Tableau

I N T H I S I S S U E | H I P - H O P G E N E R A T I O N | P O U S S I N | H U M A N I T I E S ' Q U A N T I T A T I V E S I D E

1 LETTER FROM THE DEAN

2 HERE & NOW

• Cultural Implications of Global Warming

• Fidelity, Form, and the Limits of Translation

• HipHopistan

• The Tale of Two Manuscripts Reunited

• Challenging the Exclusivity of the

Literary Canon

• Bringing Home a Grammy

• Views of Prague Castle

DONOR NEWS

7 Readers with a Passion

Randy Lamm Berlin, AM 1977, and Melvin Berlin Endow a New Professor’s Chair in English Language and Literature

FEATURE

8 Blind Orion Seeking the Sun

2007 Humanities Day Keynote AddressBy Richard Neer, David B. and Clara E. Stern

Professor of Humanities, Art History, and

the College

ON CAMPUS

14 Curriculum Vitae Faculty Awards

16 In Memoriam Nancy Pearce Helmbold (1918–2007)

Peter K. Jansen (1934–2007)

Joseph M. Williams (1933–2008)

17 HappeningsA Selection of Past, Present, and Future Events

contents

Tableau, Summer 2008, Volume 10, Number 1 —Tableau is published biannually with Division of the Humanities funds for our alumni and friends. Editor: Stefanie Rothman White. Copy Editor: JoanneBerens, MFA 1993. Also contributing to this issue: Rad Borislavov, PhD candidate in Slavic Languages and Literatures; Jane Charney, master’s candidate, International Relations; Natasha Long, MA 2008;Daniel Pratt, MA 2007, PhD candidate in Slavic Languages and Literatures; and Josh Schonwald. Design: Winge Design Studio. To Contact Tableau: The University of Chicago, Division of the Humanities,1115 East 58th Street, Chicago, Illinois 60637, tableau@uchicago.edu.

F R O M T H E D E A N 1

&d e a r a l u m n i a n d f r i e n d s

THIS HAS BEEN AN EXHILARATING FIRST YEARas Dean. Many moments of inspiration, challenge, discovery—and of course exhaustion—have culmi-nated in gratification and confidence that the Division,in tandem with the University, is making significantprogress toward sustained support for our faculty anddoctoral students. A number of new developments oncampus will help us maintain our prominent role inshaping academic fields and setting the intellectualagenda in the decades to come.

Most importantly, I am pleased to share that theUniversity’s successful completion of the ChicagoInitiative fundraising campaign has exceeded its goal,including the endowment of 105 new professorshipsand 207 graduate fellowships, which will yield directbenefits for our faculty colleagues and doctoral candi-dates in the Humanities Division. Addition of new,outstanding faculty scholars will impact our intellectualcommunity, enabling us to expand our range of scholar-ship and to continue to offer the broadest range ofpedagogy. Likewise, enhanced graduate student expe-riences via increased fellowship opportunities, higherteaching stipends, better research support, full healthbenefits, and enlightened student parent policies willmake the University even more attractive to the mostcapable applicants. Our intention is to allow doctoralstudents to focus on their classroom work and theirresearch, as well as to provide to them a range of teach-ing experiences with the goal of shortening the amountof time required to complete a PhD. This goal is sup-ported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which in2008 awarded the Division six million dollars to providedissertation completion grants. My hope is that we soonwill be able to offer these dissertation completion grantsto every PhD student in the Division of the Humanities.

University of Chicago Humanities faculty memberswere recognized last year with major awards from theNational Endowment for the Humanities, the GuggenheimFoundation, the Council for International Exchange ofScholars, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, theBritish Academy, the American Society of Composers,Authors and Publishers, the Royal Dutch Academy ofArts and Sciences, and more. Please see CurriculumVitae, pages 14 and 15 of this issue, for an idea of themagnitude of these honors.

While it is essential to be recognized for our scholar-ship, it is also important to know that we are makingan impact in the classroom. Three Humanities faculty

members were recognized for their leadership in theclassroom this year. The 2008 Faculty Award forExcellence in Graduate Teaching was awarded to twocolleagues: Frederick de Armas, the Andrew W. MellonProfessor in the Humanities and the College, and Chairof the Department of Romance Languages and Litera-tures; and Christopher Faraone the Frank Curtis Springerand Gertrude Melcher Springer Professor in the Depart-ment of Classical Languages and Literatures and theCollege. The 2008 Quantrell Award, given for excellencein undergraduate teaching, went to Michael Kremer,Professor in the Department of Philosophy and theCollege. Finally, one of our graduate students, AndreaHaslanger, a fourth-year PhD student in English Langu-age and Literature, was recognized with the Wayne C.Booth Graduate Student Prize for Excellence in Teaching.

Another hallmark of our institution is the interdis-ciplinary approach that is so well articulated by ouracademic initiatives. One such endeavor was spear-headed by new faculty member Lenore Grenoble, theCarl Darling Buck Professor in the Department of SlavicLanguages and Literatures, the Department of Linguistics,and the College, who embraced the Chicago approachwith a conference on “Siberian Thaw: Climate Changeand Social Change in Siberia” in the spring. Grenoblebrought together anthropologists, ethnomusicologists,historians, and linguists to consider the effects of cli-mate change on indigenous people of Siberia. You canread more about this conference on page 2. Page 4features a progressive new seminar taking place thisautumn; it will bring together the Departments of ArtHistory and Romance Languages and Literatures in aventure to explore the commerce of book trade, medievalpolitics, and the art of manuscripts.

On October 25, members of the community withinand outside of the University will again have theopportunity to experience our faculty firsthand withthe upcoming Humanities Day, which this year marksits 30th consecutive year. For a hint of what you mightexpect in terms of engaging scholarship, please seethe text of last year’s keynote address by Richard Neer,the David B. and Clara E. Stern Professor of Humanitiesin the Department of Art History and the College, begin-ning on page 8. We look forward to this annual thought-provoking opportunity for alumni to revisit their class-room experiences and for us to introduce our researchto new audiences. For information about the 2008Humanities Day, please go to http://humanities.uchicago.edu/humanitiesday/.

Thank you for your support this year. We have much to be proud of and much to look forward to inthe year ahead. ■

Sincerely yours,

Martha T. RothDean of the Division of the Humanities

H E R E & N O W2

here &now

example, participated in the conference as a linkbetween the situation on the ground and the per-ceptions offered by academics.

Activists joined in the conversation, too. Theseparticipants tended to focus more extensively onCanada and Alaska, because grass-roots campaignsare virtually unknown in the Siberian North. Accordingto Grenoble, there is the lingering Soviet legacy oftop-down leadership, as well as restrictions placedon non-governmental organizations by the currentRussian government, which views activists as potentialthreats to sovereignty.

The traditional relationships between language,culture, and the land are threatened by environmentalchanges related to global warming. Further global-ization is threatening Siberian indigenous identity.The combination of newly available resources andnavigation routes that result from global warmingmeans that not only will greater economic develop-ment occur in the North but also a host of strategicand security issues will arise. Both will inevitablyresult in an influx of outsiders, which threatens indige-nous human and natural ecosystems in the North.

Among conference participants were independentscholar Edward Alexeyev; David Archer, Professor of

Geophysical Sciences and the College; Marjorie Balzer,Research Professor at the Center for Eurasian, Russianand East European Studies at Georgetown University;Gary Cook of the Earth Island Institute; William Fitz-hugh of the Smithsonian Institute; K. David Harrison,Assistant Professor of Linguistics at SwarthmoreCollege, Theodore Levin, Associate Professor ofMusic at Dartmouth College; and Florian Stammlerof the Scott Polar Research Institute at the Univer-sity of Cambridge.

“The idea is collaboration between the variousdisciplines to see whether we can identify the localneeds,” Grenoble said. “We all have to give back tothe communities where we conduct research.”

Funding and support for the conference wereprovided by the Center for East European and Russian/Eurasian Studies, the Franke Institute for the Humanities,the Norman Wait Harris Fund, and the Program onthe Global Environment.” ■

“When you work in a remote village in Siberia, yourpresence profoundly impacts the local population,”Grenoble said. “We must ask what we can do for themtogether with them.”

Grenoble studies endangered languages of Siberia

Cultural Implications ofGlobal WarmingBy Jane Charney, master’s candidate, International Relations

Linguists, historians, anthropologists, and ethnomusicologists from around the world gathered

May 10 for a conference titled, “Siberian Thaw: Climate Change and Social Change in Siberia.”

They attempted to find ways to understand the effects of global warming on the indigenous people

of Siberia. Organized by Lenore Grenoble, the Carl Darling Buck Professor in Slavic Linguistics, the

conference was a first step to finding ways to help the people affected by climate fluctuations.

and North America. She has participated in field workin Siberia and has cultivated relationships with indige-nous people, a practice shared by her colleagues.Nadezhda Bulatova of the Institute of LinguisticsResearch at the Russian Academy of Sciences, for

C O N F E R E N C E

T A B L E A U 3

T R E N D S

HipHopistan

DJ Rekha, MC Kabir, Yogi B and Natchatra,Chee Malabar, and AbstractVision aremusicians with international reputations,and if you want to buy their recordings

in Chicago, you need to head to Devon Avenue.Yogi B and Natchatra, a group of Malaysian Tamilrappers, performed for 20,000 at a recent show inToronto. DJ Rekha (aka Rekha Malhotra) drawsthousands for her appearances at clubs in NewYork, London, and Chicago.

These artists performed at “HipHopistan: TheLand of Hip-Hop,” April 17–19, a mixture of discus-sions and concerts believed to be a first. Coincidingwith the annual meeting of the Association for Asian-American Studies, the event explored the linguisticand pan-ethnic expressions of various South Asianand South Asian–American hip-hop artists, said eventorganizer Samip Mallick, Outreach Coordinator in theSouth Asian Language and Area Center.

