2014 Working Group Activities

Funded 2014 Phase II Events

PHILOSOPHY

PHI1: Syracuse Philosophy Annual Workshop (SPAWN), Graduate Student Exchange, and Creighton Club
January-December 2014: Graduate Student Corridor Exchange, Corridor-Wide
Each year several of graduate students take courses or attend events at other Corridor institutions, especially Cornell and Rochester.
June 6 – 9, 2014: SPAWN 2014, Syracuse University
SPAWN is Syracuse Philosophy Department’s annual summer conference. The topic for 2014 is Philosophy Of Disability. The conference features philosophers and disability scholars from the U.S. and Europe.
September 27, 2014: Creighton Club, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
The Creighton Club is an annual philosophy conference that takes place at varying locations in Upstate New York, with its primary participants being from Syracuse, Rochester, Cornell, and surrounding universities and colleges. The Creighton Club is a one-day conference that takes place in the Fall Semester; it typically features four to five talks with commentators, including a dedicated session for a graduate student talk. There is always a distinguished keynote speaker who almost always comes from a location outside of Upstate New York, sometimes substantially outside upstate New York.

PHI 3: Upstate New York Early Modern Philosophy (UNYWEMP)
October 31 – November 2, 2014: German Philosophy and the Ethics of Belief, Cornell University
Major two-day conference featuring nine well-known specialists in German philosophy, in honor of Professor Allen W. Wood, who taught for 28 years at Cornell before moving on to Yale, Stanford, and now Indiana.
November 8, 2014: Substantial form and causality: Aquinas, Suarez and Descartes, Syracuse University
One-day workshop bringing together scholars from Syracuse University and Cornell with interests in both Medieval Aristotelian philosophy and in Descartes, promoting scholarship on Descartes’ relationship to his Medieval Aristoteli and predecessors, with a focus on accounts of substantial form and causality in the work of Aquinas, Suarez and Descartes.
Guest-speakers: Simona Vucuof the University of Toronto on agency and causal power in Thomas Aquinas and Henry of Ghent. Calvin Normoreof UCLA presented his research on matter and quantity in the Scholastics and Descartes.

PHI6: Continental Philosophy
November 4, 2014: Central New York Humanities Corridor Symposium “Papers from the Society for the Study of Biopolitical Futures”, Syracuse University
A one-day colloquium to present works that evolved out of the initial meeting of the Society for Biopolitical Futures, and concluding with a roundtable discussion by Society presenters on the present state of biopolitical thought and its possible futures. Featuring new research from original members Cary Wolfe and Timothy Campbell, and papers that were delivered this past summer at Life, in Theory: The 8th Meeting of the European Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts, Turin Italy, June 2014.

PHI7: Ancient Philosophy
May 9-10, 2014: Ancient Philosophy Working Group Conference “Plato and the Stoics”, Colgate University
A two-day conference, including presentations and Corridor members and a keynote address by a senior scholar in the field, to facilitate the discussion of work by members of the Corridor and promote continued collaboration among Corridor members while building connections with scholars beyond the region.

PHI8: Late Antiquity
January 31, 2014: Symposium Planning Meeting, Cornell University
April 11-12, 2014: Senses, Affect, and the Imagination in Late Antiquity, Symposium, Colgate University
Keynote from Carlin Barton (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)
September 12, 2014: Robin Jensen (Vanderbilt University), Syracuse University
A discussion led by Robin Jensen, an art historian from Vanderbilt University, on pre-circulated paper “Christian Desecration of Pagan Statues.”
October 17, 2014: Discussion on Aesthetics, Syracuse University OnLonginus’ on the Sublime.

PHI9: CNY Ethics Reading Group
March 28 – 29, 2014: CNY Ethics Reading Group 1st 2014 Workshop Meeting, University of Rochester
May 9, 2014: CNY Ethics Reading Group 2nd 2014 Workshop Meeting, Syracuse University
August 15 – 17 2014: 1st Annual CNY Ethics Reading Group Summer Retreat, Syracuse University’s Minnowbrook
Featuring talks byWilliam FitzPatrick(University of Rochester) andHille Paakkunainen(Syracuse University) along with three nationally and internationally known ethicists:Stephen Darwall(Yale),Sarah McGrath(Princeton), andCaspar Hare(MIT), with external discussant Hallie Liberto (University of Connecticut).

