Monthly Newsletters 4
 

Although winter is still hanging on in Austin, the Humanities Institute is pleased to share the activities we have planned for the Spring 2019 semester. Our March 2019 Newsletter announces our Distinguished Visiting Lecture Series on the theme of "Narrative and Social Justice", including the inaugural lecture by Dr. Emily Greenwood on "Philology and Reparation." Details on our second Difficult Dialogue / Planet Texas 2050 Public Forum on the Environment with guest speaker, Dr. Paige West, and the March Controversy & Conversation film screening of Wasted! The Story of Food Waste with guest speaker Lisa Barden of Keep Austin Fed are also included. We conclude with news on the continuing Health and Humanities Research Seminar Series.

Please read below to find further details on our Spring 2019 events and programs!

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Emily Greenwood to Deliver Inaugural Talk in Distinguished Visiting Lecture Series on "Narrative and Social Justice"

“Philology and Reparation:
Resisting Anti-Human Errors in ‘Great’ Books”

Wednesday, March 13, 2019
7:00 - 8:30 PM: Lecture and Discussion
The Avaya Auditorium, Peter O'Donnell Building
POB 2.302, 201 E. 24th Street, Austin, TX 78712

This Spring the Humanities Institute will begin its Distinguished Visiting Lecture Series on "Narrative and Social Justice." The series accompanies the 2018-2020 Faculty Fellows Seminar on the theme of "Narrative Across the Disciplines." The lecture series aims to expand dialogue between university scholars of every discipline and community members of every background on the topics of stories, storytelling, and social justice.

The first lecture features a presentation by Emily Greenwood, Chair and Professor of Classics at Yale University. Dr. Greenwood's talk is titled "Philology and Reparation: Resisting Anti-Human Errors in 'Great' Books." Through Anglophone literature from Africa and the black diaspora, Dr. Greenwood challenges the notion of an exclusively Western canonical interpretation of Greek and Roman Classics. The lecture will take place on March 13th in the Avaya Auditorium (POB 2.302, 201 E 24th Street).

About the speaker:
Emily Greenwood is Chair and Professor of Classics at Yale University. Dr. Greenwood’s work focuses on the politics and poetics of responding to, interpreting, adapting, and writing back to Greek and Roman Classics in Anglophone literature in Africa and the black diaspora. Her research interests include ancient Greek historiography, Greek prose literature of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, twentieth century classical receptions (especially uses of Classics in Africa, Britain, the Caribbean, and Greece), Classics and Postcolonialism, and the theory and practice of translating the ‘classics’ of Greek and Roman literature.

Dr. Greenwood's recent books include: Afro-Greeks: Dialogues Between Anglophone Caribbean Literature and Classics in the Twentieth Century (2010), Reading Herodotus: A Study of the Logoi in Book 5 of Herodotus’ Histories (Edited Volume, 2007), Homer in the Twentieth Century: Between World Literature and the Western Canon (2007), and Thucydides and the Shaping of History (2006).

This event is free and open to the public. RSVPs are not required but are appreciated.

Emily Greenwood's talk is sponsored by the Sterling Clark Holloway Centennial Lectureship and the Viola S. Hoffman and George W. Hoffman Lectureship in Liberal Arts and Fine Arts.

Upcoming Lectures in the 2019 Distinguished Visiting Lecture Series:

Wednesday, April 3 (Auditorium, Blanton Museum of Art) – Doris Sommer, PhD, Ira Jewell Williams Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, and Director of the Cultural Agents Initiative, Harvard University. Dr. Sommer will speak on narrative, art, and social justice.

Wednesday, September 11 (Avaya Auditorium, Peter O'Donnell Building) – Robin Lakoff, PhD, Professor of Linguistics (Emerita), The University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Lakoff will speak on the use of narrative control in maintaining power.

Wednesday, October 23 (Avaya Auditorium, Peter O'Donnell Building) – Jason De León, PhD, Professor of Anthropology, The University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. De León will speak on migration narratives.

