National Humanities Center Annual Report 2004 2005 The National Humanities Center does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, national and ethnic origin, handicap, sexual orientation or preference, or age in the administration of its selection policies, educational policies, and other Center- administered programs. Editor David B. Rice Copyeditor Karen Carroll Images Ron Jautz Kent Mullikin Andrew Ross Design Lesley Landis Designs The National Humanities Center’s Report (ISSN 1040-130X) is printed on recycled paper. Copyright © 2005 by National Humanities Center 7 Alexander Dr. P.O. Box 12256 RTP, NC 27709-2256 TEL 919-549-0661 FAX 919-990-8535 E-MAIL [email protected] WEB www.nhc.rtp.nc.us National Humanities Center Annual Report 2004 2005 Annual Report from the President and Director Work of the Fellows Statistics Books by Fellows Financial Statement Supporting the Center Staff Board of Trustees Report from the President and Director “I have thanked my lucky stars…” ANY TIMES OVER THE PAST TWO AND A HALF YEARS, MI HAVE THANKED MY LUCKY STARS THAT I WORK AT THE NATIONAL HUMANITIES CENTER, BUT NEVER MORE FERVENTLY THAN THIS MORNING, AUGUST 29, 2005. As I am writing, at around 6:00 a.m., I am keep- ground), Piety and Desire (just a short walk), ing an eye on CNN, which is tracking the course white and black, rich and poor, elegance and vul- of Hurricane Katrina as it bears down on New garity. This may be the last day in the history of a Orleans, the city I inhabited, in a state of mingled city that has given America the best of its music, ecstasy and disbelief, for seventeen years before a good portion of its literature, most of its good moving to North Carolina in January 2003. A food, and much of its soul. New Orleans has few minutes ago, the storm took a slight jog to always inspired exotic analogies. When Andrew the east, which means that the winds will be about Jackson’s wife entered the city, she wrote to a 30 miles per hour slower than they might have friend, “Great Babylon is come up before me"; been; but even so, it is horribly clear that much of this morning, people are speaking of Pompeii the city will be lost, recoverable only by memory and Atlantis. inflected by that mix of fatality, decay, sweetness It is difficult to focus on the business of writing of spirit, and transcendent joy that gave the place an annual report in a time of crisis, but it is espe- its distinctive and irreplaceable feel. Everything in cially in such times that one often discovers a New Orleans is close to its opposite: life and death capacity to focus on something else other than the (the living below sea level, the dead above the crisis itself. Having made this discovery on several occasions in the past, I am struck by how often ness of ourselves. It is the only science in that something else is something drawn from which human beings step before us in their the cultural past, from that vast archive of deeds, totality. The inner history of the last thou- IRECTOR D events, and documents that have survived the sand years is the history of mankind achiev- forces of destruction to become part of a past that ing self expression: this is what philology, a magically appears to be continuous, stable, and historicist discipline, treats. This history con- reassuring—a tradition that includes Babylon, tains the records of man’s mighty, adventur- Pompeii, and Atlantis. The past lays down deposits ous advance to a consciousness of his human RESIDENT AND P like silt, which protect us from the storms of exis- condition and to the realization of his given tence. potential. All the rich tensions of which our This was fully understood by the great philolo- being is capable are contained within this gist Erich Auerbach who, having been forced to course. An inner dream unfolds whose scope leave Nazi Germany, emigrated to Istanbul, where and depth entirely animate the spectator…. he produced one of the most widely admired The loss of such a spectacle…would be an EPORT FROM THE R scholarly books ever written, Mimesis: The impoverishment for which there can be no Representation of Reality in Western Literature. possible compensation. NNUAL Shortly after finishing this book, he wrote an A Auerbach is referring here to history as a schol- essay called “Philologie der Weltliteratur,” arly practice, but it is impossible not to think that which contains the following passage: he is also pondering the loss of the world in some History is the science of reality that affects more direct, immediate, and material sense. He us most immediately, stirs us most deeply had, after all, just witnessed the destruction of his and compels us most forcibly to a conscious- own “world,” and had already begun the recon- A Year at the National Humanities Center .-. Summer Institute for High School Teachers of History, Literature, and Art Leon Fink (Rockefeller Fellow 1990–91), Joy Kasson (Delta Delta Delta Fellow 1996–97), and Lee Mitchell (Rockefeller Fellow 1986–87) lead a group of high school teachers through .