LINGUISTICS

LIN 4: The Syntax-Semantics Interface
December 6-7, 2014: Central New York Humanities Corridor Workshop in Theoretical and Experimental Linguistics, Syracuse University
Workshop on the interfaces between syntax and semantics, and between syntax and phonology, structured the workshop to reflect cutting-edge research in both theoretical and experimental linguistics, with further focus on including senior faculty, junior faculty, and graduate students as presenters.

LIN 6: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Discourse
November 8-9, 2014: The Fourth Workshop in Linguistics and Philosophy – Plurality and Generics, Cornell University
Interdisciplinary workshop bringing together philosophers, linguists, and computer scientists to examine the ways humans express and conceptualize generalizations. Research across several fields has explored the wide range of interpretations of plural expressions, cross-linguistic differences, uses in discourse, as well as different approaches to their formal analysis and implications for theories of cognition. The two-day workshop featuring presentations of previously circulated papers, comments, and discussion from researchers in the Corridor and invited participants from beyond the Corridor. The event is co-sponsored by the Central New York Humanities Corridor from an award by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Cornell Society for the Humanities, Sage School of Philosophy, Department of Linguistics, and Cognitive Science Program.

VISUAL ARTS AND CULTURE

VAC 3: Visual Studies
November 17, 2014: CNYX Experimental Film Festival, Syracuse University
Breaking the Framewith Marielle Nitoslawska and Carolee Schneemann.
Marielle Nitoslawska, born in Canada, is a filmmaker, cinematographer and film professor who lives and works in Montreal. She received her B.F.A. in Studio Arts and Art History from Concordia University, Montreal and an M.F.A., magna cum laude in Cinematography from the Polish National Film School in Lodz. She remained in Poland for a decade, working as a filmmaker during the social and cultural upheavals that led to the fall of that country’s communist government. There, she shot numerous exploratory ethnographic films in 35mm and actively participated in the underground media arts movement in Lodz, with friends and mentors from the Workshop of Film Form. Nitoslawska has made numerous film essays, both feature length and short form on ground-breaking movements and artists such as Domingo Cisneros, Szczepan Mucha, Jozef Robakowski, and Carolee Schneemann. Poetic and unconventional, her films explore the ideas behind the work of these artists and their contemporary significance. Her films have received critical acclaim and extensive festival play, and include Bad Girl (2002), a groundbreaking documentary investigating explicit representations of female sexuality; Sky Bones (1999, nominated for Best Art Doc, Hot Docs); and Choices: An Artist From Eastern Europe Speaks Out (1987), included in the National Gallery of Canada’s permanent collection. A pioneer of performance and body art as well as avant-garde cinema, multi-disciplinary artist Carolee Schneemannhas been breaking the frames of the art world for five decades. Using her own body as a medium, Schneemann’s most well-known pieces Meat Joy (1964), the film Fuses (1967), Interior Scroll (1975, performed live at Telluride in 1977), and Up to and Including Her Limits (1973-1976), shattered the taboos against the representation of sexuality and the female body. Yet while these pieces scandalized the male-dominated art world, they also irrevocably transformed the history of art. Since the 1970s, Schneemann’s iconic oeuvre has influenced innumerable artists and continues to enjoy international critical acclaim. She remains an active artist today, with an impressive list of international exhibitions. In recognition of her pioneering achievements, Schneemann has received numerous awards and honors. She is a USA Fellow for Visual Arts, Rockefeller Foundation (2011); recipient of a President’s Award, Bard College (2012) and of the Ono Lennon Courage Awards for 2012.

VAC 17: Global Biennale
October 1, 2014: Global Biennale Workshop/Seminar, Cornell University
Workshop with Xu Bing on Contemporary Art and the Global Biennale, conducted in the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art.

