ACLS Fellows in the News. Duke Today profiles Humanities on Demand, an innovative new course designed by six ACLS New Faculty Fellows that invites students to participate in course design.
The course, Humanities on Demand, will examine “viral narratives” – the art of telling stories that endure. Course co-director Michael P. Ryan said he is happy to emphasize well-known, popular stories and authors in the course – Shakespeare? Little Red Riding Hood? But he thinks more contemporary forms of storytelling – like a video uploaded to Youtube and forwarded a zillion times through cyberspace – will resonate more fully with students, particularly if they select the stories to study.
“The idea of asking students to supply material for a course is very new,” said Ryan, one of six American Council of Learned Societies faculty fellows who came to Duke last year. “This was the absolute domain of the professor, a unilateral approach. But it doesn’t have to be that way.”
(Source: m.today.duke.edu)
The Ancient Maya of Mexico: Reinterpreting the Past of the Northern Maya Lowlands edited by Geoffrey E. Braswell F'00 now available from Equinox Publishing.
The archaeological sites of Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, including Chichen Itza and Uxmal, are among the most visited ancient cities of the Americas. The past 20 years have seen a revolution in our interpretations of social and political process in the northern Maya lowlands, but the great advances made by archaeologists in our understanding of this half of the Maya region are under-represented in both scholarly and popular literature.
The aim of The Ancient Maya of Mexico: Reinterpreting the Past of the Northern Maya Lowlands is to present the results of new and important archaeological, epigraphic, and art historical research in the Mexican states of Yucatan, Campeche, and Quintana Roo to a broad audience of scholars, students, and educated laymen who are interested in the ancient Maya. This volume consists of original and timely contributions of the sort often published in journals. The writing style of the volume, however, is intended to be lively and approachable so as to be accessible and of particular use to undergraduate and graduate students, as well as to more advanced scholars. The organization of the volume is temporal (from the Middle Preclassic to colonial and modern periods), so that readers will understand how new data and interpretations have changed the whole of our understanding of Maya history.
(Source: equinoxpub.com)
From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933–1965 by John F. Connelly G'97, F'96, F'93 now available from Harvard University Press.
In 1965 the Second Vatican Council declared that God loves the Jews. Before that, the Church had taught for centuries that Jews were cursed by God and, in the 1940s, mostly kept silent as Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis. How did an institution whose wisdom is said to be unchanging undertake one of the most enormous, yet undiscussed, ideological swings in modern history?
From Enemy to Brother illuminates the baffling silence of the Catholic Church during the Holocaust, showing how the ancient teaching of deicide—according to which the Jews were condemned to suffer until they turned to Christ—constituted the Church’s only language to talk about the Jews. As he explores the process of theological change, John Connelly moves from the speechless Vatican to those Catholics who endeavored to find a new language to speak to the Jews on the eve of, and in the shadow of, the Holocaust.
(Source: hup.harvard.edu)
ACLS is pleased to announce that Susan Ware has been appointed the General Editor of the American National Biography (ANB), the premier biographical encyclopedia of U.S. history. She succeeds Mark Carnes, who has held that post since the ANB began.
Susan Ware is an accomplished historian, editor, and the author of seven books, including biographies of Billie Jean King, Amelia Earhart, Molly Dewson, and Mary Margaret McBride. She served as the editor of several documentary collections and of the most recent volume of Notable American Women, published in 2004, which contains biographies of 483 women from over 50 fields. Educated at Wellesley College and Harvard University, Dr. Ware taught at New York University and Harvard. She has long been associated with the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and is active in a variety of professional organizations. She has extensive media experience in radio, television, and documentary film and is committed to bringing women’s history and feminist scholarship to a wide popular audience.
Alice Kessler-Harris, professor of history, Columbia University and president of the Organization of American Historians wrote: “Susan Ware is the best possible selection for the next general editor of the ANB. A distinguished historian and biographer, she served as general editor for the magnificent third revision of Notable American Women. She is judicious, even-handed, principled, and thoughtful. You could not have placed the ANB in better hands.”
