdivisional faculty Committee on Theater Is this the table of a judge of aliveness. David Levin, Associate Professor and Performance Studies) with the autonomy weighing evidence and preparing a verdict? Is it a of Germanic Studies and chair of the search and vibrancy of a theater that continues to be medical examination room where some decision committee that brought Coleman to her position entirely student-run. ❏ on a patient’s health is about to be made? Is it a as the new University Theater Director, notes 22 ALUMNIALUMNI AFFAIRSAFFAIRS FACULTY FOCUS 23

BY GERALD M. KOWARSKY What has it meant to Richard of Chicago’s campus including Ralph cal boundaries. He embodies what he loves Stern to be a teacher? His Ellison, Norman Mailer, and Flannery most about Chicago, this “brutal yet gor- For University of Chicago alumni, the appeal of Proof goes beyond the play’s wide TEACHER answer is a story told with his O’Connor. At the time of his retirement on geous” city with its rich and diverse ethnic acclaim. The author, David Auburn, graduated from the College with a concen- usual passion, brevity, and January 1, 2002, Richard Stern held the communities: the interdependence and tration in English. The action takes place in Hyde Park, and the characters are WRITER thoughtfulness. He once title of Helen A. Regenstein Professor of interconnection of people and institutions from the University community: a professor, a graduate student, faculty children, CHICAGOAN taught first- through fifth- English and of the Humanities. on all levels, from politics to the neighbor- and (heard offstage but not seen) a boisterous band of physicists. Alumni can grade reading and arithmetic What constantly strikes me, as a former hoods to the university. This is a quality experience nostalgia and pride in Proof ’s Chicago connections along with the in Germany in the U. S. Army’s student of his, is that Richard Stern repre- that he shares freely as a teacher, inspiring play’s other attractions. Troop Information and Education sents a legacy not just in the literary influ- his students, especially his writing stu- The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis was one of the first regional theaters to stage program. His students ranged in age ences of his writing—figures such as T. S. dents, to see themselves as a valuable and Proof,which opened in New York two years ago and at this writing is still on from eighteen to fifty, including “a Eliot, Ezra Pound, the early F. Scott contributing part of this legacy. Broadway and on national tour. I saw the St. Louis production twice: first during its sergeant, no, a corporal, gray-haired.” opening weekend for a cable television review, then later in the run at a University of Chicago alumni event. I found the play even more satisfying the second time. During one class, he recited Longfellow’s Some of my extra enjoyment came from being part of the alumni group. A “A Psalm of Life”: “Tell me not in Fcrack about an infinite Ph.D. program drew a knowing response from the audience mournful numbers, /Life is but an empty with the U of C contingent, and it was fun to speculate with other former Hyde dream!” The men wept. In the telling, Parkers about the street on which the house in the play might be located. The play itself, however, produced most of my additional satisfaction. The cen- tral question in a first viewing of Proof concerns the authorship of a brilliant math- Stern...shares that his “joy” as a writer is in the ematical proof discovered in the home of a revered University of Chicago profes- ability to speak oneself, “to register what is best in sor who began a long mental decline in his mid-20s. Is the proof the work of the professor himself or his daughter, Catherine, who dropped out of college to live you,” which sometimes includes, “facing up to what with her father when his mental illness required him to have a full-time caregiver? is the worst of you.” Suspense builds around other questions, too. Is Catherine showing signs of proo her father’s instability now that she has reached the age at which his symptoms began to appear? Will Catherine succumb to pressure from her older sister, Claire, to move to New York, where Claire can keep tabs on Catherine’s mental condition? Will a bond grow between Catherine and Hal, a student of her father’s who has been going through the professor’s notebooks? richard stern An indication of Proof ’s stature is that knowledge of the outcome enriches the play instead of spoiling it. In a second viewing, when the authorship of the proof the story seemed to crystallize the mastery and other questions are no longer at issue, one can focus on how the construc- of storytelling and the passion for teaching tion of the play produces more than just suspense. Proof works as a mystery, but that