2009-2010
Humanities Institute Research Workshops (2009-10)
The Humanities Institute’s Research Workshops bring together UB faculty and graduate students from diverse disciplines to present research and to explore topics of common intellectual concern. The HI provides “seed money” ($2,500) for workshops to sponsor guest lectures, “works-in-progress” seminars and future conferences. In 2009-2010, the HI currently sponsors eight research workshops ranging from the long-standing group in Early Modern Studies to the more recently established workshops on “Cultural Studies of Space,” “Time and Memory,” and “Queer Theory.”
Early Modern Research Workshop
The Early Modern Research Workshop offers a wide range of expertise and a variety of courses in the literature and culture of the Western world from 1500-1830, including intellectual history, historical studies of genres and authors, detailed readings of canonical and popular texts, and various topics in cultural studies. It is comprised of UB faculty in English, Comparative Literature, History, and Modern Languages, and supplemented by course offerings available through our membership in the Folger Shakespeare Library Institute.
Principal coordinators: Ramya Sreenivasan (History) and Amy Graves (RLL)
2009-2010 EVENTS
March 19, 2010 | Michel Fisher (Department of History, Oberlin)
“Images of Asians in Early Imperial Britain”
October 9, 2009 | Ken Mills (Department of Spanish, University of Toronto)
“The Eyes of Faith will See: Sacred Journeying the Early Modern Spanish World”
February 20, 2009 | Ben Schmidt (Department of History, University of Washington)
“The Idea of Europe and its Expansion: Global Exoticism at the Turn of the Eighteenth Century”
October 16, 2008 | Nabil Matar (Department of English, University of Minnesota)
“The Priest, the Sufi and the Chaplain: Three Travelers to the Holy Land”
Philosophical Reading Group Research Workshop
For more than a decade the Philosophical Reading Group has convened one day per week to discuss, typically over the course of an entire semester, a major work in the philosophical tradition. Historically, the group focuses on difficult works that reward intensive close reading. In 2009/2010 the PRG will read Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time (fall 2009), followed by Jean-Luc Nancy’s The Experience of Freedom and Jacques Derrida’s Of Spirit (both spring 2010). The group will also host two sets of speakers in the spring term: Juan Manuel Garrido (Universidad Diego Portales) and Nancy and Leonard Lawlor (Penn State University).
Principal coordinators: David Johnson (Comparative Literature) and Galen Brokaw (RLL)
Research Workshop for Queer Theory
Queer theory encompasses a heterogenous body of critical interrogations of identity and the normalizing technologies of power that, as an effect of their operation, pathologize other forms of sociality, subjectivity, embodiment and erotic proactice. This research workshop seeks to continue the production of robust critiques and renders queer theory itself as an object of critical inquiry.
Principal coordinator: Steven Ruszczycky (English)
Time and Memory Research Workshop
The Time and Memory Research Workshop brings together different conceptions of time and memory across the disciplines of socio-cultural anthropology, history, American Studies, and archaeology to stimulate interdisciplinary cross-fertilization. Our primary aim is to improve our own work practices by presenting original research to peers and graduate students in a forum geared towards feedback and debate. [more]
Principal coordinator: Peter Biehl (Anthropology)
Haudenosaunee and Native American Research Workshop
Comprised of Indigenous and non-Indigenous allied faculty and graduate student scholars from across disciplines at UB, The Haudenosaunee/Native American Studies Research Workshop provides a forum for discussion of recent academic work in the ever-emerging interdisciplinary field of Indigenous studies. The primary rationale for this research workshop ’s Haudenosaunee-specific focus corresponds with maintaining respectful recognition of the University at Buffalo’s location within the traditional territories of the Haudenosaunee people.
Principal coordinator: Theresa McCarthy (American Studies)
Cultural Studies of Space Research Workshop
The Cultural Studies of Space Research Workshop brings together faculty and graduate students to discuss social theories of space, especially as concerns globalization and culture. The foundations of this Reading Group rest in intellectual curiosity and a desire to expand our understnading beyond the bounds of sometimes too narrowly defined academic discioplines, rather than in any institutional directive. [more]
Principal coordinators: Colleen Culleton (RLL) and Justin Read (RLL)
Cultural Studies Research Workshop
The primary purpose of the Research Workshop is to draw together the community of cultural studies scholars across disciplines at UB and in the community. Membership includes faculty, staff, and students from approximately 15 UB departments. Our research engages a wide range of historical and contemporary theories and methods of cultural critique and practice, with a special interest in how those interventions contribute to contemporary shifts in redefining both culture and its study at the levels of the individual, the national, and the global.
Principal coordinators: Tim Bryant (English), David Squires (English) and David Schmid (English)
