News Archive
ISI Welcomes New Board Members
At the beginning of the spring semester, the ISI welcomed new members to its Advisory Board. The new members of the board are David Cort from Sociology, Brian Dillon from Linguistics, Rebecca Hamlin from Political Science/Legal Studies, Shona Macdonald from Art, and Angie Willey from Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. They join Lisa Henderson from Communication, who has graciously agreed to stay on.
This is also an occasion to thank once again those members of the board who have stepped down after many years of contributing to the Institute's success; we are indebted to Janice Irvine from Sociology, Randall Knoper from English, Kathleen Lugosch from Architecture, and Banu Subramanian from Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.
Former ISI Fellow Rebecca Lorimer Leonard recently published, "Writing on the Move: Migrant Women and the Value of Literacy"
Former ISI Fellow Rebecca Lorimer Leonard (Value, 2014-15) recently published, Writing on the Move: Migrant Women and the Value of Literacy, which details how ideological values affect literacy. Based on a qualitative study of migrant writers in the U.S. from 17 countries, Writing on the Move describes multilingual writers both struggling and succeeding under contemporary conditions of migration. Part of the book was workshopped during ISI's 2014-15 "Value" seminar. More information about the book is available on the website of The University of Pittsburgh Press.
Hande Gürses publishes chapter in edited volume on Orhan Pamuk
The ISI congratulates current ISI Faculty Fellow Hande Gürses on the recent publication of a chapter in the edited volume, Orhan Pamuk: Critical Essays on a Novelist Between Words, edited by Taner Can, Berkan Ulu, and Koray Melikoğlu and published with Columbia University Press. Gurses’ chapter is titled, “Voices of Dissent: Belonging and Identity in Silent House and A Strangeness in My Mind.”
Hande Gürses publishes chapter in edited volume on Orhan Pamuk
Marian McCurdy, ISI ‘Dissent’ Fellow, will be speaking at the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) in Belmont, MA on December 14, 2017. McCurdy will be speaking on "Nemesis, Justice, and Inter-generational Trauma: How Resistance Promotes Resilience."
Current ISI ‘Dissent’ Fellow and economist M.V. Lee Badgett has been named a 2017-18 Spotlight Scholar.
When Badgett published her 1995 study on the wage gap faced by gay men and lesbians, there was nothing like it in the field. In fact, conventional wisdom held just the opposite of what she found. Badgett’s research was the first to look at LGBT realities through an economic lens. As an economist, she understood that money and power were intertwined.
Former ISHA and ISI Fellow, professor of anthropology and director of the W.E.B. DuBois Center Whitney Battle-Baptiste appeared on a panel during a two-day academic conference on the relationship between black religious traditions and material objects hosted by the new Center for the Study of African American Religious Life (CSAARL) at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) in Washington, D.C. Battle-Baptiste spoke about the importance of material culture as a physical connection between our past and present.
Laura Furlan, current ISI Faculty Fellow, recently celebrated the publication of her latest book, Indigenous Cities: Urban Indian Fiction and the Histories of Relocation, in which she demonstrates that stories of the urban experience are essential to an understanding of modern Indigeneity. More information about the book is available on the website of the University of Nebraska Press website.
On October 2, former ISI faculty fellow and emeritus professor in the department of Psychology and Brain Sciences, Ervin Staub, gave a talk on the UMass campus titled, “The Power of Active Bystanders: Genocide, Reconciliation, Police Behavior, Children and Bullying, and Trumpworld,” which addressed possible interventions to prevent harmful behavior and to generate positive action.
In May of 2017, the Chicago Review of Books published an interview with current ISI ‘Dissent’ fellow Malcolm Sen (English) about the role of literature in our collective understanding of climate change, and specifically about the importance of climate change fiction (“cli-fi”) and its social and artistic relevance.
As I contemplate stepping down as Director of the ISI at the end of June, it’s amazing to think that in our two incarnations (ISHA/ISI), we have been under way since 2001. In that time we have hosted close to 170 fellows in our faculty seminars. We have had a run of successful residencies with such figures as Caryl Phillips, Jean and John Comaroff, and (most recently) Daniel Kanstroom. We have held lectures, workshops and community meetings, and cosponsored significant events across campus. We have hosted national and international symposia on Chinua Achebe and James Foley.
For me it has been an honor, a pleasure, and a privilege to be part of it all, and I couldn’t be more grateful. I am grateful to a succession of Provosts and Deans for funding us. I am grateful to an extraordinary run of graduate assistants whose help has been invaluable over the years. I am deeply grateful to the members of the ISHA and ISI boards, who have been a collegial and intellectual family in this project. And I am grateful to everyone in the ISI community for your generosity, energy, friendship, tolerance and enthusiasm in our collective inquiries and engagement. I have learned an enormous amount from our exchanges; it has been a thrill to get to know you.
John Kingston has been with us from the start, and I know that with him at the helm, the ISI will be in the best of hands. I look forward to seeing the institute’s sustained programs and new directions over the next phase of its existence. Here’s to a brilliant and enriching future, ISI!
