May 9, 2012
IASH Fellows' Speaker Series: "The Other Side of Abolition"
Presented by Lisa Yun, Associate Professor (English, AAAS) While a significant body of literature and scholarship exists on the African slave passage, slaveholders, and masters, comparatively little has been studied about the Asian coolie passage and their American and European masters. This paper examines period maritime literature and documents, such as ship journals, captain's letters, crew testimonies, newspaper and novel accounts, with particular attention to the backdrop of abolition and slavery that shadows the traffic. What might these materials reveal about the masters of new slavery and their role in the hierarchies of power? The discussion of these materials expands our understandings of coercion, slavery, and racialization. 12:00pm, IASH Conference Room (LN 1106)
May 2, 2012
IASH Fellows' Speaker Series: "From Regionalism to Programmatic Competition: Korean Political Parties Under Transformation"
Presented by Yoonkyung Lee, Assistant Professor (Sociology, AAAS) This study examines how Korean parties have changed regarding their nature of partisan competition in recent elections and explains how these changes were made possible. The paper demonstrates it is not simply Korean voters' mounting socioeconomic grievances that generated political parties' move from regionalism to programmatic competition but the growing interactions between political parties and social movement actors that enabled the career politicians with social movement background to become responsive to the growing pressure from the politically dissatisfied voters. 12:00pm, IASH Conference Room (LN 1106)
April 25, 2012
IASH Fellows' Speaker Series: "Translating Rigoberta Menchú and (Re)Constructing the Story of All Poor Guatemalans"
Presented by Erin Riddle, Graduate Fellow (Comparative Literature) The book "Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nació la conciencia" (1983) was written by Elizabeth Burgos, who recorded Menchu's testimonio, transcribed the recordings and edited the text, dividing it into chapters and adding and deleting information. The text was then translated into English by Ann Wright and published as I, Rigoberta Menchú (1984). Even though Burgos is recognized in her role as a co-writer of Menchú's life and her community's history, little recognition is given to the role that that Wright played in reconstructing this life narrative and history for an English-reading audience. I will argue that scholarship based on this translated text cannot ignore the role of translation in constructing Menchu's life narrative for the target community. The English text is the product of Menchú, Burgos, and Wright, and therefore a text that offers a different understanding of Menchú, her agenda, and the community that she claims to represent. In addition, Wright's translation is often cited in English language scholarship as the model Latin American testimonio as a genre and is has been at the center of controversy and debate over the truthfulness of Menchú's narrative. The way this translation was transformed to appeal the emerging interest in subaltern studies, as Riddle will argue, and an emerging North American postcolonial approach to "history" told from the perspective of the "native informant" and a subsequent desire for the subaltern to "speak" is often not part of the discourse, however. In addition, Riddle will review some of the existing literature related to the controversy over Menchú's testimony and how those participating in the discussion often do not acknowledge the role of the translator and translation in constructing this text and the life story of Menchú, as well as Guatemalans as a collective foreign community. 12:00pm, IASH Conference Room (LN 1106)
April 18, 2012
IASH Fellows' Speaker Series: "Process Gives Way to Product: A Theory of Grading Student Writing"
Presented by Kelly Kinney, Assistant Professor of English, General Literature and Rhetoric and Director of the Writing Initiative, winner of the Conference on College Composition and Communication's 2011 Writing Program Certificate of Excellence. Coauthored with Roger Gilles and Daniel Royer, "Process Gives Way to Product" examines how rhetoric and writing studies has sidestepped issues of quality in student writing: Instead of grading writing on the merits of a final product, the field has embraced grading systems that honor engagement in a writing process. Our approach to grading is premised on the notion that process gives way to product. Although we remain committed to process pedagogies, we argue that it is time to acknowledge the inevitability of evaluating student writing, and the possibility that grading—practiced as a transparent, public, and communal act—can help students and teachers improve their writing and teaching. 12:00pm, IASH Conference Room (LN 1106)