“Not much research has been done on SouthAsian hip-hop,” Mallick said. “For five or ten years,American hip-hop artists have been using SouthAsian sounds, but for South Asian hip-hop artists,it’s relatively new.”

In a class taught by Sullivan last fall, nine studentsincluding myself created the forty-minute single-channel video piece that was screened besideBen-Ner’s Wild Boy.

The group began with adaptation theory,discussing the importance of remaining faithfulto the source and the limits of translating onemedium into another. For the practicum, Sullivaninstructed each student to choose a source, withno limits as to what, and the nine objects selectedbecame the foundations for the piece.

The final project was a bizarre conglomerationof dialogue, characters, and props taken fromsources as diverse as Pride and Prejudice, WoodyAllen’s Everything You Always Wanted to KnowAbout Sex But Were Afraid to Ask, the 1980stelevision series Slim Goodbody, and Descartes’First Meditation. Characters walk from one scriptto the next, and the Tim Burton–inspired setsrecur as motifs.

Each artist in the exhibition displays a different

approach to the topic of adaptation and, collec-tively, their work offers a provocative introductionto topics of fidelity and form. While Sussman’swork, a feature-length film entitled The Rape of the Sabine Women, recreates the JaquesLouis David painting in its harrowing final scene,Herrera’s interpretation of Igor Stravinsky’s LesNoces presents the viewer with a highly abstractdance of black and white images.

The experience of writing, producing, anddirecting as a group was as much about adaptingto one another through collaboration as adaptingthe sources. Individual ideas were subjected tosecondary adaptations by others, and the sourcesmanifested in ways participants hadn’t predicted.This loss of control was exciting, and the mostinteresting moments in the student video occurwhen sources interact and mutate.

The exhibition highlights that all art is rootedin cultural reference and adaptation, and thatcreativity lies in interpreting the world. Askedabout the problem of originality in adaptation,Ben-Ner replied, “I don’t know of any other way,in the history of art, that works. Nothing justcomes from the mind.”

Adaptation closed in Hyde Park in May, and willtour nationally through 2011. The student-createdvideo will not be part of the touring exhibition,but remains on view at the Smart Museum. ■

For the first time, the Smart Museum of Art showcased work by student artists alongside

professionals in spring 2008. The exhibition, Adaptation, featured videos by Guy Ben-Ner;

Arturo Herrera; Catherine Sullivan, Assistant Professor of Visual Arts, Cinema and Media

Studies, and the College; and Eve Sussman & the Rufus Corporation, included a piece by

the University of Chicago student collective ARTV 24103.

Added Kaley Mason, a postdoctoral fellow inethnomusicology, who studies South Asian musicand moderated a HipHopistan panel discussion:“It’s really an amazing, unprecedented event. I don’tthink South Asian hip-hop has ever received thistype of forum in North America. When we think ofSouth Asian musical practices in North America, orEurope, it’s mainly the classical Indian traditions orBollywood song and dance sequences.”

HipHopistan is only one among a series of con-ferences, performances, and classes at the Universityfocused on exploring the contributions of the hip-hopgeneration to politics and culture. Bakari Kitwana,artist-in-residence at the Center for the Study ofRace, Politics, and Culture, taught a class on “ThePolitics of the Hip-Hip Generation” during the springquarter. Kitwana, the author of The Hip-Hop Generation

Catherine Sullivan, still from the multichannel video installationTriangle of Need, 2007. Courtesy of the artist, Galerie CatherineBastide, Brussels, and Metro Pictures, New York.

E X H I B I T I O N S

Fidelity, Form, and the Limits of TranslationBy Natasha Long, MA 2008

H E R E & N O W4

here

&no

w. . . hip-hop is

a very real and

powerful social

movement,

meriting a place

for its study in

the halls of

academia.

continued from page 3

and Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop, imagined theclass as an interdisciplinary exploration of hip-hopculture and race in America through textual studyand discussion. As Katie Buitrago of the ChicagoWeekly noted, Kitwana’s appointment is evidencethat “hip-hop is a very real and powerful socialmovement, meriting a place for its study in the hallsof academia.”

Hip-hop performers have also visited the campusfor both concerts and conferences. DJ Kool Herc,credited with helping to birth the movement, spokeat Hyde Park’s Experimental Station in early June,and the relationships of hip-hop to politics has beenfrequently addressed on campus: artists, academics,and analysts gathered at the University April 5 for a conference on “The Hip-Hop Generation: Race,Gender & the Vote,” while feminism and hip-hopwere debated during panel discussions in 2005. ■

Left: Jacobus de Cessolis. Le Jeu des échecs moralisé.Anonymous compilation of translations by Jean Ferron andJean de Vigny. France, ca. 1365. 13 illuminations by theMaster of Saint Voult. University of Chicago MS 392.

Right: Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun. Le Roman de la Rose. France, ca. 1365. 40 illuminations by the Master ofSaint Voult. University of Chicago Library MS 1380.

The graduate seminar will center on what isconsidered “the single most influential vernaculartext of the late French Middle Ages,” Delogu said.“The manuscript presents a potential interest toscholars of manuscript culture and literary studiesworldwide.”

Kumler added: “This manuscript will make anideal centerpiece for a wide range of teachingprojects including classes examining the com-mercial book trade in Paris, the politics of luxuryin the Middle Ages, and the history of medievalilluminated manuscripts.”

Delogu and Kumler’s seminar, which is partof the Franke Institute for the Humanities’ Centerfor Disciplinary Innovation curriculum, will offera chance to explore Le Roman as a literary andvisual construct.

The Regenstein Library’s acquisition of themanuscript reunited it with another fourteen-century manuscript: Le Jeu des échecs moralisé(The Moralized Game of Chess), which was sep-arated from Le Roman de la Rose in 1907 andwhich the Library had acquired in 1931.

In the late 1230s, Guillaume de Lorris wrote thefirst section of Le Roman de la Rose, an allegoricalpoem on the art of love. Jean de Meun later com-pleted the poem between 1270 and 1280. Thecopy acquired by Chicago dates from about 1365— nearly 100 years before the invention of theprinting press. More than forty illuminations adornthe manuscript, created by the Master of SaintVoult, who added hand-colored, painted, andgold-leaf embellishments to manuscripts.

The Library’s manuscript of Le Jeu des échecsmoralisé also was created in France about 1365,and includes illuminations by the Master of SaintVoult as well. Le Jeu was originally written inLatin in the thirteen century by Jacobus de Cessolis,an Italian Dominican friar. Written at a time ofpolitical instability, his work was read centurieslater as a guide to proper behavior, both becauseof the readily understood nature of the metaphorand the references to biblical and classical liter-ature that buttress the argument.

“Bringing the two parts of this book backtogether will enable discoveries that would notbe possible if they remained apart,” said AliceSchreyer, Director of the Special CollectionsResearch Center at the Library.

Christina von Nolcken, Associate Professorin English Language and Literature, MedievalStudies, and the College, added: “The reunion ofparts of a medieval manuscript proves a rare andwonderful opportunity. This is especially the casetoday, when scholars tend to work with manu-scripts rather than with individual texts.”

Digital versions of both manuscripts are avail-able at http://roseandchess.lib.uchicago.edu. ■

For “Love’s Books, Love’s Looks: Textual and Visual Perspectives on the Roman de la Rose,”

a course offered by Daisy Delogu, Assistant Professor of Romance Languages and Litera-

tures, and Aden Kumler, Assistant Professor of Art History, this autumn, will engage students

in a cross-disciplinary exploration of Le Roman de la Rose, a fourteen-century French love

poem recently acquired by the Regenstein Library.

N E W A C Q U I S I T I O N S

The Tale of Two Manuscripts Reunited

T A B L E A U 5

“Bourgeoisie: On HenrikIbsen,” centered on the bour-geois as a character in Ibsen’sdrama and posed the question of“the historical position of Ibsen’swork within the overall trajectory ofthe European bourgeoisie.” This lecture,Moretti explained, drew on a chapterfrom a forthcoming book on the bourgeois inEuropean literature. The last lecture, probably

advances in digitizing texts, could be applied to otherformal features of the novel and other genres.

Challenges to the exclusivity of the literary canon,however, are not new. What is specific about Moretti’sapproach? Iconoclastic, to say the least, with a headymixture of Marxism, quantitative analysis, and evo-lutionary theory, Moretti has bucked the trend in literary studies, which have been dominated by avariety of theoretical approaches offering insightfulreadings of texts and discourses, but exhibiting hardlyany interest in literary history as he understands it.Moretti has long argued for a “more rational literaryhistory,” one that would not fall prey to the vagariesof subjective taste nor limit itself to the complacentself-sufficiency of existing canons. If one is to believeMoretti, the influx of raw data and its quantificationby statistical methods would open up the literaryfield by making it “historically longer, geographicallylarger, and morphologically deeper.” Morphology, orform, is an important term in Moretti’s vocabularybecause his approach calls for a more rigorous literaryscholarship, one which makes use of the traditionaltoolbox of literary studies—literary devices and form—but whose insights are derived from the process-ing of a large amount of previously neglected data.In short, the study of literature should not spurnexplanations—quite the opposite, it should edge

closer to the scientific theory of falsifiabilityby focusing on demon-strable causal relations

and by building hypothe-ses that can be provedand disproved. Moretti isquick to add, however,that literature can alsoserve as a corrective tomethods accepted inthe sciences and thus

recognizes that their juxtaposition can be mutually illuminating.

