FALL
Monday September 14-Thursday September 17
Visit of short-term fellow Aamir Mufti (Comparative Literature, UCLA)
Monday 4:00: Lecture, "Orientalism and the Institution of World Literature" CL 501
Reception to follow
Wednesday 12:00: PITT FACULTY “Take Me to Your Language: Comparative Literature and Global Society” CL 526
Thursday 12:30: Colloquium, “The Missing Homeland of Edward Said”
CL 526
Paper for discussion will be distributed in advance.
Email humctr@pitt.edu for a copy of the paper.
Thursday October 1
12:30: Colloquium, Adriana Helbig, Humanities Center Fellow (Music)
Paper Title: “Playing for Peace: Reggae-Rap and Hip-Folk Among African Migrants in Ukraine”
CL 512
Paper for discussion will be distributed in advance.
Email humctr@pitt.edu for a copy of the paper.
Thursday October 1
3:00: Lecture by Greg Grandin (History, NYU)
“American Exceptionalism: Reflections on the 50th Anniversary of William Appleman Williams's The Tragedy of American Diplomacy”
CL 501
Thursday October 8
12:30: Colloquium, Sharon Marcus (English and Comparative Literature, Columbia)
CL 526
Text for discussion (from her book Between Women) will be distributed in advance.
Email humctr@pitt.edu for a copy of the reading.
Thursday October 8
4:30: Lecture, Sharon Marcus, “Salome and the Drama of Celebrity”
501 CL
Friday October 9
5:00: Lecture, Lawrence F. Rhu, "Shakespeare Italianate: Skeptical Crises in Three Plays of Shakespeare"
Thursday October 15
12:30: Colloquium, "Teaching Faulkner", Julia Stern (Northwestern)
CL 526
Thursday October 15
4:30: Lecture, "Family Troubles in the House Divided: Slave Violence in Mary Chestnut's Civil War Narratives", Julia Stern
CL 501
Tuesday October 20
4:00, Lecture, "Time and Freedom in Asian Film", Tony Day
CL 512
Thursday October 29
12:30: Colloquium, Joshua Lund, Humanities Center Fellow (Hispanic)
Paper Title: “Let Plunder: Altamirano's Mexico and the Problem of Paramilitarism”
CL 512
Paper for discussion will be distributed in advance.
Email humctr@pitt.edu for a copy of the paper.
4:30: Lecture, George Lamming (Brown), "The Politics of Theory: Caribbean Literature and the Search for a New Critical Language"
Tuesday November 3
2:30: Two lectures on the topic “The Idea of France in the Middle Ages and Renaissance”: Daisy Delogu (Romance Languages and Literatures, Chicago), “A Natural King and a Free People: Philippe de Mézières's 'Dream of the Old Pilgrim' (1386-89)”; Katherine Crawford (History, Vanderbilt), “Salic Law and the Politics of Exclusion”
501 CL
Reception to follow
Wednesday November 4
2:30: Colloquium on “Gender and the Medieval/Renaissance French Nation”: discussion around French primary texts led by Daisy Delogu and Katherine Crawford
Babcock Room (CL 40th floor). Take the elevator to the 36th floor and then take the service elevator around the corner to your right.
Texts for discussion will be distributed in advance.
Email humctr@pitt.edu for a copy of the texts.
Thursday November 5
12:30: Colloquium, Adam Lowenstein, Humanities Center Fellow (English/Film Studies)
Paper Title: “The Animal in You(Tube): Posthuman Cinema from Buñuel to New Media”
CL 512
Paper for discussion will be distributed in advance.
Email humctr@pitt.edu for a copy of the paper.
Friday November 13-Saturday November 14
Friday 4-7pm: Frick Fine Arts Auditorium
Saturday 10:00-11:45am: Babcock Room (40th Floor CL)
1:30-3pm: Frick Fine Arts Auditorium
3:30-5pm: Frick Fine Arts Auditorium
Please click here for a detailed overview of events.