Mark Carnes welcomed his successor, saying, “A superb choice! Susan Ware is an outstanding biographer, a proven editor, and a wonderful person. She will thrive in a job whose importance does not preclude it from being great fun.” In 1986, Carnes, now the Ann Olin Whitney Professor of History at Barnard College, and Professor John A. Garraty accepted then ACLS President Stanley Katz’s invitation to design and develop the American National Biography. “When Mark Carnes began his service 26 years ago, the ANB was only an idea,” commented ACLS Vice President Steve Wheatley. “Mark’s effort, expertise, and leadership were essential to turning the idea into a shelf of print books and then into an online resource bringing deep knowledge of broad scope to the general public in a form both authoritative and accessible. We appreciate that he now wants to apply his enormous energy to new projects, including the pedagogically innovative project, Reacting to the Past (http://reacting.barnard.edu/).”
The landmark American National Biography offers portraits of more than 18,700 men and women—from all eras and walks of life—whose lives have shaped the nation. First published in 24 volumes in 1999, the ANB received instant acclaim as the new authority in American biographies, and continues to serve readers in thousands of school, public, and academic libraries around the world. Its online counterpart, ANB Online, is a regularly updated resource currently offering portraits of over 18,700 biographies, including the 17,435 of the print edition. ACLS sponsors the ANB, which is published by Oxford University Press.
(Source: acls.org)
Looking for Bruce Conner by Kevin Hatch F'06 now available from MIT Press.
In a career that spanned five decades, most of them spent in San Francisco, Bruce Conner (1933–2008) produced a unique body of work that refused to be contained by medium or style. Whether making found-footage films, hallucinatory ink-blot graphics, enigmatic collages, or assemblages from castoffs, Conner took up genres as quickly as he abandoned them. His movements within San Francisco’s counter-cultural scenes were similarly free-wheeling; at home in beat poetry, punk music, and underground film circles, he never completely belonged to any of them. Bruce Conner belonged to Bruce Conner. Twice he announced his own death; during the last years of his life he produced a series of pseudonymous works after announcing his “retirement.” In this first book-length study of Conner’s enormously influential but insufficiently understood career, Kevin Hatch explores Conner’s work as well as his position on the geographical, cultural, and critical margins.
(Source: mitpress.mit.edu)
ACLS Society News. The Organization of American Historians begins its 2012 annual meeting in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. “Frontiers of Capitalism and Democracy” is this year’s theme. The collaboration between the OAH and the NCPH, the variety of scholarly sessions, and the great location are sure to make the 2012 gathering the most dynamic annual meeting to date.
(Source: annualmeeting.oah.org)
ACLS Society News. The Society of Architectural Historians begins its 65th Annual Conference today in Detroit. Events include plenary sessions, roundtable discussions, lectures, film screenings, and award ceremonies.
(Source: sah.org)
Red Brick, Black Mountain, White Clay: Reflections on Art, Family, and Survival by Christopher Benfey F'99 now available from Penguin Press.
An unforgettable voyage across the reaches of America and the depths of memory, Red Brick, Black Mountain, White Clay tells the story of America’s artistic birth. Following his family back through the generations, renowned critic Christopher Benfey unearths an ancestry- and an aesthetic-that is quintessentially American. His mother descends from colonial craftsmen, such as the Quaker artist- explorer William Bartram. Benfey’s father-along with his aunt and uncle, the famed Bauhaus artists Josef and Anni Albers-escaped from Nazi Europe by fleeing to the American South. Struggling to find themselves in this new world, Benfey’s family found strength and salvation in the rich craft tradition grounded in America’s vast natural landscape. Threading these stories together into a radiant and mesmerizing harmony, Red Brick, Black Mountain, White Clay is an extraordinary quest to the heart of America and the origins of its art.
(Source: books.google.com)
The Art of Folk Spirit. 2011 Haskins Prize Lecturer Henry Glassie speaks on Mehmet Gursoy and the stars of Kutahya at the Rice Design Alliance tomorrow for “UH: The Art of Folk Spirit.”
The event includes three presentations by prominent folklorists, complemented by a photo exhibit, offered to celebrate the inauguration of the Global Studies minor of the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies. All three talks will center on community religious expressions and how they communicate values, belief, and esthetics. Each of the talks will be based on the speaker’s intensive ethnographic research. Each will highlight “the local knowledge” of distant folk communities that possess close analogues in the Houston area.
(Source: ricedesignalliance.org)
From Modern Production to Imagined Primitive: The Social World of Coffee from Papua New Guinea by Paige West F'04 now available from Duke University Press.