At the conclusion of the last lecture, JamesChandler, the Barbara E. and Richard J. FrankeDistinguished Service Professor of English Languageand Literature, asked about the prospects for institu-tional success of a Moretti-inspired school of literarycriticism. Moretti was moderately optimistic but alsopointed out that it was his intellectual formation inthe 1960s that eventually led him to his interest inquantitative studies. A new generation of literaryscholars, he continued, already working at the inter-sections of quantitative studies and literary form, willbring a different set of assumptions and innovativeideas to bear on the old problem of literary history. ■

The work of Franco Moretti has galvanizeddiscussions about the object and methodsof literary studies for more than twentyyears. Not beholden to the pitfalls of

interminable interpretation and suspicious of theselective reading perpetuated by the literary canon,Moretti, the Danily C. and Laura Louise Bell Professorof English and Comparative Literature at StanfordUniversity, has ventured into fields as different fromhis area of expertise, the nineteenth-century Europeannovel, as popular culture and film in an attempt toplace humanities research on a broader foundation.His week-long visit to the University of Chicago asthe annual Frederick Ives Carpenter Lecturer in earlyMarch 2008 symbolized the importance of his numer-ous contributions to the field of literary studies thathave challenged disciplinary boundaries and contributedgreatly to our understanding of the European novelby, among other things, expanding the availablemeans of studying it.

Moretti presented his latest research in threelectures, participated in the Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Cultures workshop, and met with students.The first lecture, “Theory of the Novel, History of theNovel,” outlined differences and similarities in therise of the novel in Western Europe and China as a vacillation between the two extremes of “mere”narrativity and its aestheticization. The second lecture,

Challenging the Exclusivity of the Literary CanonFranco Moretti Explores Quantitative Studies for the Humanities

By Rad Borislavov, PhD candidate in Slavic Languages and Literatures

L E C T U R E S E R I E S

Moretti has long argued for a

“more rational literary history,”

one that would not fall prey to the

vagaries of subjective taste nor

limit itself to the complacent self-

sufficiency of existing canons.

the most ambitious, “Quantitative Data: FormalAnalysis, Reflections on 7,000 titles, British Novels1740 –1850,” discussed alternative ways of describ-ing and accounting for literary change by tracingfluctuations in the length of novel titles. Morettimade it clear, however, that this method of statisticalanalysis, made possible in large measure by recent

H E R E & N O W6

A W A R D S

Bringing Home a Grammy Doctoral Student’s Piece on Winning Album

By Josh Schonwald

When David M. Gordon, a second-year doctoral student in Music,composed Friction Systems in2002, he could not imagine his

piece would be recorded, much less be part of aGrammy-winning album.

The piece, nearly fifteen minutes in length, is oneighth blackbird’s strange imaginary animals. It’s not asurprise that eighth blackbird, an ensemble-in-residenceat the University, won a Grammy on February 10 in theBest Chamber Music Performance category—thesextet has been impressing critics with its pioneer-ing contemporary classical music since 1996—butit is surprising that a student composition was onthe ensemble’s award-winning album.

As virtuoso, pioneering performers, eighth black-bird has its pick from the world’s best-known classicalcomposers. The group plays student compositions,but rarely tours with, or records them. Gordon’s piecewas not only on the album, it also has been praised

for its unique sound by the Chicago Sun-Times,Gramophone, and the BBC’s Music Magazine.

“David has an extraordinary way of working withsound,” said Shulamit Ran, the Andrew MacLeishDistinguished Service Professor in Music and theCollege. “He uses conventional acoustics and unusualinstruments and really interesting rhythmic patternsand phrases to create a highly unusual sound. It’sunique. It’s a sound world all his own.” Ran, one ofGordon’s advisors, said she could not think of anothercomposer whose music resembles the sound worldof his work. “He has a very personal voice.”

Gordon said writing for eighth blackbird was an amazing experience. In working with musicianswith abilities “bordering on the superhuman,” hewas able to compose a complex piece with littleconcern for it being “too difficult.” In the piece, thencalled Dramamine, Gordon used complex rhythms,

non-standard tunings, and unusual instrumentaltechniques. “It was very exciting to do,” he said.

It was equally exciting for Gordon to get feed-back from virtuoso musicians. “When you work withstudent musicians and ask them whether certaintechniques are possible, you’re never 100 percentcertain if the answers they give you are accurate.With eighth blackbird, you can know for certain thatwhatever they tell you is absolutely correct.”

Writing a track on a Grammy-winning album inthe best Chamber Music Ensemble is quite a bitdifferent than winning, say, Best Rock Album. It iscertainly not instant fame and fortune, though Gordondoes earn a small royalty from performances anddisc sales. Still, Gordon, who has nearly completedhis PhD, said he believes Friction Systems will havea lingering impact: “It certainly raises the exposureof my work like never before. Every disc they sell,lets another person hears my work.” ■

T R A V E L D I A R Y

Views of Prague CastleBy Daniel Pratt, MA 2007, PhD candidate in SlavicLanguages and Literatures

As a graduate student in the SlavicDepartment, I am required to learn at least two Slavic languages to analmost native level of fluency. I have

chosen Russian and Czech, two complex and fasci-nating languages. In summer 2007, I received twoscholarships to study in both Russia and the CzechRepublic: a Foreign Language and Area Studies grant,administered through the Center for East European,Russian/Eurasian Studies, and the Prochazka Fundgrant, established by the Prochazka family to fosterCzech and Slovak studies at the University of Chicago.

A day-long journey took me to the heart of Siberia:Irkutsk, a former city of exile, would become myhome for nine weeks. Its political history, quality ofRussian teaching, and proximity to Lake Baikal, thedeepest lake in the world, intrigued me.

During the week, I studied Russian at the StateLinguistic University of Irkutsk and visit the museumsin the city, and on the weekends, I made trips to thelake. Baikal is a unique ecosystem with many endemicflora and fauna, such as fresh-water seals and omyl,a fish much like salmon that is excellent smoked.The lake has been the subject of eco-preservation in the last few years, and the successful result hasbeen water clean enough to drink directly from the lake.

Left: eighth blackbird Below: David Gordon

In working with musicians with abilities

“bordering on the superhuman,” Gordon

was able to compose a complex piece with

little concern for it being “too difficult.”

T A B L E A U 7

The research has proved priceless to me, and Ipresented some of my findings at two conferencesthis year. It would be hard to overstate the value ofthe two summer research trips to my preliminarydissertation research. I have improved my Russian toa significantly higher level and gathered materialsthat will serve as the basis of my dissertation. More-over, I was able to experience a unique culture andecosystem in Russia and broaden my understandingof one of the greatest Czech writers. ■

“It will enable us to hire a scholar whose con-cern with literary form will show students howand why the novel as a genre has retained itsremarkable vitality,” said Bill Brown, the EdwardCarson Waller Distinguished Service Professorand Chair of English Language and Literature.

“The Berlins are passionate readers who fullyappreciate the density and complexity of greatliterature,” said Brown. “They recognize the powerwith which books pose particular questions andthe patience it takes to see how those questionsget resolved. Talking with them about books—about Austen or James or Nabokov—has beena distinct pleasure.”

Melvin Berlin, the retired chairman of BerlinPackaging, LLC, and Randy Lamm Berlin, AM 1977,a retired attorney, are longtime supporters of the humanities, with a passion for supportingthe University’s central mission to train doctoralstudents.

Randy Berlin is Chair of the University’sHumanities Visiting Committee. For the pastthree years, she has taught law and literature atLoyola University Chicago School of Law, where,she continues “to proselytize for the humanitiesas an essential enrichment to the life of the mind.”

As to the focus of their gift, Randy Berlin said,“We chose to focus our professorship narrowlyon the development of the novel in English be-cause other specialists teach the Greek, Roman,and European classics and poetry. But there isno chair for a professor who specializes in thestudy of masterpieces of the novel in the Englishlanguage, of which there are so many gloriousexamples. Our intention was to plug that gap.”The professorship will be named the Randy L. andMelvin R. Berlin Professor of the Development ofthe Novel in English Language and Literature intheir honor.

During her graduate studies at Chicago, Ms.Berlin took classes with one of the world’s leadingscholars of the novel, the late English professorSheldon Sacks, PhD 1960. She said that her encounterwith his neo-Aristotelian method of criticism andorganization of the novel was revelatory.

“It was a new method of thinking about thesubject and altered forever the way I read andteach and think about literature today,” she said.“At the least, I hope to give future students theopportunity to replicate my experience in under-standing the masterpieces of the form and howthe novel developed over time. Melvin and I feela chair devoted to study of the novel will con-tribute to that end.” ■

D O N O R N E W S

Readers with a PassionBerlin Gift Creates Professor of the Development of the Novel

Randy and Melvin Berlin

Agenerous gift of $2 million from Randy and Melvin Berlin to the Division of the

Humanities will create the Division’s first professorship devoted to studying the novel.

The Department of English Language and Literature will use the endowment to hire

a prominent scholar working on the development of the novel in any period, or

across periods.

“ . . . I explored Prague and immersed

myself in the dialects of several towns

where Hrabal, considered among the

foremost Czech writers of the twentieth

century, once lived.”

After studying in Irkutsk for nine weeks, I flewto the Czech Republic, where I had received permis-sion from the estate of Bohumil Hrabal to access his manuscripts at the National Archive in Prague,which is located on a hill, just outside the center of Prague, in the Strachov monastery. The readingroom is an old study, complete with gilt cherubs,frescoes of Biblical stories, and a view of Praguecastle. I spent a month doing research during theweek, and on the weekends I explored Prague andimmersed myself in the dialects of several townswhere Hrabal, considered among the foremost Czechwriters of the twentieth century, once lived.

“ . . . there is no chair for a professor

who specializes in the study of master-

pieces of the novel in the English

language ... Our intention was to plug

that gap.”

