CONVERSATIONS IN THE HUMANITIES
Conversations in the Humanities has become the Center’s fundamental series. These programs are designed to promote interdisciplinarity in the academy and to broaden the revelence of the humanities in the public sphere. They bring together academics, artists, and writers to discuss a wide range of topics, from major art exhibitions taking place in New York City to current political debates.
February 23, 2007
Ian Buruma and Richard Wolin: Europe and the Challenge of Islam
Ian Buruma is Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Rights, Democracy, and New Media at Bard College. His most recent book is Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance. Richard Wolin is a Distinguished Professor of History at the Graduate Center, CUNY.
November 20, 2006
Frank Rich and Alan Brinkley: The Decline and Fall of Truth
Frank Rich, columnist for The New York Times, discussed his book The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina with Alan Brinkley, Provost and Professor of History at Columbia University, whose books include The Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the American People from 1865 and Liberalism and its Discontents.
November 14, 2006
Marijane Meaker and Leslie Feinberg: Pioneering Lesbian Literature
Marijane Meaker’s 1952 novel, Spring Fire, published under the pseudonym Vin Packer, was one of the first pulp fiction novels to deal with a lesbian theme. Her groundbreaking 1955 account of lesbian life in New York City, We Walk Alone, and its sequel, We Too Must Love, are being re-published this fall by the feminist press. She spoke with Leslie Feinberg, transgender activist and author of Stone Butch Blues and Drag King Dreams. Marcia Gallo, Professor of History, Lehman College, moderated the discussion.
April 21, 2006
Joan Didion and W.S. Merwin: The Writing Life
A reading and discussion with the 2006 National Book Award Winners and life-long writers Joan Didion, author of The Year of Magical Thinking, and W.S. Merwin, author of Migration: New and Selected Poems. The event was moderated by New York Times staff writer Dinitia Smith and co-sponsored by the National Book Foundation.
March 29, 2006
Greil Marcus and Kim Gordon moderated by Julia Sneeringer
Greil Marcus, the author of Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century and other classics of cultural studies, and Kim Gordon, bassist for the influential band Sonic Youth, spoke with Julia Sneeringer, Associate Professor of History at Queens College and a Resident Mellon Fellow in 2006.
March 16, 2006
Elaine Scarry and Vincent Crapanzano
Elaine Scarry, author of The Body in Pain and On Beauty and Being Just, and Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University, spoke with Vincent Crapanzano, author of Hermes’ Dilemma and Hamlet’s Desire: On the Epistemology of Interpretation and Serving the Word: Literalism in America from the Pulpit to the Bench.
December 8, 2005
E.L. Doctorow and Victor Navasky
E.L. Doctorow, winner of (among others) the National Humanities Medal, the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, spoke about his 2005 novel The March—a fictionalization of Sherman’s 1864 march through the Confederate South—with long-time friend, fellow writer, and Editor-in-Chief of The Nation Victor Navasky.
November 4, 2004
Ben Katchor and Joshua Brown
Ben Katchor, graphic novelist and MacArthur Fellow, spoke with Joshua Brown, Executive Director of the Center for Media and Learning and the American Social History Project at the Graduate Center.
October 13, 2004
Diane Middlebrook and Nancy K. Miller
Diane Middlebrook, award-winning biographer and author of Her Husband: Hughes and Plath, a Marriage spoke with Nancy K. Miller, Distinguished Professor in Comparative Literature, English, and French at the Graduate Center.
March 3, 2004
Richard Foreman, Wallace Shawn, and Alisa Solomon
Avant-garde playwrights Richard Foreman and Wallace Shawn discussed theater and its discontents with Alisa Solomon, Professor of English, critic, and scholar of dramaturgy.
CONFERENCES
Our conferences are organized in collaboration with other Graduate Center departments and research centers, as well as outside organizations. The Center’s interdisciplinary agenda is reflected in the unique combination of panels bringing together speakers from a variety of fields.