I look forward both with enthusiasm and more than a little modesty to becoming the second Director of the Interdisciplinary Studies Institute. The source of my enthusiasm is obvious: ISI has organized, funded, and otherwise promoted many of the most interesting and significant events that have taken place on this campus since its inception as ISHA more than fifteen years ago.
The source of my modesty is equally obvious: the principal source of ISI's success has been Stephen Clingman's thorough understanding of the enormous scholarly and creative riches and opportunities offered by this campus, its faculty, and its students. I've been fortunate to be a member of ISHA's and then ISI's board long enough to have learned at least a little of how Stephen has used that understanding to draw effectively on the talents of UMass's faculty and students to accomplish all that ISI has. I look forward to maintaining all the activities that ISI has organized, funded, and promoted during Stephen's directorship, and to working toward substantially expanding the scope of the Institute's activities. Finally, watch this space for information about an event to honor Stephen early in the fall.
Amanda Waugh Lagji, ISI Assistant since Spring semester of 2012, successfully defended her dissertation titled, “Waiting for Now: Postcolonial Fiction and Colonial Time” on March 29, and will join the faculty of Pitzer College as an Assistant Professor of English and World Literature for the 2017-18 academic year. In March, Amanda won the 2017 Graduate Student Caucus Essay Award for the Northeast Modern Language Association.
We would like to thank Amanda for her many considerable contributions to the Institute over the past five years, and wish her all good fortune as she moves out to California to begin her career at Pitzer!
Congratulations to Banu Subramaniam, ISI Board Member and Professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies on being awarded a fellowship at the Newhouse Center for the Humanities at Wellesley College for the 2017-2018 academic year.
Former ISI “Transformations” Fellow and Professor of Linguistics John McCarthy, is relinquishing his role as Dean of the Graduate School to devote more time to his duties as Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, as well as to his linguistics research. John has been tremendously successful in his position as Dean; we wish him all good luck going forward.
Elizabeth Chilton, Professor of Anthropology, Associate Vice Chancellor for Research and Engagement, and former ISI fellow (2009-2010 and 2012-2013) has been named Dean of the Harpur College of Arts and Sciences at Binghamton University in New York. In addition to twice being a member of our seminars, Professor Chilton offered valuable support to the Institute, especially during our transition from ISHA to the ISI. We wish her all good luck in her new position!
On April 25, the W.E.B. Du Bois department of Afro-American studies will celebrate the book launch of ISI 'Value' fellow Britt Rusert's Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American Culture. The event will take place from 5-7 p.m. in the New Africa House lobby. Copies of the book will be available for sale courtesy of Amherst Books.
Steven Tracy, ISI 2012-2013 'Engagement: the Challenge of Public Scholarship' fellow, was appointed Distinguished Professor in the Afro-American Studies department. A member of the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies since 1995, Tracy is the leading authority on intersections between African-American literature and blues. In addition to his books, Langston Hughes and the Blues and Going to Cincinnati: A History of the Blues in The Queen City and A Brush with the Blues, and Hot Music, Ragmentation, and the Bluing of American Literature, Tracy has published more than 75 book chapters and articles.
In addition to his scholarship, Tracy is played with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and opened for artists such as BB. King and Muddy Waters.
Mari Castañeda, 'Emancipation' ISI fellow, was named a 2016-2017 faculty fellow of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Castañeda will participate in a week-long faculty seminar in November as part of her fellowship.
'Public Thought, Public Art, Public Effect' ISI fellow James Young will give a talk at the Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies on November 16 at 4:30 p.m. on his new book, The Stages of Memory: Reflections on Memorial Art, Loss, and the Spaces Between. Young is the founding director of the Institute and Emeritus Distinguished Professor of English and Judaic and Near Eastern Studies. The event is sponsored by the University of Massachusetts Press.
Former ISI 'Transformations' fellow Max Page and Marla Miller will discuss their new book, Bending the Future: Fifty Ideas for the Next Fifty Years of Historic Preservation in the United States at the Jones Library at 7 p.m. on November 14. Their book is a collection of essays examining the current state and future prospects of the National Historic Preservation Act, and the event is sponsored by the University of Massachusetts Press.
Current ISI 'Trespassing' fellow, Leila Kawar (Political Science and Legal Studies), will be talking on “Legal Activism and Deportation Resistance: Comparative and Historical Perspectives,” in room 423 in Tobin Hall on November 16, from 4-6 p.m. Professor Kawar’s research examines the politics of legal expertise, at both the national and international levels, with a focus on questions relating to migration, citizenship, and labor. Her book, Contesting Immigration Policy in Court: Legal Activism and Its Radiating Effects in the United States and France (Cambridge U Press, 2015) received the Law and Society Association's Herbert Jacob Book Award for best book in law and society in 2016 and also the APSA Migration and Citizenship Section award of Best Book in 2016. Her talk i s part of the Resistance Studies Initiative Fall Speaker Series.
Former ISI Board member, Manisha Sinha, was nominated for a National Book Award for her work, The Slave's Cause: A History of Rebellion. A full list of the 2016 nominations in nonfiction and fiction can be found here.
