SU Humanities Center announces 2012 Spring symposia

The Syracuse University Humanities Center in The College of Arts and Sciences announces the lineup for the 2012 HC Fellows Spring Symposia. The program includes more than a dozen presentations by HC Dissertation Fellows, HC Faculty Fellows and Humanities Faculty Fellows. All events are free and open to the public.

Gregg Lambert, Dean’s Professor of the Humanities and founding director of the SU Humanities Center, says the purpose of the fellowships—and the symposia, in general—is to facilitate a scholarly examination of the interdisciplinary humanities.

“We want to spur conversations and discoveries that lead people to have a better understanding of the world in which they live,” he says. “Each year, our dissertation and faculty fellowships provide scholars in The College of Arts and Sciences and in the Maxwell School with uninterrupted blocks of time to engage in research initiatives and public programming. Many of these projects invariably involve people from other institutions.”

Lambert is also proud that the SU Humanities Center is presenting, for the first time, lectures by Humanities Faculty Fellows.

HC Faculty Fellow Symposia

• “Middle East Media and Cultural Politics: Digital Occupation or Digital Revolution”
  Monday, March 26, 4 p.m.
  Eggers Hall, Room 220
  Faculty Fellow: Amy Kallander, assistant professor of history, affiliated faculty member of women’s and gender studies, and core faculty member of the Middle Eastern Studies Program at SU
  Invited Speaker: Helga Tawil-Souri, assistant professor of media, culture and communication at New York University
  Co-Sponsors: Department of History, Middle Eastern Studies Program, and Executive Education Program
• “Cosmopolitan Mosaics of Modern Alexandria, Egypt”
  Tuesday, April 17, 9:30 a.m.
  The SU Humanities Center Seminar Room (304), Tolley Humanities Building
  Faculty Fellow: Stefano Giannini, assistant professor of Italian at SU
  Invited Speakers: Michael Ebner, assistant professor of history at SU; and Deborah Starr, associate professor of modern Arabic and of Hebrew literature and film, as well as director of Jewish studies at Cornell University
  Invited Respondents: Beverly Allen, professor of French, Italian and comparative literature at SU; Timothy Campbell, professor of Italian studies and chair of Romance studies at Cornell University; and Jean Jonassaint, associate professor of French and Francophone studies at SU
  Co-Sponsor: Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics (LLL)
• “Analytical Methods of Sociolinguistic Variation and Change”
  Thursday, April 26, 3:30 p.m.
  The Kilian Room (500), Hall of Languages
  Friday, April 27, 9 a.m.
  The Kilian Room
  Friday, April 27, 1 p.m.
  107 Hall of Languages
  Faculty Fellow: Rania Habib, assistant professor of linguistics and Arabic at SU
  Invited Speakers: Sali Tagliamonte, professor of linguistics at the University of Toronto, and William Labov, professor of linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania
  Co-Sponsors: LLL and The CNY Humanities Corridor

HC Dissertation Fellow Symposia

• “Disorienting Landscapes: Queer Diasporic Reframings of the Region”
  Thursday, Feb. 2, 4 p.m.
  Peter Graham Scholarly Commons, Bird Library
  Friday, Feb. 3, at 9 a.m.
  SU Humanities Center Seminar Room, 304 Tolley Humanities Building
  Dissertation Fellow: Soumitree Gupta G’12, doctoral student in women’s and gender studies and in English at SU
  Invited Speaker: Gayatri Gopinath, associate professor of social and cultural analysis and director of gender and sexuality studies at NYU
  Co-Sponsors: Department of Women’s and Gender Studies and the South Asia Center in SU’s Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs
• “Visions and Dreams of the Divine”
  Friday, April 27, 10 a.m.
  Peter Graham Scholarly Commons, Bird Library
  Friday, April 27, 1 p.m.
  SU Humanities Center Seminar Room, Tolley Humanities Building
  Dissertation Fellow: Nell Champoux G’12, doctoral student in religion at SU
  Invited Speaker: Elliot R. Wolfson, The Abraham Lieberman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and professor of Hebrew and Judaic studies at NYU
  Co-Sponsors: The Department of Religion and Judaic Studies Program

Humanities Faculty Fellow Lecture Series

• “The Period Appetite: Culinary Culture in Early Modern Parma and Piacenza”
  Thursday, Jan. 26, 4 p.m.
  Tolley Humanities Building, Room 115
  Faculty Fellow: Kate Hanson
  Respondent: Laurinda Dixon, professor of art history and director of graduate studies in art and music histories at SU
• “All Fun and Games?: Fostering Identity Among Jewish Children in Paris, Berlin and St. Petersburg, 1890s-1950s”
  Thursday, Feb. 23, 4 p.m.
  SU Humanities Center Seminar Room, 304 Tolley Humanities Building
  Faculty Fellow: Sarah Wobick-Segev, Jim Joseph Fellow in Judaic Studies at SU
  Respondent: Harvey Teres, associate professor of English and director of Judaic studies at SU
• “Plato’s Cosmopolitan Ideal: Philosophical Exile”
  Thursday, March 8, 4 p.m.
  SU Humanities Center Seminar Room, 304 Tolley Humanities Building
  Faculty Fellow: Aaron Vlasak
  Respondent: William Robert, assistant professor of religion at SU
• “Documentary Poetics: An Artist’s Talk”
  Thursday, March 22, at 4 p.m.
  SU Humanities Center Seminar Room, 304 Tolley Humanities Building
  Faculty Fellow: Jesse Nissim
  Respondent: Michael Burkard, associate professor of English at SU
• “Theorizing Han: An Affect Wave and Psychoanalytic Turn Toward Rethinking ‘Koreanness’”
  Thursday, April 12, 4 p.m.
  SU Humanities Center Seminar Room, 304 Tolley Humanities Building
  Faculty Fellow: Meera Lee
  Respondent: Karina von Tippelskirch, assistant professor of German at SU