Archive for January, 2013

Call for Papers: Thinking Publicly Proposals, Drew University (Madison, New Jersey)

By
Marilyn Weber
 – January 30, 2013Posted in: Calls for Papers

Call for Papers: Thinking Publicly Proposals

Due: February 7, 2013 Date of Conference: June 7-8, 2013 Location: Drew University (Madison, New Jersey)

 

What exactly is a public intellectual? Can it be a blogger, a comedian, a teacher, a scientist, a historian, a celebrity, a small-town government official? Or does a public intellectual transcend these categories? How have our conceptions of public intellectuals changed over time? How does an intellectual function in the public sphere today?

Who listens to the public intellectual?

 

The Graduate Program in History and Culture at Drew University looks forward to discussing these questions and more at Thinking Publicly, a conference on public intellectuals, on June 7-8, 2013. Through this conference we hope to provide a space for emerging scholars to voice their perspectives on public intellectualism. We aim to broaden our ideas about public intellectuals and go beyond the limiting boundaries between disciplines. We highly encourage proposals from graduate students in all fields. New scholars, working public intellectuals, and independent scholars are also welcome to submit.

 

Papers and panels on all aspects of public intellectualism will be considered. Some potential topics include: • the history of public intellectuals • public intellectualism in a global framework • defining and problematizing the term public intellectuals • the use of humor in public intellectualism • platforms for public intellectuals to disseminate information • the role of public intellectuals in social justice and civic engagement • intersections between the arts and sciences • the use and methodology of present scholarship outside academia • teachers as public intellectuals • the future landscape of higher education • newer technologies and social media’s impact on the scholar • intellectuals providing obstacles for, rather than enlightening, the public • the forgotten “lost causes” of public intellectuals

 

Please submit a 400-word paper proposal no later than February 7, 2013.

Paper submissions should include a tentative title, a brief description of the project, and a two-page CV. Panel proposals should consist of a 200-word topic description, individual paper abstracts, and CVs for each presenter. Questions and paper submissions can be emailed to:

hc@drew.edu.

 

2/4 – Emancipation: James Oakes & Sean Wilentz in Conversation

By
Marilyn Weber
 – January 29, 2013Posted in: GC Events, History Program Events

Emancipation: James Oakes & Sean Wilentz in Conversation

Monday, February 4th, 6:30 p.m.

Elebash Recital Hall

SOLD OUT! But you can watch it livestreamed here - http://videostreaming.gc.cuny.edu/videos/livestreams/page1/

Historians James Oakes, of the Graduate Center, and Sean Wilentz, of Princeton, discuss Oakes’s provocative new book about the Civil War, Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865.

 

With Freedom National, Oakes, a leading figure in the study of the Civil War, Reconstruction, slavery, and the Old South, lays to rest the popular notion that the Civil War was merely a war to restore the Union. He argues instead for antislavery’s centrality to the war. It has just been announced the work has won the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize. Oakes’s previous books include The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics; Slavery and Freedom: An Interpretation of the Old South; and The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders.

Noted historian and public intellectual Sean Wilentz has written with precision on such topics as race and class in America, popular music, and contemporary politics. His many books include the Bancroft Prize-winning The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln; Bob Dylan in America; and The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008.

This event is free, but reservations are required and can be made at: https://community.gc.cuny.edu/james_oakes_and_sean_wilentz

 

Come explore the life of the mind in the heart of the city; for more information about Public Programs at the Graduate Center, please visit:

www.gc.cuny.edu/publicprograms

CFP – 8th Annual Appalachian Spring Conference in World History and Economics

By
Marilyn Weber
 – January 29, 2013Posted in: Calls for Papers

CALL FOR PAPERS

8th Annual Appalachian Spring Conference in World History and Economics

This conference is an interdisciplinary meeting aimed at bringing together scholars from Appalachian State University (Boone, NC) with scholars from other universities in North Carolina, the surrounding states, and abroad. We have already hosted seven of these meetings in the past, which have been very successful. Our past keynote speakers have included John Wallis, Jeremy Black, Peter Lindert, and Price Fishback. This year’s speaker will be Dr. Philip Hoffman, Rea A. and Lela G. Axline Professor of Business Economics and Professor of History, California Institute of Technology; a world-renowned scholar of financial institutions and government capacity for violence. We will also feature 7-9 panels with scholarly papers, divided among different topical themes, including an undergraduate and a graduate panel. This year’s theme will be How Did Europeans Come to Rule the World? The paper or panel proposals do not have to be directly tied to the conference theme, although papers fitting with theme will be given special consideration.