ISI Board member Banu Subramaniam was awarded the 2016 Ludwik Fleck Prize for her book, Ghost Stories for Darwin: The Science of Variation and the Politics of Diversity. The prize honors an outstanding book across the fields of science and technology studies. The press release from the Society of Social Studies of Science can be found here.
Former ISHA Fellow, Ervin Staub, will give a talk entitled "The Origins of Violence and Principles and Practices of Prevention" on November 3, 2016 at 12:00 p.m. in the Commonwealth Honors College Events Hall. The talk, organized by the Interdisciplinary Seminar on Conflict and Violence, will cover the origins and prevention of genocide, and draw from Staub's work on Rwanda. Staub's most recent books are Overcoming Evil: Genocide, Violent Conflict and Terrorism (2011) and The Roots of Goodness and Resistance of Evil: Inclusive Caring, Moral Courage, Altruism Born of Suffering, Active Bystandership, and Heroism. More information on the talk and others in the series can be found here.
TreaAndrea Russworm, former 'Secrecy, Publicity, Privacy, Security' fellow, is an editor of a collection of essays published by University of Mississippi press titled From Madea to Media Mogul: Theorizing Tyler Perry. The collection contends that Perry and his work are "at the epicenter of a rich and needed interdisciplinary dialogue," and that Perry "must be understood as a figure at the nexus of converging factors, cultural events and historical traditions." Russworm's co-editors include Samantha N. Sheppard, assistant professor of cinema and media studies at Cornell, and Karen M. Bowdre, an independent scholar whose work has appeared in Black Camera; Cinema Journal; and Falling in Love Again: The Contemporary Romantic Comedy. NPR commentator Mia Mask of Vassar College commended the collection: “Russworm, Sheppard, and Bowdre offer a rigorous collection of well-timed essays on an underserved area of American cinema. [Their book] is an engaging anthology that places industrial practices into dialogue with auteurist sensibilities and theoretical models. It enables scholars, students, and spectators to consider the complexities and contradictions embedded in African American culture and filmmaking.”
More information can be found on the University of Mississippi Press's website.
Kathleen Lugosch, ISI Board member, received the 2016 Distinguished Faculty Award from the UMass Amherst Alumni Association. Lugosch received the award on April 4 at the Massachusetts State House in Boston. Lugosch's award recognizes her role as the founding director of the Master of Architecture program at UMass, the first accredited architecture degree at a public university in New England. The Distinguished Alumni Awards recognize alumni, faculty, and friends of the University who have translated their UMass Amherst experience into distinguished achievement in the public, business, or professional realsm, and bring honor to UMass Amherst and their field of endeavor. Click here for a full list of current and past award recipients.
This summer, current ISI fellow Leila Kawar received two awards for her book, Contesting Immigration Policy in Court: Legal Activism and Its Radiating Effects in the United States and France. Kawar was awarded the Herbert Jacob Award for the best book in Law and Society. The Committee noted that Contesting Immigration "shifts our focus from conventional questions that ask how political struggles influence compliance with official legal decisions and instead asks how legal advocacy shapes wider political debates and policies surrounding immigration." The full list of Law and Society award winners can be found here.
Kawar also received the best book award of the Migration and Citizenship Section of the American Political Science Association.
Contesting Immigration was published in 2015 by Cambridge University Press.
On March 13, former 'Emancipation' fellow John Higginson will lead a seminar on 'Work, Workers and Industrial Transformation in Southern Africa' in Thompson Hall 919 at 4 pm. The event is cosponsored by the Economics Department, the PERI African Development Policy Speakers Series, and the UMass Economic Department's History and Development seminar.
Lisa Henderson, former ISHA fellow and current ISI Board member, is a visiting scholar at McGill’s Institute for Gender, Feminist, and Sexuality Studies this Spring (https://www.mcgill.ca/igsf/about/visiting). Her essay “Queers and Class: Toward a Cultural Politics of Friendship” appeared in December as the lead article in a special issue of Key Words: A Journal of Cultural Materialism, published by The Raymond Williams Society.
ISI board member, Banu Subramaniam, will give a distinguished faculty lecture on March 8, 2016. The lecture, titled "Interdisciplinary Hauntings: The Ghostly Worlds of Naturecultures" will take place at 4 pm in the Bernie Dallas Room, Goodell. The lecture is free and open to the public, and a reception will immediately follow.
A book launch for Manisha Sinha's new book, The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition will be held on February 9, from 4-6 pm in the Bernie Dallas Room at UMass Amherst. Provost Katherine Newman will provide an introduction, followed by a panel discussion featuring historians from the Five College Consortium. A reception and book signing will follow the event.
The launch and panel discussion coincides with Black History month. The Slave's Cause overturns long-held assumptions about the abolitionist movement by demonstrating the importance and centrality of women and men, black and white, slave and free, who supported feminism, labor rights, and utopian socialism.
On February 18 former ISI Board member Manisha Sinha's book, The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition, will be the center of discussion at a panel featuring some of the most respected scholars from history, African American Studies, and American Studies.
