Center for the Humanities

Center for the Humanities http://www.humanities.wisc.edu Center for the Humanities Calendar <speaker>Didier Fassin</speaker><speaker_title>James D. Wolfensohn Professor, School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; and Director of Studies, Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales, Paris </speaker_title><description>The witness has become a key figure of our time, whether as the survivor testifying to what he has lived through (superstes) or as the third party telling what he has seen or heard (testis). Publicly bearing witness to suffering and injustice is precisely what departs the first (International Red Cross) and second (Doctors without Borders, Doctors of the World) ages of humanitarianism. Basing my reflexion on an inquiry into the intervention of humanitarian organizations in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I will show how they define the legitimate manner to tell the world the “victims’ truth”, thus using the witness’ expertise and authority (auctor). In particular, the increasing presence of psychiatrists and psychologists on the field introduces a new vision in which trauma appears less as a clinical category than as a political argument. This process of subjectification of Palestinians but also of Israelis as victims, which institutes their experience and condition as shared, leaves aside the social meaning of the sacrifice of stone-throwers and suicide-bombers who witness as martyrs (martus) and renounces to the function of the witness as the one who narrates history (histôr). Beyond the specificity of this Middle-East field and situation, the philological investigation and its ethnographical developments illustrate more general questions about the complex issues raised by politics of testimony in a time when political causes become global and moral sentiments enter the political sphere. Finally it questions the processus of subjectification which result in the production of subjectivities and the obliteration of subjects. Didier Fassin's visit has been co-sponsored by The Center for European Studies, the Robet F. and Jean E. Holtz Center for Science & Technology Studies, and the Department of Anthropology </description><speaker_bio></speaker_bio><start_date>Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:00:00 -0700</start_date><location/><link>http://www.humanities.wisc.edu/?id=469#DidierFassin</link></event><event><title/><speaker>A Celebration of The Master Cheesemakers of Wisconsin </speaker><speaker_title></speaker_title><description>This event is co-sponsored by the <a href="http://uwpress.wisc.edu/">University of Wisconsin Press</a> and the <a href="http://www.union.wisc.edu/wud/">Wisconsin Union Directorate </a></description><speaker_bio></speaker_bio><start_date>Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:30:00 -0700</start_date><location/><link>http://www.humanities.wisc.edu/?id=158#ACelebrationofTheMasterCheesemakersofWisconsin</link></event><event><title/><speaker>Lea Jacobs</speaker><speaker_title>Professor of Film and Communication Arts</speaker_title><description>The Hollywood cinema is often said to have altered in the decade following World War I. Historians frequently characterize the period in terms of the development of new feminine stereotypes—the flapper epitomized by the stars Clara Bow and Colleen Moore—and of a new sexual permissiveness both reflected within films and, perhaps, reinforced by them. Others have explained the new representations of sexuality seen in the films with reference to the emergence of a culture of consumption. But these by now standard interpretations of the period do not account for the nature or full extent of the cinema’s transformation. The lecture describes a decisive shift in taste that was manifested in critical discourse, in filmmaking technique and narrative. It will contrast what came to be identified as sophisticated taste, films deemed on the edge of what censors or more conservative viewers would tolerate, with naïve taste, films dismissed as cloying, overly melodramatic, or simply old fashioned.