Wednesday November 18
4:30: Lecture by Sheila ffolliott (George Mason University), "How Renaissance Women Viewed Portraits"
CL 202
Friday November 20
3:00: Lecture by Alexander Nehamas (Philosophy, Princeton), “‘Because It Was He, Because It Was I’: The Good of Friendship”
CL 324
Reception to follow
Thursday December 3-Friday December 4
Visit of Short-Term Fellow, Sabine MacCormack (Classics and History, Notre Dame)
Thursday 12:30: Colloquium discussion of chapters 1 & 5 from her book In The Wings of Time: Rome, the Incas, Spain and Peru. 526 CL
Responses from Gonzalo Lamana (Hispanic), Bruce Vernarde (History), and Lara Putnam (History)
Text to be distributed in advance.
Email humctr@pitt.edu for a copy of the reading.
Thursday 5:00: Lecture, “The Poetics of Representation in Viceregal Peru: A Walk Round the Cloister of San Agustin in Lima”
501 CL
Friday 1:00: Discussion on José de Acosta’s travel narrative, led by Prof. MacCormack. 526 CL
Texts to be distributed in advance.
Email humctr@pitt.edu for a copy of the reading.
Thursday December 10
4:30: Lecture by Petre Petrov, Humanities Center External Fellow (Slavic Languages and Literatures, Princeton)
“The Industry of Truing: Socialist Realism, Reality, Realization”
CL 501
SPRING
Wednesday January 20
4:30: Presentations on the history and architecture of the new Humanities Center, Rush G. Miller (Director, University Library System) on the history of the Darlington Library and Jeff Slack and Greg George (Pfaffmann and Associates) on the recent renovation project. Space limited. Contact humctr@pitt.edu to check availability.
Thursday January 21
12:30: Cosmopolitanism Colloquium 1, led by Jonathan Arac
Thursday January 28
12:30: Colloquium on anarchy, led by Mohammed Bamyeh (Sociology)
Friday January 29
1:00-4:00: An Afternoon with The Keywords Project, Humanities Center and the English Department
Thursday February 4
4:30: Lecture, Boris Groys (Senior Fellow, NYU), “Aesthetic Democracy”
Thursday February 11
12:30: Colloquium, Jerome Branche (Fellow, Hispanic), “ Malungaje: Toward a Poetics of Diaspora."
Thursday February 18
12:30: Colloquium, Petre Petrov (Early-Career Fellow, Princeton), "The Soviet Gnomic (On the Peculiarities of Generic Phenomena in Stalinist Officialese)."
Lecture, Lawrence Kritzman (French/Comp Lit, Dartmouth), “Intellectuals without Borders” (on Balibar, Ben Jelloun, Nancy, Derrida, Kristeva). 2:30PM in 501 Cathedral of Learning.
2:30: Lecture, Mercedes Niño Murcia (University of Iowa) “Letras prohibidas y escritores estigmatizados en el mundo letrado”
Friday February 19
1:30: Colloquium, Frank Salomon (Wisconsin) and Mercedes Niño-Murcia (Iowa) on chapters of their book Beyond the Lettered City
Thursday February 25
12:30: Cosmopolitanism Colloquium 2, led by Jonathan Arac. Reading: Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism.
Although open to all interested, this is primarily for the group preparing to take part in the May Faculty Seminar. If you wish to be added to that list, or if you wish to learn the readings for one of the preparatory meetings, please contact the Center.
Thursday February 25
2:30: Colloquium, Lynn Festa (English, Rutgers), Enlightenment texts TBA
Readings include Festa, "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Tahitian Jouissance," _Romance Quarterly_ 54.4 (Fall 2007): 303-25; sections of Diderot's _Supplément au voyage de Bougainville_ (available by emailing the organizer Chloé Hogg [hoggca@pitt.edu]).