Sinha's book was published by Yale University Press and argues that the Haitian revolution and slave resistance shaped the ideology and tactics of abolition. The panelists will include Eric Foner, Professor of History at Columbia, John Stauffer, Professor of English and African and African American Studies at Harvard, and Andrew Delbanco, Professor of American Studies at Columbia University. More information on the panel, which will be held from 4-6 p.m. at the Hall of Graduate Studies Room 211, can be found here.
Lee Badgett, ISI Board member and director of the Center for Public Policy and Administration, will discuss her new book The Public Professor: How to Use Your Research to Change the World on Wednesday, January 27 at 4 p.m. in the Amherst Room of the Campus Center. Amy Shalet, from the department of sociology and director of the Public Engagement Project, will moderate the event. Elizabeth Chilton, former ISI Engagement fellow, will comment along with Sylvia Brand from the department of resource economics.
The book was published this month from New York University Press. Among the book's many positive reviews, Urvashi Vaid, author of Irresistible Revolution praises, "From one of the foremost publicly engaged scholars in the country, this brilliant and groundbreaking primer for academics interested in applying their expertise in the policy realm is also a deeply useful manual for all policy advocates. Combing astute power analysis of how policy is made with strategic communications advice, stories of real-life experience with an accessible and clear style, Lee Badgett has created an essential training tool for every academic, graduate student, law student and advocate interested in informing public policy debates."
On October 8, Former ISI Board member Manisha Sinha delivered the William T. MacCaffrey Distinguished Lecture in History at Reed College in Portland Oregon. Sinha's lecture drew from her book, The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition, forthcoming from Yale University Press in 2016.
Former ISI 'Emancipation' Fellow Tanisha Ford published her book, Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style, and the Global Politics of Soul with University of North Carolina Press. Ford read from the book at a book-launch party at Amherst Books on October. 19.
Ford's ISI 'Emancipation' project workshopped material from one of the chapters from the book in progress. You can find the book from North Carolina Press here.
On November 6, current ISI Fellow Jenny Vogel will give a talk at University Museum of Contemporary Art on the UMass Amherst Campus. The doors open at 6:30 p.m., and presentations begin at 7 p.m. For a suggested donation of $5, the evening includes Art Salon presentations, a brief Q & A period with the artists, and light refreshments.
Vogel will join other artists, including Andrea Deszo, Benjamin S. Jones, Olivia Bernard, and Wendy Ewald. More information on the Art Salon can be found here.
The UMCA is the teaching museum at UMass Amherst, a multidisciplinary, international laboratory for the exploration and advancement of contemporary art. More information on the museum and its events can be found here.
David Buchanan, ISI 'Value' fellow, spoke about public health, ethics, and community-based research on a "Public Health Minute" segment in July. The radio segment interviews researchers and medical professionals about a variety of public health topics, and is sponsored by the Lehman School of Health Services, Human Services, and Nursing at CUNY.
A link to the interview can be found here.
Former member of the board and ISHA fellow Manisha Sinha's book, The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Identity in Antebellum South Carolina, was selected by Harvard historian Sven Beckert as one of "Ten Books on Slavery You Need to Read" in POLITICO.
Counterrevolution was Sinha's first book, and in it revisits the roots of southern separatism, arguing that instead of a fight for white liberty, the movement was a "conservative, antidemocratic movement to protect and perpetuate racial slavery."
A link to Beckert's article can be found here, and the information for Counterrevolution on the University of North Carolina Press's website can be found here.
The work of ISI Board member Lee Badgett has been cited in the International Business Times, the BBC World Service, WBUR, Knowledge@Wharton on Sirius XM, WABE, RYOT and The News Tribe. Badgett's research was conducted at the Williams Institute at UCLA, and demonstrates that same-sex weddings will likely bring $546 million to the economies of the 13 states that did not allow marriage equality prior to the court's decision.
A link to the International Business Times article can be found here.
David Mednicoff, former ISI fellow of the Emancipation seminar, attended two international conferences in Morocco and Germany, addressing the intersection between religion and legal politics. Mednicoff chaired a panel at the "Constitutionalism, Religious Freedom and Human Rights: Constitutional Migration and Transjudicialism Beyond the North Atlantic" conference in Hanover, Germany. A week later, he lead a two-day workshop in Rabat, Morocco on the ethics of political science research and teaching in the Middle East. Mednicoff's case study on Islam and legal politics, titled "Religion and Positionality in Research and Teaching," was included in the conference. Mednicoff was one of 20 scholars from around the world invited to participate.
When Clingman was two, he underwent an operation to remove a birthmark under his right eye. The operation failed, and the birthmark returned, but in somewhat altered form. In his book, Clingman takes the fact of that mark – its appearance, disappearance and return – as a guiding motif of memory. This is how we remember the worlds we are born into, how they become a set of images in the mind, surfacing and resurfacing across time and space. South Africa under apartheid was itself governed by the markings of birth – the accidents of color, race, and skin.
In this narrative set on three continents, Stephen’s memories make up the hologram of the book’s subtitle. It is a story that is personal, painful, comic, and ultimately uplifting: a book not so much of the coming of age, but the coming of perspective.
More information about Birthmark can be found here.
