7 join Humanities Institute as 2004-05 Visiting Fellows

Updated 11:00 AM September 9, 2004

7 join Humanities Institute as 2004-05 Visiting Fellows

By Eliza Woodford
Institute for the Humanities

The Institute for the Humanities will host a varied group of Visiting Fellows in the coming academic year. During their residencies, these visitors will join the 15 U-M faculty and graduate student fellows in their weekly seminar, and either will give a public lecture or present their work in other forums.

Director Daniel Herwitz notes that this year's group of visitors is a varied and exciting one. "It is also a group," he says, "that exhibits the institute's range of activities, from its thematic interest in human rights to its deep embroilment in the arts, to its concern with traditional and non-traditional forms of humanistic scholarship."

This year, the Institute is launching the Global Fellows Program. Funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation, this program will bring José Kagabo, a Rwandan sociologist now based in Paris, for the fall term, and Hilda Sabato, an Argentinian historian, for two weeks. During her visit, on Nov. 4, the institute will offer a conference on their mutual interests, "Human Rights, Political Violence and the Global South."

Kagabo (Centre d'Etudes Africaines, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) will teach a seminar on "Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, Justice and Human Rights: Lessons from Rwanda." He has been involved in several dimensions of the Rwandan drama, as an expert on the region, as a participant in efforts at reconstruction—particularly in regard to reconstituting the university system—and as an expert witness before a legislative investigation into France's role in the unfolding of the genocide.

He also is active in human rights and humanitarian programs. From 1994-98, he led a program to assist orphans and widows after the genocide. Now he is working on a project called the Youth, Citizenship and Solidarity Foundation. It aims to promote the values of citizenship and human rights in tandem with development in Rwanda's rural areas. While at the Institute for the Humanities, he hopes to complete a book on the "Medias Trials." In residence fall term 2004

Sabato (History, University of Buenos Aires) initially studied topics related to the foundation of capitalism in 19th-century Argentina. Since the mid-1980s, she has shifted her interests to political history, and has focused on the relationship between civil society and the state in Latin America. She works on the history of citizenship, representation, suffrage and the shaping of the public sphere. At present, she is involved in a new project on political violence in 19th century Argentina. She has been a researcher at the Centro de Investigaciones Sociales sobre el Estado y la Administración in Buenos Aires (1978-92) and a fellow at the Social Science School of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (1990-91), the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford (1998-99), and the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2002-03). In residence Oct. 24-Nov. 6

Other visitors include:

Arnold Weinstein—by training a classicist—is a playwright, lyricist, poet, translator and stage director. He was for many years an adjunct professor in the English Department at Columbia University. His decades of collaboration with Professor of Composition William Bolcom have yielded several volumes of "Cabaret Songs" as well as adaptations of three works for the Lyric Opera of Chicago: Frank Norris' novel "McTeague," Arthur Miller's "A View from the Bridge," and Robert Altman's "The Wedding." He and Bolcom also collaborated on the shows "Dynamite Tonight!" and "Casino Paradise." Weinstein has collaborated with artists Larry Rivers, Andy Warhol, Howard Kanovitz and Marisol, and his plays include the award-winning "Red Eye of Love" and Ovid's "Metamorphoses." The latter had its premiere at the Yale Repertory Theater in 1969 and subsequently was presented on Broadway. At present, he is collaborating with U-M composer Bright Sheng on a martial arts musical based on the Chinese folktale "The Monkey King." Paula and Edwin Sidman Fellow in the Arts; in residence Nov. 7-19 and Jan. 23-29

Sarah Beckwith, English and Religious Studies, Duke University, works on late medieval religious writing. She is particularly interested in Middle English religious writing in its fully cultural dimensions and in the intersections of writing and religious practice. Her studies of Margery Kempe, the literature of anchoritism, medieval theatre and sacramental culture have appeared in numerous essay collections and journals such as the "South Atlantic Quarterly" and "Exemplaria." Past books include "Christ's Body: Identity, Religion and Society in Medieval English Writing" (1993) and "Signifying God: Social Relation and Symbolic Act in York's Play of Corpus Christi" (2001). She is working on "The Mind's Retreat from the Face," a book on medieval and Renaissance drama centering on Shakespeare and the transformation of sacramental culture. Norman Freehling Visiting Professor; in residence winter term 2005

Frederic Jameson (Comparative Literature, Romance Studies) is chair of The Literature Program at Duke University. His most recent books include "Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism" (1991, winner of the MLA Lowell Award), "Seeds of Time" (1994), "Brecht and Method" (1998), "The Cultural Turn" (1998), and "A Singular Modernity" (Verso Press 2002). His most frequently taught courses cover modernism, Third World literature and cinema, Marx & Freud, Jean-Paul Sartre, the modern French novel and cinema, and the Frankfurt School. Among Jameson's ongoing concerns is the need to analyze literature as an encoding of political and social imperatives, and the interpretation of modernist and postmodernist assumptions through a rethinking of Marxist methodology. On Feb. 2, Professor Jameson will deliver the Institute's Marc and Constance Jacobson lecture. In residence Jan. 31-Feb. 4

Carl Phillips (English, Washington University in St. Louis) is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently "The Rest of Love." His other books include "Coin of the Realm: Essays on the Life and Art of Poetry" and a translation of Sophocles's "Philoctetes." A finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, Phillips won the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for his book "The Tether." Other honors include an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Lambda Book Award, the Morse Poetry Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Library of Congress. Visit supported by the Ambrose D. Pattullo Endowed Fund; in residence March 6-20

Boris Mikhailov is the former Soviet Union's most influential living photographer. During the 1970s and 1980s, Mikhailov's photographs featured satirical criticism of the Soviet regime. Since the demise of the Soviet Union, he has documented the poverty and social collapse that have enveloped his homeland. The series "Case History" (1997-98) includes almost 500 photographs and focuses on the homeless of Kharkov. Mikhailov will participate in a conference on the "Ruins of Modernity," and the Institute will feature a concurrent exhibition of some of his work. In residence March 6-20.

7 join Humanities Institute as 2004-05 Visiting Fellows

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