marked Stern’s presence and contribu- it also rewards close attention to the development of tions as an English professor for forty-six Catherine’s relationships with the other three characters. years at the University of Chicago. SET AT THE U OF C, PROOF — the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning For example, Catherine’s fascination with the correspon- Richard Stern has had a long and dis- dence between two of her mathematical idols, Sophie tinguished career. After earning a B.A. play by alumnus David Auburn (AB ’91)—is a drama about genius, madness Germain and Carl Friedrich Gauss, has more bearing on from the University of North Carolina and, growing between these two states of mind, love. Catherine is a young her choices than one might recognize at first. (1947), an M.A. from Harvard (1949) and The St. Louis production, directed by Susan V. a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa (1954), woman who has devoted her life to her ailing mathematician father Booth, was a distinguished effort. Susan Pourfar Stern took his first American teaching (Catherine) and Brik Berkes (Hal) were believable as position at Connecticut College. Before and who may have inherited both his madness and his brilliance, leading young academics whose intellects do not help them deal that, he had taught at the University of Fitzgerald—but also in the sheer list of dis- The question is, finally: what has it with matters of the heart. William Bogert’s performance Heidelberg and the Collège Jules Ferry in tinguished writers that Stern has commu- meant to Richard Stern to be a writer? His her sister and an unexpected suitor on a search for the truth behind a as Catherine’s father was very well attuned to his different France. In 1955, Stern began teaching at nicated with over his career. I recall a recep- answer is a thoughtful reflection on writing states of mind. Rhoda Griffis’s portrayal of mysterious mathematical proof. ••• In February, the University of Chicago with responsibil- tion for first-year Ph.D. students, including as it applies to living. He shares that his f Claire, the outsider, impressed me more in my ities both in the Committee on General myself, in the English Department. We “joy” as a writer is in the ability to speak a group of alumni gathered to see the play at the second viewing, when it was easier to under- Studies in the Humanities and the were privileged to hear Stern’s tale of his oneself, “to register what is best in you,” stand a character who tries to manipulate some- Department of English Language and meeting with Pound in Venice and the cir- which sometimes includes, “facing up to Ph.D. Student, Department of English Language and Literature Ph.D. Repertory Theatre of St. Louis. One of them was one so different from herself. Literature. Over the years, Stern has been a cumstances of his receiving a bust of what is the worst of you.” If you’re true to The set by Todd Rosenthal meticulously prolific and well-respected writer, a chair- Pound, which now occupies a corner of the this requirement, he suggests, you will have Gerald M. Kowarsky (AB ’71, AM ’72, Ph.D. ’83), who writes recreated the back of a brick house that might man of the faculty committee of the English Department’s lounge. In the midst done all right as a writer. Yet also, I suspect, be found near the University. Theater compa- Chicago Review,and,ofcourse, an educa- of my eagerness to begin the intellectual one would have lived a well-examined life. theater reviews for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and nies do not need the resources for such an tor teaching writing as well as courses on exchanges that characterize the University Richard Stern continues to be active in elaborate scenic design, however, to stage Proof the novel, drama, and contemporary criti- of Chicago experience, Stern’s presence retirement. He is currently working on a co-hosts a theater review program on St. Louis cable ROSIE BANKS successfully. The human story in the play will cism both on campus and abroad. He has reminded me of how these exist alongside novel, giving occasional talks, and antici- move audiences for many years to come in pro- brought many notable authors to interact many other meaningful exchanges that pating the publication of a new book, What television. ❏ ductions by companies at all levels. BY with students and faculty on the University extend beyond the university’s geographi- Is What Was. ❏ 24 ALUMNI AFFAIRS ALUMNI AFFAIRSAFFIARS25

