Tableau FALL 2002 VOLUME 4 NUMBER 2 THE NEWSLETTER for the DIVISION of the HUMANITIES at THE UNIVERSITY of CHICAGO FROM THE DEAN ON CAMPUS 1 DEAR ALUMNI ON CAMPUS 8 AND FRIENDS, 1 Collaborative Ventures Spotlighting the Department of Germanic Studies 8 The Battle for Hearts and Minds utumn has returned thousand miles away, is moving to comple- The 23rd Annual Humanities Open House anew. Excitement tion in a timely fashion. In the Spring issue of and possibility are Tableau, we will provide you with more FACULTY FOCUS A alive everywhere detailed information on this exciting project on campus, partic- which is envisioned not only as a stimulating ularly in the faces of new students who will intellectual environment for our College 4 Acquired Talents quickly join the net- and graduate students New Humanities Faculty works of discussion and from the Humanities 5 Recent Work debate in this commu- and Social Sciences but By Humanities Faculty nity of scholars. The fall also as a University of 11 What Matters To Me and Why quarter is not only a Chicago outpost for our By David Bevington time to look ahead: it is friends and alumni in also a time to reflect on Europe. what has passed. In this I feel certain you will IN MEMORIAM issue of Tableau, we agree that these are honor and thank those exciting moments for who enacted their com- the Division, as major 6 Michael Camille (1958-2002) mitment to the Division humanistic currents be- last year with their gen- gin to assume greater 7 Norman Cutler erous contributions. I substantiality and force. (1949-2002) am also pleased to Your support has helped report on the five new importantly and contin- 6 ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT talents that join our faculty ranks this year as ues to do so. In gratefully acknowledging well as on the recent publications of my your interest and your help, I look forward to remarkably productive colleagues. On a sad- keeping you informed on vital developments 10 Luis Leal der note, we continue to grieve for the in the Division. One Life, Two Cultures untimely loss of three members of our com- munity: graduate student Peter Gonzalez and With warm thanks and cordial greetings, faculty members Michael Camille and S TUDENT SPOTLIGHT collaborative Norman Cutler. The last issue of Tableau reported on the 12 Reel Life THE DEPARTMENT OF GERMANIC STUDIES vibrancy of the creative and performing arts JANEL MUELLER Behind the Screen With Student Filmmakers on campus and our plans to incorporate this ventures vitality more centrally into the life of the Janel Mueller is Professor of English and of the Division. I am delighted to be able to report Humanities and William Rainey Harper Professor to you some significant progress in the area. in the College. She has been teaching at Chicago IT IS OFTEN ASSUMED that the philosopher writing in his Over the summer, the President and Provost since 1967. Her publications include The Native formally approved funding for a program- Tongue and the Word: Developments in English office has more interaction with his philosophical colleague hundreds ming and planning study, co-chaired by Prose Style (University of Chicago Press, 1984), Associate Provost Mary Harvey (Ph.D. ’87) and The Second Part of the Countess of Montgomery’s of miles away than with the anthropologist who is at work in her office Urania, edited with Suzanne Gossett (Renaissance me, whose objective, under the auspices of a across the quad. This belief about academic exchange runs counter to committee, is to program and prepare for a English Text Society, 1999), and Elizabeth I: proposed Center for the Creative and Per- Collected Works, edited with Leah Marcus and the special enthusiasm attached to interdisciplinary endeavors. forming Arts. This study will be important in Mary Beth Rose (University of Chicago Press, advancing our vision of a thriving Center in 2000). She was awarded the University of Interdisciplinary work does not occur in a vacuum or, even, in the energetic mind of a single author. While and around the current site of Midway Studios. Chicago Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching in June 1998. one could say this about scholarly work generally, interdisciplinary work is especially nurtured by collab- As we begin preparatory efforts for this WILLIAM ORCHARD Center on campus, another Center, the BY orating minds that converge from different vantage points. >>> University of Chicago’s Paris Center, three 14 2 ALUMNION CAMPUS AFFAIRS ALUMNION AFFIARSCAMPUS 3 The University of Chicago has a distinguished James Conant, Michael Forster, John Hauge- York and Chicago last spring have helped Beuys. Supported by a generous grant from ship are located in departments other than industries and to help rebuild the nation. history of sustaining such collaborations. At land, Charles Larmore, Jonathan Lear, and the bring the edition to the attention of German- the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the