December 9, 2005
Picturing Atrocity
An unprecedented collaboration between museums and universities, the conference brought together world-renowned photojournalists, artists, writers, and curators, including Susan Meiselas, Alfredo Jaar, Samantha Powers, and Philip Gourevitch, to explore the increasingly urgent questions provoked by photographs of atrocity in contemporary visual culture. Participants explored questions of response and responsibility toward the ubiquity of such images. The event was accompanied by an exhibition on atrocity photographs in the media prepared by students at The Graduate Center. It was held in support and with the presence of Amnesty International, and was co-sponsored by The Humanities Research Institute; University of Leeds, UK; The Graduate Center, CUNY; The British Academy; and Amnesty International.
September 29-October 1, 2005
Translation, the History of Political Thought, and the History of Concepts: An Interdisciplinary Conference
While few would deny that the disciplines of translation, political thought, and the history of concepts are connected, the interrelationships have seldom been systematically considered. This conference brought together theorists, historians, and practitioners of these subjects to discuss their interaction and to consider how interdisciplinary work may most profitably be conducted. It was co-sponsored by the History of Political and Social Concepts Group, The German Historical Institute, The Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, and The Historical Society.
March 1, 2004
Re-Imagining the Welfare State
An all-day event co-sponsored by The Center for Urban Research and the PhD Program in Political Science, Re-Imagining the Welfare State featured panels on the philosophical and moral foundations as well as the politics of the welfare state. Speakers included Senator Edward Kennedy and academics from across the United States and Europe, including Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Robin Blackburn (University of Essex), Elizabeth Warren (Harvard University), Frances Fox Piven (CUNY Graduate Center), and Leith Mullings (CUNY Graduate Center).
April 10, 2003
Writing Lives: The Past and Future of Biography
Biography has been a popular way of thinking about the past from antiquity to the present, but it has not always been pretty. For every Agricola by Tacitus, Life of Johnson by Boswell, and Jefferson by Ken Burns, there are the tawdry stories of Suetonius, the hagiographies of dictators, and gossipy “investigations” on television. Biography is the quintessential interdisciplinary field. Focusing on three figures—Charles Darwin, Sappho, and Louis Armstrong—this conference explored the phenomenon of life-writing, the nature of its audience, and the commonalities and differences across disciplines. Speakers included James Atlas, Publisher, Atlas Books; Michael Cogswell, Louis Armstrong Archive at Queens College and Director of the Louis Armstrong House; Ralph Colp, Jr., author To Be an Invalid: The Illness of Charles Darwin; Susan Daitch, Hunter College, author The Colorist, Gary Giddins, author Satchmo: The Genius of Louis Armstrong, David Grubin, Peabody and Emmy-award winning documentary filmmaker, Harry S. Truman and Kofi Annan: Center of the Storm; Eva Stehle, University of Maryland, author Performance and Gender in Ancient Greece; Rebecca Stott, Anglia Polytechnic University, Cambridge, author Darwin and the Barnacle.
October 25-26, 2002
Sidney Hook Reconsidered: A Centennial Celebration
Participants included: Casey Blake, Columbia University, Gary Bullert, Washington State University, Leonard Bushkoff, Oakland University, Steven Cahn, The Graduate Center, John Patrick Diggins, The Graduate Center, Joseph Dorman, Filmmaker of Arguing the World, Michael Eldridge, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, Barbara Forrest, Southeastern Louisiana University, Nathan Glazer, Harvard University, James Livingston, Rutgers University, Marvin Kohl, SUNY Fredonia, Paul Kurtz, Prometheus Books, Tibor Machan, Hoover Institution, Timothy Madigan, University of Rochester Press, Christopher Phelps, Ohio State University, Alan Ryan, Oxford University, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The Graduate Center, Edward Shapiro, Seton Hall University, Robert Talisse, Vanderbilt University, Cornel West, Princeton University, Robert Westbrook, Cornell University, and Bruce Wilshire, Rutgers University.
PANELS
The Center for the Humanities panels, featuring leading scholars, artists, writers, journalists, and civic leaders, create interdisciplinary forums for an ongoing, intelligent and uncompromised public dialogue about culture, art, politics, and any other topic that’s essential to public life.