RECENT JOB PLACEMENTS FOR HUMANITIES GRADUATES Looking for other Chicago alumni at your institution BERNARDO ILLARI DEPARTMENT OF NEAR JOSHUA DAVID HOLO DEPARTMENT OF DEPARTMENT OF “Polychoral Culture: Cathedral EASTERN LANGUAGES AND “An Economic History of ROMANCE LANGUAGES SOUTH ASIAN LANGUAGES or in your area? Curious about where last year’s class of humanities graduates got their jobs? Here is a list of recent graduates, with Music in La Plata (Bolivia), CIVILIZATIONS the Jews in Byzantium from AND LITERATURES AND CIVILIZATIONS 1680–1730.” Assistant the Eve of the Arab Conquest Professor, University of ANNE FALBY BROADBRIDGE to the Fourth Crusade.” NATALIE HESTER SHANTANU PHUKAN thesis or dissertation titles and job titles, who have accepted full-time employment that exercises their graduate training. North Texas. “Mamluk Ideological Assistant Professor, Graduate “Traveling for Writing’s “Through a Persian Prism: Theological Union, Berkeley. HILARY PORISS and Diplomatic Relations Sake: Seventeenth-Century Hindi and Padmavat in the with Mongols and Turkic Italian Tourists and Their Mughal Imagination.” Assistant “Artistic License: Aria ALI J. HUSAIN Rulers of the Near East Narratives.” Assistant Professor, University of North Interpolation and the “A Developmental Analysis and Central Asia (656–807/ Professor, University Carolina, Chapel Hill. Italian Operatic World, of Depictions of the Events 1260–1405).” Assistant of Oregon. 1815–1850.” Society of of Karbala in Early Islamic

Professor, University of note Fellows, Columbia University. History.” Lecturer, Loyola Massachusetts, Amherst. DEPARTMENT OF onward Assistant Professor, University, Chicago. SLAVIC LANGUAGES University of Cincinnati. PAUL LINCOLN HECK The information is reported by and upward FUMI KARAHASHI AND LITERATURES “Qudama b. Jafar (d. 337/948) each department or committee SUZANNE SORKIN “Sumerian Compound and his Kitab al-Kharaj “Night Watch.” Verbs with Body Part Terms.” AMANDA EWINGTON and includes students who wa-sina’ at al-kitaba: DEPARTMENT OF LISA MEYEROWITZ KAMILA KINYON-KUCHAR COLLEEN BOGGS JONATHAN SACHS Visiting Assistant Professor, Visiting Instructor, University graduated from spring 2000 to Administrative Contributions “A Voltaire for Russia?: ART HISTORY Vassar College. of Chicago. “Exhibiting Equality: Black- “Models of Exile: Koestler, “The American Translation.” “Antique Modernity: to Knowledge.” Alexander Petrovich summer 2001. Run Museums and Galleries Nabokov, Kundera.” Lecturer, Assistant Professor, Romanticism, Republicanism, RICHARD SUTHERLAND Society of Fellows, CLEMENS DANIEL REICHEL Sumarokov’s Journey MARIAN BLEEKE in 1970s New York.” Special Western Michigan University. Dartmouth College. and the Matter of Rome.” from Poet-Critic to Russian If you or someone you know “ . . . not the songs of Princeton University. “Political Changes and Projects Editor, Publications Harper-Schmidt Fellow, Philosophe.” Assistant should be listed here, please “Situating Sheela-na-gigs: CYNTHIA KLESTINEC KAVITA DAIYA light.”Visiting Assistant Cultural Continuity in Department, the Art Institute Collegiate Assistant ANNIE HIGGINS Professor, Davidson College. The Female Body and Professor, St. Lawrence the Palace of the Rulers at contact your department. The of Chicago. “Theatrical Dissections “Violent Belongings: Professor, University “The Qur’anic Exchange Social Significance in University. Eshnunna (Tell Asmar) from Division is working to and Dancing Cadavers: Nationalism, Gender, and of Chicago. of the Self in the Poetry Romanesque Sculpture.” the Ur III Period to the DEPARTMENT OF Andreas Vesalius and Postcolonial Citizenship.” of Shurat (Khariji) Political maintain accurate records of Assistant Professor, FREDERICK WHITING Isin Larsa Period.” Lecturer, CLASSICAL LANGUAGES Sixteenth-Century Popular Assistant Professor, George Identity 37–132/ 657–750 AD.” job placement. Beloit College. University of Chicago; AND LITERATURES Culture.” Postdoctoral Washington University. “Monstrous Desires: Lecturer,University of Research Associate, KAREN CARTER Fellowship, Max Planck Psychopathy and Subjectivity Illinois, Chicago. JOSEPH DIMURO Oriental Institute. “L’âge de l’affiche: Institute for the History in Cold War America.” DANIEL RICHTER “The 1893 Ferris Wheel and The Reception, Display, of Science (Berlin). Assistant Professor, “Ethnography, Archaism, and the Cultural Politics of and Collection of University of Alabama. Identity in the Early Roman NICOLE LASSAHN National Identity.” Lecturer, Illustrated Posters in Fin- Empire.”Visiting Assistant “‘Songes . . . qui ne sont nie University of California, de-Siècle Paris.” Assistant COMMITTEE ON THE own uses. By showing experimental art works in art; one can actually find online an entire exhibi- Professor, Princeton University. mençongier’: Historical Los Angeles. WU—Continued from page 14 Professor, Miyazaki Inter- HISTORY OF CULTURE Content and Fictional Truth shown in this dark, unseen place readily draw on versatile places outside regular exhibition channels, tion canceled by the authorities. national College (Japan). BRIAN FAGEL DEPARTMENT