WSU - Humanities

The Humanities Center has scheduled 63 talks to be held on Tuesdays and Wednesdays during the Fall and Winter semesters.
All lectures will be held in 2339 FAB from 12:30-1:30 unless otherwise announced.

Since the inception of the weekly Brown Bag Colloquium Series, literally hundreds of Wayne State humanities and arts faculty and students have participated either as speakers or as members of the audience. Each new year brings an increase in the number of faculty volunteering to present talks. As a result, the Center regularly hosts talks twice a week throughout the entire academic year. Brown Bag talks are free and open to the public. We are inviting junior and senior scholars in the humanities and arts as well as those working in the natural and social sciences whose work overlaps with the humanities.

Communitarians have suggested that our self-seeking tendencies must sometimes be set aside in pursuit of the common good. Government is often (although not always) the mechanism through which common interests are advanced. When government abdicates its responsibility, diastrous consequences often occur, as was the case with respect to Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. At the other extreme, disaster can also result from the accumulation of too much power in government, as in the case of the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster. This talk will suggest a communitarian framework for the powers and responsibilities of government, individuals, and intermediate organizations.

Claude Schochet, Moderator, Professor, Mathematics, Martha Ratliff, Department Chair, English, Susan Vineberg, Associate Professor, Philosophy, Bob Bruner, Associate Chair, Mathematics, & Allen Batteau, Associate Professor, Anthropology
“The Two Cultures” by C.P. Snow -- 50 Years Later"

The Humanities Center, in collaboration with the Institute for Information Technology and Culture, presents this important panel discussion marking the 50 year anniversary of C.P. Snow's work linking the sciences and the humanities.

"The Two Cultures" is the title of an influencial 1959 lecture by British scientist and novelist C.P. Snow. Its thesis was that the breakdown of commuication between the "two cultures" of modern society - the sciences and the humanities - was a major hindrance to solving the world's problems.

A panel of WSU faculty will discuss the current status and consequences of this breakdown. Do we indeed have rwo cultures today? Is the problem worse or better?

Robert J. Burgoyne, Professor, English
“Homeland/Promised Land: Gangs of New York”

Rather than seeing nation as the apotheosis of ethnic conflict, or providing an immigrant narrative where the ethnic other is absorbed into the national body, Gangs of New York presents the ethnic gangs as a far more powerful source of identity and emotional purpose than the fledgling nation-state. Instead, the nation-state is portrayed as a contending gang in its own right, with no greater claim to allegiance than the Dead Rabbits or the Native Americans. Out of this struggle a form of nation is born that is internally marked, as Homi Bhabha writes, "by the discourses of minorities, the heterogenous histories of contending peoples, antagonistic authorities, and tense locations of cultural difference."

Robert Burgoyne is professor of English and film studies. The presentation on Gangs of New York is part of a chapter from his forthcoming book, Film Nation: Hollywood Looks at U.S. History: Revised Edition(University of Minnesota Press , 2010). He has recently published The Hollywood Historical Film (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008), and he has just completed the manuscript for The Epic Film in World Culture, an edited volume to be published by Routledge.

Erica Stevens Abbit, Assistant Professor, University of Windsor History
“Body and Breath: Inspiring Feminist Research and Practice”

This talk, adapted from a recent keynote address at the 10th annual Feminist Research Group at the University of Windsor, looks at feminist practice and research across the arts and sciences. Are there common characteristics, approaches, and strategies that "mark" feminism within the academy? Apart from an interest in gender, class, race and sexuality, what might these tactics be? How can they enhance our work, and extend our explorations beyond departmental divides?

Erica Stevens Abbitt trained as an actor and director, and currently teaches theatre history, Canadian theatre and aspects of contemporary practice at the University of Windsor. Her recent writings on theatre pedagogy link a lifetime of interest in the intersections between feminism, drama, and the active classroom.

