ISI Announces Fellows for 2013-14 Seminar, "Emancipation"

ISI Seminar 2013-14

ISI is proud to announce a new roster of fellows for the 2013-2014 seminar, 'Emancipation,' which commemorates the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. The notion of emancipation has a larger history beyond the abolition of slavery in the United States, and is related to broader conceptions of human agency, autonomy, and equality. The concept has been closely connected with notions of democracy, universal human rights, social and economic justice, gender and sexual equality, and the freedom from constraints that inhibit self-determination. It also has a long philosophical and theological lineage in debates over free will, human agency, necessity and divine preordination. Its links reach from the creative to the scientific spheres.

For more information on the seminar and to see a list of next year's fellows, click read more.

Jane Anderson Gives Lecture at Library of Congress

Jane Anderson, ISI fellow 2012-13, gave a lecture entitled "Anxieties of Authorship and Ownership: Intellectual Property, Indigenous Collections and Decolonial Futures" on April 3, 2013 at the Library of Congress. Anderson's lecture was part of the Benjamin Botkin Folklife Lecture Series at the American Folklife Center. Anderson's talk focused on the "author" in the colonial archive as legal and cultural construct, bringing together her interdisciplinary research in international intellectual property law and the protection of Indigenous/traditional knowledge and culture. A list of the 2013 Botkin Lecture Series speakers can be found here.

University Honors Badgett with Conti Fellowship

M.V. Lee Badgett, former ISHA fellow and current director of the Center for Public Policy and Administration, has been awarded the Samuel F. Conti Faculty Fellowship, a prestigious honor from the University of Massachusetts Amherst recognizing outstanding scholarly achievement. The fellowship includes a cash prize and a year-long leave of absence, which Badgett intends to spend exploring the economic impact that social and legal equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people has on developing countries around the world, as well as on employers in the United States.

Badgett is also currently completing a book manuscript, How to Use Research to Change the World, which began as her ISHA project for the 2010-2011 seminar, (Ir)rationality and Public Discourse. ISI offers her warm congratulations on both accomplishments.

'Transformations' Fellow Page Wins Rome Prize

ISI is thrilled to congratulate Max Page, former ISHA fellow and Professor of Art, Architecture, and Art History, for his win of the prestigious Rome Prize for Historical Preservation and Conservation. Awarded annually by the American Academy in Rome to about 30 scholars in diverse fields, the prize includes a two-year stipend plus room and board on the Academy's 11-acre campus. Page plans to spend the Spring 2014 semester in Italy, where he will continue work on his latest project, “Usable Pasts: The Legacy of Mussolini and the Lessons of Scarpa."

ISI Panel on the Challenges of Public Scholarship

On Wednesday, April 24th at 4 pm, the Interdisciplinary Studies Institute will host a panel discussion on 'The Challenges of Public Scholarship' featuring fellows from our current seminar, in Campus Center room 904-08. The event will highlight the work of our fellows, and allow the campus community to join in the conversation on a timely and significant topic. In many ways, we are all being challenged to consider our wider relevance to the communities and society around us, yet definitions of 'engagement' and 'relevance' may vary widely, not least across the disciplines as well as for those working in interdisciplinary environments. At the same time, those who wish to undertake public scholarship confront a variety of challenges, whether obtaining research funding, finding appropriate publication venues, or meeting tenure and promotion criteria. Our panelists will get the discussion going, but this will be an opportunity to have a wide-ranging, collaborative conversation.

Following the Capstone Event, join us at the Faculty Club at 6 pm for drinks and appetizers as we celebrate the first year anniversary of ISI!

New Essay from Professor Emerita Nina Scott

Nina Scott, member of the Beyond Reproduction ISHA seminar, has published a new essay in A Companion to Latin American Women Writers, entitled ‘Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.’ She also served as Chair of the Spanish Department of Amherst College from 2010-2012.

ISI Cosponsors Conference on Cultural Heritage

The Interdisciplinary Studies Institute (ISI) will cosponsor an international conference hosted by The University of Massachusetts Amherst Center for Heritage and Society. ‘The Past for Sale? New Perspectives on the Economic Entanglements of Cultural Heritage’ will take place on the UMass Amherst Campus on May 15-17, 2013. The goal of the conference is to bring together a wide range of academics, economists, heritage professionals, development experts, government officials, and community leaders to examine the economic impact of cultural heritage. Rather than seeing tourism, urban redevelopment, and antiquities looting as distinct economic problems—as case-by-case profits and/or losses—the conferences hopes to encourage a multi-disciplinary discussion of the economic entanglements of cultural heritage.