Read more about the 2018-2020 class of Humanities Institute Faculty Fellows here. Please visit the Humanities Institute's blog, Thinking in Community, to keep up with our weekly posts on research presented in the Faculty Fellows Seminar on "Narrative Across the Disciplines."

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Paige West headshot

Dr. Paige West, Barnard College and Columbia University

Spring 2019 Difficult Dialogues Public Forum on the Environment

Dr. Paige West
“Hard Choices & Opportunities: Environment and Economy"

Tuesday, April 16, 2019
Texas Union, Quadrangle Room (3.304)
2308 Whitis Avenue
Austin, TX 78712
7:00 - 9:00 PM

Free and open to the public.

This Spring the Humanities Institute is partnering with Planet Texas 2050 to host a Difficult Dialogues Public Forum featuring a presentation by Paige West, Professor of Anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University. Her presentation is titled “Hard Choices & Opportunities: Environment and Economy" and will draw on her research in Papua New Guinea to discuss questions such as: How can researchers galvanize social and political action for change around climate-related issues? Specifically, how can writing climate change ethnographically allow scholars to reach a broader public?

The forum will also feature a panel of respondents including Jason Cons, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at UT Austin, and members of the Austin community working on environmental change. The discussion will be moderated by Pauline Strong, director of the Humanities Institute.

This event is free and open to the public.

Please RSVP here if you would like to attend.

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Controversy & Conversation Film Screening: Wasted! The Story of Food Waste Produced by Anthony Bourdain

Free and open to the public.

Thursday, March 7, 2019
6:30-9:00 PM Screening & Discussion
Terrazas Branch, Austin Public Library
1105 E. Cesar Chavez Street, Austin, TX 78702

March's Controversy & Conversation documentary screening of Anthony Bourdain's Wasted! The Story of Food Waste (2017) will feature a discussion with Lisa Barden, the Executive Director of Keep Austin Fed.

Produced by Anthony Bourdain and directed by Anna Chai and Nari Kye, Wasted! (2017) aims to change the way people buy, cook, recycle, and eat food. Through the the eyes of chefs like Bourdain, Dan Barber, Mario Batali, Massimo Bottura, and Danny Bowien, audiences will see how the world’s most influential chefs make the most of every kind of food, transforming what most people consider scraps into incredible dishes that create a more secure food system. Wasted! exposes the criminality of food waste and how it’s directly contributing to climate change, and shows how each of us can make small changes to solve one of the greatest problems of the 21st Century.

The film was the Audience Favorite award winner at the Aspen Film Festival and received a Primetime Emmy in 2018.

Lisa Barden ranch-full

Lisa Barden, Keep Austin Fed

About the Speaker:
After graduating with a Math degree, Lisa moved to Austin and jumped into an IT career at The University of Texas. After 22 years as a “cube jockey”, she decided she wanted more, so she left to pursue her desire to start a business encouraging fitness for everyone. Life made another right turn when Lisa started volunteering with Keep Austin Fed after watching the documentary Just Eat It, in May 2015. Astounded by facts on the prevalence of food insecurity and the vast amount of perfectly good food that gets thrown away she immediately signed up to be a part of the solution. Lisa says she is “humbly energized” by the appreciation in the faces and voices of the recipients of the food her organization distributes. Her passion and dedication to the cause, which started with just a few hours a week, have led to her current role as the organization’s Executive Director.

Controversy & Conversation is a collaboration between the Humanities Institute's Difficult Dialogues Program and the Austin Public Library. Documentary screenings take place the first Thursday of the month at the Terrazas Branch of the Austin Public Library. They begin at 6:30 PM and are followed by a 30-50 minute community conversation. Light refreshments are provided.

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ClassicsVase

Berlin painter, c. 490 BCE (Image credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art)

UT Department of Classics Conference - Orality and Literacy XIII: Repetition

Conference: Wednesday, March 27 - Sunday, March 31, 2019
Except as noted, all paper sessions and meals will take place in RLP 1.302B, University of Texas at Austin (305 East 23rd Street).