Bruce Russell, Professor, Philosophy
“Pedro Almodovar’s Films: Explorations of Love”

Analytic philosophers are interested in essences and try to formulate them in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. For instance, the essence of being a square is captured by the following formulation: something is a square if, and only if, it is a four-sided plane figure all of whose sides and angles are equal. Similarly, someone lies if, and only if, he says something he believes to be false with the intention to deceive. But what is the essence of love? Abe loves Beatrice if, and only if,...what? One way to figure out how to answer this question is to look at hypothetical cases, cases where love is present and those where it is absent. Almodovar’s films are a rich source of data, for they present cases of maternal and filial love, of romantic love, and of their opposites. In some of his examples it is not obvious that one person loves another, but I will argue that they do and that we can learn something about the nature of love from them, for instance, that love is compatible with certain forms of selfishness. In the end, I will argue that Abe loves Beatrice if, and only if, Abe cares for Beatrice for her own sake and would tend to be upset if he believed that Beatrice were being harmed or her life was not going well for her.

Steven Shaviro, Deroy Chair & Professor, English
“Dangerous Modulations: Grace Jones’ “Corporate Cannibal””

Grace Jones' recent song and video, "Corporate Cannibal" (2008) marks her return to pop music for the first time in nearly twenty years. Jones has always been a transgressive figure, confounding boundaries between male and female, and between black and white. In her earlier work, she assaulted gender divisions by transforming herself into a cold, forbidding, more-than-masculine hardbody.; and she assaulted racial divisions by embracing the worst stereotypes of both black and white, the better to spit them back at the audience. Against all distinctions of race, gender, and sexuality, Jones developed a sadistic, robotic, "transhuman" persona. "Corporate Cannibal" pushes all this to a new extreme. Jones takes on the persona of a corporate vampire. She equates transgression with the depredations of capitalism. Her voice starts out wheedling, then becomes contemptuous, commanding, and menacing, and finally modulates into a predatory snarl. The music behind her is grinding and dissonant, with harsh backbeats and shrieking guitars. In Nick Hooker's video, her body passes through a series of unsettling electronic manipulations, never coalescing into a single, graspable form. In "Corporate Cannibal," Jones seeks to "make the world explode."

Thomas W. Killion, Associate Professor, Anthropology
“Corktown Archaeology: Recent Research at the Workers Row House”

September 2009 marks the 50th birthday of the Museum of Anthropology at Wayne State University. On October 9 the Museum will open a new exhibit entitled “Mythical Foundations/Material Consequences: A Look at Archaeological Research at the Workers Row House, Corktown, Detroit.” The exhibit presents three seasons of excavation and research (2006-2008) in the heart of old Detroit, which recently won recognition with the Governor’s 2009 Award for Historic Preservation.

Dr. Killion’s presentation for the Humanities Center examines historical archaeological research at the Workers Row House since 2006. Students and faculty at Wayne State, the University of Michigan, Flint, as well a high school and primary students and volunteers from across the metro area have participated in the project since its beginning. Our research explores the city’s early residential, industrial, and ethnic history in the dooryard of a small working class tenement built in 1849. The Workers Row House (WRH), presently under development as a community-based house museum by a local non-profit—the Greater Corktown Development Corporation (GCDC)—is perhaps the oldest wooden structure of its kind still standing in the city. Working in collaboration with the GCDC archaeologists have uncovered more than 150 years of everyday life and material culture from the early immigrants and working-class folks who built the modern city.

The talk focuses on the collaborative and community-centered nature of research at the WRH and the challenges of digging up and interpreting the remains of one of the city’s earliest surviving residences. Killion provides a glimpse of immigration, industrialization, and urbanization as these factors transformed the lives of working class residents some 50 years before the first automobiles rolled off the assembly lines at the Ford Motor Company. He looks at the prospects and benefits of future historical archaeology research in Detroit in the coming years.