P O U S S I N8

A painting by the French artist Nicolas Poussin, Blind Orion Searching for the Rising Sun, and

the scholarly responses to it elucidate two important things. First, they elucidate a distinctive

historical conception of picture-making, a distinctive set of ethical dilemmas that confronted

certain people in the past when it came to making, and looking at, and thinking about, paint-

ings. Second, the picture and its scholarship elucidate some of the distinctive resources and

limitations of humanistic pursuits, as opposed to, say, those branches of knowledge with a

legitimate claim to the status of science. It’s a useful springboard for reflection on the sort of

things that brought us here today, I mean the humanities. >>

BLINDORION

SEEKING THE SUN

Blind Orion Searching for the Rising Sun, 1658, Nicolas Poussin, French (Les Andelys 1594–1665 Rome), Oil on canvas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fletcher Fund, 1924

R I C H A R D N E E R

is the David B. and

Clara E. Stern Professor

of Humanities in Art

History and the College.

This article is a revised

version of the keynote

address presented

at Humanities Day, the

University of Chicago,

on 27 October 2007.

T A B L E A U 9

10 P O U S S I N

It’s sort of a cliché to say that the lofty rationalism ofDescartes’ method has a pictorial counterpart in theequally lofty rationalism of Poussin’s pictorial compo-sitions. In each case, you organize the world accordingto regular principles worked out in advance. Descartes,by beginning not with the senses but with his owncogitations, logically bootstrapping his way to a premiseand then built from there; Poussin, by eschewing thepungent realism of someone like Caravaggio or aDutch still life, instead created ordered pictorial worldsthat exemplify rational proportions, even as they tellstories about high-minded thoughtful types of people.

Blind Orion isn’t like that at all. It’s one of Poussin’slast works. He finished it in 1658, when he was in hismid-sixties. In a couple of years, persistent tremblingin his hands would force him to give up painting for-ever. It is for all intents and purposes a unique picturein the canon of early modern painting—nobody elsepainted this story. As a result, it presents us with alot of problems. But first, the picture, and the story.

The giant hunter Orion—whose constellation stillhangs in our night sky—strides into the backgroundfrom stage right. He’s been struck blind for havingattacked the daughter of the king of the island of Chios,and has to find the rising Sun, in whose rays he willfind a cure. Here he seems to be making his way tothe crest of a hill, behind which is a light-filled valley.Helping him in his quest is a little man perched atophis shoulders. This is Cedalion, an assistant at theforge of the smith-god Hephaestus. Cedalion seemsto be asking directions from a man standing in theshade of a large tree. Immediately above and in frontof him is a dark cloud, its edges gilt by sunlight: trailsof vapor lead off to the right, suggesting that the cloudhas been moving from right to left, floating before Orion.Leaning on the cloud is Orion’s lover, the goddessDiana, a figure of studied nonchalance.

One can scarcely imagine anything more remotefrom the rigid proportions of your standard Poussinthan the radical disproportion of this picture, with thebizarre giant alongside the little men, the lush andyet mysteriously blasted natural setting. In fact, thepainting has long been admired exactly because it’sso unlike the stereotype of Poussin as a chilly ratio-nalist. Early commentators celebrate its wild andromantical landscape. They differ markedly in thisregard from the dominant readings of our own time,which have focused on its fit, or lack thereof, withversions of the same myth in classical literature. Thetrouble is that Poussin’s picture conforms to no extantaccount of the story. Any effort to subordinate thepicture to literature are doomed to failure; it justdoesn’t match.

In this situation we need to look more closely. Ithappens that discussions have overlooked a significantdetail. In a picture that has as its central drama thequest for the sun, commentators have been remark-ably incurious about the source of light. Where’s Oriongoing—where is the sun? The overwhelming sense,on first approaching the picture, is that the light isshining from the left background into the right fore-ground. It silhouettes the men who sit on the crest ofthe hill and causes the edges of Diana’s cloud bankto glow. To my knowledge, every commentator whomentions the light source locates it in the left back-ground, somewhere beyond or behind the clouds.This impression is all but irresistible, especially giventhe way the light catches the edges of Diana’s cloudbank. It looks almost as though the sun were behindthe cloud, causing a nimbus to form around its extrem-ities. At the same time, a hole in the screen of treesat left reveals the sky brightening to white in farthestdistance on that side, while the trees in the light-filledvalley, directly above the heads of the silhouetted menon the hillcrest, cast long shadows that angle distinctlyinto the foreground. The commentators are presumablyresponding to these clues.

But this impression just can’t be correct. Althoughthe illumination of the background does suggest thatthe sun rises in the left distance, the disposition ofshadows in the foreground indicates plainly that thelight enters from somewhere in front and to the left ofthe picture plane. Each tree stump in the foregroundis like a sundial, casting a long shadow into the rightbackground. Orion himself casts a similar shadow,while the illumination of his shoulders would be inex-plicable if the sun were in the background. You can’twalk facing the sun and at the same time have thelight at your back. Even the stand of trees at left mid-dle ground, so far from being backlit, actually catchesthe sun. It’s extraordinarily odd—in a picture that’sall about finding the light source, when you actuallylook for the sun, it’s exceptionally difficult to place.There seems to be no way satisfactorily to reconcilethe lighting of the foreground with that of the back-

In a picture that

has as its central

drama the quest for

the sun, commentators

have been remarkably

incurious about the

source of light.

USS

IN

Top: Richard Neer; Above: Nicolas Poussin’s Blind OrionSearching for the Rising Sun

11T A B L E A U

ground, and it is difficult to avoid the conclusion thatPoussin has been inconsistent.

But if that’s the case, the effect is unlikely to beaccidental. Not only is the location of the sun of uniqueimportance to this story, but Poussin is known to havebeen unusually fastidious in the disposition of hislight sources. For instance, his picture of the LastSupper was a showpiece of consistent illumination:Poussin exercised considerable ingenuity in repre-senting the play of shadows cast by an oil lamp withthree separate wicks. This painter was famous forhis coherent integration of multiple light sources. Heknew just what he was doing.

So Orion is not, or not simply, walking toward thesun. There are at least two notional suns in this picture,one outside the frame in the space of the beholder,shining onto Orion’s back, and the other in the distance,behind the hills. Recognition of this inconsistencyclarifies the narrative action considerably. Cedalion,perched on Orion’s shoulders, and the “little fellow”gesticulating below, are each pointing in differentdirections. The guy on the ground seems definitely tobe sending Orion into the valley. Cedalion points off tothe left, but the exact angle of his gesture is uncertain.Although his right arm is parallel to Orion’s left, thetwist of his body suggests that he is not pointinginto the valley but to stage left, or maybe not (theambiguity is permanent). The result is a scene ofexceptional pathos: Orion, huge and sightless, marchespurposefully in the wrong direction, while his guide,the craftsman who should be his eyes, bickers witha bystander over where to go. It is this spectacle thatthe goddess Diana watches so impassively.

I recognize that the notion that Poussin includedtwo suns in his picture may seem impossibly contrived.Faced with such a conundrum, the first thing we dois look for a text. In fact, the notion of multiple sunshas important precedent. For instance, in a handbookcalled Morosophie, published in 1553, Guillaume LaPerrière wrote a little poem that reads

To believe there could be multiple suns in the skies

Is strange, really crazy;Just so, to believe in many godsIs heresy, and loathesome.

Maybe that’s what Poussin’s alluding to? Is he takinga stand against paganism? Well, how would we decide?One criterion to use is: is there anything in the picturethat suggests that its point is to label paganism as aloathsome heresy? And here you’d have to say, No.It’s a pagan myth, after all. The whole picture is “crazy”with its giant and its little guide. And anyway, Orion’sproblem is not that he believes in multiple suns; ifanything, his whole problem is that he wants to findthe one true sun.

But once you start looking for multiple suns theystart turning up everywhere. Here’s another. In thesixteenth canto of Purgatorio, Dante writes

Rome, that reformed the world, was accustomed To have two suns, which one road and the other, Of God and of the world, made visible.

It might be tempting to read off Poussin’s meaningfrom this passage. Orion, victimized by his own lust,massively corporeal, stands at a crossroads betweensalvation and the world. The allusion to Nebbia andGuerra might be adduced in support of such a reading.But, here again, there’s nothing in the picture to sug-gest that these suns are individually symbolic of divineand earthly light, that the setting is Rome, or eventhat there are two roads. There is nothing pictorialthat suggests any specific debt to, or even knowledgeof, the Purgatorio.

If, however, we leave Florence for Rome, and thefourteenth century for the seventeenth, and Italianfor French, then we find an even stranger descriptionof multiple suns. On the twentieth of March, 1629,the citizens of Rome witnessed an extraordinary mete-orological event: the appearance of five separate sunsin the afternoon sky. This prodigy occurred shortlyafter Poussin’s arrival in the city as a young painter.Technically known as parhelia, or sun-dogs, the mul-tiple suns ignited scholarly controversy. A fierce Jesuitnamed Christoph Scheiner, who spent most of hisleisure hours tormenting Galileo, witnessed theevent from the vineyards of Frascati outside Rome.He communicated it in detail to the powerful andwell-connected Cardinal Barberini, who in turn senta letter to the great Provençal intellectual Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc. Peiresc was the hub of ahuge circle of intellectuals. He produced a pamphletdescribing the event which he disseminated through-out Europe by means of his friend Pierre Gassendi,one of the great figures of early modern science. Itwas a scholarly call-to-arms—who could explain theprodigy? The call did not go unanswered. Gassendihimself wrote a treatise on the subject, which firstappeared in 1630 and was reprinted in 1656 andthen again in 1658 (the year of Poussin’s Orion) aspart of larger collections. (Samuel Beckett, actually,mentions parhelia in his poem “Whoroscope,” call-ing it “Gassendi’s sun-red crystally cloud,” and refer-ring us in a footnote to this very book!) The topiclikewise exercised the great Dutch scientist ChristiaanHuygens, who was working on it in the 1660s, aswell as a host of lesser figures.