Friday February 26
2:30: Lecture, Lynn Festa, “Humanity without Feathers: Slavery, Sentimentality, and the 18th-Century Origins of Humanitarian Sensibility”
Thursday March 18
5:00: Franziska Meier, "Italo Calvino Under Italian Fascism: Reconstruction and Denial," 119 Cathedral of Learning
Friday March 19
2:00: Amnon Raz-Krakotzin, "Censorship and the Secularization of Jewish Discourse" 501 Cathedral of Learning
9:30-11:30 AM: Franziska Meier, workshop, 1218 Cathedral of Learning
Monday March 15 - Friday March 26
Visit of short-term fellow Etienne Balibar (French/Comp Lit, Irvine):
Monday 3/15 5:00: Lecture, “Rights, Differences, Exclusions,”
University Club Ballroom B, with reception to follow
View video of the lecture
Tuesday 3/16 12:30: Presentation/discussion with European Studies Center, “Ideas of Europe,” 4130 Posvar Hall
Wednesday 3/17 2:00: Colloquium/discussion held in French, a
reconsideration of Balibar’s influential essay “La forme nation: histoire et idéologie” (in Race, nation, classe, 1988)
Thursday 3/18 12:30: Colloquium, “Crime and Madness: A Dubious Abnormality” (suggested reading: Michel Foucault, “The Dangerous individual”, address to the Law and Psychiatry Symposium in Toronto, 1978, reprinted as chapter 8, in Michel Foucault, Politics, Philosophy, Culture. Interviews and Other Writings 1977-1984, ed. Kritzman, Routledge, 1988, 125-51.
Monday 3/22 12:00: Presentation and discussion for undergraduates, “Citizen and Nation”
Tuesday 3/23 12:30: Colloquium, “Race, Culture, and the Genealogical Order” (suggested reading: William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!)
Thursday 3/25 12:30: Colloquium, “Masculinities/Femininities” (suggested reading: Joan Copjec, “Sex and the Euthanasia of Reason,” chapter 8 of Read My Desire: Lacan against the Historicists, M.I.T. Press, 1994)
Friday 3/26 2:00: Closing lecture, “Thinking the Impossible Human,” G24
Cathedral of Learning
Tuesday March 30
4:00: Lecture, Shamsul Amri Baharuddin, (Institute of Ethnic Studies, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia), "From Conflict to Cohesion: The paradigmatic challenge in analyzing plural societies in Southeast Asia"
Thursday April 1
12:30: Cosmopolitanism Colloquium 3, led by Jonathan Arac
Although open to all interested, this is primarily for the group preparing to take part in the May Faculty Seminar. If you wish to be added to that list, or if you wish to learn the readings for one of the preparatory meetings, please contact the Center.
Thursday April 8
12:30: Colloquium, Hannah Johnson (Fellow, English), “The Ariel Toaff Scandal and the New Politics of Blood Libel”
Monday April 12
12:30: Colloquium, Boris Groys (Senior Fellow, NYU), "The Border between Word and Image"
2:30: Colloquium, Shane Agin (French, Duquesne), "On Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men"
Tuesday April 13
5:00: Lecture, Shane Agin, “Rousseau and the Sexual Imagination”
Thursday April 15 and Friday April 16
10:00 - 12:30: Seminar, Alexander Nehamas (Princeton), Two seminars on the topics of philosophy and beauty, 1218 Cathedral of Learning
Space is limited, please contact humctr@pitt.edu
Thursday April 22
12:30: Cosmopolitanism Colloquium 4, led by Jonathan Arac
Although open to all interested, this is primarily for the group preparing to take part in the May Faculty Seminar. If you wish to be added to that list, or if you wish to learn the readings for one of the preparatory meetings, please contact the Center.
4:00: Lecture, Jo Guldi, "City of Words" 202 Frick Fine Arts
Friday April 23
12:00: Colloquium, Jo Guldi, "Britain Invents the Infrastructure State"
Monday May 3 - Friday May 7
11:00-1:00: Faculty Seminar, Bruce Robbins (English/Comp Lit, Columbia), “Cosmopolitanism.” Space-limited event: contact humctr@pitt.edu to apply.
Friday May 14
2:30-4:30PM: An International, Interdisciplinary Colloquium: “RUSSIAN PHILOSOPHY BEYOND MARX AND GOD?” CL 1228
Tatiana Artemyeva, Herzen State Pedagogical University (St. Petersburg, Russia),“Russian Utopianism (from the Enlightenment to the Post-Soviet Period)”
Alyssa DeBlasio, University of Pittsburgh and Higher School of Economics (Moscow, Russia) “‘Deception, Hedonism, and Ideological Clanking’: Writing the History of Russian Philosophy”
James P. Scanlan (The Ohio State University) “When ‘Russian Philosophy’ Meant Marxism”
Discussant: Fred Evans, Duquesne University