Fellows Lectures

HI Fellow Lecture 2011-2012

“Genkin Philharmonic Informance”
Jon Nelson, Associate Professor, Music
February 27, 2012
4:00 PM
Baird Recital Hall

Jon Nelson, associate professor of music, CAS, an active performer, teacher, producer and collaborator. He has performed extensively throughout the world, is a founding member of the internationally recognized Meridian Arts Ensemble and can be heard on more than 50 CD recordings featuring such artists as Frank Zappa, Milton Babbitt, Duran Duran, Pierre Boulez, Arto Lindsay and Marisa Monte. For his project, “Switching on the Lights: The Early 20th Century Musical Avant-Garde Goes Electric,” he will adapt and re-orchestrate avant-garde works by von Webern, Stravinsky, Verese, Bartok, Debusy, Ives, Satie, Prokofiev and Ravel for a 10-piece electro-acoustic ensemble.

“Natality and Biopolitics”
Ewa Ziarek, Professor, Comparative Literature
April 4, 2012
3:30 PM
830 Clemens Hall

Ewa Ziarek, Julian Park Professor of Comparative Literature, CAS, founding director of the Humanities Institute and author of several books on feminist ethics and aesthetics, and modernism and gender. She will work on a new book project, “Natality and Biopolitics,” which explores possibilities and limitations of the feminist politics of “natality” (i.e., entry into the political order) in the age of biopolitics.

HI Fellow Lecture 2010-2011

“In/Divided Unity: Reclamation at Grand River”
Theresa McCarthy, Assistant Professor
American Studies
March 30, 2011
3:30 PM
830 Clemens

My book project is an ethnographic study of community-based educational initiatives that advance Haudenosaunee traditionalism and languages at the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario. Focused at the intersection of academia and the Reserve community, my work argues for a rethinking of prevailing notions of “tradition” and “factionalism” given the historical legacy of anthropological research and other forms of colonial scholarship on the cultural representation of Haudenosaunee peoples. As land claim negotiations with the Canadian government further amplify the scrutiny of Six Nations factionalism and increasingly challenge the integrity of Haudenosaunee traditionalism in public and legal domains, my book offers an analysis that engages ongoing colonial experiences, with particular emphasis on the contours of state/power and gender relations. I also draw upon paradigms of unity, divisiveness and nationalism examined through the lens of Haudenosaunee language-based intellectual frameworks.

Theresa McCarthy specializes in Native American Studies.  Her research focuses on the continuity of Haudenosaunee traditionalism and languages in contemporary Six Nations communities. Her further research interests reside in the areas of Six Nations/Haudenosaunee land rights, the historiography of anthropological research on the Iroquois, Indigenous women and anti-violence initiatives and linguistic research methodologies. She received her Ph.D. from McMaster University.

HI Fellows’ Lectures 2008-2009

“Socio-Economic Relations in Classical Poetry”
Neil Coffee, Assistant Professor
Department of Classics
March 18, 2009

The Rhetoric of Economics in Classical Rome

Social historians have demonstrated that the economic systems of ancient Greece and Rome differed qualitatively from the modern marketplace: a whole picture of the ancient economy must include not just financial transactions, but also the social relationships through which they were articulated.  This book project examines how a range of literary and visual artists of the late Roman Republic and early empire responded to these systems by testing and shaping elite economic ideology while defining their own roles within it. After an introduction setting out the theoretical background, I offer studies on Cicero’s use of the elder Cato as economic model; Vergil’s departures in the Eclogues and Georgics from the norms of contemporary agricultural writers; the rhythms of giving and receiving in Pliny’s letters; and the imagery of abundance and corruption in early Imperial visual arts.

Neil Coffee teaches and publishes in the areas of Epic poetry, Roman imperial literature and culture, Hellenistic philosophy, classical tradition, and conversational Latin . He received his M.A. and Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Chicago.

“Migration, diversification, contact, and ideology (among other things): Towards an areal grammar of Lower Fungom.”
Jeffrey Good, Assistant Professor
Department of Linguistics
February 11, 2009

Towards an Areal Grammar of Lower Fungom

In Lower Fungom, a region of Cameroon not much larger than the city of  Buffalo, one finds at least seven indigenous languages, five of which  are not spoken elsewhere. None of these languages are well described,  and the largest has, perhaps, a few thousand speakers. Lower Fungom is  interesting not only from a sociocultural perspective, due to the  presence of such extensive diversity in such a small area, but also  from a historical perspective since the region is located in the  putative Proto-Bantu homeland, from which Bantu speakers spread out  some 5000 years ago, ultimately reaching the southern coast of Africa.  This project will examine data collected on the languages of the Lower  Fungom over the last four years with the aim of preparing a lexical  and comparative database which will serve as the foundation of a  linguistic description covering not only the grammars of individual  languages but also the social dynamics that have led to such a high  concentration of languages in such a small area.

Jeffrey Good teaches and publishes in the areas of Syntax, Morphology, Historical Linguistics, Typology, Niger-Congo Languages, Computer-assisted Linguistics. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley .

Fall 2008 Schedule

September 24
4:00 PM
830 Clemens Hall

“Dogs, Witches, and Other Unreliable Narrators: A Cervantine Twist on Fantasy and Exemplarity”
David Castillo, Romance Literatures and Languages
University at Buffalo
HI Faculty Fellows’ Lectures