OF in Dream Poetry from the the political and social connotations of “under- they bring these works to the public in a guerilla- At a seminar held in Beijing in 1999, I heard a PO-KAN CHOU LISA DEAM COMPARATIVE LITERATURE Time of the Hundred Years “Spirit Lessons: Post-Nuclear ground.” Often designed to explore unknown like fashion, and in so doing transform non-exhi- well-known western curator confess that he actu- American Fiction and the “The Translation of “Mapping the Past: War.”Assistant Director, bition spaces—shopping malls, bookstores, bars, ally knew little about the history of contemporary Spirituality of Survival.” The Dazhidulun:Buddhist territory outside conventional social norms and The Fleur des Histoires HÜLYA ADAK University Writing Programs, Consultant, The Boston Evolution in China in the moral standards, these works reject “above- and streets—into public exhibition spaces. Chinese art, but he nevertheless decided to (Brussels, Bibliothèque University of Chicago. “Intersubjectivity: Halide Consulting Group. Early Fifth Century.” ground” spaces and their public functions. The Related to these “experimental exhibitions” is the include many examples of this art in an exhibi- Royale, MS. 9231–9232) Edib or the ‘Ottoman/ Turkish MARCOS NATALI Associate Professor, National effort to adapt popular forms of mass media to tion because he found the “intensity of creative in the Context of LEE GARVER “basement” exhibition Post-Sense Sensibility: (Women)’ as the Subject “The Politics of Nostalgia: Taiwan University. Fifteenth-Century Distorted Bodies and Delusion,for example, fea- create new types of experimental art. Artist Zhao energy” in these works irresistible. This short of Knowledge.” Assistant An Essay on Ways of Relating “Lost Politics: The New Age Burgundian Historiography.” CHRISTOPHER I. LEHRICH tured on-site installations shaped like human Bandi turns his conceptual photographs into essay suggests that we can find similar intensity in Professor, Sabançi University, to the Past.” Postdoctoral and the Edwardian Socialist Lily Postdoctoral “public welfare” posters in Beijing’s subway sta- the social transformation of Chinese society; Istanbul. Fellowship and Visiting Roots of British Modernism.” “Hermetic Hermeneutics: organs, creating a fictional interiority for Beijing. Fellowship, Valparaiso Assistant Professor, University Assistant Professor, Butler Language, Magic, and Power Finally, the transformation of the city has tions. Other artists and curators have created what makes contemporary Chinese art “irre- University. STEFANI BROOKE ENGELSTEIN of S˜ao Paulo (Brazil). University. in Cornelius Agrippa’s encouraged unofficial artists and independent works resembling the newspaper. The internet has sistible” is the speed and depth of its internaliza- “Organs of Meeting: The De occulta philosophia.” REBECCA DEROO NOEL JACKSON curators to take over new urban spaces for their added a new dimension for making and exhibiting tion of social change. ❏ ‘Natural’ Human Body in FRANCISCO ORTEGA Lecturer, Boston University. “Private Objects, Public Literature and Science of the “The Anxieties of Trauma: “Sensation: British Institutions: French Art RICHARD SCHMITT Late Eighteenth and Early Representations of Disaster in Romanticism, Human Science, BERLANT—Continued from page 15 ing the “nation” as, at root, a collection of virtuous between the actuarial and the aesthetic, the mate- and the Reinvention of the Nineteenth Centuries.” Colonial and Contemporary and the Invention of the “The Form of Wittgenstein’s because our most ordinary speech intends a women and heroic men, whiter and more trans- rial and the visceral, which are so much more Museum 1968–1978.” Assistant Professor, University Latin America.” Assistant Aesthetic.” Assistant Professor, Tractatus with a New world we are bringing into being. Like poetry, parent in their blamelessness than the dark, mys- complexly related than at first it seems. The rela- Assistant Professor, of Missouri, Columbia. Massachusetts Institute of Translation of Logisch- Professor, University of ordinary speech has a utopian component, but it terious terrorists who take pleasure in trying to tion of poetry to inequities of all sorts will con- Washington University. Technology. Philosophische Abhandlung.” MARC FALKENBERG Wisconsin, Madison. is usually unmarked. It implies mainly unarticu- destroy our national properties. Many kinds of tinue to raise productive levels of stress in the KATHERINE HASKINS Project Manager, NSIT, “The Poetical Uncanny: MICHELLE JENSEN self-righteous pleasures have been unleashed by humanistic academy. But for the various publics DEPARTMENT OF University of Chicago. lated relations to spaces of capital and political “Good Impressions of A Study of Early Modern “Imposture and Cultural ENGLISH LANGUAGE and military might that are also spaces where this crisis. This isn’t finally a war about words or, who turn to art to do something, though fre- Good Things: The Art Fantastic Fiction.” Teacher, Appropriation in Eighteenth- AND LITERATURE DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC people live intimately. In moments of crisis the really, about freedom seen as the thing mapped quently they know not what, the turn to poetry Journal Print and the Roberto Clemente Century British Narrative, Craft of Connecting High School. 