Former ISI fellow and Professor Emeritus of Psychology Ervin Staub recently published his new book, The Roots of Goodness and Resistance to Evil. In this book, Ervin Staub draws on his extensive experiences in scholarship and intervention to illuminate the socializing experiences, education, and trainings that lead children and adults to become helpers/active bystanders and rescuers, acting to prevent violence and create peaceful and harmonious societies.
The book collects Staub's most important and influential articles and essays in the field together with newly written chapters, with wide-ranging examples of helping behaviors as well as discussions of why we should help and not harm others. He addresses many examples of such behaviors, from helping people in everyday physical or psychological distress, to active bystandership in response to harmful actions by youth toward their peers (bullying), to endangering one's life to save someone in immediate danger, or rescuing intended victims of genocide.
More information about Staub's book can be found here.
Assistant Professor of Afro-American Studies Britt Rusert was awarded the 2014 Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies (INCS) essay prize for her essay "Delany's Comet: Fugitive Science and the Speculative Imaginary of Emancipation." The prize recognizes excellence in interdisciplinary scholarship on any nineteenth-century topic. Last year "Delany's Comet" also received finalist mention for the Constance Rourke Prize, awarded by the American Studies Association (ASA) for the best article published in American Quarterly.
Associate Professor of English Jenny Adams (a current fellow of the ISI Faculty Seminar on "Value") was awarded a Summer Stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities to undertake a project titled, "Student Debt and University Life in Medieval Oxford." Professor Adams credits the ISI Faculty Seminar with helping her lay the groundwork for her application.
In separate news, Professor Adams was announced a winner of the Distinguished Teaching Award from the College of Humanities and Fine Arts. ISI would like to congratulate Jenny on both of these impressive accomplishments.
Professor of English and ISI Director Stephen Clingman was an invited participant at a March 26 special colloquium honoring Bram Fischer at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Fischer was the lawyer who led the defense of Nelson Mandela and the other accused at the Rivonia Trial in 1964. He is now regarded as one the major heroes of the South African anti-apartheid struggle. After the colloquium, Fischer was awarded a posthumous honorary doctorate of law by the University of the Witwatersrand. Clingman's biography of Fischer, "Bram Fischer: Afrikaner Revolutionary," won the Sunday Times/Alan Paton Award in 1999.
Former ISI fellow and Associate Professor of Anthropology Whitney Battle-Baptiste and Demetria Shabazz, assistant professor of Communication, have been recognized as Women Who Lead by Example in Massachusetts by UnityFirst.com, a Springfield-based distributor of diversity-related e-news to corporations and diverse communities.
Battle-Baptiste, Shabazz and other honorees from business, education, arts, government and other fields are featured in a special issue released March 28.
ISI board member Banu Subramaniam published Ghost Stories for Darwin: The Science of Variation and the Politics of Diversity with the University of Illinois Press in October. The book brings together her work on flower color variation in morning glories and the feminist studies of sciences. The interdisciplinary book bridges the social history of plants, women's studies, evolutionary and invasive biology, and the history of ecology. Donna J. Haraway comments that Subramaniam's book "destabilizes the old exchange rates and proposes instead a wealth of narratives and experimental conceptual and laboratory practices for doing evolutionary biology, ecology, and women's studies together." The book can be found here.
On February 6th, former ISI fellow John Higginson celebrated the publication of his new book, Collective Violence & the Agrarian Origins of South African Apartheid, 1900-1948. Higginson teaches in the History Department here at the University of Massachusetts and is a research Fellow in the College of Human Sciences and in the Department of History at the University of South Africa in Pretoria. Collective Violence examines the dark odyssey of official and private collective violence against the rural African population and Africans in general during the two generations before apartheid became the primary justification for the existence of the South African state. More information about the book, as well as an opportunity to purchase it, can be found on the website of Cambridge University Press.
Mari Castañeda, Professor of Communication and former ISI fellow has been appointed as the first Chancellor's Leadership Fellow, effective at the beginning of the spring semester. Castañeda will be mentored by John McCarthy, dean of the Graduate School. Mari will be developing and implementing a new Preparing Future Faculty program as well as participating in planning and decision-making. Her term runs through the fall semester.
Aline Gubrium, Associate Professor of Community Health Education and current ISI Value fellow, and Betsy Krause, Professor of Anthropology, published an op-ed in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel on Jan. 22 in which they characterize the teen pregnancy awareness campaign launched by the United Way of Greater Milwaukee as cruel and misguided.
UMass's Herter Gallery is hosting the exhibit "Deafening Silence: The Strange Career of Mussolini's Legacy in Rome" by current ISI Value fellow and Professor of architecture Max Page (January 22-February 22, 2015). Using recent photographs, professor Page documents those aspects of Rome's architectural legacy bequeathed by Mussolini. The exhibition was made possible in part by the research allowance ISI makes available to its fellows each year.
Current ISI Value Fellow Angela de Oliveira was selected as a Fellow for the Nation Science Foundation-funded "Enabling the Next Generation of Hazards and Disasters Researchers Fellowship Program." According to de Oliveira, she discussed her ISI project in her application for the fellowship.