April 11, 2012
IASH Fellows' Speaker Series: "Homo Rationalis: Self-Interested Rationality in the Context of Psychological Realism"
Presented by Leonard Simmons, Undergraduate Fellow (PPL & Political Science) Homo Economicus is a model of an individual who is rational, self interested, and makes decisions without fault. However, for those who are interested in bettering their decision making, it may be fruitful to adopt a model that is similarly rational and self interested, but in a psychologically realistic context. When we examine this, we see trends in decision making behavior that divide between low and high stakes situations, each with their own benefits for avoiding cognitive biases associated with decision making. This new model, Homo Rationalis, serves to represent how we can use our psychological deficits to our advantage, and make decisions in various scenarios that can outperform the perfect decision maker, Homo Economicus. 12:00pm, IASH Conference Room (LN 1106)
March 28, 2012
IASH Fellows' Speaker Series: "Structural Justice and the Objects of Responsibility"
Presented by Jessica Payson, Graduate Fellow (Philosophy) Structural injustice presents unique problems for determining what individuals can be said to carry responsible for. In the most straightforward applications of a causal responsibility model, what individuals are responsible for can be determined by calculating deviations from a given baseline. An individual who causes a certain amount of harm is thought to owe that much in return. In a role-based responsibility model, the content of individuals’ responsibilities can be specified by reference to the tasks and expectations associated with the role. An individual’s responsibility is determined by reference to her position in a structure, and the content of the responsibility is typically meant to perpetuate this structural framework. Both causal and role-based models of responsibility suggest that the meaning of individuals’ responsibilities is self-contained: what an individual is responsible for can be explained only in reference to the individual’s own doings or positioning, as measured against either a stable baseline or given structural framework. Efforts towards structural justice, in contrast, aim to question and amend such background structures. Additionally, changes to this background are not brought about by individuals acting discretely, but instead by individuals acting together. The meaning of individual responsibilities is not entirely self-contained, but instead is explicable only through reference to what others are doing to collectively intervene in structural functioning. The topic of this paper is to explain the content of individual responsibilities in this context. If an individual, despite her limited causal effects, can do something meaningful towards justice, what is the “something” that can appropriately be said to carry value? How does an individual contribution become meaningful? 12:00pm, IASH Conference Room (LN 1106)
March 21, 2012
IASH Fellows' Speaker Series: "Towers of Faith: Eighteenth Century Philippine Fortress Churches"
Presented by Lalaine Little, Graduate Fellow (Art History) In 1573, King Philip II of Spain issued the Laws of the Indies, which prescribed the standards of city planning for all of Spain’s overseas holdings in the Americas and the Philippines. This included the specification that church buildings should serve as a means of military defense. By 1773, Philippine churches had endured not only attacks by neighboring kingdoms south of the archipelago, but also by Spain’s European rivals. Further destruction resulted from urban revolt and natural disaster. Lack of manpower and Spain’s drained resources from her involvement in international conflicts showed the Philippines to be an unaffordable venture. King Carlos III was advised to prioritize the Philippines’ economic potential and physical security over its religious mission through reforms in the governance of the islands. Reforms affected immigration, intercolonial trade, and preemptive military strategies. This presentation will explore the extent to which Philippine church architecture in the late eighteenth century diverged from its earlier European models as the focus of Spanish administration expanded from the primary impetus of saving souls to rescuing Spain’s political and commercial interests in Asia. 12:00pm, IASH Conference Room (LN 1106)
March 7, 2012
IASH Fellows' Speaker Series: "Critically Theorizing African Heterosexuality"