Christine Evans, Ph.D. Candidate, University of California, Berkeley, History
“From Truth to Time: The Cold War and theTransformation of Soviet Central Television’s Evening News, 1961-1982"

Beginning in the early 1960s, Soviet Central Television’s journalists and executives sought to alter the way that Soviet news was conceived and produced in response to an enormous ideological challenge: Western radio broadcasting to Soviet audiences. In 1968, modeling their efforts on British, European and American television news programs, they created a new evening news show, entitled Time, that was intended to compete directly with the speed and style of Western radio broadcasting, while also conveying the superiority of the Soviet way of life. From its first broadcast, however, the show faced a persistent problem: an awkward contrast, within every evening’s broadcast,between static and exclusively positive domestic Soviet news and conflictual, dynamic foreign news coverage. For the following decade, Central Television’s journalists and executives sought to reform Time in order to eliminate this contrast, articulating, in the process, many of the ideas that would be enacted in Central Television’s news programming during perestroika. Ultimately, however, the problem proved insoluble because it was the result of a fundamental difference between Soviet and Western news narratives: Western news was set within a non-teleological historical framework, one whose conflicts and uncertain outcomes proved far more recognizable to Soviet audiences.

Jim Brown, Assistant Professor, English
“Girl Talk vs. DJ Spooky: Remixes, Mashups, and Digital Writing"

This talk stages a confrontation between the methods of two contemporary DJs—DJ Spooky and Girl Talk—in the interest of rethinking digital writing. DJ Spooky can be credited with bringing the DJ method to the academy. Spooky has been writing and making music since the mid-1990s. His book, Rhythm Science, is a performance of the DJ method, mixing philosophy, critical theory, personal anecdotes, and sound. Girl Talk—a DJ who creates mashup tracks that sample as many as 30 songs—has developed a method that differs significantly from Spooky’s. Whereas Spooky’s tracks reflect the slowness of literate writing, Girl Talk’s mashups are a performance of digital speed. This presentation will focus on DJ Spooky’s Rebirth of a Nation, a film project that brings the DJ method to film by remixing one of the most racist (and influential) films in history. I offer both a critique of Spooky’s Remix and an answer to it in the form of my own mashup. By using Girl Talk’s method to answer Spooky, this talk will open up a discussion about digital writing and speed.

Tamara Bray, Associate Professor, Anthropology
“Inca Imperialism on the Northern Frontier”

Following a long and fierce resistance, the ethnic province of Caranqui in the northern highlands of Ecuador became the last region to come under Inca control prior to the Spanish invasion in 1532 CE. The period of formal occupation of this region by Inca forces is estimated at no more than 30-50 years. Did the Inca approach to imperialism remain monolithic in the face of unprecedented distances between the Cuzco heartland and the northern frontier? Did local resistance and solutions to imperial consolidation remain constant through time? What can we discern of the mature phase of imperial Inca expansion based on archaeological evidence from the Caranqui region? These are some of the research questions being addressed at the recently discovered imperial Inca site of Caranqui located in northern highland Ecuador. This paper presents some of the preliminary findings of a collaborative, international and interdisciplinary project initiated at the site in 2008.

Afira Javed, Lecturer, Sociology
“Effective Intervention Techniques in Situations of Domestic Violence among New Immigrants”

My presentation is entitled “Effective Intervention Techniques in Situations of Domestic Violence among New Immigrants.” It is based on my experience as an applied sociologist working at different social service agencies where I ran an acculturation project for new immigrant families of various ethnic backgrounds. These included Arabic, Bosnian, Bangladeshi, Chaldean, Indian and Pakistani immigrants. This presentation focuses on effective intervention in reported cases of domestic violence involving spousal abuse and child abuse among new immigrant families. In the aftermath of such incidents, many of these families go through a crisis where they end up filing for divorce or losing their children to child protective services. Their ignorance of laws in America that define certain coercive forms of disciplining children and interpersonal interaction with spouses as abuse makes their ordeal of acculturation even more difficult. This presentation discusses effective techniques that will help both law enforcement and immigrant families to deal with these situations more constructively.