May 8, 2007
The Interpretation of Habeas Corpus
Taking the fall 2006 Military Commission Act as a starting point, this interdisciplinary panel examined the historical precedents for limiting habeas protections as well as the recent legislation’s potential impact on US citizens’ constitutional protections. Participants included David Cole, Professor of Law at Georgetown University and Legal Affairs Correspondent for The Nation, Aziz Huq, Director of the Liberty and National Security Project at the Brennan Center for Justice, and Corey Robin, Professor of Political Science at the Graduate Center, CUNY.
April 24, 2007
Activist Culture and the State of Radical Art
What is the meaning of radical art and cultural resistance in a city full of expensive galleries and sleepy politics? Professor Stephen Duncombe (Media and Cultural Studies, Gallatin School, NYU), author of Dream: Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy, and a panel of artists and curators examined the current state of radical art. Panelists included Hugo Martinez, gallerist and founder of “United Graffiti Artists;” Nato Thompson, Curator, Creative Time; graffiti writer and filmmaker SKUF; and SWOON, a New York-based artist.
March 27, 2007
Writing the Contemporary: Art History and Art Criticism
Academics and art critics discussed the relationship between art history and art criticism, working inside and outside the academy, and the various problems of writing contemporary history. The event was moderated by Katy Siegel, Associate Professor of Art History at Hunter College and featured Johanna Burton, contributor to Grand Street and Artforum, and author of Cindy Sherman; Branden Joseph, Associate Professor of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University; Scott Rothkopf, Senior Editor of Artforum; and Lawrence Weschler, former staff writer for The New Yorker and author of Everything Rises: A Book of Convergences. Co-sponsored by the PhD Program in Art History.
March 6, 2007
The Role of Religion – The Secular, the Sacred, and the State
From Iraq to Iowa, the rise in the significance of religion as a cultural and political phenomenon has had implications for both politics and policy, often creating unstable tensions between the secular and the religious. This interdisciplinary discussion explored the religious and the secular as political forces. Participants included Talal Asad, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center; Jane Kramer, European Correspondent for The New Yorker; and Eyal Press, contributor to The Nation and author of Absolute Convictions: My Father, a City, and the Conflict that Divided America. Vincent Crapanzano, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center, CUNY was moderator.
March 5, 2007
After ’68: French Film, History, and Politics in the 1970’s
Jean-Michel Frodon, world-renowned film critic and editor-in-chief of Cahiers du Cinéma spoke with Lynn Higgins, Professor of French at Dartmouth College and author of New Novel, New Wave, New Politics: Fiction and the Representation of History in Postwar France, about the aftermath of the student uprising in 1968 and the culture of the 1970’s. Sam Dilorio and Ivone Margulies from Hunter College moderated.
February 13, 2007
Undoing Jews: The Jew of Malta and The Merchant of Venice
In conjunction with Theater for a New Audience’s simultaneous productions of Christopher Marlowe’s Jew of Malta and Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, the Center presented a conversation with actors, directors, and scholars about what these plays can tell us about our own time’s increasingly apocalyptic sectarian antagonisms. Panelists included the actor F. Murray Abraham (the leading role in both plays); David Herskovitz, director, The Jew of Malta; James Shapiro, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, and Richard McCoy, Professor of English at The Graduate Center, CUNY.
October 23, 2006
Reckoning with Hart Crane
Poets and critics discussed the life and work of the poet Hart Crane upon the publication of Library of America’s publication of Hart Crane: Complete Poems and Selected Letters. Participants included Langdon Hammer (Yale University), Herbert Liebowitz (Parnassus: Poetry in Review), Wayne Koestenbaum (The Graduate Center, CUNY), Brian Reed (Washington University) and David Yezzi (poet and critic). Moderated by Rachel Cohen (Sarah Lawrence University) and co-sponsored by the Library of America and the Poetry Society of America.
