Upcoming
Events
The Second Annual Bloomington Eighteenth-Century Workshop,
organized by Dror Wahrman (History), will focus on the topic of “Death
in the Eighteenth Century: Theory and Practice” this year. The
workshop, to be held from May 21st -24,th features a series of intense,
cross-disciplinary discussions of participants’ papers. (details
available at www.indiana.edu/~voltaire/workshop.html). On March 27,th
the “Cultural History Series,” organized by Maria Bucur-Deckard (History),
will feature a lecture on “Democracy and the Cultural Memory of WWII
in America” by John Bodnar, Chancellor’s Professor of History.
The lecture will be held from 7:00 – 9:00 p.m. in Ballantine 004.
Dyan Elliott, Professor of History and Director of Medieval Studies, will
conclude the spring series on April 24th. Her lecture, “The Prostitute,
the Mystic, the Inquisitor, and the Law: ‘Daughters of Sin’ and their Judges
in Late Medieval France” will be held from 7:00 – 9:00 p.m. in Ballantine
Hall 004. The “Seminar on Translation,” organized by Breon Mitchell
(Lilly Library) and Sumie Jones (CMLT), will include a lecture by Jay
Rubin, Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard
University, on “Translating Haruki Murakami,” to be held in the
Lilly Library Lounge from 4:00 - 5:30 p.m. on April 3rd. The subsequent
day, Rubin will discuss “How NOT to Write a Book on Haruki Murakami” from
12:00 – 1:30 p.m. in BH 004.
Later
in April, Cultural Studies will join Gender Studies and American Studies
in sponsoring a lecture by Purnima Mankekar, Professor of Cultural
Anthropology at Stanford University. Her work explores the affective
bases of nationalism and the ways in which the politics of gender, sexuality,
family, and ethnicity shape people's ideas about the nation and themselves
as citizens. Her lecture topic, “changing notions of the erotic in
post-liberalization India,” will draw from recent research that focuses
on transnational flows within the Third World and the production of South
Asian American public cultures. The lecture will be held on Monday,
April 14th from 5:30-7:30 p.m. in the Oak Room at the Indiana Memorial
Union. The following day, the American Studies lecture series, “Methods
of Engagement: The Political Work of American Studies,” will feature
Troy
Duster, Professor of Sociology at New York University. His lecture,
“Human Molecular Genetics and the Subject of Race: Contrasting the Rhetoric
with the Practice in Medicine and Law,” will be held on Tuesday, April
15th at 4:00 p.m. in Ballantine 005.
Recent
Events
The
Cultural Studies program has co-sponsored a number of events since last
spring. It joined the Bloomington Cultural History Workshop to present
“FILM/History: A Colloquium” last April. Organized by Deidre
Lynch (English), Dror Wahrman (History), and Jeff Wasserstrom (History),
this interdisciplinary colloquium considered the competitions and collaborations
that have linked film to history and history to film over the last half-century,
interrogating the impact of film on historical |
Recent
Events (continued)
discourse. The colloquium
featured papers by James Chandler, Professor of English at the University
of Chicago, Tom Keirstead (History and East Asian Languages and Cultures),
Deidre Lynch (English), Joss Marsh (English), and Jeff Wasserstrom (History).
This fall, the program co-sponsored a colloquium on “New Paradigms in
Asian American Studies” organized by Angela Pao (Comparative Literature);
Melanie Castillo-Cullather (director, Asian Culture Center); and Indermohan
Virk, a visiting scholar in Sociology. The invited speakers: Gary
Okihiro, Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University;
Nancy Abelmann, Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Anthropology,
and Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Martin
F. Manalansan IV, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University
of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; and Lavina Shankar, Professor of English
at Bates College, addressed questions of race, ethnicity, gender, and cultural
identity that are raised by diasporic and immigrant communities and by
transnational perspectives.
Cultural
Studies also co-sponsored a reading and discussion by the drama critic,
performance artist, and novelist, Laurie Stone, this fall.
Author of the novel, Starting with Serge, and the memoir collection,
Close to the Bone, Laughing in the Dark, a collection of her writing on
comic performance, Stone is also a longtime writer for the Village Voice.
Her visit was organized in conjunction with Joan Hawkins’ (Communication
& Culture) course on experimental film, theater and performance art.
In honor of Sylvia Plath’s 70th birthday, the Cultural Studies program
joined the School of Fine Arts, the School of Music, the department of
English, and other sponsors in commemorating “The Art of Sylvia Plath.”
This international event, organized by Kathleen Connor (English), included:
“Eye Rhymes,” the first major exhibition of Plath’s visual art; a 70th
year commemoration ceremony featuring a concert with music based on Plath’s
Ariel poems; and a literary symposium with Susan Van Dyne, Professor and
Chair of Women’s Studies at Smith College, and Diane Middlebrook, writer
and Professor of English Emeritus at Stanford University, as keynote speakers.
The Cultural Studies program also participated in the Kinsey Institute’s
2003 series on “Women’s Sexualities: Portrayals and Perspectives” by co-sponsoring
a lecture by Linda Williams, chair of Film Studies at the University of
California, Berkeley. Williams’ lecture, “‘White Slavery’ or the
‘Ethnography of Sex Workers’: Women in Stag Films at the Kinsey Archive,”
which included a screening of historic stag films from the Kinsey collection
and drew a standing-room only crowd, was held in conjunction with the film
festival, “Under the Radar: Women in Cinema in the Kinsey Era,”
organized by Joan Hawkins. |