- an exploration of “The Gilded and the Gritty: America, 1880–1920,” Education Programs drawing on historical documents, literature, and art from the decades Summer Institutes in Literary Studies after the Civil War to ask broad questions about memory, progress, for College and University Faculty people, power, and empire during the time of Reconstruction, Susan Stewart of the University of western expansion, and the rise of the robber barons. The Pennsylvania introduces a group of Education Programs young PhDs in literature to “Five staff work with the Major Odes” and Frances Ferguson scholars and (GlaxoSmithKline Senior Fellow 2003–04) EDUCATION PROGRAMS EDUCATION teachers to turn guides a second group through a careful the seminar into reading of Gustave Flaubert’s Sentimental the fourth module Education. The seminars mark the second in the online Tool- year of a three-year program sponsored box Library. by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. EDUCATION PROGRAMS EDUCATION SUMMER 2004 struction of that world through scholarship. The present but also permits or forces the present to world could be reclaimed by this means, but if the measure itself against the example of the past. historical record of human acts and imaginings “Humanism,” he said, had been lost—and many were—there could be is a word I continue to use stubbornly despite “no possible compensation” because the imagina- the scornful dismissal of the term by sophisti- tion, the human creative faculty, would be cated post-modern critics. By humanism I deprived of materials and tools, and crippled mean…[using] one’s mind historically and in its attempts to imagine the future. rationally for the purposes of reflective under- For various reasons, I have been thinking in standing. Moreover humanism is sustained recent months about Edward Said, the controver- by a sense of community with other inter- sial Columbia University scholar who died of preters and other societies and periods: strict- leukemia in September 2003. As a political activist ly speaking therefore, there is no such thing as well as a scholar, Said had been for many years as an isolated humanist.…Humanism is cen- an embattled figure, making as many enemies as tered upon the agency of human individuali- admirers, living in an atmosphere of constant tur- ty and subjective intuition, rather than on bulence and occasional danger. And yet, in his last received ideas and approved authority… book, written in the shadow of death, he turned humanism is the only and I would go so far to the scholarly discipline in which he had been as saying the final resistance we have against trained. Humanism and Democratic Criticism the inhuman practices and injustices that argues that the best resource for productive think- disfigure human history. ing in times of crisis is the humanistic tradition, which not only makes the past available to the Said particularly valued the philological work .- .- . European-American Young Scholars’ . Friends of the Center Summer Institutes Luncheon Public Lecture For a second summer, young scholars from The Center welcomes Bruce Redford (Allen Europe and the United States gather on local friends and W. Clowes Fellow) two continents for broad interdisciplinary . alumni fellows back kicks off the fall pub- seminars, thanks to a grant from The to the Archie K. Davis lic lecture series with Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The group Labor Day Picnic Building to meet the a talk on “Eros and studying “Secularization and Religion” Many of the thirty- Corbett Capps on new fellows. After a the Antique: Sire under the guidance of José Casanova of nine fellows (and September 17 and reception and lunch, William Hamilton in the New School University and Hans Joas two distinguished the pre-lunch project Distinguished Visitor Enlightment Naples.” of the Max Weber Center for Advanced visitors) who make up talks—in which Thomas Cogswell Later in the fall, Cultural and Social Studies, which met in the Class of 2004–05 Deputy Director Kent enlightens and enter- Deborah Harkness Erfurt, Germany, in 2003, reconvenes at EDUCATION PROGRAMS EDUCATION are the guests of Mullikin allots each tains those who have (John E. Sawyer the National Humanities Center. The semi- honor at the Center’s fellow five minutes to the upcoming presi- Fellow) and Roger nar on “The Concept of Language in the traditional Labor Day characterize the book dential elections on Chickering (John P. Academic Disciplines,” led by John Joseph Picnic. Two other he or she plans to their minds with Birkelund Senior of the University of Edinburgh and Talbot long-standing tradi- write—help the fel- anecdotes about Fellow) lecture, Taylor of the College of William and Mary, tions, the pig pickin’ lows and the staff get electoral politics in respectively, on the moves from the Center to the University orchestrated by acquainted socially seventeenth-century Scientific Revolution of Edinburgh.