Humanities Day 2017 - Session 2

The Flesh of the Image’s Flesh, or History in the Image

tpopelka — Fri, 18 Aug 2017 17:59:08 +0000

Presenter:

In a famous sequence from Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante (1934), Michel Simon’s character, le Père Jules, disrobes before Juliette (Dita Parlo), and in effect makes his tattoos perform for her when he inserts a cigarette into his navel which itself is surrounded by a tattooed face. In this moment, the image of Simon’s body becomes a double inscription of the body, whereby Vigo’s cinema, “reveals itself under the sign of the flesh.”

In what way are these tattoos visible markers of Père Jules’ own history, one that remains otherwise absent in the film narrative? And how and what did his tattoos signify to film spectators in 1934? This talk explores how the cinematographic image can function as a both a multi-faceted repository for human history and an anthropological network of visual and cultural relations. These give voice to muted histories of the French nation including its colonial and penal practices that, in the case of Père Jules, reveal themselves under the sign of his flesh.

Jennifer Wild

tpopelka — Fri, 18 Aug 2017 17:57:17 +0000

Presentation:

The Flesh of the Image’s Flesh, or History in the Image

Session:

Session 2

Cinema and Media Studies

Jennifer Wild is a scholar of experimental film, modernism and the avant-garde, French cinema, and cinema’s relation to the other arts. Wild is currently researching a history of the arrival of the moving image into galleries as art works. She is the author of The Parisian Avant-Garde in the Age of Cinema, 1900–1923 (2015). Wild is Associate Professor in the Departments of Cinema and Media Studies and Romance Languages and Literatures.

Virginio Ferrari: Full Circle, 1957–2017

tpopelka — Tue, 01 Aug 2017 10:18:17 +0000

Presenter:

Virginio Ferrari

Laura Steward

Session 2

Join acclaimed sculptor and former UChicago faculty member Virginio Ferrari for the official release of Virginio Ferrari: Full Circle, 1957–2017, a limited-edition art book on Ferrari’s life’s work. Virginio Ferrari covers all of his major artworks from the last 60 years, including Dialogo (1971), perhaps his most well-known sculpture on UChicago’s Hyde Park campus. Moderating the discussion with Ferrari will be Laura Steward, Curator of Public Art at the University of Chicago, and Virginio’s son, Marco, a practicing artist who also served as editor of the book.

This special presentation is a collaboration between Humanities Day, Seminary Co-op Bookstores, the Smart Museum, UChicago Urban, and UChicago Arts, and is part of the 2017-18 Urban Readers Series.

The Black Skyscraper: Architecture and the Perception of Race

tpopelka — Mon, 31 Jul 2017 10:01:37 +0000

Presenter:

Adrienne Brown

Session 2

This talk recovers the skyscraper’s drastic effects not only on the shape of the city but the racial sensorium of its residents at the turn of the 20^th century. The widened scale, fragmented sightlines, increasing density, and multiplying vantage points engendered by this new architectural form were understood by writers, painters, architects, planners, and journalists in the period to alter how race was seen, felt, and experienced in growing American cities.

Literature and Media Censorship in China, July 2017

tpopelka — Mon, 31 Jul 2017 09:59:26 +0000

Presenter:

Paola Iovene

Session 2

In China as elsewhere, censorship does not simply mean the regulations and bans imposed by an authoritarian government. Rather, it is a collaborative activity involving individuals and groups with diverse agendas, in which self-censorship plays a central role. This talk will focus on three cases I learned about during my stay in Beijing this past July: a novel that was banned, a novel that was not banned, and social media reactions to the death of the dissident Liu Xiaobo.

**This presentation is full**

The Royal Game of Ur from Ancient Mesopotamia

tpopelka — Fri, 28 Jul 2017 14:34:03 +0000

Presenter:

John Wee

Session 2

Mesopotamia’s “Royal Game of Ur” and similar game boards have been discovered from Iran to Crete over millennia of antiquity. Within Mesopotamia, the game’s title, board design, movable tokens, knucklebone-die, and use of recited verses as part of game rules evolved over time. From the fixed forms of artifacts and cuneiform texts, this talk imagines the dynamic event of game play, and explores how ancient thinkers adopted its imagery to express meanings in divination and astronomy.

Research and the Literary Imagination: Poetry, Fiction, and Nonfiction

tpopelka — Fri, 28 Jul 2017 14:27:51 +0000

Presenter:

Srikanth "Chicu" Reddy

This panel will focus on the role of research in literary production, featuring faculty writers working in the genres of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. We will discuss questions of historical documentation and creative freedom, poetic experimentation with archives, and the problem of making research material come to life through narrative techniques such as plot and characterization. Participants will include Gus Rose (author of the novel The Readymade Thief), Lynn Xu (author the poetry collection Debts and Lessons), and Rachel Cohen (author of the critical biography Bernard Berenson: A Life in the Picture Trade). Moderated by Srikanth Reddy, interim chair of the Program in Creative Writing.

**This presentation is full**

Spreading the Mystery: The Fall and International Revival of the Basque Language

tpopelka — Fri, 28 Jul 2017 14:25:54 +0000

Presenter:

Diana Palenzuela

Session 2

Straddling the border of southern France and northern Spain, the land of the Basques has long been home to a people who had no country of their own but have always viewed themselves as a nation. Their roots remain mysterious, and their peculiar language is not related to any other in the world, but Basques have managed to keep their identity alive, even as other civilizations tried to blot it out.

**This presentation is full**

Buddhist Wisdom Stories

tpopelka — Fri, 28 Jul 2017 14:02:39 +0000

Presenter:

Steven Collins

Session 2

It is often said that Buddhist stories are simply ways to present Buddhist doctrine in a simple, popular form. This is wrong. Narratives can do things that systematic thought cannot: for example, explore moral problems rather than try to resolve them, and entertain rather than proselytize. Educated people like to read stories too, and not all Buddhist texts have something to sell. If systematic thought tries to solve problems, stores often like to state them.

Conflicting Signs: Ethnic and Gender Representations in the Musical South Pacific

tpopelka — Fri, 28 Jul 2017 14:01:08 +0000

Presenter:

Thomas Christensen

Session 2

South Pacific (1949) has often been lauded as one of the most progressive musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein, particularly for its frank treatment of ethnic prejudice in a genre that typically eschewed such sensitive social topics. But a close analysis of some musical scenes in the score (particularly in the 1958 film version) reveals a strong undertow to this received picture. This talk will suggest that the mixed messages of the musical are a reflection of competing social currents of American society in the wake of the Pacific War, a growing red scare, and the first stirrings of the civil rights movement.