Onnagata: A Labyrinth of Gendering in Kabuki Theater
by Maki Isaka F’06. Now available from University of Washington Press.
Kabuki is well known for its exaggerated acting, flamboyant costumes and makeup, and unnatural storylines. The onnagata, usually male actors who perform the roles of women, have been an important aspect of kabuki since its beginnings in the 17th century. In a “labyrinth” of gendering, the practice of men playing women’s roles has affected the manifestations of femininity in Japanese society. In this case study of how gender has been defined and redefined through the centuries, Maki Isaka examines how the onnagata’s theatrical gender “impersonation” has shaped the concept and mechanisms of femininity and gender construction in Japan. The implications of the study go well beyond disciplinary and geographic cloisters.
Modality and Explanatory Reasoning
by Boris Kment F'11. Now available from Oxford University Press.
Since the ground-breaking work of Saul Kripke, David Lewis and others in the 1960’s and 70’s, one dominant interest of analytic philosophers has been in modal truths, which concern the question what is possible and what is necessary. However, considerable controversy remains over the source and nature of necessity. In Modality and Explanatory Reasoning, Boris Kment takes a novel approach to the study of modality that places special emphasis on understanding the origin of modal notions in everyday thought.
Kment argues that the concepts of necessity and possibility originated as useful ancillaries to a common type of thought experiment—counterfactual reasoning—that allows us to investigate explanatory connections. This cognitive routine is closely related to the controlled experiments of empirical science. Necessity is defined in terms of causation and other forms of explanation such as grounding, a relation that connects metaphysically fundamental facts to non-fundamental ones. Therefore, contrary to a widespread view, explanation is more fundamental than modality. The study of modal facts is important for philosophy, not because these facts are of much metaphysical interest in their own right, but because they provide evidence about explanatory relationships.
A Burnable Book
by Bruce Holsinger F'04, Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowships for Recently Tenured Scholars now available from Harper Collins.
In Chaucer’s London, betrayal, murder, and intrigue swirl around the existence of a prophetic book that foretells the deaths of England’s kings
London, 1385. Surrounded by ruthless courtiers–including his powerful uncle, John of Gaunt, and Gaunt’s artful mistress, Katherine Swynford–England's young, still untested king, Richard II, is in mortal peril, and the danger is only beginning. Songs are heard across London–catchy verses said to originate from an ancient book that prophesies the end of England’s kings–and among the book’s predictions is Richard’s assassination. Only a few powerful men know that the cryptic lines derive from a “burnable book,” a seditious work that threatens the stability of the realm. To find the manuscript, wily bureaucrat Geoffrey Chaucer turns to fellow poet John Gower, a professional trader in information with connections high and low.
Gower discovers that the book and incriminating evidence about its author have fallen into the unwitting hands of innocents, who will be drawn into a labyrinthine conspiracy that reaches from the king’s court to London’s slums and stews–and potentially implicates his own son. As the intrigue deepens, it becomes clear that Gower, a man with secrets of his own, may be the last hope to save a king from a terrible fate.
Medieval scholar Bruce Holsinger draws on his vast knowledge of the period to add colorful, authentic detail–on everything from poetry and bookbinding to court intrigues and brothels–to this highly entertaining and brilliantly constructed epic literary mystery that brings medieval England gloriously to life.
Related Links:
- “’A Burnable Book’ Is Fragrant With The Stench Of Medieval London.” NPR. Jean Zimmerman
- “To Kill a King.” The New York Times. Sarah Dunant
Oral Literature for Children: Rethinking Orality, Literacy, Performance, and Documentation Practices
What Was Contemporary Art?
by Richard Meyer F'94, Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS Dissertation Fellowships in American Art.
Now available from MIT Press.
Contemporary art in the early twenty-first century is often discussed as though it were a radically new phenomenon unmoored from history. Yet all works of art were once contemporary to the artist and culture that produced them. In What Was Contemporary Art? Richard Meyer reclaims the contemporary from historical amnesia, exploring episodes in the study, exhibition, and reception of early twentieth-century art and visual culture.
For more information about the Luce/ACLS Dissertation Fellowships in American Art, click here.
Filmed by Stephen Pagano and Tom Salvaggio. Edited by Tom Salvaggi for MOCA.
ACLS Fellows in the News. S. Hollis Clayson F'90 has been appointed the 2013-14 Samuel H. Kress Professor at the National Gallery of Art. The professorship is among the highest honors in the field of art history.
“With the appointment, Clayson will become the senior resident scholar at the National Gallery’s Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA). In addition to pursuing her own research, she will counsel predoctoral fellows at the center.
A historian of modern art who specializes in 19th-century Europe and transatlantic exchanges between France and the United States, Clayson is author of “Painted Love: Prostitution in French Art of the Impressionist Era” and “Paris in Despair: Art and Everyday Life Under Siege (1870-71).” She is co-editor of “Understanding Paintings: Themes in Art Explored and Explained,” which has been translated into six languages.
At CASVA, Clayson, Northwestern’s Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities, will complete “Electric Paris,” a book exploring the visual cultures of the City of Light in the era of Thomas Edison.
Clayson was honored for her work two years ago by the Art Institute of Chicago and has received numerous awards, including fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Getty Research Institute, the Clark Art Institute and The Huntington Library.
The Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts was founded by the National Gallery of Art to study the production, use and cultural meaning of art, artifacts, architecture, photography and film.”
(Source: evanstonnow.com)
New Report Shows Little Testing of Civic Education
Karen Shanton F'12 blogging for the National Council of State Legislatures. The ACLS Public Fellows Program placed Dr. Shanton as a Legislative Studies Specialist at NCSL for two years.
ACLS Fellows in the News. Bruce Cole F'80 delivers a lecture on “Their Names Liveth Forevermore: Remembering the Fallen of the Great War” tomorrow at Mississippi State University as part of the Institute for the Humanities Distinguished Lecture Series.
Cole has spent much of his career teaching art history and comparative literature at Indiana University. The author of more than 14 books, he has been honored with fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies and American Philosophical Society. He also holds nine honorary degrees.
Cole helped establish the American Revolution Center in Philadelphia, Penn., which he directed from 2009-2011. From 2001-2009, he also chaired the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agency and one of the largest funders of humanities programs in the U.S.
For information about this and other programs of MSU’s Institute for the Humanities, visit www.msstate.edu/dept/IH/Humanities.html .
(Source: msstate.edu)
Pittsburghers rally to replenish one poor school's library shelves
Jessie Ramey F'11 spurs online effort to restock library at low-income Pittsburgh school.
Focus on Research: Emma J. Teng F'06 on the Hidden Histories of Mixed Race Families
ACLS asked its fellows to describe their research: the knowledge it creates and how this knowledge benefits our understanding of the world. We are pleased to present this response from Emma J. Teng, T.T. and Wei Fong Chao Professor of Asian Civilizations at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In June 1914, a young American woman with a small baby boarded a ship bound for China. Although she was white, she traveled in accommodations meant “for Asiatic passengers only.” Why? Mae Watkins Franking, a native of Ann Arbor, Michigan, was traveling to China to reunite with her Chinese husband, whom she had met as a student at the University of Michigan. Due to the Marital Expatriation Act of 1907, which stripped U.S. citizenship from all American women who married foreign nationals, Mae had taken Chinese nationality, and thus, in an age of segregated travel, she journeyed to Shanghai under this status. Mae might have felt apprehensive moving to China, for although racial intermarriage was legal in Michigan at the time of the Frankings’ wedding, the Chinese government prohibited the intermarriage of overseas students with foreign women. (Merchants and laborers were allowed to intermarry.) The Frankings had three children: Nelson, born in the U.S., was an American citizen by right of birth; while Alason and Cecile, born in China, were considered by the U.S. government to be “aliens ineligible for naturalization.” Although the family returned to the United States in 1918, Alason and Cecile would have to wait until 1943 to gain the right of naturalization—despite the fact that their ancestors had fought in the American Revolution. These are just a few examples of the legal injustices faced by mixed (and in this case transnational) families up through the first half of the twentieth century.
ACLS Fellows in the News. Amy-Jill Levine F'92 speaks at St. Norbert’s College (Wisconsin) tonight.
Amy-Jill Levine, professor of New Testament and Jewish studies at Vanderbilt University, will present, “Seeing Through Different Lenses: How Christians and Jews Read Scripture,” as a part of the Norman and Louis Miller Lecture in Public Understanding. The event will take place on Tuesday, Oct. 2, at 7:30 p.m. in the Walter Theatre, Abbot Pennings Hall of Fine Arts, on the St. Norbert College campus. The lecture is free and open to the public.
(Source: snc.edu)
ACLS Fellows in the News. Christian Lee Novetzke F'08 lectures on “The Revolutions of Yoga: The Cosmic, Cultural and Political Power of Yoga in India” tomorrow at Winston-Salem State University.
The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will explore the history and philosophy of yoga in classical India and its impact on the construction of Hindu temples. Novetzke, who teaches and writes about religion, history and culture in South Asia, will also highlight how the central ideas and practices of yoga empowered Gandhian politics in the early 20th Century and its current renaissance in the modern West.
An associate professor of South Asia studies and comparative religion at The Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle, Novetzke will be a visiting scholar at WSSU September 13-14 as part of a National Endowment for the Humanities funded project on integrating India into the liberal arts curriculum. In addition to his public lecture, Novetzke will also conduct a workshop for WSSU faculty on “Teaching the Religions of India.”
(Source: wssu.edu)
ACLS Fellows in the News. Paul Hayes Tucker F'84 speaks on “Claude Monet - Seeking Significance in the Giverny Gardens” at Hill-Stead Museum tomorrow night in Farmington, CT.
Hill-Stead is pleased to welcome Professor Paul Hayes Tucker, Curator of Monet’s Garden at The New York Botanical Garden, on Friday, September 7 at 7 pm to speak on “Claude Monet - Seeking Significance in the Giverny Gardens.” Professor Tucker, hailed by Time Magazine as one of America’s foremost authorities on Claude Monet and Impressionism, will offer a fascinating look at Claude Monet, his garden and his art, drawing connections between Hill-Stead Museum’s collection and the exhibition of Monet’s Garden at The New York Botanical Garden. The lecture complements a public trip hosted by Hill-Stead Museum Saturday, September 8 to Monet’s Garden in New York (see hillstead.org for details). A reception will follow the lecture. Admittance is $15 for members, $20 for members-to-be. Proceeds benefit Hill-Stead Museum, its education and community programs.
(Source: courant.com)