MUSICOLOGY AND MUSIC HISTORY

MMH17: Teaching Exchange
February 23, 2014: Paul O’Dette Workshop, Cornell University
Professor Paul O’Dette (Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester) in a lecture-demonstration and discussion with students from Music 1201 (European Music from the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Baroque), and Music 7501 (Historical Performance Practice), followed by a concert.
March 6, 2014: Lydia Hamessley Workshop, Syracuse University. Professor Lydia Hamessley (Hamilton College) at Syracuse University.
April 14, 2014: Brad Lubman Workshop, Cornell University
Professor Brad Lubman (Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester) at Music 4121.
November 22, 2014: Steven Doane & Mikhail Kopelman Workshop, Cornell University
Professors Steven Doane and Mikhail Kopelman (Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester) at Music 4121.

MMH21:Mobilizing Music – Gender and Performativity
February 21, 2014: Kiri Miller Mini-Seminar, Syracuse University
Professor Kiri Miller (Brown University) on issues of gender and virtual musical performance in new digital medias.
October 24, 2014: Joe Roach Mini-Seminar, Syracuse University
Professor Joe Roach (Yale University).

MMH22: Performance/History
This working group interrogates the relationship between performance as an object of historical research and performance as a theoretical keyword in a variety of humanities disciplines. Assembling scholars from departments and programs in English, theater, music, dance, art history, film and media studies, and women’s studies, this group is initiating an interdisciplinary dialogue on the challenges of performance historiography and the potential (and limitations) of theoretical discourse on performance as an answer to these challenges.
April 4, 2014: Seminar with Daphne Brooks, Colgate University
Professor Daphne Brooks (Colgate University) on broad, methodological issues in performance history, and her current book projectSubterranean Blues: Black Women and Sound Subculture.
April 25, 2014: Reading Group, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Discussion of performance studies scholar Rebecca Schneider’s bookPerforming Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment (2011).
October 3, 2014: Seminar with Susan Foster, Colgate University
Susan Leigh Foster, choreographer and scholar, is Distinguished Professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at UCLA. Professor Foster ail ear a discussion of key chapters fromChoreographing Empathy, complemented by several other readings of recent scholarship in dance history.

MMH23: Rethinking Robert Schumann’s Late Music
Schumann’s admission to the cannon in the history of western music was not without difficulty. The distressing biographical details surrounding his final years shroud compositions from his so-called late period, casting a permanent veil over the history of their critical reception. Doubts about the artistic value of compositions from 1850 onwards has persisted through the twentieth century and has only recently begun to give way as scholars and musicians pursue alternative perspectives that re-contextualize the music’s often perplexing structural, sonic, and expressive affinities. This working group brings together scholars with expertise in recent advances in theories of form, their relation to performance, historical instruments and performance practices, and ideas of late-ness and style in Beethoven, Brahms, and Haydn to inform the rethinking and reimagining of this difficult repertoire.
November 1-5, 2014: Symposium, Cornell University
Three interconnected events comprise the two-day symposium: a conference with two paper sessions, a concert in collaboration with the Formosa String Quartet, and a public master class.