1663–1800.” Lecturer, revival of cliché into polemical speech is a sign out by laws: it is more a struggle to shape the near and to cliché are plays in a struggle over the gov- LYNN HOOKER in Mid-Victorian Britain, SAMUEL BAKER University of Chicago. that some hallowed things can no longer be taken and far future of world resource management, erning rules of pragmatism; these language games DANIEL H. FOSTER 1850–1880.” Director, Arts “Written on the Water: British “Modernism Meets for granted. In moments of crisis skepticism is which is to say of profit, and it goes to the heart of are utopian gestures toward re-zoning the spaces “The Hellenization of HILARY JUSTICE Nationalism: Béla Bartók Library, Yale University. Romanticism and the Culture one of the most powerful tones of counter-hege- the unthought thought we might as well be having of necessity that we find ourselves drowning and Politics: Richard Wagner’s “The Necessary Danger: and the Musical Life of of Maritime Empire.” Assistant monic earnestness. about the material conditions, the expensiveness, waving in, on behalf of holding open the project Ring Cycle and the Greeks.” Professor, University of Texas, Hemingway and the Problem Pre-World-War-I Hungary.” Of course there is nothing at all simple about of our (or any peoples’) freedom. of making the world something better than the Mellon Postdoctoral Austin. of Authorship.” Assistant Assistant Professor, Fellowship, University of Professor, Illinois State University of Richmond. innocence, nor about the motives for characteriz- Thus war forces us to think about the relation rough currents in which we now live. ❏ Pennsylvania. University. 26 WHAT’S NEW

ACTIVIST ART has a rich history communication, dissemination, and in Chicago, one that has been marked collaboration have on this work, the in recent decades by artists who use structure and content of Critical Mass conceptually-based practices to address are being developed through close complex social issues. Currently the collaboration among artists and curator. mix includes artists and collectives who The project will consist of interventions have been working into the museum and here for years, new- other sites to create a comers from other series of interconnected cities, and emerging spaces and activities. artists. Their work is Since activist art is often sustained in part by motivated by the desire to a critical mass: artists escape the confines of who share informa- institutions, this project tion, debate ideas, offers an opportunity to and collaborate on highlight current socially projects. This is not engaged art in Chicago Aa self-defined or while exploring the possi- regionally-identified bilities and limitations of

APRIL 25–JUNE 23,2002 group, but rather a series of over- the museum. Among the artists fea- CRITICAL lapping clusters of artists who have tured in this exhibition are COVA fac- chosen to base their practices in ulty member Bob Peters and recent Chicago, but often work in far-flung COVA graduates Marc Fischer (MFA ’95) places. To reflect the importance that and Brett Bloom (MFA’96). ❏ mass Left and above right: Gregory Sholette, i am NOT my office, 2002 (detail). Below right: Temporary Services, Groupings: Aesthetic Analysis of Human Groupings, 2002 (detail). THE SMART MUSEUM OF ART

TO CONTACT TABLEAU Division of the Humanities Editor: Tableau Editorial Board: Errata: The University of Chicago William Orchard David Bevington, Daniel Garber, Shaleane Volume 3, number 2, page 5 Gee, Erin Hogan, Kamla Hurst, Mary Jean We failed to mention the name of the editor 1010 East 59th Street Contributers to this Issue: Kraybill, Janel Mueller, Joshua Phillips, of The Chicago Review Anthology (University Chicago, Illinois 60637 Kaveh Askari, Rosie Banks, Lauren Berlant, Matthew Stolper of Chicago Press, 1959). It was edited by E-mail: [email protected] Leon Botstein, Deborah Drattell, Shaleane David Ray (AB '52, AM '57). Gee, Philip Gossett, Wu Hung, Greg Kotis, Tableau is produced with Gerald Kowarsky, William Orchard, David Volume 3, number 2, back cover Humanities Division funds. Ray, Philip Roth, Bernard Sahlins, Susan "Eratta" should have read "Errata." Sontag, Kurt Vonnegut

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