The program "foster[s] the development of hazards scholars who will expand and strengthen the interdisciplinary research community." The fellowship begins with a weekend meeting in February, where fellows will be introduced to interdisciplinary practices in the study of hazards and disasters, begin to formulate their goals for the program, and meet with mentors and fellows. The Annual Natural Hazards and Applications Workshop will be held in July at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
The program selects up to 20 fellows each year for the competitive program. More information about the program can be found on the Next Generation of Hazards and Disasters Researchers website.
Current ISI 'Value' fellow Max Page completed his tenure as a Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. 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 was in Rome from January to July, during which he kept a blog of more than 200 entries, including photos and observations.
Page researched the way the era of Mussolini is remembered, memorialized, and marked on the physical places of Rome, and his interview with the American Academy in Rome about his work can be found here. Upon returning to Massachusetts, Page published an article in the Boston Globe, "The Roman Architecture of Mussolini, Still Standing."
Former ISHA Fellow Young Min Moon has been selected to receive a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. Moon, an associate professor of studio art at UMass was one of 178 scholars, artists, and scientists in the United States and Canada to be chosen from a group of almost 3,000 applicants on the basis of "prior achievement and exceptional promise." Moon’s practice of art and art criticism are informed by his experience of migration across cultures and hybridized nature of identities in the context of the historical and political relationship between modern Asia and North America. More information about the artist and the award can be found here.
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Current ISI Fellow David Mednicoff has been invited to be a fellow for a research group on Balancing Religious Accommodation and Human Rights and Human Rights in Constitutional Frameworks. He will be working on his book on the rule of law and religious politics in cross-national Arab perspective, as well as a related law review article and book chapter.
The ZiF is Bielefeld University's Institute for Advanced Study, and fosters outstanding and innovative interdisciplinary research projects, which it selects through a highly competitive application process. A statement of the theme of the fellowship work group can be found here. A list of the members of the work group including Mednicoff, can be found here.
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Former ISI Fellow Lisa Henderson's book Love and Money: Queers, Class, and Cultural Production (NYU 2013), one chapter of which was developed in an ISHA seminar, is a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in the category of LGBT Studies. Finalists for the awards were announced in early March by the Lambda Literary Foundation. The Lambda Literary Awards celebrate achievement in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) writing for books published in 2013. The winners will be announced at a ceremony on June 2 at Cooper Union in New York City.
More information about the award can be found here.
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The 2013 University of Massachusetts Amherst Report on Research highlights the Interdisciplinary Studies Institute (ISI) in "Crossing Boundaries: Interdisciplinary Studies' Intellectual Adventure." The annual Report on Research is a report on the campus's achievements in research, scholarship, and creative activity by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Engagement. The report celebrate's the ISI's promotion to a full-fledged institute, notes the publication of its first book, and features commentary from ISI fellows past and present. The report on ISI can be found here.
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A review in the forthcoming March 2014 issue of CHOICE "highly recommends" the volume Negotiating Culture: Heritage, Ownership, and Intellectual Property, edited by Laetitia La Follette. CHOICE is a publication of the Association of College and Research Libraries.
Negotiating Culture 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. This edited volume originates from the productive discussions of the ISI faculty seminars. More information about the book from the University of Massachusetts Press can be found here.
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Current ISI Fellow Barbara Krauthamer's book with photographic historian Deborah Willis Envisioning Emancipation: Black Americans and the End of Slavery won the 45th Annual NAACP Image Award in the category of non-fiction. The awards, presented in 35 categories in literature, motion pictures, recording, documentary, writing and directing, were televised live Feb. 22 from Pasadena, Calif. The awards celebrate the achievements of people of color in the arts and the promotion of social justice through creative endeavors.
Envisioning Emancipation illustrates what freedom looked like for black Americans in the Civil War era. From photos of the enslaved on plantations and African-American soldiers and camp workers in the Union Army to Juneteenth celebrations, slave reunions, and portraits of black families and workers in the American South, the images in this book challenge perceptions of slavery. They show not only what the subjects emphasized about themselves but also the ways Americans of all colors and genders opposed slavery and marked its end. Krauthamer and Willis amassed 150 photographs—some never before published—from the antebellum days of the 1850s through the New Deal era of the 1930s.
More information about Krauthamer's award can be found here.
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The Interdisciplinary Studies Institute (ISI) celebrates the publication of former ISI fellow David Bollier's book Think Like a Commoner: A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons by New Society Publishers. Bollier's book provides a "succinct overview of the great diversity of commons in the world; the many pernicious enclosures now being fought; the logic, worldview and ethics of the commons; and the burgeoning international movement of commoners, especially in Europe and the global South." More information about the book and its author can be found here. Amherst Books will host an event celebrating the publication of Bollier's book on Monday, March 31st at 5:30pm.
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Joya Misra, ISI fellow 2012-13, developed the Gender & Society blog during her fellowship year. As editor of the top-ranked journal in Gender Studies, Gender & Society, Misra wanted to ensure that the research published in the journal was also accessible to wider publics. The blog presents short, accessible summaries of articles and books, and responses to current issues by top feminist scholars.