Presented by Nkiru Nzegwu, Professor (Africana) Heterosexuality remains the norm in Africa despite two pivotal developments – the disproportionate funding of same-sex research by Western donors; and the increasing transformation of same-sex issue into Africa’s new cause célèbre. Meanwhile, the combined forces of the two Abrahamic religions (Christianity and Islam), eugenists’ racist fears of African sexuality, Western-derived legal codes in most African nations, and feminist theories of women’s universal subjugation, have successfully enthroned a moral framework that upholds a notion of heterosexuality that publicly constrains black female agency. In problematizing this alien notion of heterosexuality, this paper explores a different sexual framework, with deep roots in Africa’s ontological scheme. The underlying moral values of this scheme accords sexual agency to both sexes; and uncouples African women’s sexuality from the restrictive psychological anxieties of purity and decency used to bind it in the last 100 years. 12:00pm, IASH Conference Room (LN 1106)
February 29, 2012
IASH Fellows' Speaker Series: "C. L. R. James’ Challenge to the Enlightenment Tradition"
Presented by Scott Henkel, Assistant Professor (English) As David Scott explains in Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment, “most of all,” C. L. R. James’ history of the Haitian Revolution, The Black Jacobins, is “the political biography of this enlightened and inspiring leader, Toussaint L’Ouverture” (10). To make this argument, Scott illustrates the ways in which L’Ouverture was drawn into the Enlightenment tradition, co-opting it at times and resisting it at others. This paper argues that James’ other focus in The Black Jacobins, namely the swarmlike behavior of the mass of slaves in revolt, draws upon non-Western conceptions of emancipation, community, and mutual aid which cannot be adequately understood by appeals to the Enlightenment tradition. If The Black Jacobins is the biography of an enlightened and inspiring leader, one whom James calls the “black Spartacus” (250), it is not only that. It is also about that leader’s limitations, and the contributions made by the mass of insurgent slaves fighting for their freedom. 12:00pm, IASH Conference Room (LN 1106)
February 15, 2012
IASH Fellows' Speaker Series: "The Ethics of Care and Military Humanitarian Intervention"
Presented by Jessica Kyle, Graduate Fellow (Philosophy) Cases of military humanitarian intervention (MHI) suggest that values promoted by an ethic of care at times take center stage in public policy debates, whatever their general political marginalization. Yet the very appeals to care values used to justify MHI also encourage exceptionalist attitudes toward international law when they hold that the moral urgency of certain humanitarian crises demands unauthorized or otherwise illegal military action. Kyle considers the extent to which the approaches of two prominent care theorists, Virginia Held and Joan Tronto, can address this issue of legal exceptionalism in name of care. Kyle argues that both approaches ultimately contribute to what she calls the problem of global worldlessness—the loss or erosion of the relatively recently emergent global space of politics—and she turns to the Arendtian care value of “amor mundi” or care for the world as a potential counterbalance to other care values during policy deliberations. 12:00pm, IASH Conference Room (LN 1106)
February 8, 2012
IASH Fellows' Speaker Series: "vox feminae, vox populi (A Woman's Voice, The People's Voice): Demand for Actresses in the Roman World"
John Starks, Assistant Professor, Classical and Near Eastern Studies presents a chronological and topical overview of the most important primary texts, inscriptions, graffiti, and artifacts at the center of his comprehensive research on actresses in the Greek and Roman worlds. Starks' assembly of these very scattered pieces of evidence viewed through various sociological, historical, and performative lenses will offer insights into the personal and professional lives of these fascinating, and largely forgotten, non-élite women in ancient Mediterranean cultures. 12:00pm, IASH Conference Room (LN 1106)
February 1, 2012
IASH Fellows' Speaker Series:"The Object of and in Film Theory: The Maltese Falcon (1941)"
Presented by Brian Wall, Assistant Professor (Cinema) Film theory's history might be charted according to its various stances in relation to subject and object. In the heyday of the classical film theory of Bazin and Kracauer, film seemed to promise the redemption of the world of objects by virtue of its technological status, but since it has come to seem more urgent to think of film's object status in terms of the commodity; and in between the classical and contemporary, phenomenology, psychoanalysis and reception studies shifted the focus to subjectivities both on and off-screen. In Wall's presentation he will consider John Houston's seminal film noir as evoking some of the conflicts that arise from these often opposed interpretive modes to very specific ends: what does Sam Spade's relation to the Falcon suggest about our relation to film? 12:00pm, IASH Conference Room (LN 1106)
