March 21st, 2012
James Leach, chairman of the NEH, speaks at the Capitol Hill Reception
On Monday, March 19 – Tuesday, March 20, the National Humanities Alliance (NHA) held its 32nd Annual Meeting and 13th Humanities Advocacy Day in Washington DC. More than 250 individuals participated in the events. Activities included a panel of presentations illustrating the value of humanities research, panel discussion on the role of the humanities in undergraduate education, luncheon and keynote address, policy briefing, Capitol Hill reception, and Congressional visits. At the Capitol Hill Evening Reception at the Rayburn House Office Building, James A. Leach, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities since August 2009, spoke to the crowd of NHA participants, Congressmen and Congresswomen, and their staffers. Mr. Leach, a 30 year Member of the House of Representative (R- Iowa), was the founder and co-chairman of the Congressional Humanities Caucus.
Participants attended advocacy training sessions and were given an Issue Brief, a FY2013 Funding Priorities paper, and a list of NEH awards won by our states. On March 20th, the Massachusetts advocacy delegation representing 3 Massachusetts NHA member institutions (1 person from Harvard University, 2 people from Northeastern University, and Christine Loken-Kim from Boston University) visited the congressional offices of Senator John Kerry, Senator Scott Brown, and Representative Michael Capuano and spoke with their staff members in charge of educational and humanities issues.
March 5th, 2012
Today, March 5, 2012, Kecia Ali was the first woman mentioned on CNN’s Belief Blog:
Editor’s Note: Sarah Sentilles is a scholar of religion and the author of three books, most recently a memoir, “Breaking Up with God: A Love Story.” She tweets as @sarahsentilles.
Please check it out.
March 2nd, 2012
On February 9th, Lectures in Criticism presented University of California at Berkeley professor Julio Ramos speaking on “Detroit’s Rivera: On the Labors of Public Art.” The Detroit Industry Murals are the frescoes by Mexican artist Diego Rivera depicting industry at the Ford Motor Company. With twenty-seven panels in all, the two main panels on the north and south depict workers at the Ford Motor Company River Rouge Plant. Together they surround the Rivera Court in the Detroit Institute of Arts. Painted between 1932 and 1933, they were considered by Rivera himself to be his most successful work.
January 13th, 2012
On December 7, 2011, the College of Arts and Sciences Core Curriculum presented “Theater of War,” A dramatic reading from Sophocles’ Ajax and a town-hall discussion about the psychological and physical wounds of war. This event was co-presented by the Red Sox Foundation and Massachusetts General Hospital’s Home Base Program.
December 15th, 2011
BUCH 2010/2011 Henderson Senior Research Fellow, Professor Manfred Kuehn of Philosophy, announces the publication of a new book. During his Fellowship year, he completed the manuscript for a biography of Johann Gottlieb Fichte in German. Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) was a German philosopher and founding member of the philosophical movement known as German Idealism. The book will be published early next year by the prestigious Beck Verlag in Munich and will be approximately 600 pp long.
October 28th, 2011
The Sedgwick Memorial Lecture was an extraordinary success. We had well over a hundred students and faculty in the audience Oct. 27th as well as guests that came from New York, Harvard, Amherst, and MIT! We were dragging in chairs from the closet at Hillel in the minutes before the lecture started, and we still had guests standing in the back. I was incredibly honored to have such a remarkable turnout for an academic lecture.
We had a private room at the restaurant, so we really were able to have a substantive conversation about topics ranging from Andrew Parker’s provocative lecture, to biological plasticity, to the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and what to name classes dealing with gay and lesbian studies so as not to potentially leave debilitating lines on our students’ transcripts – or if we still need to worry about that at all. Hal Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s husband, joined us from New York. It was a touching tribute to Eve’s legacy and an exciting second lecture in our series. The Gender and Sexuality Studies group will be conducting a student discussion of the lecture, as has now become our tradition, in the newly renamed Center for Gender, Sexuality, and Activism Oct. 28th at 4 pm.
Reported by Assistant Professor Carrie Preston, English.
October 17th, 2011
The Workshop on Late Modern Philosophy was held on Friday, October 14 and Staurday, October 15. This inaugural conference featured a focus on philosophical psychology and ethics, and the event’s nine speakers presented papers on subjects as diverse as freedom, narcissism, agency, asceticism, pathology, and linguistic representation. Although speakers approached their topics froma variety of different directions, they were united by this common theme, which made for many fascinating connections between their presentations.
The workshop was extremely well attended, with some talks garnering as many as sixty attendees. The interdisciplinary nature of the conference attracted not only members of the BU Philosophy Department, but attendees from English, Comparative Literature, History, and Religion. A good number of BU undergraduates attended as well. The conference also drew a number of participants from neighboring universities, including faculty and students from Harvard, Boston College, Brandeis, and Merrimack College. Indeed, we were delighted to learn that, in several cases, word of the workshop had spread far beyond Massachusetts: two student from UC Berkeley travelled to Boston specifically to attend the workshop, as did a professor from Colby College in Maine.
Reported by Assistant Professor Paul Katsafanas.
October 13th, 2011
In November, 2008, the B0ston University Center for the Humanities (then the Humanities Foundation) supported a conference coordinated by BU professors Jennifer Wright Knust (School of Theology) and Zsuzsanna Varhelyi (Classical Studies Department) entitled “What the Gods Demand: Blood Sacrifice in Mediterranean Antiquity.” The event gathered over a dozen scholars from the US, Europe and Israel to discuss the role of sacrifices in Greek, Roman, Christian and Jewish religious traditions.
One of the products of this intriguing conference was a book released by Oxford University Press in September of this year: Ancient Mediterranean Sacrifice. Edited by Kunst and Varhelyi this book collects the essays generated by the conference. It examines the practice of and reasons behind sacrifice across cultures and creeds.
October 6th, 2011
The Center for the Humanities is proud to announce the publication of a new book by Diana Lobel of Boston University’s Department of Religion. Diana Lobel joined the Department in 2000 and teaches classes in comparative religion at the graduate and undergraduate levels. Her book, The Quest for God and the Good: World Philosophy as a Living Experience, explores the philosophical and religious traditions of peoples both eastern and western. It was released by Columbia University Press in July of this year. Lobel received a BUCH Publication Production Award to support the publication of this book.
September 7th, 2011
At its final meeting of the 2010–11 academic year, the Executive Committee voted to change the Foundation’s name. As of 1 September 2011, we have become the Boston University Center for the Humanities. This change reflects our determination to be more than a silent source of funding. In our current and future programs, BUCH is taking an active role in promoting interdisciplinary conversations, organizing discussions of important issues, and sharing the excitement of the humanities with wider audiences, including alumni. In the upcoming Campaign, we shall be actively seeking funding that will enable the Center to have its own space for such activities.
At the same meeting, the Committee made a major change in the Junior Fellowship Program. Since 1982, our Junior Fellows have been released from teaching for one semester in order to pursue their research projects. Beginning with this year’s application process, those chosen as Junior Fellows may hold their Fellowships for a full academic year. Applications for these substantially improved fellowships are due on October 15.