Marc Kruman, Chair & Professor, History
“Abraham Lincoln: Bicentennial Reflections”

Krista Brumley, Assistant Professor, Sociology
“Globalization and Organizational Culture: Accommodation and Resistance in Mexico”

The new demands posed by globalization on economic life shape our social world in ways that are contradictory and complex. The objective of this presentation is to analyze women’s and men’s experiences of paid work over the life span within the context of globalization. Using in-depth interviews conducted at a Mexican multinational corporation, I present two points: (1) the gender-based benefits and costs of globalization and (2) the intersectional relationship of age, gender, and class in perceived workplace changes. I illustrate that workers perceive the changes of globalization as having a significant and positive impact on the company’s organizational culture. However, it is in the more nuanced analysis of the intersection of gender, age, and class that the different experiences of the new organizational culture become more visible. Therefore, my analysis suggests that analyzing how globalization shapes paid work requires an intersectional approach.

Vanessa Jill DeGifis, Assistant Professor, CMLLC
“Scripture and Pious Rhetoric in Abbasid Politics”

The Qur’an is an ideal tool for the Muslim political propagandist because it is a source of vocabulary and images familiar to a Muslim audience, and because it is considered to be of sacred origin, with inherent religious, ethical, social, and rhetorical authority. By borrowing phrases, structures, and themes from the Qur’an and applying them in a new discursive context, the politician employs the persuasive power of the scripture to evoke desired emotional and behavioral responses from his audience. The Abbasid Caliph al-Ma’mun’s (r. 198-218 AH/813-833 CE) famous mihna, or “inquisition” regarding the nature of the Qur’an, epitomizes the impact of the Qur’an on Islamic politics, because the Qur’an is central to both the subject and the lexicon of this debate. The mihna was intended, at least ostensibly, to promote the theological position that the Qur’an was “created.” Those who did not assent to the caliph’s view were barred from administrative office and from serving as courtroom witnesses. The present paper is a textual analysis of the first official letter promulgating the mihna in 218/833. An analysis of this text reveals that al-Ma’mun’s qur’anic borrowing is a deliberate and indispensible strategy for conceptualizing and articulating his personal agenda. Based on my assessment of his qur’anic rhetoric, I propose a new understanding of the motive and aim of the mihna: It is a way for al-Ma’mun to reclaim the prerogative of “commanding the right and forbidding the wrong (al-amr bi-al-ma`ruf wa-al-nahy `an al-munkar)” from the Hadith folk, who had assumed this function since the Abbasid civil war of 195-198/809-813.

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Marvin Zalman, Professor, Criminal Justice
“Citizenship Explains Changes in Police Interrogation Practices and Supreme Court Confessions Rulings”

Police scholarship traces the third-degree—threats and violence to obtain confessions—from 1900 to its exposure in the 1931 Wickersham Commission, to its eventual decline and replacement by “psychological” interrogations. Recent studies show that false confessions and wrongful convictions result from excessive pressure during psychological interrogations.

Constitutional criminal procedure scholarship traces Supreme Court interrogation and confessions decisions from the due process era (1936-1966), outlawing torture and other excesses, to the self-incrimination regime under Miranda v. Arizona (1966), to the present day Supreme Court that supports an attenuated form of constitutional patrolling of police interrogation behavior under Miranda.

Speculation whether Supreme Court decisions tempered police excesses after the 1930s, or whether the Court’s current pro-law enforcement approach encourages false confessions, is inconclusive. My paper argues that social and political factors, summarized through the lens of citizenship theory originally developed by T. H. Marshall, offer a better explanation of changes in both police and Supreme Court behavior than mechanistic ideas of police professionalization or legal impact. The notion that expanding indicia of citizenship tend to accompany, or “cause,” more “civilized” police behavior and more defense-leaning Supreme Court decisions is better seen as a heuristic than a deterministic model.