October 19, 2006
Does Diversity Matter: Race, Class and Higher Education
A panel discussion on diversity and racial inequality. Moderated by William Kelly. President of the Graduate Center, with Walter Benn Michaels, author of The Trouble with Diversity: How we Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality; David Harvey, Professor of Anthropology and Political Science at the CUNY Graduate Center and author of A Brief History of Neoliberalism; Leith Mullings, Presidential Professor of Anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center and author of On Our Own Terms: Race, Class and Gender in the Lives of African American Women; and Gary Younge, columnist for The Nation and The Guardian.
October 12, 2006
Why Arendt Matters
This conversation around reparations, cultural memory and forgiveness focused particularly on Hannah Arendt’s “politics of forgiveness” and its relevance to contemporary situations. The panel featured Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, author of Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World, Anna Freud: A Biography and Why Arendt Matters;John Torpey, Professor of Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center and author of Making Whole What has been Smashed: On Reparations Politics; and Jonathan Schell, peace and disarmament correspondent for The Nation and author of Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People.
October 5, 2006
War Reporting: Two Generations of Journalism Under Siege
A panel of prize-winning war correspondents compared their experiences and discussed ongoing issues such as the government’s role in reporting war, the cultural legitimacy of the first-person account, and the nature of “embedded” reporting. Participants included Rajiv Chandrasekaran, former Baghdad bureau chief for the Washington Post and author of Imperial Life in the Emerald City, Frances FitzGerald, author of Pulitzer Prize winning Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam, Christian Parenti, author of The Freedom: Shadows and Hallucinations in Occupied Iraq, and Sydney Schanberg, author of The Life and Death of Dith Pran. Lonnie Isabel, former deputy managing editor at Newsday and professor at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism moderated. Co-sponsored by the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and the Library of America.
February 22, 2006
The Iraq War and the Politics of Memoir
The Nation correspondent Christian Parenti spoke with young veterans of the Iraq war about politics and aesthetics of writing memoirs. Participants included John Crawford, author of The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldier’s Account of War in Iraq; Camilo Mejia, author of The Road from Ar Amadi: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejia; and Kayla Williams, author of Love My Rifle More Than You: Young and Female in the U.S. Army.
November 2, 2005
Robert Lowell & Ted Hughes: Giants Across the Divide
Editors, poets, and critics responsible for the recent editions of the work of Lowell and Hughes discussed and read the letters and poems of these two modern giants. The event featured Frank Bidart, David Gewanter, Saskia Hamilton, and Paul Keegan. Co-sponsored by the Poetry Society of America and the PhD Program in English, The Graduate Center, CUNY.
February 4 – March 4, 2005
Attacking Academic Freedom in America: A series of events exploring the contemporary crisis
This series of three panel discussions on the historical and contemporary implications of and responses to attacks on academic freedom took place in coordination with the exhibit ACTIVISM AND REPRESSION: The Struggle for Free Speech at CCNY and was co-sponsored by the Office of the Dean for Interdisciplinary Studies (The Graduate Center), The American Social History Project, The Center for Media and Learning (The Graduate Center), and the New York Council for the Humanities. The three panels—Rehearsing for McCarthyism at City College, Defending Academic Freedom in an Atmosphere of Terror, and A Conversation with the Critical Art Ensemble—featured a ranged of scholars, activists and artists, including Paul Buhle (Brown University), Blanche Cooke (CUNY), Henry Foner (former President of the Fur and Leather Worker’s Union), Eric Foner (Columbia University), Joan Wallach Scott (Institute for Advanced Study), Mahmood Mamdani (Columbia University), Ammiel Alcalay (CUNY), and Steve Kurtz (Co-founder of Critical Art Ensemble who was arrested in 2004 under the Patriot Act and professor at SUNY-Buffalo).
October 26, 2004
FINAL COUNT of the Collision between Us and Them:
Hip Hop, Prison, and the New Democracy
Scholars, artists and activists discussed the under-stories of mass political disengagement and electoral disenfranchisement. The panel, moderated by Leith Mullings, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at The Graduate Center, featured Piper Anderson, performer, prison reform activist and a contributor to How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office; Yvonne Bynoe, author of Stand and Deliver: Political Activism, Leadership and Hip Hop Culture and president and co-founder of Urban Think Tank Institute; and Greg Tate, staff writer for the Village Voice and author of Everything But the Burden: What White People are Taking from Black Culture.