</description><speaker_bio></speaker_bio><start_date>Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:30:00 -0700</start_date><location/><link>http://www.humanities.wisc.edu/?id=67#LeaJacobs</link></event><event><title/><speaker>Heather Paxson</speaker><speaker_title>Associate Professor of Anthropology, MIT</speaker_title><description>Initially applied to wine, the French notion of terroir, loosely translated as the taste of place, has long been a value-adding label bestowing distinction. Recently, American artisan cheesemakers have been experimenting with "translating terroir" to reveal the range of values — agrarian, environmental, social, gastronomic — that they believe constitute their cheese and distinguish artisan from commodity production. Some domestic cheesemakers are self-consciously working to reverse-engineer terroir: developing cheeses and natural-cultural landscapes that are well suited to one another. More than approaching terroir as a descriptive label to characterize how distinctive tastes express valued characteristics of place, these rural entrepreneurs approach terroir prescriptively, as a model for practice that might create place through environmental stewardship and rural economic revitalization. U.S. terroir talk reveals attempts to reconcile the economic and socio-moral values that producers invest in artisan cheese.   Photo: Anne Topham at the Dane County Farmers' Market</description><speaker_bio></speaker_bio><start_date>Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:00:00 -0700</start_date><location/><link>http://www.humanities.wisc.edu/?id=469#HeatherPaxson</link></event><event><title/><speaker>Humanities in the 21st Century</speaker><speaker_title></speaker_title><description> This panel brings together the nation's foremost experts in the humanities to discuss the direction of the Humanities in the 21st century. Moderated by UW-Madison Chancellor Carolyn 'Biddy' Martin, the panel will include comments from Jim Leach, Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities; Don Randel, President of the Mellon Foundation; and Pauline Yu, President of the American Council of Learned Societies. </description><speaker_bio></speaker_bio><start_date>Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:30:00 -0700</start_date><location/><link>http://www.humanities.wisc.edu/?id=158#Humanitiesinthe21stCentury</link></event><event><title/><speaker>Bill Cronon</speaker><speaker_title>Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas Research Professor of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies</speaker_title><description></description><speaker_bio></speaker_bio><start_date>Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:30:00 -0700</start_date><location/><link>http://www.humanities.wisc.edu/?id=67#BillCronon</link></event><event><title/><speaker>Catherine Malabou</speaker><speaker_title>Maître de conférences in the Philosophy Department at the Université Paris-X Nanterre</speaker_title><description>The most recent research in biology aims at putting into question the concept of genetic programming. Today, epigenetics tends to be more important than genetics itself. Three main discoveries explain this shift: the discovery of interfering RNA; the discovery of stem cells; and the discovery of neural plasticity. In this lecture, philosopher Catherine Malabou focuses on plasticity, which explains that our brain develops itself for the most part after birth and is modeled by experience, education, and learning. Malabou considers how the discovery of neural plasticity challenges philosophical and political conventions, in particular the belief that philosophy and technoscience are opposed. She explores what happens to a politics of emancipation and resistance when science no longer is the name of the enemy, and asks what is the future of philosophy in an era of plasticity and epigentics.</description><speaker_bio></speaker_bio><start_date>Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:30:00 -0700</start_date><location/><link>http://www.humanities.wisc.edu/?id=56#CatherineMalabou</link></event><event><title/><speaker>3rd Annual Conference on Public Humanities</speaker><speaker_title></speaker_title><description>The Conference on Public Humanities is a one-day event on bringing the humanities to wider publics in our communities, schools, nonprofits, digital spaces, and more. Featuring the work of graduate students in and outside of The Center for the Humanities' Humanities Exposed (HEX) program.</description><speaker_bio></speaker_bio><start_date>Wed, 17 Mar 2010 09:00:00 -0600</start_date><location/><link>http://www.humanities.wisc.edu/?id=234#3rdAnnualConferenceonPublicHumanities</link></event><event><title/><speaker>Frank Salomon</speaker><speaker_title>John V. Murra Professor of Anthropology</speaker_title><description></description><speaker_bio></speaker_bio><start_date>Wed, 07 Apr 2010 17:30:00 -0600</start_date><location/><link>http://www.humanities.wisc.edu/?id=67#FrankSalomon</link></event><event><title/><speaker>Paola Antonelli</speaker><speaker_title>Senior Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art</speaker_title><description></description><speaker_bio></speaker_bio><start_date>Mon, 26 Apr 2010 19:30:00 -0600</start_date><location/><link>http://www.humanities.wisc.edu/?id=56#PaolaAntonelli</link></event></events> </xml>