MMH24: Re-Sounding History
This working group seeks to transform various separate and informal shared interests among individuals and institutions within the Corridor into compelling long-term interdisciplinary collaborations. Its projects utilize a combined focus on ethnomusicology and library/archival exploration to capitalize on growing faculty and student strengths and interests in studying cross-disciplinary interconnections between sound archives and live music performance. The group aims to highlight the value of recorded music, held in audio collections, to active musical practice. The participating institutions (Syracuse University, Colgate University, and Hamilton College), all hold archival music and sound resources in their libraries and archives. The group hopes to raise awareness of the value of such sonic collections by showcasing well-known performers who draw heavily upon historical archives in their performance practices through a series of lecture-demonstrations.
February 20, 2014: Zeke Leonard, Syracuse University
Lecture-demonstration by Professor Leonard (Syracuse University) of his found-object instruments.
February 28, 2014: Zeke Leonard, Hamilton College
Lecture-demonstration by Professor Leonard (Syracuse University) of his found-object instruments.
March 27, 2014: Re-Sounding Klezmer Lecture-Demonstration, Syracuse University
Lecture-demonstration by Peter Rushefsky (Center for Traditional Music and Dance).
March 27, 2014: Re-Sounding Klezmer Concert, Syracuse University
Concert by Peter Rushefsky (Center for Traditional Music and Dance).
April 26, 2014: Re-Sounding Southern Fiddles, Syracuse University
Lecture-demonstration by Harry Bolick.
September 9, 2014: Re-Sounding Banjos, Syracuse University
Lecture-Demonstration by David Deacon.
September 19, 2014: Re-Sounding Banjos, Hamilton College
Lecture-Demonstration by David Deacon.
October 9, 2014: Re-Sounding Appalachian Fiddles, Syracuse University
Lecture-Demonstration by Todd Clewell.
October 10, 2014: Re-Sounding Appalachian Fiddles, Hamilton College
Lecture-Demonstration by Todd Clewell.
November 7, 2014: Re-Sounding Italian Mandolins, Syracuse University
Lecture-Demonstration by Paul Oorts and Jay Benforado, “The Rigatoni Brothers.”
November 7, 2014: Re-Sounding Italian Mandolins, Colgate University
Lecture-Demonstration by Paul Oorts and Jay Benforado, “The Rigatoni Brothers.”

DIGITAL HUMANITIES

DH6: Digital Witness Symposium
October 1, 2014: 5th Digital Witness Symposium, Hamilton College
October 2, 2014: 5th Digital Witness Symposium, Syracuse University
The fifth Digital Witness Symposium is dedicated to the theme of “Thinking Through the Digital,” examining how the digital processes and logics of computation stimulate new ways of conceptualizing human rights and social justice media. The two speakers for this year’s symposium are D. Fox Harrell (Associate Professor of Digital Media, MIT) and Patricia Zimmermann (Professor of Screen Studies, Ithaca College). Professor Harrell’s recently published book,Phantasmal Media: An Approach to Imagination, Computation, and Expression(MIT Press, 2013) argues that the great expressive potential of computational media comes from the ability to construct and reveal phantasms and blends of cultural ideas and sensory imagination. Harrell offers an approach for understanding and designing computational systems that have the power to evoke these phantasms, paying special attention to the exposure of oppressive phantasms and the creation of empowering ones. Professor Zimmermann’s forthcoming co-authored book (with Dale Hudson),Thinking through the Digital: Transnational Practices and Local Places(Palgrave) examines how digital media domains are increasingly based on explorations of code and user interface, interrogations and applications of archives and databases, automated recombinatory techniques, and provocative performance

DH8: Digital Humanities Speaker Series: THAT Camp CNY 2014
April 11-12 2014: THAT Camp CNY 2014, Syracuse University
The Digital Humanities Speaker Series supports lectures for the Digital Humanities Project across the Corridor.
October 27, 2014: Workshop “Intellectual and Cultural Property in the Global South”, Cornell University
Anita Say Chan (University of Illinois) on “Networking Peripheries: Technological Futures, Informatic Contests, and the Myth of Digital Universalism”, Rosemary Coombe (York University) on “The Knowledge Economy and its Cultures: Neoliberalism and the Proprietary Imagination.”
November 5, 2014: Lecture, Digital Humanities Speaker Series, Cornell University
Hoyt Long (University of Chicago) on “Literary Pattern Recognition: A Machine Reading of Modernist Form.”

LITERATURE, LANGUAGE, AND CULTURE

LLC1: Language, Identity, and Power
March 21, 2014: Modernizing India, Syracuse University
Workshop and talk with Kira Hall (University of Colorado, Boulder).
November 13, Fall 2014: Workshop and Lecture, Syracuse University.Workshop on methodologies and public lecture byBarbara Johnstone(University of Colorado, Boulder) on “Proximity and Journalistic Practice in Environmental Discourse: Experiencing ‘Job Blackmail’ in the News.”