René Descartes eventually got his hands on oneof Peiresc’s pamphlets. To say that the news wassignificant would be an understatement. Descartesdropped everything and set out to provide a physicalexplanation of parhelia. His work on this topic becamethe germ of a broader study of meteorological phe-nomena, which in turn gave rise to what would becomeDiscourse on the Method—the very book in whichDescartes laid out his rationalist technique for defeat-ing skepticism. Although nowadays read in isolation,the Discourse was originally the preface to threestudies of optics, geometry, and meteorology. These

three divisions correspond to what we can figure outrationally in our heads (geometry), the way we relateto the external world (our senses, optics) and theexternal world itself (the weather). Meteorology wasthe last of these studies, representing the climax ofthe whole project: Descartes’ method in its applica-tion to natural phenomena. And the last chapter ofthe Meteorology, the culmination of the culmination,is an explanation of the multiple suns of 1629. It’s noexaggeration to say that parhelia changed the world.

What was at stake in these sun-dogs? I mean: Whydid multiple suns, specifically, generate such hugeexcitement? The epigraph to Peiresc’s pamphlet, a passage from the first Georgic of Virgil, providesa gloss:

Who dares to call the SunA liar? It is he who often warns

of secret [caecos] conspiracyAnd treachery and hidden swelling of war.

In a time of insurgent skepticism and nascent empiri-cism, the possibility of a lying sun was both a problemand an opportunity. A problem, because it demonstratedin startling fashion the power of contemporary doubtsabout sense perception. The very vocabulary of ration-alism was predicated on the veracity of the sun: reasonwas la clarté naturelle, “natural light,” a cognitivecounterpart to the self-evident clarity of sunshine.The possibility of doubling a single candle flame bypressing on one’s eyeballs was an old chestnut ofskepticism, but a sun that appeared multiple underordinary conditions was an altogether greater worry.It was in fact a cliché in its own right. Well before1629, Michel de Montaigne had raised the possibil-ity of multiple suns in the Apologie pour RaymondSebond. In a long and thoroughly skeptical accountof the fallibility of the senses, he quoted from theAeneid (4.470) to make his point:

This same deception that the senses convey to our understanding they receive in their turn. … What we see and hear whenstirred to anger, we do not hear as it is. Et solem geminum, Et duplices se ostendereThebas [Twin suns appear, and a double city of Thebes]…To a man vexed or afflicted the brilliance [clarté ] of day seems darkened and gloomy. Our senses are not only altered, but often completely stupefied by the passions of the soul.

The line from Virgil is itself a celebrated reference tothe moment in Euripides’ Bacchae (ll. 918-19) at whichthe drunken and fear-maddened Pentheus sees double:“Oh look! I think I see two suns, and twin Thebes,the seven-gated city.” Montaigne, however, is lessconcerned with passing disturbances of perceptionthan with its root fallibility. It is this altogether moresignificant aspect of the problem that the parhelia

P O U S S I N12

dramatized: the incident of 1629 brought a theoreticalfancy to life.

Precisely the significance of this topos for skepti-cism made it an opportunity for the rationalists of theseventeenth century: explaining the bizarre occurrencewould be a significant victory both for the nascentscience and for whomever could solve the conundrum.If Cartesian méditation amounts to stating the skepti-cal argument in order methodically to defeat it, thenthe impetus of that enterprise lies in parhelia, as itsdemonstration consists in rationalizing the phenome-non. The lying, plural sun represents the conjunctionof the extraordinary with the everyday: it forces a con-frontation between the world of the Cartesian closet,in which the philosopher is prey to radical doubt aboutballs of wax and malicious demons, and the world of ordinary conversation, the world of weather andsunshine, in which it can be possible to hold suchquestions at bay.

There is no reason to suppose that Poussin hadspecific knowledge of Gassendi’s or Descartes’ dis-cussions of parhelia. But he was resident in Rome whenthe incident occurred in 1629, and the main actors wereknown to him personally: Cardinal Barberini was apatron, as was his retainer Cassiano dal Pozzo, andPoussin himself corresponded with Peiresc. It is verylikely that Poussin knew of the prodigy, even if he did not witness it personally. But the Orion landscapedoes not refer directly to this incident: Scheiner reportedfive suns, and the picture seems to imply only (if that’sthe word) only two. The point bears repeating: thepainting does not illustrate the event of 20 March1629. Similarly, Montaigne does mention two suns,but only in passing—would Poussin really havenoticed the remark?—and he also mentions twocities of Thebes, which of course do not appear inthe picture. The importance of these textual precedentslies not in providing sources for Poussin’s meditationbut in defining the significance of duplex suns. TheApologie pour Raymond Sebond, the prodigy of 1629,and the scientific responses all suggest that parheliawere one especially important way in which skepticaldoubt presented itself in the second quarter of theseventeenth century. They are, therefore, no moreand no less than circumstantial evidence for the pos-sibility that Poussin might himself have attachedmetaphysical importance to such a phenomenon. Thisclaim is a deliberately weak or minimalist one, but at least it rests on visual evidence. The multiple sunwas part of the conceptual vocabulary that Poussinhad at his disposal. What Poussin made of it, however,is not to be understood by reference to scientifictreatises but to the pictures themselves.

Painting as a Way of Life

What is the point of making such pictures—eachone learned, recondite, with all the intricacy of acuckoo clock? However fussy and intricate they maybe, they all insist upon the practical, lived experience

of the vicissitudes of representation: people sufferand die, cities fall. To exemplify the abstract in theeveryday is the special usefulness of such an image.The result is a pragmatic, as opposed to theoretical,mode of philosophizing.

For all their complexity, there is nothing methodical,in the Cartesian sense, about such paintings. Compar-ison with Peiresc’s diagram is telling. The diagram lendsitself to textual decipherment: the cryptographic methodof academic iconology would be perfectly appropriate inthat instance. Each element in the picture correspondsto an element in the text, such that the image func-

tions as (mere) illustration.But the Orion picture oper-ates in an entirely differentregister. It is worlds awayfrom the diagram, still fur-ther from Gassendi’s andDescartes’ explanations,just as the earlier dramasof idolatry and sin are any-thing but scholastic. Thepurpose of such pictures is not to illustrate a text inthe interests of an abstractand universal science.Rather, Poussin’s paintingsoffer moral philosophy onthe fly, occurring in theeveryday contemplation ofspectacles of extraordinarysuffering, of humans whofail to see correctly, if at all.The narratives are edifying,to be sure, but they areedifying of beholders: theyteach us how to look.

The Orion landscapeinvites the beholder to seekvainly for the sun, and there-by to make the giant’sdilemma his or her own.

The high view-point may have something to do withthis—how tall must we be in order to get just thisview of the scene? I won’t press that one. But I dowant to insist that Poussin is out to make the problemof depiction and of imitation, with all its risks andrewards, the beholder’s own. He thereby constituteslooking at pictures as an ethical concern in its ownright. Looking at pictures models looking at the world;and the pictures themselves narrate the pitfalls andrewards of such beholding. In this way, Poussin solicitsa mode of viewing attentive to the ethical stakes inrepresentation: an ethically heightened seeing thatamounts to a lived or pragmatic cultivation of the self,what Michel Foucault called “conversions of looking.”

The difference with Cartesian science, and withthe diagram, thus consists in two points. First, Poussin’spicture is narrative in a way the diagram is not: theyrepresent dilemmas of skepticism and representation

. . . the last

chapter of Descartes’

Meteorology is an

explanation of the

multiple suns of 1629.

It’s no exaggeration

to say that parhelia

changed the world.

SEEK

ING

TH

ESU

N

T A B L E A U 13

as they are lived, not in theory but in practice.Second, the picture stages the act of beholdingitself, such that reading each picture enactsits narrative. To hunt the sun in the Orionlandscape is to mimic the protagonist.The diagram does not stage looking inthis way, and its beholding is preciselynot a problem for Descartes or Peirescor Gassendi. Indeed, part of thepoint of the various illustrationsin Descartes’ treatises is tomodel an unproblematic ordoubt-free mode of seeing, asif to enact the rationalization ofvision in La Dioptrique. For Des-cartes, in the first Meditation, itis exactly painting that modelsdeceptive appearances. For Poussin,by contrast, looking at a painting isnot an obstacle to knowledge but thevery crux of an ethical discourse.

In a sense these claims are familiar. Itwas, after all, the burden of Anthony Blunt’sargument that Poussin’s paintings were destinedfor philosophical contemplation. Was he or was he not a peintre-philosophe? The answer will dependupon how one takes philosophy. One great lesson ofMontaigne is, in Pierre Hadot’s words, that “philosophyis something other than a theoretical discourse.” Mon-taigne’s skepticism was nothing if not lived. It was an ascetics, a care of the self, pertinent only in its

everyday enactment; it took place in and as quotidianself-examination, in and as writing, in and as thedecoration of one’s study, the education of children, thecontemplation of one’s thumbs. As Hadot suggests,the Essais are a supreme example of the survival,into modernity, of the Antique ideal of philosophy asa way of life. But Blunt and most modern commen-tators have not understood the peintre-philosophein this manner. For Blunt, as for iconology generally,philosophy means abstraction, and for a picture tohave philosophical significance it must illustrate undiscours théorique. The resulting art history sacrificesboth art and history to method. In its properly histor-ical sense, the phrase peintre-philosophe implies an ascetics of painting—painting as a way of life—that takes the contemplation of images as thevery practice of a love of wisdom. Making and be-holding pictures is a substantive ethical act.

In a late interview, the great French philosopherMichel Foucault suggested that an essential featureof the Cartesian revolution in philosophy was the dissociation of ethics from physics and logic. Wherethe Antique and medieval worlds had assumed the

mutual implication of these three branches of philos-ophy, Descartes constituted knowledge as somethingdistinct from comportment and self-fashioning. “[T]heextraordinary thing in Descartes’ texts is that he

succeeded in substituting a subject as founder ofpractices of knowledge, for a subject constitutedthrough practices of the self.” Foucault identified two key elements in this transition. The first was the de-coupling of ethics and self-formation (ascesis)from rationality.