exhi- Germanic Studies, but that fact is indicative of Beginning in the early 1960s, Turkish immi- an early phase, graduate students are inducted newly-arrived Michael Kremer. In its inaugural icists on both sides of the Atlantic. Praising the bition will engage several critical themes, the far reach and truly interdisciplinary nature grants responded in significant numbers to into interdisciplinary conversations through year, the Center sponsored several colloquia panoramic survey of German-language letters including the relation of myth to German of Germanic Studies on campus. this call for “guest workers.” In 1973, the their participation in workshops. On a larger and workshops on such topics as eighteenth- that the issue brings into focus, the Frankfurter identity, the place of war and urban tumult in Testament to this interdisciplinary depth is recruitment of immigrant workers ended. It scale, collaborations between researchers and century literature, the practice of narrative, Allgemeine Zeitung declared that “now, for a shifting national consciousness, and the the number of faculty from diverse depart- was assumed that guest workers would even- other campus institutions provide our schol- the work of philosopher Franz Rosenzweig, the first time, interested readers have the question of how, in a contemporary context, a ments who have been awarded important tually return to their country of origin, after arly work greater visibility by opening it to and the poetics of Paul Celan. The Center has opportunity to get to know the diversity of German art might look. fellowships and visiting appointments at giving their best years to German industry. larger publics. This fall, graduate students and also provided both support and momentum contemporary German literature.” Heller’s work on the exhibition will be aug- premier German institutions. Among those However, many of the original guest workers faculty in the Department of Germanic Studies for the three autumn projects that occasioned A ten-week series to be screened at Doc mented by a course on resistance to abstrac- receiving notice in the past academic year is now have grandchildren who have been edu- have joined efforts with three campus organi- this article. Films, the nation’s oldest student film society, tion in contemporary German art taught by Joel Snyder, Professor in the Department of cated in Germany, speak fluent German, and zations to produce a volume of contemporary also aims to present a more complex view of Nina Zimmer, a German art historian and the work for German companies. In a one-day German-language writing, a series of post-war German culture, focusing on the post-war autumn quarter Bosch Visiting Professor. spring colloquium co-organized by Hakan German films, and an exhibit of German art. period from 1946 to 1979. Programmed by (Zimmer’s class is doubly timely given the Art Özoglu, Ayasli Lecturer in Turkish Language The happy simultaneity of these projects Germanic Studies graduate student James Institute’s current glorious retrospective of the in the Department of Near Eastern Languages provides a fitting occasion to highlight some Cantarella, “Post-War German Cinema and work of German painter Gerhard Richter.) and Civilizations, and Germanic Studies grad- of the recent developments in Germanic Identity” begins with Wolfgang Staudte’s The Funded by the Robert Bosch Foundation and uate student Darren Ilett (AM ’01), an inter- Studies, a department whose collaborative Murderers Are Among Us (1946), the first film supported with matching funds from the national array of scholars will consider the ventures are one key to its vitality. produced in Germany after World War II. The Humanities Division and the Office of the social and political aspects of the situation as An exciting recent development that has series consists of films from both East and Provost, the Bosch Fellows Program permits well as its cultural effects. served to foster collaboration is David West Germany and includes works by such the Department of Germanic Studies to invite In addition to the fall film series and art Wellbery’s appointment to the new Leroy T. established talents as Alexander Kluge and R. three visiting professors each year, each for exhibit, which will run and Margaret Deffenbaugh Carlson Univer- W. Fassbinder as well as less familiar works a ten-week quarter. The Bosch Visiting Pro- through the end of the year, dr eyeye dr sity Professorship. University Professorships from the GDR that were virtually inaccessible fessors are recruited from Germany, Switzer- alumni and friends of the GERHARD FALKNER are the highest distinction offered to faculty before German reunification. The East German land, and Austria and teach two courses in Humanities Division can new to the University and are bestowed upon films, made available by the Deutsche Film- Germanic Studies: one graduate and one under- also hear more about the shavings of light internationally notable scholars.