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A book launch and reading by Mari Castañeda, associate professor of communications and director of diversity advancement for the College of Social and Behavior Sciences, is planned for the new book she co-edited, “Mothers in Academia.” It will be held at Food For Thought Books in Amherst at noon on Saturday, Sept. 14.
The volume, just published by Columbia University Press, features other contributing authors from UMass Amherst as well: co-editor Kirsten Isgro, Brenda Bushouse, Wendy Wilde, Vanessa Adel and former doctoral student Allia Matta.
The book was recently featured in both Inside Higher Ed and Times Higher Education. It offers “forthright testimonials” by women who are or have been mothers as undergraduates, graduate students, academic staff, administrators and professors. “Mothers in Academia” intimately portrays the experiences of women at various stages of motherhood while theoretically and empirically considering the conditions of working motherhood as academic life has become more laborious. As higher learning institutions have moved toward more corporate-based models of teaching, immense structural and cultural changes have transformed women’s academic lives and, by extension, their families. Hoping to push reform as well as build recognition and a sense of community, the authors and editors of the collection offer several potential solutions for integrating female scholars more wholly into academic life.
Castañeda is the co-editor of Soap Operas and Telenovelas in the Digital Age: Global Industries and New Audiences. Isgro, an assistant professor in communication studies at the State University of New York, Plattsburgh, has published essays in Women and Children First: Feminism, Rhetoric, and Public Policy; Fundamentalisms and the Media; Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies, and Feminist Media Studies.
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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.
Laetitia La Follette edited and contributed to the volume, which also features her fellow Cultural Ownership (ISHA 2006-2007) colleagues David Bollier, Oriol Pi-Sunyer, Banu Subramaniam, and H. Martin Wobst. ISI director Stephen Clingman, Susan DiGiacomo, Margaret Speas and Joe Watkins also contributed. The book will be available through the University of Massachusetts Press this coming August.
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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.
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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.
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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."
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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.’ Professor Emerita Scott was one of the first ISHA fellows and belongs to the "Beyond Reproduction" spin-off group, which has been meeting for eleven years. She also served as Chair of the Spanish Department of Amherst College from 2010-2012.
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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. Tracy was also appointed a Fulbright Senior Specialist and made a six-week Fulbright trip to the University of Konstanz. His recent and forthcoming publications include:
“The New Negro Renaissance.” In The Cambridge Companion to American Poetry. Ed. Mark Richardson. Forthcoming 2013.
“How Many Light Bulbs Does It Take to Screw in a Blues Singer?” In a new volume on Ralph Ellison to be published by the University Press of Mississippi.
"Harlem Renaissance." In Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, New edition. Princeton University Press, Fall 2012.
“Without Respect to Gender.” In Langston Hughes: Critical Responses. Ed. R. Baxter Miller. Salem Press, 2012.
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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.
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ISI Fellow Angie Willey publishes "The Science of Love Behind the Science of Rape" in The Feminist Wire. Argues Willey, "We need to talk about the legitimacy of a science of love that passes as commonsensical despite decades of queer and feminist research that undermines its central premises. It won’t do to dismiss the claims we disagree with as “unscientific.” We need to be able to engage with “science” when and wherever it does “count.” And when it does and it’s to our benefit, we need to remember that our own use of scientific authority can be used against us."
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Sally Campbell Galman
Child and Family Studies, School of Education, ISHA 10-11
—Wise and Foolish Virgins: White Women at Work in the Feminized World of
Primary School Teaching. Lexington Books, 2012.
Elizabeth Krause
Department of Anthropology, ISHA 08-09
—“Tight Knit: Two Familisms in One Country”, Center for Research on Families
Scholar, 2011-2012.
Shona Macdonald
Department of Art, Architecture and Art History, ISHA 09-10
—Roswell Artist-in-Residence, Roswell New Mexico, 2010-2011.
—“Sea Change,” University Gallery, Illinois State University, Bloomington IL,
January 2011.
—“Simmer Dim,” Engine Room, Massey University, Wellington New Zealand,
November 2010.
—“Simmer Dim,” St. Gaudens Picture Gallery, Cornish NH, August 2010.
—Artist Merit Grant, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, July 2009.
—Solo Drawing Show, College of St. Benedict, St Joseph MN, Oct 21-Nov 21.
David Mednicoff
Legal Studies, ISHA 05-06
—”Popular Uprisings in the Arab World: An Open Discussion on Recent Events”,
Panel, Feb 3, 2011.
Daphne Patai
Department of Spanish and Portuguese, ISHA 10-11
—Samuel F. Conti Faculty Fellowship, 2011-2012.
Nina Scott
Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Emeritus, ISHA Spring 01
—Chair, Amherst Spanish Department, 2010-2011.
Manisha Sinha
Department of Afro-American Studies, ISHA Board
—“Did the Abolitionists Cause the Civil War?” Distinguished Faculty Lecture
Series, April 27th, 2011.
Ervin Staub
Department of Psychology, ISHA 02
—Overcoming Evil: Genocide, Violent Conflict, and Terrorism, Oxford University Press,
2011.