Evidence substituted for ascesis at the point wherethe relationship to the self meets the relationship toothers and the world. The relationship to the self nolonger needs to be ascetic to get into relation to thetruth. Before Descartes one could not be impure, im-moral, and know the truth. With Descartes, directevidence is enough. After Descartes we have a non-ascetic subject of knowledge.

The second element was the recasting of philoso-phy’s task from ascetics to epistemology, from a careof the self to a grasping of the world. Foucault calledthis second element the change from a subject ofethics to a subject of knowledge.

The rupture should not be overstated. Hadotjustly criticized Foucault for making an excessivelystark distinction between Cartesian and Stoic philos-ophy. Not for nothing, he observed, did Descartes

entitle his book the Meditations : an explicit allusion toMarcus Aurelius. The Discourse opens in a distinctly

ethical register:

It is not enough to have a good mind, rather the main thing is to apply it well.

The greatest souls are capable of the greatest vices as well as of thegreatest virtues, and those who go forward only very slowly canprogress much further if they alwayskeep to the right path, than thosewho run and wander off it.

Only a few pages later, however,Descartes makes a sharp distinction

between la méthode and the classicaltradition of philosophical ethics. “I com-

pared the moral writings of the ancientpagans to the most proud and magnificent

palaces built on nothing but sand and mud.”Coming from a committed foundationalist, there

could be no more damning characterization. Ratherthan breaking decisively with the classical tradition,the author of the Meditations retains the traditionalvocabulary while recasting it decisively. He does notdispense with ethics, but he does subordinate it toknowledge or connaissance. The first Meditation namesitself as “action” as opposed to “deliberation.” Butthe action in question consists in pedagogy as theterminus of meditation. One does not know the truthby being pure and moral; one is pure and moral byknowing the truth.

Poussin stands at the cusp of this transition. Hemobilizes the identical topos to the new science—the problem of multiple suns. But he does not distin-guish the skeptical or epistemological problem fromthe ethical one. On the contrary: throughout his careerhe posits depiction and beholding as the very stuff ofethics even as, with the Orion landscape especially,he is fully alive to their epistemology. Physics, logic,and ethics remain intertwined, even as the vocabu-lary remains constant. There is a useful contrast withPeiresc’s diagram, reused by Descartes. The diagrameffectively sunders physics and logic from ethics. For all that an interrogation of sense perception isintegral to a healthy life—a way to fend off mad-ness, as Descartes puts it in the first Meditation—Descartes’ solution leaves the ethical to one side.Even the Discourse on the Method adopts a confes-sional mode, but in the chapter on Meteorology theexplanation is purely logical and physical. For Poussin,by contrast, the identical dilemma is nothing if notethical. The multiple suns in the Orion landscape stageas tragedy what the diagram stages as knowledge. ■

The Orion landscape invites the beholder to seek vainly for

the sun, and thereby to make the giant’s dilemma his or her own.

Left: René Descartes by Baudran.

Above: The Constellation of Orion and Taurus the Bull

by James Thornhill, circa 1725.

F R O M T H E D E A N0 O N C A M P U S14

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Art History

Wu Hung, Harrie A. Vander-stappen Distinguished ServiceProfessor of Art History, East AsianLanguages and Civilizations, andthe College, received a FacultyAward for Excellence in GraduateTeaching from the University ofChicago. He was also appointeda fellow of the American Academyof Arts and Sciences. In addition,he received the DistinguishedTeaching of Art History Awardfrom the College Art Association,a fellowship from the FrankeInstitute for his research “AnotherStory of Ruins: Presence andAbsence in Chinese Art andVisual Culture,” and a facultyaward from IBM.

Rebecca Zorach, AssociateProfessor of Art History and theCollege, has been awarded thePaul Mellon and Ailsa MellonBruce Senior Fellowship from the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the NationalGallery of Art.

Classics

Christopher Faraone, FrankCurtis Springer and GertrudeMelcher Springer Professor in theHumanities and in the College, isthe recipient of a fellowship fromthe Institute for Advanced Studiesat Princeton (fall 2008) and a fel-lowship from the Getty ResearchCenter (spring 2009). Faraone alsoreceived a grant from the LoebClassical Foundation in supportof his 2008–09 research leave.

Bruce Lincoln, Caroline E.Haskell Professor of the History ofReligions in the Divinity School,and the Committee on the Historyof Culture, and Associate Memberof Anthropology and Classics,received the 2007 Frank MooreCross Book Award for Religion,Empire and Torture: The Case of Achaemenian Persia with aPostscript on Abu Ghraib (2007)from the American Schools forOriental Research.

Emanuel Mayer, AssistantProfessor of Classics and theCollege, received a fellowshipfrom the Radcliffe Institute forAdvanced Studies at HarvardUniversity.

Mark Payne, Assistant Professorof Classics and the College,received a fellowship from theFranke Institute for his research“The Animal Part: Humans andAnimals in the Lambic Tradition.”

East Asian Languages& Civilizations

Donald Harper, Professor inEast Asian Languages and Civi-lizations and the College, hasbeen awarded fellowships fromthe Guggenheim Foundation andthe American Council of LearnedSocieties in support of his 2008–09 research leave to pursue workon “Occult Texts and EverydayKnowledge in China in the Age of Manuscripts: Fifth Century B.C.to Tenth Century A.D.”

Michael Raine, Assistant Pro-fessor of East Asian Languagesand Civilizations, the Committeeon Cinema and Media Studies,and the College, received a fellow-

ship from the Franke Institute for his research “Modernism,Materiality, and Cultural Mimesis:Japanese New Wave Cinema,1955–1964.”

Edward Shaughnessy,Lorraine J. and Herrlee G. CreelDistinguished Service Professorin Early Chinese Studies in EastAsian Literatures and Civiliza-tions and the College, received a fellowship from the NationalEndowment for the Humanities.

English Language & Literature

Jacqueline Goldsby, AssociateProfessor of English Languageand Literature and the College,received the William SandersScarborough Prize of the ModernLanguage Association for her bookA Spectacular Secret: Lynchingin American Life and Literature,which was also a finalist for theLora Romero First Book PublicationAward of the American StudiesAssociation. She also received agift from ComEd in support of her“Mapping the Stacks” project.

Loren Kruger, Professor ofEnglish Language and Literature,the Committee on African Studies,and the College, was a recipientof a research fellowship from the U.S. Department of State’sFulbright-Hays Faculty ResearchAbroad Program.

W. J. T. Mitchell, GaylordDonnelley Distinguished ServiceProfessor of English and ArtHistory, was a recipient of afellowship from the Sterling andFrancine Clark Art Institute.

The following is a list of awards, grants and fellowships received by University

of Chicago faculty in 2007 and 2008. Please help us keep informed of your accom-

plishments: tableau@uchicago.edu.

Jennifer Scappettone,Assistant Professor of EnglishLanguage and Literature and theCollege, received a fellowshipfrom the Djerassi Resident ArtistsProgram. She also has beenawarded a grant from the GladysKrieble Delmas Foundation tosupport research she will be conducting in Venice, Italy.

Mark Slouka, Professor of English Language and Literatureand the College, received a Gug-genheim Fellowship.

Germanic Studies

Christiane Frey, AssistantProfessor of Germanic Studiesand the College, received a fellowship from the HerzogAugust Bibliothek Wolfenbuttel.

David Wellbery, LeRoy T. andMargaret Deffenbaugh CarlsonUniversity Professor of GermanicStudies, Comparative Literature,and the College, was elected a corresponding member of theBavarian Academy of Sciencesand Humanities.

Linguistics

Susan Gal, Mae and Sidney G.Metzl Distinguished Service Pro-fessor of Anthropology, Linguistics,and the College, was named afellow of the American Academyof Arts and Sciences.

John Goldsmith, Edward CarsonWaller Distinguished ServiceProfessor of Linguistics, ComputerScience, and the College, andSenior Fellow of the ComputationInstitute, was named a fellow ofthe American Academy of Artsand Sciences and a fellow of theLinguistics Society of America.

Jason Merchant, AssociateProfessor of Linguistics and theCollege, received a fellowshipfrom the Onassis Foundation.

Jerry Sadock, Glen A. LloydDistinguished Service Professor of Linguistics, was named a fellow of the Linguistics Societyof America.

Alan C. L. Yu, AssociateProfessor of Linguistics and theCollege, received a fellowshipfrom the Franke Institute for hisresearch “Rescuing FleetingVoices: A Study of the Sounds of a Dying Language.”

F R O M T H E D E A N 0T A B L E A U 15

Music

Philip V. Bohlman, MaryWerkman Distinguished ServiceProfessor of the Humanities and of Music and the College,received the Derek Allen Prizefor Musicology from the BritishAcademy for The Music ofEuropean Nationalism: CulturalIdentity and Modern History.

Martha Feldman, Professor ofMusic and the College, receivedthe Ruth A. Solie Award for bestmulti-author collection of essays,with Bonnie Gordon of the Univer-sity of Virginia, for The Courtesan’sArts: Cross-Cultural Perspectives.She also was also appointed the Ernest Bloch Lecturer at theUniversity of California, Berkeley.

Philip Gossett, Robert W.Reneker Distinguished ServiceProfessor of Music and the College,received the Otto Kinkeldey awardfor best monograph by a seniorscholar for his Divas and Scholars:Performing Italian Opera. Gossettalso received a two-year grantfrom the Packard HumanitiesInstitute to prepare a multi-volumeset of the Works of GioachinoRossini and was awarded theSerena Medal by the BritishAcademy for “eminent servicestowards the furtherance of thestudy of Italian history, literature,art and economics.”

