Center for the Humanities

Center for the Humanities http://www.humanities.wisc.edu Center for the Humanities Calendar <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.   Please join us for a "Humanities Happy Hour" before the lecture. The University Club will open a cash bar from 4:30-5:30 that afternoon.</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>Natalie Zemon Davis</speaker><speaker_title>Adjunct Professor of History, Senior Fellow in Comparative Literature, and Professor of Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto</speaker_title><description> <meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="Content-Type"> <meta content="Word.Document" name="ProgId"> <meta content="Microsoft Word 12" name="Generator"> <meta content="Microsoft Word 12" name="Originator"> <link href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5Clkain%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml" rel="File-List" /><o:smarttagtype name="country-region" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype name="City" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype name="place" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype name="PlaceName" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype name="PlaceType" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype> <link href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5Clkain%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_themedata.thmx" rel="themeData" /> <link href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5Clkain%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_colorschememapping.xml" rel="colorSchemeMapping" /><style type="text/css">  </style>Natalie Zemon Davis is a social and cultural historian of early modern times.  She has written on peasants and artisans in early modern <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">France</st1:place></st1:country-region>; on women in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Germany</st1:place></st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">France</st1:place></st1:country-region>, the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Netherlands</st1:place></st1:country-region> and Québec; on criminality and storytelling in sixteenth-century <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">France</st1:place></st1:country-region>; on forms of gift-giving in early modern times; and on Muslims and Christians in sixteenth-century <st1:place w:st="on">Europe</st1:place>.  She is the author of eight books, all of them translated into various foreign languages: Society and Culture in Early Modern France; The Return of Martin Guerre (she was also historical consultant for the film Le Retour de Martin Guerre); Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales in Sixteenth-Century France; Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives; The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France; Slaves on Screen: Film and Historical Vision; L’histoire tout feu tout flame. Entretiens avec Denis Crouzet; Trickster Travels. A Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds.  Together with Arlette Farge, she was coeditor of volume 3 (Renasisssance and Enlightenment Paradoxes)  of A History of Women, edited by Michelle Perrot and Georges Duby.  She has taught at the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">Toronto</st1:placename></st1:place>, the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">California</st1:placename></st1:place> at <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Berkeley</st1:place></st1:city>, and <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Princeton</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype></st1:place>, where she was Henry Charles Lea Professor of History and Director of the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Shelby</st1:placename> <st1:placename w:st="on">Cullom</st1:placename> <st1:placename w:st="on">Davis</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Center</st1:placetype></st1:place> for Historical Studies.  A former president of the American Historical Association, she is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a corresponding fellow of the British Academy, and Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes Académique.   She is the recipient of various honorary degrees, including from <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Harvard</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype></st1:place>, the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">Toronto</st1:placename></st1:place>, Memorial University of Newfoundland, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Cambridge</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype></st1:place>, Université de Lyon, and <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Oxford</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype></st1:place>.   Emerita from <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Princeton</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype></st1:place>, Natalie Zemon Davis is currently Adjunct Professor of History and Professor of Medieval Studies at the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">Toronto</st1:placename></st1:place>.  Her present research is on slavery and sociability in 18th-century <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Suriname</st1:place></st1:country-region>.</meta> </meta> </meta> </meta> </description><speaker_bio></speaker_bio><start_date>Thu, 25 Feb 2010 19:30:00 -0700</start_date><location/><link>http://www.humanities.wisc.edu/?id=56#NatalieZemonDavis</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>Steven Epstein</speaker><speaker_title>John C. Shaffer Professor of Sociology</speaker_title><description></description><speaker_bio></speaker_bio><start_date>Mon, 12 Apr 2010 16:00:00 -0600</start_date><location/><link>http://www.humanities.wisc.edu/?id=469#StevenEpstein</link></event><event><title/><speaker>Steven Epstein</speaker><speaker_title>John C. Shaffer Professor of Sociology</speaker_title><description></description><speaker_bio></speaker_bio><start_date>Mon, 12 Apr 2010 16:00:00 -0600</start_date><location/><link>http://www.humanities.wisc.edu/?id=469#StevenEpstein</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>