LLC3: Early Modern Thinking
November 7, 2014: Digitization of Early Modern Materials, Syracuse University
Syracuse University Humanities Librarian, Patrick Williams, recently participated in the NEH Office of Digital Humanities’ Early Modern Digital Agendas (EMDA) institute at the Folger Shakespeare Library. During this three-week Institute in the summer of 2013 and follow-up sessions this spring, EMDA participants explored how scholars may represent, interpret, extend, and investigate the Early Modern corpus using a variety of analytical, literary, and linguistic tools and approaches, guided by the Folger staff and an expert group of international visiting faculty. Additionally, participants worked together to historicize, theorize, and critically evaluate these tools and approaches in order to appraise their potential to support and connect with current and future research in the field. Workshop on an overview of the topics and discussion at the institute and suggested examples, questions, and critical concerns for those undertaking digital research trajectories, drawn from English Early Modern Studies, but the approaches and issues would be applicable to scholars working in any period or location.

LLC5: Revival Cultures – The Burnt Over District and Beyond
March 29-30, 2014: Spring Workshop on Prison Writing, University of Rochester
October 31-November 1, 2014: Workshop “Religion and Incarceration,” Syracuse University

LLC6: 19th Century Studies
The LLC6 working group is an outgrowth of a bi-annual works-in-progress workshop for central and western English Department New York faculty, engaging in research in nineteenth-century British literary and cultural studies.
November 7 – 8, 2014: Symposium, Syracuse University
Graduate student conference followed by lecture and seminar withIan Duncan(UC Berkeley).

LLC9: Critical Theory and the Global – The Politics of Translation
February 28, 2014: Critical Theory and the Global – The Politics of Translation Workshop/Seminar, Cornell University
Workshop/seminar with Samuel Weber (Avalon Professor of Humanities at Northwestern University).

LLC12: Lake Erie Latin American Cultural Studies (LELACS)/Global Literature and Cultures
February 15, 2014: Work-in-Progress Workshop, SUNY Binghamton
September 13, 2014: “Japan Today” Symposium, Syracuse University
October 25, 2014: Emergencias,Cornell University

LLC13: Alguien al otro lado
October 27-31, 2014: Francisco Dìaz de Castro onCante Jondo (flamenco gypsy song) in the Poetry of Federico Garcìa Lorca, Syracuse University

LLC17: Jewish Studies
March 6-7, 2014: Jewish Studies and the Disciplines Spring Workshop, University of Rochester
A keynote address by Professor Randall Styers (UNC-Chapel Hill), and a roundtable discussion of the intersection of Jewish Studies and the academic study of religion.
September 11-12 2014: Jewish Studies and the Study of Literature, Syracuse University
A keynote address by Professor Svetlana Boym (Harvard).
October 30-31 2014: Jewish Studies and Anthropology, Cornell University
A keynote address by Matti Bunzi (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign).

ARCHIVES AND MEDIA

AM2: Visiting Scholars Program
January 2014: Visiting Scholar Residency, Syracuse University
Philip Lockley (University of Oxford) on “Millennialism, Communalism and the Origins of Socialism: Transatlantic Theologies of Transformation before 1848.”
February 2014: Visiting Scholar Residency, Syracuse University
Jeanelle Hope (Syracuse University) on “Seeking Poetic Justice: Positioning Black Women and Queer Identifying into the Black Power Historical Narrative.”
April 2014: Visiting Scholar Residency, Syracuse University
Lawrence Chua (Hamilton College) on “Architecture, Hip Hop, and Utopia.”
August 2014: Visiting Scholar Residency, Syracuse University
Richard Bell (University of Maryland) on “The Blackest Market: Kidnapping, Slavery and Salvation.”
September 2014: Visiting Scholar Residency, Syracuse University
Jenn Thomas (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) on “Researching Nineteenth-Century Insane Asylum Landscapes of New York State.”
October 2014: Visiting Scholar Residency, Syracuse University
Mary Freeman (Columbia University) on “Letter Writing and Politics in the Campaign Against Slavery.”

MELLON COLLABORATOR

MC1: Mellon Visiting Scholar Series
October 2014: David Pesetsky (Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Modern Languages and Linguistics; MacVicar Faculty Fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Syracuse University
Public lecture: “Language and Music: Same Structures, Different Building Blocks.”
Technical talks: “Islands in the Modern World” and “Dependent case as Binding Theory.”