Marta Ptaszynska, Helen B.and Frank L. Sulzberger Professorin Composition of Music and the College received numerous commissions, including: MagicDoremic, opera for young audi-ences, the National Opera inWarsaw, January 18, 2008; Lumen,Cleveland Chamber Symphony,March 30, 2008; Concerto forFlute, Harp, and Orchestra, Inter-national Harp Society, May 18,2008, Katowice, Poland; Hymn ofthe Universe, for choir and organ,Rockefeller Chapel commissionfor the Gala Celebration of thenew organ, June 7, 2008; and a percussion orchestra work inprogress, Poznan Academy ofMusic and Philharmonic, sched-uled to premiere December 16,2008, Poznan, Poland.

Shulamit Ran, Andrew MacLeishDistinguished Service Professorof Music and the College, andthe Artistic Director of Contempo,was named to a three-year termas vice-president for Music ofthe American Academy of Artsand Letters. Legends for Orchestra

CD of Ran’s works performed bythe Chicago Symphony Orchestraunder the direction of MaestroDaniel Barenboim, with ViolinConcerto performed by Ittai Shapiraand the BBC Concert Orchestra,was released on Albany Recordsin December 2007.

Anne Walters Robertson,Claire Dux Swift DistinguishedService Professor of Music, andthe College, received the H. ColinSlim Award for best article by asenior scholar of the AmericanMusicological Society for “TheSavior, the Woman, and the Headof the Dragon in the Caput Massesand Motet” in the Journal of theAmerican Musicological Society.She also received the WilburLucius Cross Medal from theYale University Graduate SchoolAlumni Association for outstand-ing achievements in scholarship,teaching, academic administrationand public service and was nameda Fellow of the American Academyof the Arts and Sciences.

Howard Sandroff, Senior Lecturerof Music and the Director of theComputer Music Studio, receivedthe ASCAPLUS Award from theAmerican Society of Composers,Authors and Publishers (ASCAP).

Kotoka Suzuki, AssistantProfessor of Music and the College,has been awarded a fellowship bythe Howard Foundation in supportof her 2008–09 research leave.

Near East Languages & Civilizations

Nadine Moeller, Assistant Pro-fessor of Egyptian Archeology inNear Eastern Languages and Lit-erature, was awarded a NationalEndowment for the HumanitiesDigital Humanities Grant to developnew digital imaging techniquesat Tell Edfu.

Farouk Mustafa, Ibn RushdProfessorial Lecturer in ModernArabic Language in Near EasternLanguages and Civilizations andthe College, was the recipient ofthe Saif Ghobash-Bonipal Prizefor Arabic Literary Translationfrom the Society of Authors.

Dennis Pardee, Professor ofNear Eastern Languages and Civi-lizations, the Oriental Institute,Committee on Jewish Studies,and the College, gave a lectureon “Ugaritic and the beginningsof the West-Semitic literary tra-dition,” as part of The Schweich

Lectures series at the BritishAcademy in November 2007.

Tahera Qutbuddin, AssistantProfessor of Arabic Literature inNear Eastern Languages and Civil-izations and the College, has beennamed a 2008 Carnegie Scholarby the Carnegie Corporation ofNew York.

Matt Stolper, Professor ofAssyriology and the John A.Wilson Professor of OrientalStudies in the Oriental Institutewas awarded a Getty Foundation,and National Endowment for theHumanities Preservation andAccess Grant to continue the re-cording of the Persepolis Archive.

Theo van den Hout, Professorof Near Eastern Languages andCivilizations, the Oriental Institute,and the College, was namedCorresponding Member of theRoyal Dutch Academy of Arts andSciences and gave his first lectureas member in November 2007.

Christopher Woods, AssistantProfessor of Near Eastern Lan-guages and Civilizations and theCollege, received a fellowshipfrom the Franke Institute.

John Woods, Professor ofHistory, Near Eastern Languagesand Civilizations, and the College,was the recipient of the FacultyAward for Excellence in GraduateTeaching from the University ofChicago.

Philosophy

Arnold Davidson, Professor ofPhilosophy, Comparative Literature,the Divinity School, the Committeeon Conceptual and HistoricalStudies of Science and the College,was appointed Visiting Professorat the University of Pisa.

Josef Stern, Professor of Phi-losophy, Jewish Studies and theCollege, received a fellowshipfrom the American Council ofLearned Societies.

Romance Languages & Literatures

Kelly Austin, Assistant Professorof Romance Languages and Litera-tures, Comparative Literature,and the College, received a Post-doctoral Research Leave Fellowshipfrom the American Associationof University Women EducationalFoundation.

Rebecca West, William R.Kenan, Jr. Distinguished ServiceProfessor of Romance Languagesand Literatures, the Committee onCinema and Media Studies, andthe College, was named a VisitingProfessor at Yale University.

Slavic Languages & Literature

Robert Bird, Associate Professorand Chairman of the Departmentof Slavic Languages and Literaturesand the College, received the Out-standing Academic Title awardfrom Choice Magazine for hiswork The Russian Prospero: TheCreative University of ViacheslavIvanov.

Victor Friedman, Andrew W.Mellon Professor in Slavic Lan-guages and Literatures, Linguistics,and the College, has been award-ed a number of fellowships andgrants to support his 2008–09research leave, including an Indi-vidual Advanced Research Oppor-tunity grant from the InternationalResearch and Exchanges Board;a Fulbright Scholar grant from theCouncil for International Exchangeof Scholars; a fellowship from theGuggenheim Foundation; and aFulbright-Hays Faculty ResearchAbroad Program Fellowship fromthe U.S. Department of Education.

Yuri Tsivian, Professor of SlavicLanguages and Literatures, ArtHistory, Comparative Literature,Cinema and Media Studies, andthe College, was appointedVisiting Professor at HarvardUniversity for 2007–08. He alsoreceived the Digital InnovationFellowship from the AmericanCouncil of Learned Societies.

South Asian Languages & Civilizations

Steven Collins, Professor andChair of South Asian Languagesand Civilizations and the College,has been named the Chester D.Tripp Professor in the Humanities.

Sascha Ebeling, AssistantProfessor of South Asian Languagesand Civilizations and the College,has been awarded a ResearchFellowship for Excellence inUndergraduate Teaching fromthe Humanities Division and theCollege. This fellowship, whichprovides him with a year ofresearch leave in 2008–09, ismade possible by a generous

grant from the Mrs. GilesWhiting Foundation.

Jason Grunebaum, SeniorLecturer in Hindi in South AsianLanguages and Civilizations hasreceived a fellowship from theDjerassi Resident Artists Program.

Valerie Ritter, Assistant Pro-fessor of South Asian Languagesand Civilizations and the College,received the Senior Short-TermFellowship from the AmericanInstitute of Indian Studies.

Ulrike Stark, Assistant Professorof South Asian Languages andCivilizations and the College,received a fellowship from theFranke Institute.

Visual Arts

Tania Bruguera, AssistantProfessor of Visual Arts and the College, exhibited DelayedPatriotism at Performa 07 inNew York City. Her works werealso exhibited at the MoscowBiennale.

Laura Letinsky, Professor andChair of Visual Arts, Professor in the Committee on Cinema andMedia Studies, and the College,exhibited Dirty Pretty Things atBrancolini Grimaldi in Italy andTo Say It Isn’t So at the YanceyRichardson Gallery in New YorkCity and at Monique Meloche in Chicago.

Jason Salavon, AssistantProfessor of Visual Arts and theCollege had Currents on displayat the Columbus Museum inColumbus, Ohio.

Catherine Sullivan, AssistantProfessor of Visual Arts, theCommittee on Cinema andMedia Studies, and the College,exhibited Triangle of Need at the Walker Art Center in Min-neapolis, Minnesota, and is partof a Smart Museum video instal-lation exhibition, “Adaptation,”on display. Sullivan also wasfeatured as a subject in PBS’s“Art:21” documentary series.

I N M E M O R I A M16

Peter K. Jansen1 9 3 4 – 2 0 0 7

A mong German scholars, Peter K. Jansen was highly regarded for his work on theeighteenth-century German writer Heinrich

von Kleist. “Jansen earned a permanent place in thescholarship on Heinrich von Kleist, for whose story,The Foundling, Peter discovered an important source,”said Eric Santner, Professor and Chair of GermanicStudies. In addition to his scholarship, Jansen wasalso an accomplished literary translator, who taughtthe theory and practice of translation at Chicago. His translation of three plays by the Austrian writerThomas Bernhard has been used in performances inEngland and Canada. “Clearly theater was one ofPeter’s loves,” said Santner, “and he often traveledfar and wide to see new experimental theater.”

Born in Essen, Germany, in 1934, Jansen studiedat universities in Austria, France, and Germanybefore coming to the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he completed master’s and doc-toral degrees in German literature. His dissertationexamined the use of irony in the writings of the nine-teenth-century dramatist Georg Büchner. After workingat both Illinois and Indiana University, he joined theUniversity of Chicago faculty in 1968.

During his more than three decades at Chicago,Jansen’s research focused heavily on German dramaof the nineteen and twentieth centuries. But Jansenwas perhaps best known as a teacher. “He had anencyclopedic knowledge of German literature,” saidVreni Naess, AB 1961,the longtime administrator forGermanic Studies. “And students loved him.”

Susan Hohl, a student of Jansen’s, added: “As a teacher and as a person, his was a rare blend ofgenerosity of intellect, elegance, and a quiet gracious-ness that inspired.” ■

Nancy Pearce Helmbold1 9 1 8 – 2 0 0 7

AWest Texas native, Classics Professor Emerita Nancy Pearce Helmbold had atremendous gift and love for languages —

she translated Spanish language calls for the FBI inSan Antonio and Japanese nautical documents forthe Navy during the U.S. occupation of Japan in thelate 1940s. But more than anything, Helmbold had a gift for teaching Latin. “She was an outstandingLatin teacher,” said Elizabeth Asmis, Professor inClassics, “She loved being in the classroom andteaching at every level.”