April 13 and 21, 2004
The US Commitment to the United Nations
Then: International Cooperation in 1945
With Steven C. Schlessinger, World Policy Institute Director
Now: In the Wake of Iraq and the Elections in 2004
With Thomas G. Weiss, Edward C. Luck, Sir Brian Urquhart, and UN Ambassadors Dumisani Kumalo (South Africa), Kishore Mahbubani (Singapore), and Gert Rosenthal (Guatemala).
Attack of the Intelligent Woman: Great Writers of the 1950s
A series of four panel discussions taking place over the course of two months, Attack of the Intelligent Women addressed such questions as: What is our literary inheritance from the 1950's? How did the forces of feminism and femininity shape personal and political lives, and how have they influenced the way we think now? What can we learn with the tools that feminism and gay and lesbian studies have given us over the last half-century? Is short story writing a women's sport, like half-court basketball, or is novel writing a women's sport, like long-distance swimming? What, if anything, did the female writers of the 50's have in common? The discussions—The Group That Was Not One: The Lives of Fifties Writers; Rebel With A Cause: Being Female in the 50's; Foremothers: Fiction Writers on their favorites from the 50’s; and Grace Paley: A Reading and Conversation—presented such writers as Hisaye Yamamoto, Carson McCullers, Jean Stafford, Mavis Gallant, Grace Paley, Muriel Rukeyser, Gwendolyn Brooks, Elizabeth Bishop, and Jane Bowles and featured a wide range of eminent writers and academics, including Marie Ponsot, Brenda Wineapple, Michael Anderson, Eve Sedgwick, Mary Gordon, Jhumpa Lahiri, Linda Yablonski and Grace Paley.
SPECIAL GUESTS
Special guests who are open to a lively intellectual exchange with a public audience as well as our own faculty and graduate students are always welcome at The Center for the Humanities.
April 30, 2007
Zachary Leader
Great Engine of Comedy: Kingsley Amis in Perspective
Zachary Leader, Professor of English Literature at Roehampton University, discussed Kingsley Amis's centrality to British literary culture and the relation of his writing to his life. Zachary Leader's books include The Life of Kingsley Amis and On Modern British Fiction. He edited The Letters of Kingsley Amis.
November 13, 2006
David Nasaw
Lions & Scotsman
David Nasaw, the Executive Director of the Center for the Humanities and Distinguished Professor of History at the Graduate Center, spoke about writing his latest biography Andrew Carnegie.
November 1, 2006
Taner Akçam
Turkey and the Armenian Genocide
As Turkey lobbied to enter the European Union, Taner Akçam, controversial author of A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility discussed its evasion of responsibility for the Armenian genocide of 1915 and the international community’s inadequate attempts to bring the perpetrators to justice. Taner Akçam is one of the few historians to have mined significant evidence on the genocide in Turkish military and court records, parliamentary minutes, letters, and eyewitness accounts.
October 30, 2006
The Irving Howe Memorial Lecture with Robert Alter
The Enchantment of the Word: Language and the Study of Literature
Robert Alter is Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of seventeen books, including The Art of Biblical Narrative, which won the National Jewish Book Award for Jewish Thought, and The Pleasures of Reading in an Ideological Age. His most recent publication is The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary.
April 19, 2006
Jan Gross
Fear: Anti-Semitism after Auschwitz
Jan Gross’ books include Neighbors, a finalist for the National Book Award, and The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath. His most recent book is Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz. He is Professor of War and Society in the Department of History at Princeton University.
February 3, 2006
Tony Judt
Director of the Remarque Institute at New York University, Tony Judt is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, The New Republic, and The New York Times. In this talk he discussed Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945.
November 9, 2005
Tzvetan Todorov
The Avant-Garde in Art & Politics
Tzvetan Todorov, director of the Centre National de la Reserche Scientifique in Paris, spoke about the new role that art and artists found themselves entrusted with in the first half of the 20th century: the transformation of society.
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