In this vivid ethnography, Paige West tracks coffee as it moves from producers in Papua New Guinea to consumers around the world. She illuminates the social lives of the people who produce coffee, and those who process, distribute, market, and
consume it. The Gimi peoples, who grow coffee in Papua New Guinea’s highlands, are eager to expand their business and social relationships with the buyers who come to their highland villages, as well as with the people working in Goroka,
where much of Papua New Guinea’s coffee is processed; at the port of Lae, where it is exported; and in Hamburg, Sydney, and London, where it is distributed and consumed. This rich social world is disrupted by neoliberal development strategies, which impose prescriptive regimes of governmentality that are often at odds with Melanesian ways of being in, and relating to, the world. The Gimi are misrepresented in the specialty coffee market, which relies on images of
primitivity and poverty to sell coffee. By implying that the “backwardness” of Papua New Guineans impedes economic development, these images obscure the structural relations and global political economy that actually cause poverty in Papua New Guinea.
(Source: dukeupress.edu)
ACLS Fellows in the News. Jeremy Melius F'11 recently delivered a lecture on minimalist artist Bruce Nauman. The Oberlin Review profiles the event:
Melius began by canonizing Nauman’s work, explaining that its essence is derived from an understanding of his medium. Nauman utilizes the human body literally and metaphorically in most works by extending the functionality of man through an alienation of its origin… Melius excluded the social and racial implications of painting a body black or white and focused on the theoretical connotations of the performance. He circumvented the issues that are inherent in Nauman’s work by referencing McLuhan’s famed words. It is clear that the purpose of the talk was to inform the audience on duality of skin, an idea that Nauman commonly plays with.
(Source: oberlinreview.org)
ACLS congratulates the fellows and awardees among the the 2012 Guggenheim Fellows:
Together, they constitute more than a quarter of fellows named in the humanities and social sciences.
(Source: acls.org)
The Problem of Slavery as History: A Global Approach by Joseph C. Miller F'74 now available from Yale University Press.
Why did slavery—an accepted evil for thousands of years—suddenly become regarded during the eighteenth century as an abomination so compelling that Western governments took up the cause of abolition in ways that transformed the modern world? Joseph C. Miller turns this classic question on its head by rethinking the very nature of slavery, arguing that it must be viewed generally as a process rather than as an institution. Tracing the global history of slaving over thousands
of years, Miller reveals the shortcomings of Western narratives that define slavery by the same structures and power relations regardless of places and times, concluding instead that slaving is a process which can be understood fully only
as imbedded in changing circumstances.
(Source: yalepress.yale.edu)
Winds from the North: Tewa Origins and Historical Anthropology by Scott G. Ortman F'08 now available from the University of Utah Press.
The “abandonment” of Mesa Verde and the formation of the Rio Grande Pueblos represent two classic events in North American prehistory. Yet, despite a century of research, no consensus has been reached on precisely how, or even if, these two events were related. In this landmark study, Scott Ortman proposes a novel and compelling solution to this problem through an investigation of the genetic, linguistic, and cultural heritage of the Tewa Pueblo people of New Mexico.
Integrating data and methods from human biology, linguistics, archaeology, and cultural anthropology, Ortman shows that a striking social transformation took place as Mesa Verde people moved to the Rio Grande, such that the resulting ancestral Tewa culture was a unique hybrid of ideas and practices from various sources. While addressing several longstanding questions in American archaeology, Winds from the North also serves as a methodological guidebook, including new approaches to integrating archaeology and language based on cognitive science research. As such, it will be of interest to researchers throughout the social and human sciences.
(Source: village.anth.wsu.edu)
The Southern Political Tradition by Michael Perman G'74 now available from Louisiana State University Press.
In The Southern Political Tradition, the distinguished southern historian Michael Perman explores the region’s distinctive political practices and behaviors, primarily resulting from the South’s perception of itself as a minority under attack from the 1820s to the 1960s. Drawing on his extensive research and understanding of southern politics, Perman singles out three features of the area’s political history. He calls the first element “The One-Party Paradigm,” a political system characterized by one-party dominance rather than competition between two or more. The second feature, “The Frontier and Filibuster Defense,” illustrates a dramatic, preemptive response within Congress to any threat to the region’s racial
order. And in the third, “The Over-Representation Mechanism,” Perman describes the skillful manipulation of institutional mechanisms in Congress that resulted in greater strength and influence than the region’s relatively small population
warranted. This anomalous tradition has all but disappeared since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Southern Political Tradition offers an insightful and provocative perspective on the South’s political history.
(Source: lsupress.org)