Roslyn Abt Schindler, Associate Professor, CMLLC
“Enduring Connections: Exploring Personal Roots and Professional Community in Poland”

In May 2009, I had the privilege of attending an international conference on the Holocaust (“Legacy of the Holocaust”) hosted by The Jagiellonian University in Krakow. I took the opportunity to explore my connections to Poland for several reasons: my mother’s parents were born in Poland; my mother and several family members were in a Polish forced labor camp (Zbaszyn); numerous relatives died in ghettos and concentration camps; and I have an abiding professional commitment to Holocaust Studies. In addition to being in Krakow and traveling throughout the area surrounding that city (including several Shtetls and Auschwitz-Birkenau), I visited Warsaw and northern Poland.

This will be a photographic presentation about the places I visited with the following questions in mind: Which remnants of former Jewish life—and death—remain in the Shtetls? Is there a resurgence of Jewish life in Poland? If so, where, and what characterizes it?

Todd Meyers, Associate Professor, Medical Anthropology
"Clinical Reasoning and the Threat of the Unreasonable"

Pharmaceutical interventions take on a different character once treatment moves outside a closely monitored clinical environment. In the presentation, Professor Meyers will detail the experiences of adolescents under treatment for opiate dependence using a relatively new pharmacotherapy, buprenorphine (Suboxone® and Subutex®), as these adolescents make the transition from a residential drug rehabilitation center back to their neighborhoods and other institutional environments. He will offer an account of how the thin line between licit and illicit opiate use is drawn, and show how adolescents who are otherwise “non-compliant” and “self-medicating” adopt similar forms of clinical reasoning to their physicians. The writing traces the way pharmacotherapy is experienced under social and economic constraints, and considers how efficacy, certainty, and success are shaped and challenged by the social worlds in which adolescents participate outside the clinical environment.

Dora Apel, Associate Professor, Art & Art History
“What is Radical Art Today?”

Since television first transformed the home from sanctuary and retreat from the threat of the world into a zone easily entered by war, the Internet and global blogosphere have extended the integration of the domestic and the military, progressively dissolving the boundary between private and public, or homefront and battlefront. In this paper, I examine the work of two artists--Martha Rosler and Krzysztof Wodiczko—and the guerilla theater of the group Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) in order to reflect upon the mobilization of media and military practices for radically oppositional purposes. I analyze different ways of “being political” within the public sphere of visual culture specifically in relation to the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Annie Higgins, Assistant Professor, CMLLC
“Woman’s Smile, History’s Gaze: Authority in Arabic Currencies”

This talk explores the images, symbols, and texts of paper currencies from various Arab countries to reveal different levels of cultural identity, and to trace relationships among local and global users of the currency, as well as religious and state institutions. A queen, a peasant picking cotton, and schoolchildren are imprinted on the banknote and, less overtly, on the user's consciousness.

While a currency constitutes a concrete demonstration of a state’s authority, it draws its choices from accepted representations of a people’s self-identification. What historical figures tell the country’s story – are they legends or people? How far back do they reach into history and how closely do they approach contemporary developments? History appears in statues, scenes of national triumph, numismatic imprints, and faces. Considering that some interpretations of Islam frown on animate images, does this affect the engraved faces and smiles? Does a concomitant to "In God we trust" appear?

A closer look at these currencies may change some notions of the cultural and economic identities of Arab societies, at a time when westerners are casting an economic glance eastward. With the backdrop of a united future world currency introduced at the G8 summit last July, this paper will pose questions about a currency's continuing ability to define the borders of its nation.