Cultural Ownership Fellows Contribute to Edited Collection

The Interdisciplinary Studies Institute (ISI) celebrates the publication of the first edited collection originating from the productive discussions of its faculty seminars. Negotiating Culture: Heritage, Ownership, and Intellectual Property examines issues of cultural heritage and intellectual property in a variety of contexts, from contests over tangible artifacts to more abstract forms of culture such as language and oral traditions.

Professor Michael Gomez (NYU) Gives Lecture

On Thursday, April 18th, the World Studies Interdisciplinary Project (WSIP) brings Professor Michael Gomez to campus for a talk entitled 'Malian Malestrom: Mayhem and Meaning in the Muslim World' in Herter 601 at 4:00. The lecture will center on Islam in Africa and current political troubles in Mali. The Interdisciplinary Studies Institute was a major sponsor of the original WSIP symposium and is proud to cosponsor this exciting event, which is part of a two-day visit by Professor Gomez. For full details and schedule of events, see the WSIP website.

Steve Tracy Visits China as Chu Tian Scholar

This past winter, current ISI Fellow Steve Tracy journeyed to China on the first of five visits as the Chu Tian Scholar at Central China Normal University in Wuhan. His duties will include teaching two courses per year, delivering lectures, and supervising graduate students, as well as conducting scientific research and promoting the development of African American literature as a disciplinary field.

Acclaimed Israeli Poet Visits Smith

Renowned Israeli translator, poet, linguist, and literary critic Rami Saari visited Smith College from April 2-15, 2013 as part of the College’s Visiting Scholars Program. During his stay, Saari offered a talk entitled ‘When Poets Translate Poets: Going Far and Getting Closer’ and met with interested students and faculty from across the Five Colleges. ISI was pleased to contribute to the event.

Former ISI Fellow Lisa Henderson Launches Book

Lisa Henderson (Cultures and Co-Existence, 2002) announces the release of her new book: Love & Money: Queers, Class, & Cultural Production. Henderson, who teaches in the Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has published in such journals as Signs, Journal of Communication, GLQ, Feminist Media Studies, and Screen. Her new book argues that we can't understand contemporary queer cultures without looking through the lens of social class. Resisting old divisions between culture and economy, identity and privilege, left and queer, recognition and redistribution, Love & Money offers new approaches to capturing class experience and class form in and around queerness.

Angie Willey Publishes in The Feminist Wire

ISI Fellow Angie Willey publishes "The Science of Love Behind the Science of Rape" in The Feminist Wire.

Theory from the South: Jean and John Comaroff

The Interdisciplinary Studies Institute (ISI) hosted inspirational anthropologists Jean and John Comaroff for its inaugural residency. For the past thirty years, the Comaroffs’ work has influenced a generation of scholars interested in questions of identity and resistance in both colonial and postcolonial cultures in Africa and elsewhere. Writing both separately and together, their recent work has ventured into the intersections of law and ethnicity as well as relations between the global north and south. For many years distinguished professors at the University of Chicago, Jean and John Comaroff are now Professors of African and African American Studies and Oppenheimer Fellows in African Studies at Harvard University. Their most recent books include Law and Disorder in the Postcolony (2006), Ethnicity, Inc. (2009), and Theory from the South, or How Euro-America is Evolving Toward Africa (2011).

Biondi Speaks on ‘The Black Revolution on Campus'

On February 28th, the Interdisciplinary Studies Institute (ISI) was pleased to host a stimulating lecture with Professor Martha Biondi, Associate Professor of African American Studies and History at Northwestern University. Professor Biondi holds the position of Graduate Director in one of the first African American departments to grant a Ph.D. in the discipline, where her research examines the intersection of 20th Century African American History with social movements, politics, labor, gender, cities, and international affairs. Her critically acclaimed To Stand and Fight: the Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City received two prestigious awards: the Meyers Outstanding Book Award (2004) and the Thomas J. Wilson Prize (2003). Recent publications include articles in several journals and edited collections and, in 2012, The Black Revolution on Campus, from which her talk was drawn.

Magnet Theater Artists Visit UMass

ISI contributed to a week-long residency hosted by the Theater department, which brought four artists from Magnet Theatre, based in Cape Town, South Africa, to the University of Massachusetts Amherst campus. The artists—director and scholar Mark Fleishman, performers Jennie Reznek and Faniswa Yisa, and composer Neo Muyanga—performed their award-winning piece about the effects of forced migration, xenophobia, and the triumph of the human imagination Every Year, Every Day, I Am Wallking in The Curtain Theater. Their residency also included movement and devised theatre-making workshops (Reznek and Yisa), a public lecture on South African theatre and politics (Fleishman), and a musical lecture demonstration (Muyanga).

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