2022-2023
2022-23 Humanities Institute Faculty Fellows
Colleen Culleton, Associate Professor, Romance Languages and Literatures
Colleen Culleton studies contemporary Spanish and Catalan fiction and film. She is the author of Literary Labyrinths: Narrating Memory and Place in Franco-Era Barcelona, which examines how an ideologically driven revision of the urban landscape in Barcelona led to a sense of disorientation in how the city is remembered. Her early interest in social space has evolved to be an examination of environmental care. Her most recent work approaches globalization through the lens of ecology, taking into account theories of affect and the experience of crisis in the twenty-first century.
Colleen Culleton will present her talk “Spain Connected: Global Citizenship in Spain’s Twenty-First Century” as part of the Scholars@Hallwalls series on March 10, 2023.
Maximilian Goldfarb, Assistant Professor, Art
Maximilian Goldfarb has completed object, text and media artworks with support from the Harpo Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and The Kaplan Institute for the Humanities. He has participated in numerous exhibitions in venues including Sculpture Center, NY, Stadsgalerij, NL, and Western Front, BC. He is an author of Architectural Inventions (Laurence King Publishing, UK), Handbook for Human Machines (Pilot Editions), and Remote Viewing: 500 Tableaux (Publication Studio). A 2022 book on Goldfarb’s recent collaborative work with the group, ‘Wolf Tones’ was published by Soberscove Press.
Maximilian Goldfarb will present his talk “Remote Viewing” as part of the Scholars@Hallwalls series on March 31, 2023.
Miguel Guitart, Assistant Professor, Architecture
Miguel’s scholarship focuses on perceptual experience and material memory in architecture. His recent book Behind Architectural Filters: Phenomena of Interference (Routledge, 2022) examines architectural boundaries as mechanisms of spatial relationships favoring environments of perceptual inclusion and expansive experience. Miguel also explores the connections between architectural theory, pedagogy, and practice in his book Approaching Architecture: Three Fields, One Discipline (Routledge, 2022). Miguel’s forthcoming book Reinterpreting Architectural Grounds: On Fragile Matter and Strong Memories (Routledge, 2024) examines the physical, perceptual, and political implications of material memory embedded in the physical ecology of the architectural ground, and the loss of mnemo-material significance resulting from the ground’s artificial manipulation.
Miguel Guitart will present his talk “Flattened American Landscapes: Documenting the Loss of Material Memory” as part of the Scholars@Hallwalls series on December 1, 2022.
Dalia Antonia Caraballo Muller, Associate Professor, History
Dalia Antonia Caraballo Muller is a researcher/educator whose twin passions are the study of Afro-Latin America and the study of liberatory pedagogies. The through line that connects her work is the concept of “impossibility.” She researches African-identified intellectuals in Cuba who thought at the limits of the possible as they staked claims to rights, dignity and equality. In the classroom, Dr. Caraballo Muller invites her students to stretch their minds and think at the limits of the possible in order to dream up new futures for our ailing world and planet as our ancestors once did.
Dalia Antonia Caraballo Muller will present her talk “Impossible Futures: Tragic Time and Freedom Dreaming in Post Emancipation Cuba” as part of the Scholars@Hallwalls series on November 18, 2022.
Miriam Paeslack, Associate Professor, Arts Management
Miriam investigates visual representations of the built environment and concepts of architectural and urban memory, heritage, and cultural identity. In more recent research, she explores the evolving concept of “engagement” as practiced and theorized in artistic, cultural, historical and arts management discourses. Her current book project explores this paradigm in US art museums. She is the author of Constructing Imperial Berlin: Photography and the Metropolis (University of Minnesota Press, 2018) and editor of Ineffably Urban: Imaging Buffalo (Ashgate, 2013). Her essays are published in Future Anterior, the Journal of Architecture, and Fotogeschichte.
Miriam Paeslack will present her talk “Locating Museum Engagement: The Oakland Museum of California” as part o the Scholars@Hallwalls series on April 28, 2023.
Lewis Powell, Associate Professor, Philosophy
Lewis’s research has focused on philosophy of mind and language in the early modern period. He has published primarily on David Hume, Thomas Reid, and John Locke. His current research examines the varieties of style/genre that proliferated in that period, and their winnowing over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries, as well as in the broader relationship between philosophy and fiction. Outside of work, some things that bring Lewis particular joy are his niece Quinn, his dog Scully, the music of the Mountain Goats, and the novels of Rosemary Kirstein.
Lewis Powell will present his talk “Style vs. Substance in Early Modern Philosophy” as part of the Scholars@Hallwalls series on February 12, 2023.
Paul Vanouse, Professor, Art
Paul’s artwork employs molecular biology techniques to challenge entrenched notions of individual, racial, and national identity, and the cultural authority of DNA. His projects have been exhibited in over 25 countries and widely across the US. Solo exhibitions include: Burchfield-Penny Gallery in Buffalo, Muffathalle in Munich, Schering Foundation in Berlin, and Kapelica Gallery in Ljubljana. His work has been supported by Creative Capital Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. His multi-sensory artwork, Labor, was awarded a Golden Nica at Prix Ars Electronica, 2019.
Paul Vanouse will present his talk “On the Matter of Human Emissions” as part of the Scholars@Hallwalls series on October 28, 2022.
Alexandra Zirkle, Assistant Professor, Jewish Thought
Alexandra Zirkle is a scholar of modern Jewish thought, biblical hermeneutics, and Jewish-Christian relations. Her research centers biblical interpretation as a mode of critical inquiry, restores nineteenth-century figures to the canon of modern Jewish thought, and explores the ways that the interpretation of scripture is always also a mode of political speech. Professor Zirkle’s book-in-progress analyzes how German Jews wielded the constructive power of biblical exegesis to craft new forms of Judaism and stake their claims to civil emancipation.
Her recent articles analyze Graetz’s fantasies of Jewish gender and sexuality in his anti-antisemitic commentary to the Song of Songs (2021: Modern Judaism); resurrect how debates over the Jewish Question were shaped by two exegetical odes to Jewish farmers past and present (2019: de Gruyter); and trace how Graetz’s forgotten exegetical commitments undergird his famous History of the Jews (2019: Jewish Quarterly Review).
Alexandra Zirkle will present her talk “Chastening Germany: Graetz’s Lusty Jew and Asexual Jewess as Semitic Saviors” as part of the Scholars@Hallwalls series on October 14, 2022.