Jaime Goodrich, Assistant Professor, English
“Who is Mrs. M.B.?: Monastic Authorship and the Case of Dame Clementia Cary’s Psalms”

In 1793, French soldiers burst into the English Benedictine convent in Cambrai and loaded the surprised nuns into carts without giving them time to collect their belongings. While the nuns themselves were eventually sent to England, many of this convent’s voluminous writings still remain on the Continent. This essay considers the larger scholarly implications of one such manuscript: MS 20H39, a set of Psalm paraphrases held by the Archives Départementales du Nord in Lille, France. For twenty years, critics have argued that Dame Clementia (Anne) Cary (1615-1671) wrote this text. Dame Clementia was the daughter of Elizabeth Cary, the first Englishwoman to write an original play, and feminist scholars have favorably compared MS 20H39 with the metaphysical poems of John Donne and George Herbert. Yet while this text may have been written and then revised by a nun (probably not Dame Clementia), it was originally composed by Protestant poet Samuel Woodford. An analysis of the text’s reception history reveals that wishful thinking led scholars to ignore the manuscript’s troubling physical evidence. Ultimately, MS 20H39 tells us as much about scholarly hopes of finding nuns’ writings as it does about the role of authorship in 17th-century convents for Englishwomen.

Marion Jackson, Distinguished Professor, Art & Art History
“Bandits & Heroes: Art and Popular Imagination in Brazil’s Northeast”

Eric H. Ash, Associate Professor, History
“The Unrecovered Country: The Non-Drainage of Cambridge Fens, 1619-1620”

Therese T. Volk, Associate Professor, Music
“The WPA/DSO Music Manuscripts: Collaborative Research & Website Development”

From the beginning of the American republic down to the present day the imagery of American coinage has been modeled on that of Greco-Roman antiquity. American coin designers, from the start, steeped in the artistry of the ancient celators, reproduced images clearly and consciously derived from the ancient past. However, for many citizens in the modern age this powerful legacy passes by unheeded and unknown. Yet, in the ancient world, reused and modified coin designs were frequently employed as a commentary on those of the past and on the political and social conditions which had created them.

In this paper I shall describe some of the connections between ancient classical and (modern) American coin design. My purpose is not to show that a modern designer stole (or copied) an ancient design, but that in the universe of signs, older signs have been re-formed, realigned and restated in new ways, and that powerful images have been remembered and transformed in new contexts to excite new meanings.

Eldonna Lorraine May, Part-time Faculty, Music
"Music as Propaganda: Sergei Prokofiev’s Patriotic Cantatas”

The Patriotic Cantata flourished in Russia during the years following the 1917 Revolution with clearly-defined characteristics because music’s affect and attendant demagogic power was recognized by Soviet leaders and assiduously exploited by their composers, particularly Sergei Prokofiev following his return to Russia in the mid-1930s. Prokofiev, as one of the best Soviet composers, contributed heavily to the genre, including "Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution," "On Guard for Peace," "Ode to Stalin," and "Flourish Mighty Land." This lecture/demonstration investigates Prokofiev’s contributions to the genre of "Patriotic Cantata."

Kathleen McNamee, Professor, CMLLC & Judith Arnold, Librarian III, University Libraries
“How do we help students become good researchers?”

Nicholas Fleisher, Assistant Professor & Student Advisor, English (Linguistics Program)
“Gradability, Vagueness, and the Semantics of Inappropriateness”

Jacalyn D. Harden, Assistant Professor, Anthropology
"Washington DC Sniper Project"

WINTER SEMESTER

Robert L. Thomas, Dean, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
TBA

Andrew Port, Associate Professor, History
“German Reactions to Genocide since 1945”

Aaron Retish, Assistant Professor, History
"Birth of the Soviet Prison: Creating a Humane Prison in a Socialist World"

Anca Vlasopolos, Professor, English
TBA

Robert Sedler, Distinguished Professor, Law
“Our 18th Century Constitution Congress, the President, and our Two-Party Political System”

Leisa Kauffmann, Assistant Professor, CMLLC
“Disguising the Man-god: Rulership and Religiousity iin colonial Nahua Histories”

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Melba Boyd, Distinguished Professor & Chair, Africana Studies
“From Motown to Shanghai: Teaching African American Studies in China”