Helmbold had a great interest in Virgil, St.Augustine’s Confessions, the love poetry of Catullus,and she contributed to the journal Classical Philology.But Professor of Classics Peter White, her longtimecolleague, said “she never set out to make a reputa-tion as a publishing scholar. Her life truly was devotedto teaching Latin.”

During her years at Chicago, Helmbold taughtLatin to legions of students, at every level, until shewas in her early eighties. “She never wanted to stopteaching,” Asmis said. Students who kept pace withtheir famously demanding instructor were effusivewith praise. “I have never been so pushed and prodded,stung and bitten, coaxed and cajoled — soothed andthen pushed forward again,” wrote Dawn Quitno, in nominating Helmbold for a teaching award in1989. “Nancy Helmbold should go on teaching Latinfor eternity.”

Born December 16, 1918, in Abilene, Texas, NancyPearce was the second of three daughters of a type-writer salesman. A talented student, she attended theUniversity of Texas at Austin, where she majored inliberal arts. While studying for a PhD in East Asianlanguages and literature at the University of California,Berkeley, Helmbold took a few Latin courses for fun.Noticing her Latin prowess, her teachers steered hertowards the study of the classics.

After receiving her PhD from Berkeley in 1957,Helmbold served as a visiting assistant professor atMount Holyoke College and the University of Oregon.She joined the Chicago faculty in 1963. ■

Joseph M. Williams1 9 3 3 – 2 0 0 8

Joseph M. Williams, Professor Emeritus of EnglishLanguage and Literature and Linguistics, wrote oredited more than ten books, including a sweeping

history of the English language, but he is perhaps best-known for the 1981 book, Style: Ten Lessons in Clarityand Grace. The book, now in its ninth edition, intro-duced a new approach to writing pedagogy. Stylediffered from other writing manuals, from Fowler’s TheKing’s English to Strunk and White’s The Elements ofStyle, because it carefully analyzed reader perceptionsand responses to a rhetorical style.

“Joe was interested in the reader’s perspective— what writing would do to a reader,” said GregoryColomb, a professor of English at the University ofVirginia and Williams’ longtime collaborator. Williamsand Colomb pored through cognitive science research,decision theory, risk theory, attribution theory — all togain insight into the reader. “Joe believed that if youunderstood how readers would predictably respond toparticular features of a text, you could then help writersachieve their goals. He was committed to using hisresearch to teach better writing.”

Williams also helped created the University’s writ-ing program, affectionately known as “The Little RedSchoolhouse” and a communications consulting firm,Clearlines, which worked with law firms, governmentagencies, foundations, and major corporations.

Born on August 18, 1933, in Cleveland, Ohio,Williams received a bachelor’s degree in 1955 and a master’s degree in 1960 from Miami University inOhio. He earned his PhD in English and linguisticsfrom the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1966.Williams joined the Chicago faculty in 1965 as anassistant professor. He remained at Chicago until hisretirement in 1999.

Williams received many awards throughout hiscareer, including the University’s Quantrell Award forundergraduate teaching excellencein 1987 and theGolden Pen Award in 2006 for lifetime contributionsto legal writing from the Legal Writing Institute.

“Joe’s truest aim was always to help writers,”said Colomb. ■

in memoriam

upcoming

Installed in 1928 and restored in 2008,Rockefeller Chapel’s magnificentE.M. Skinner Organ boasts over 8,000pipes. Following a seven-year hiatusand a historic, three-year, $2.1 millionrestoration, Chicago’s largest organis in play again. Tea and Pipes,weekly recitals on Tuesdays from 4–4:30 p.m. while school is in session.http://rockefeller.uchicago.edu/upcomingEvents/.

Court Theatre opens its 2008–09season with the Chicago premiereof Caroline, or Change, the deeplypersonal story from Pulitzer Prize-winner Tony Kushner (Angels inAmerica). Drawn from the playwright’sown childhood, this acclaimed musicalis set in a stifling basement laundry

room in Louisiana in 1963, and blendsblues, gospel, and traditional Jewishmelodies in a breathtaking score.Chicago’s own E. Faye Butler willperform the title role. http://court-theatre.org

Timed to coincide with the fortiethanniversary of the turbulent 1968Democratic National Convention,Looks Like Freedom: Art, Politics,and Urban Space around 1968,Chicago, was curated by studentsfrom art history professor RebeccaZorach’s winter course “Chicago1968.” The class researched politicaland artistic events and their inter-sections in and around 1968, a periodin the city’s history often associatedwith confrontation of police andVietnam protesters. Out of this tumult-uous environment grew creative

The ten-day, eleven concert serieswill honor Messiaen’s prolific legacywith some of the world’s leadingartists, composers, and scholars.chicagopresents.uchicago.edu.

A new joint initiative of the Univer-sity of Chicago and the Universityof California at Berkeley will givedigital humanities a boost. ProjectBamboo explores ways in whichhumanities faculty use digital tech-nology in both teaching and research.Funded by the Andrew W. MellonFoundation, the eighteen-month plan-ning and community design program,unprecedented in terms of size andscope, hopes to discover where a coordinated, cross-disciplinarydevelopment effort can best fosteracademic innovation. Phase one ofthe project included workshops held

in Berkeley, Chicago, Princeton, andParis, including more than 100 par-ticipating institutions. The groupanticipates releasing a blueprint forimplementing its plan in 2009.www.projectbamboo.org.

William Martin, PhD candidate inComparative Literature, will make thefirst English-language translation ofthe influential Polish writer, literarycritic, and film theoretician KarolIrzykowski (1873–1944). Martinreceive a 2008 National Endowmentfor the Arts Fellowship for Translationto translate Irzykowski’s 1903 Pałuba(The Hag ). The five-part meta-fictionweaves digressions on art of writingthe novel with psychological portraitsof a peasant, his obsession for hislong-deceased wife, and his adoptivefather and member of the nobility.Martin is also translating a novel byMichał Witkowski.

A Selection of

Past, Present, and

Future Events on

Campus and in the

Neighborhood

forms of activism that drew on, andalso influenced, movements andevents throughout the art world.Looks Like Freedom features artworkand documents by Barbara Jones-Hogu, Bob Crawford, the Hairy Who,and the Chicago Women’s LiberationUnion Graphics Collective. It is onview through October 5 at the Uni-versity’s new DOVA TemporaryGallery, 5228 S. Harper Avenue.www.looks-like-freedom.com

University of Chicago Presentswill join the international musiccommunity in marking the 100thanniversary of the birth of world-renowned French composer OliverMessiaen (1908–1992) with is first-ever music festival, October 2–11.

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For information on upcoming Humanities programming please visit http://humanities.uchicago.edu/calendar/

save the date!

The 2008 University ofChicago Humanities Day

Marking an ongoing thirty-year tradi-tion, the University of Chicago opensits classrooms each fall quarter toalumni, friends, and the intellectu-ally curious for a day of free publiclectures and spirited Chicago-styleinquiry with some of the world’sleading scholars.

Humanities Day offers explorationsinto linguistic, literary, and culturaltraditions through faculty lectures,film screenings, visual art exhibitions,and live music performances repre-senting a broad spectrum of topics. Jacqueline Goldsby, AssociateProfessor of English Language andLiterature, is slated to deliver the2008 keynote address “A Reader’sRenaissance: Black Chicago’sBook Review and Lecture Forum,1933 –1953.”

This one-day celebration takes placeon the University’s Hyde Park campus;admission is free, however seating is limited and registration, which canbe done online, is required. http://humanities.uchicago.edu/humanitiesday/

ON THE COVER Pull, Video, 0:55, 2005 Courtesy of the artist, Julia Oldham, MFA 2005

“I translate insect behavior into choreography that I perform in front of the camera, and in the editing process I manipulate speed and sound to emphasize rhythm and pattern. The

resulting videos are concerned with playful anthropomorphization; they are meditations on the fantasy that humans and insects have a shared set of experiences, accessible through

awkward, hybridized dance steps.” — JO

Following last year’s critically-acclaimed inaugural event, world-class headliners andlocal emerging artists will converge in HydePark September 27 for the second AnnualHyde Park Jazz Festival. Featuring fifteenhours of free, non-stop jazz for the seriousand casual listener alike, performances willtake place on indoor and outdoor stageslocated in cultural venues throughout HydePark. Catch artists such as, Dee Alexander,Grayzna Auguscik, Zach Brock, Orbert Davis,Nicole Mitchell, Willie Pickens, Reginald R.Robinson, Two for Brazil, and many more. www.hydeparkjazzfestival.org.

past happenings of note

Slavoj Žižek presented the 2008 RombergLecture titled, “The Spectrality of the Real: A Lacanian Approach,” on March 7,sponsored by Germanic Studies and the Divi-sion. Žižek joins popular culture and Lacanianpsychoanalytic theory to explain politics andpopular culture. Žižek, known for his belligerent,revolutionary style and polymathy has dividedopinion within the academy and developed a cultish following. View a recording of thelecture at http://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/news/files/2008/03/zizek_512k.mov.

Lawrence Rothfield, Associate Professor of English, Comparative Literature, and theCollege, and Faculty Director of the CulturalPolicy Center, led a delegation of experts in law, foreign affairs, archaeology, and themilitary in a presentation at the NationalPress Club in Washington, DC, April 9 for policy makers and the media. The briefing followed the release of Antiquities UnderSiege: Cultural Heritage Protection Afterthe Iraq War (AltaMira Press, 2008), whichexamines ongoing looting of archeologiclasites and threatens to destroy the traces of

Mesopotamian,Judeo-Christian,and Islamic cultures buried in the desert ofIraq. Rothfieldand his co-authorsoffer a series ofrecommendationsfor U.S. and inte-rnational policy-makers and NGOsand identify new

procedures and strategies that can protectartifacts at risk in future battles. http://cultural-policy.uchicago.edu/books/AuS.html.happ

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For information on upcoming Humanities programming please visit http://humanities.uchicago.edu/calendar/

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