Keynote address: Wednesday, March 27, 2019
7:30 - 9:00 PM
Robert L Patton Hall (RLP), 0.102
305 East 23rd Street, Austin, TX 78712

The Humanities Institute is pleased to share the details of the upcoming Orality and Literacy XIII: Repetition Conference hosted by the UT Department of Classics. The conference is organized by Dr. Deborah Beck, a 2018-2020 Humanities Institute Faculty Fellow.

The Orality and Literacy conference's keynote address, “Reperformance, Writing, and the Boundaries of Literature," will be given by Dr. Ruth Scodel, D.R. Shackleton-Bailey Collegiate Professor of Greek and Latin in the Department of Classics at the University of Michigan on Wednesday, March 27 from 7:30 - 9:00 PM in the Robert L Patton Hall (RLP), Room 0.102.

To see the conference's schedule of papers and events, please visit the Orality and Literacy website.

Sponsored by the UT Department of Classics, Humanities Texas and the Humanities Institute through the Barron Ulmer Kidd Centennial Lectureship.

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Dr. Lynn Harter presenting at February Health Humanities Seminar (Photo by Daniel Cavazos)

HI and Dell Medical School's Health and Humanities Research Seminar Series Continues

In Spring 2019 the Humanities Institute continues to host its series of Health & Humanities Research Seminars in partnership with Dell Medical School. The research seminars are a follow-up to the May 2018 Health and Humanities Pop-Up Institute and are intended to engage scholars and practitioners across the health and humanities disciplines in research-oriented dialogue. Designed primarily for faculty and research staff, the seminars feature presentations from speakers, followed by a group discussion, and close with casual conversation and refreshments. Learn more about the Humanities Institute's Health and Humanities initiatives HERE.

ring-david

Dr. David Ring

The March Seminar featured a presentation by David Ring, MD, PhD, Associate Dean for Comprehensive Care, Professor of Surgery and Perioperative Care, and Professor of Psychiatry at Dell Medical School. Dr. Ring's talk "Hacking Your Mind for Health," explored the increasing evidence that what goes on in your mind can affect your health in such areas as, for instance, symptom intensity, and why and how that matters for providers, patients, and researchers. His was the fourth Health and Humanities Research Seminar led by a member of the Dell Medical School faculty. Previous Dell speakers include Dr. Barbara Jones, Dr. Virginia Brown and Dr. Jewel Mullen.

You can read more about Dr. Ring's research on the topic of the "Health Benefits of Writing and Storytelling" in a recent Faculty Fellows blog post.

AlisonKafer

Dr. Alison Kafer

The next seminar in the series will take place on April 1st and features a presentation by Alison Kafer, PhD, Associate Professor of English and Women’s and Gender Studies at UT Austin. Dr. Kafer's talk is titled "After Crip, Crip Afters: Ambivalence and Temporality in the Work of Disability Artists."

Alison Kafer, a disability and feminist studies scholar, is the author of Feminist, Queer, Crip (Indiana, 2013). Her work has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including Disability Studies Quarterly, Feminist Disability Studies, the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, Sex and Disability, and South Atlantic Quarterly. She received an M.A. and Ph.D. in Women’s Studies and Religion from Claremont Graduate University and a B.A. from Wake Forest University.

Seats for the seminars are limited and available by advance reservation. You can contact seminar organizer Phillip Barrish (pbarrish@austin.utexas.edu) for more information.

The Health and Humanities Research Seminar Series is sponsored by the Humanities Institute and Dell Medical School.

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The Humanities Institute's Newsletter is edited by Kathryn North, Administrative Program Coordinator. For more information on the Humanities Institute at the University of Texas at Austin visit our website. To contact us, please write to Kathryn at knnorth@austin.utexas.edu or call (512) 471-9056.

 
   
 
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