William Harris, Professor, English
TBA

Xavier O’Neal Livermon, Assistant Professor,
TBA

Guerin Montilus, Professor, Anthropology & Penny Godboldo, Associate Professor, Dance, Marygrove College
“Katherine Dunham (June 22, 1909-May 21, 2006): The Centennial birthday of an African American Woman, Pioneer in Anthropology and Queen of the Black Dance”

Derek E. Daniels, Assistant Professor, Communication Sciences & Disorders
TBA

Norah Duncan IV, Associate Chair, Music
TBA

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Daphne Ntiri, Associate Professor, Africana Studies & Merry Stewart
“Transformative Learning Intervention: Effect on Functional Health”

Osumaka Likaka, Associate Professor, History
“Colonialism, Stereotyping, and New Ethnic Identities in Congo”

R. Khari Brown, Assistant Professor, Sociology
“The Impact of Religion on African American Immigration Attitudes”

Alicia Nails, Lecturer, Communication
“Recruiting, Retraining, and Retaining the Urban Student”

Monica M. White, Assistant Professor, Sociology
“D-Town Farm: Conversations about Race and the Urban Gardening Movement in Detroit”

Marilyn Zimmerman, Associate Professor, Art & Art History
“Detroit Photography”

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Jose A. Rico-Ferrer, Assistant Professor, CMLLC
“Poetic Friendships: The case of Boscan and Garcilaso”

Eugenia Casielles, Associate Professor, CMLLC & Dolly Title, GTA, CMLLC
“Spanish & English in Contact: Codeswitching strategies and radical bilingualism”

Mary Cay Sengstock, Professor, Sociology
“Voices of Diversity-Interviews with People on the ‘Assimilation Side’ of Multi-Culturalism”

Patricia K. McCormick, Associate Professor, Communication
“Transforming Intergovernmental Satellite Organizations into Private Equity Assets”

Elizabeth Dorn Lublin, Assistant Professor, History
“Citizens and Social Work in Meiji Japan”

renee c. hoogland, Associate Professor, English
“Abjection and Neo-Aesthetics”

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Lisa Maruca, Associate Professor, English

There is perhaps nothing as misleadingly simple as the ABC’s. Traditionally, work on the alphabet has focused on large-scale social and historical ramifications of this sort of literacy. Ivan Illich and Barry Sanders, for example, argue that the written word created the modern human, while Brian Rotman contends that nothing less than God Himself emerged from the invention of the alphabet. While these works and others provide useful analyses of macro-level cultural change, they often neglect the vital interplay of media and agency at multiple and often heterogeneous sites. Scholars in the history of the book should view this gap as an invitation. Fruitful research remains to be done in the identification and examination of local instances of technological and cultural negations with alphabetic literacy. This paper proposes such a study of the alphabetic texts that circulated as educational tools in late eighteenth-century England, such as abecedaries, battledores, primers and even type specimen sheets. Specifically, I will discuss the role of the print trade in marketing products designed to construct the literate citizen in this period—literate not just in traditional terms, but technologically literate as well. Battledores, for example, labeled alphabets not just as letters, but as specific forms of type, such as Roman or Gothic. Students were not meant to copy these shapes, just learn to read them. Alphabet toys and texts thus served as an introduction to a specific form of literacy based on the passive reading of print products.

Dennis Tini, Distinguished Professor, Music
“The Brain in Music and Martial Arts”

Simone Chess, Assistant Professor, English
“Disability, Cheap Print, and Shakespeare”

Jeff Pruchnic, Assistant Professor, English
“What is Virtual Life?”

Karen Liston, Librarian III, University Libraries
“Research in a Global Context”

Ronald Aronson, Distinguished Professor, History
TBA

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Sarika Chandra, Assistant Professor, English
TBA

John Corvino, Associate Professor, Philosophy
“Just My Opinion”

Michael Darroch, Assistant Professor, University of Windsor, Communication, Media & Film
“From Anonymous History to Acoustic Space: Marshall McLuhan Between Urban and Media Studies”

Richard Grusin, Professor, English
TBA