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Lee Badgett
Department of Economics, ISHA 04-05
—When Gay People Get Married, New York University Press, 2009.
Joyce Berkman
Department of History, ISHA 04-05
—University Distinguished Outreach in Research Award 2008/09.
Mari Castañeda
Department of Communication, ISHA Spring '01
—President’s Public Service Award, 2009.
Elizabeth Chilton
Department of Anthropology, ISHA 09-10
—Director, UMass Amherst Center for Heritage and Society.
Milan Dragicevich
Department of Theater, ISHA 08-09
—Milosevic at the Hague, Joakim Interfest International Theater Festival, October
2009.
Olga Gershenson
Judaic and Near Eastern Studies Department, ISHA 05-06
—IREX Grant.
—Ladies and Gents: Public Toilets and Gender, Temple UP, 2009.
Elizabeth Krause
Department of Anthropology, ISHA 08-09
—Unraveled: A Weaver’s Tale of Life Gone Modern, University of California Press,
2009.
Shona Macdonald
Department of Art, Architecture and Art History ISHA 09-10
—“Two Northeast” Exhibition at Proof Gallery, South Boston 9/12/09-10/17/09.
—Artist Merit Grant, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, July 2009.
—Solo Drawing Show, College of St. Benedict, St Joseph MN, Oct 21-Nov 21.
Eileen O’Neil
Department of Philosophy, and ISHA Board
—Women, Philosophy, and History (a conference in celebration of her work),
Barnard College, Columbia University, October 2-3, 2009.
Patricia Warner
Consumer Studies, ISHA Spring '01
—Keynote Address to The Costume Society of America: “Hollywood Costume
Movies: A Century of Misinformation.”
—Presentation: “She Shoots, She Scores! Women’s Basketball in Connecticut.”
—When The Girls Came Out to Play. UMass Press, 2006.
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David Bollier
Independent Scholar, ISHA 06-07
—Viral Spiral: Commoners Built a Digital Republic of Their Own, The New Press,
2008.
Laura Doyle
Department of English, ISHA Spring '03
—ACLS Fellowship.
Laurie Godfrey
Department of Anthropology, ISHA 07-08
—Award for Outstanding Accomplishment in Research and Creative Activity, Fall
2008.
—Guggenheim Fellowship.
—Samuel F. Conti Faculty Fellowship.
Randall Knoper
Department of English, ISHA Board, ISHA 09-10
—CHFA Distinguished Service Award.
Marla Miller
Department of History
—CHFA grant.
Nina Scott
Spanish and Portuguese (Emeritus), ISHA Spring '01
—Associate, Five College Women’s Studies Research Center.
—Grant, Lilly Library at Indiana University.
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Laura Doyle
Department of English, ISHA Spring '03
—Associate Dean, CHFA. Spring 2008.
John Gerber
Department of Plant, Soil and Insect Sciences, ISHA Fall '02
—Distinguished Teaching Award, Fall 2008.
Daniel Gordon
Department of History, ISHA 04-05
—Interim Director, BDIC, Spring 2008.
John Kingston
Department of Linguistics, ISHA Board, ISHA Spring '03
—College Outstanding Teacher Award.
Banu Subramaniam
Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, ISHA Spring ’03, 04-05, 06-07, 09-10
—Associate Dean, CHFA.
Martin Wobst
Department of Anthropology, ISHA 07-08
—Distinguished Faculty Lecturer.
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Bernie D. Jones
Department of Legal Studies, ISHA 04-05
—William Nelson Cromwell Foundation Prize, 2006.
—"Righteous Fathers, Vulnerable Old Men and Degraded Creatures: Southern
Justices on Miscegenation in the Antebellum Will Contest." Tulsa Law Review,
2006.
David Mednicoff
Department of Legal Studies, ISHA 05-06
—Visiting Fulbright Professor (International Law and Relations), Qatar University.
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Daniel Gordon
Department of History, ISHA 08-09
—Talk: "The Cult of Democracy: Regulating the Islamic Veil in France, Turkey, Germany, and the U.S." Feb 23, 2006.
Elizabeth L. Krause
Department of Anthropology, ISHA 08-09
—Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Richard Carley Hunt Fellowship. “Fertile Protest: Memory, Demographic Decline and Economic Angst in Italy.” Awarded August 2004 for 12 months writing beginning January 2005 and ending January 2006 ($40,000).
—A Crisis of Births: Population Politics and Family-Making in Italy. Case Studies on Contemporary Social Issues. John A. Young, series editor. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2005.
—“Encounters with ‘the Peasant’: Memory Work, Masculinity, and Low Fertility in Italy.” American Ethnologist 34(4) Nov. 2005.
David Mednicoff
Department of Legal Studies, ISHA 05-06
—Teaching 9-11' prize from Dickinson College and the Smithsonian Institution.
Nina M. Scott
Spanish and Portuguese (Emeritus), ISHA Spring '01
—"Measuring Ingredients. Food and Domesticity in Mexican Casta Paintings." Gastronomica, Vol. 5 # 1, Winter 2005: 70-79.
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