 

The conference will take place on April 20, 2013, in Raley Hall on the Appalachian State University campus in Boone, North Carolina in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains. Those interested in participating should let the organizers know by FEBRUARY 15, 2013. A one-page abstract describing the scholar’s proposal should be submitted to the organizers by that date. A full paper should be sent to the organizers by March 1, 2013. There is only a modest registration fee (regular: $75; (graduate) students: $30; ASU faculty and students: free). The organizers cannot provide funding for accommodations or travel expenses. We offer meals to the participants during the meeting at reduced cost in addition to the registration fee.

 

Organizers (contacts for paper proposals and practical matters):

• Jari Eloranta, Associate Professor (Appalachian State University, Department of History): phone: 1-828-262-6006<tel:1-828-262-6006>, email: jari.a.eloranta@gmail.com<mailto:jari.a.eloranta@gmail.com>

• Jeremy Land, Ph.D. Student (University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Department of History):  phone: 1-704-689-2055<tel:1-704-689-2055>, email: land25.jeremy@gmail.com<mailto:land25.jeremy@gmail.com>

Free Flu Vaccine – Walk-in Hours

By
Marilyn Weber
 – January 28, 2013Posted in: Uncategorized

The flu vaccine is available to currently registered students at the Graduate Center and the Graduate School of Journalism. Due to the recent epidemic, the vaccine will be available free of charge to students regardless of insurance coverage status. Please be sure to have your student ID with the Spring 2013 validation sticker available to present at reception in Room 6422.

Walk-in hours are:
Monday, February 4, 5–7 p.m.
Tuesday, February 5, 12–2 p.m.

If you are unable to make the walk-in hours, we have a limited number of slots available for appointment. You may schedule an appointment by calling: 212-817-7020.

Students may also obtain the flu vaccine from other providers. For a list of alternatives, please visit the Wellness Center’s Resources webpage and click on the 2012–13 Seasonal Influenza Information tab.

Feb. 4th, 7 PM: NYPL presents CARLO GINZBURG

By
Dory Agazarian
 – January 28, 2013Posted in: Non-GC Events, Other Events

LIVE from the New York Public Library presents:

BEING JEWISH, BECOMING JEWISH: a conversation with CARLO GINZBURG

February 4 at 7PM

THE JOY GOTTESMAN UNGERLEIDER LECTURE

Carlo Ginzburg, son of Leone and Natalia Ginzburg, is a historian. In his latest book, Threads and Traces: True False Fictive, Ginzburg offers a collection of essays weaving autobiography with scholarship and critical commentary on the problematic conventions of historical study.

Carlo Ginzburg will discuss the Jewish and literary heritage passed down by his mother, the writer Natalia Ginzburg, author of an autobiography of a kind,Family Sayings.

In conversation with Paul Holdengräber, Carlo Ginzburg will discuss his ever-evolving relationship between Jewish, becoming Jewish, and his work.

The annual Joy Gottesman Ungerleider Lecture explores themes represented in the holdings of The New York Public Library’s Dorot Jewish Division. This series has been made possible by a generous grant from the Dorot Foundation.

From Mariel Fiedler at NYPL: “We offer a student rate of $15/ticket and are happy to offer that price point to faculty as well.”

You can find more information about the evening here…

New Jersey City University seeks an adjunct for a Latin American Civilizations course

By
Marilyn Weber
 – January 28, 2013Posted in: Job Opportunities

The History Department at New Jersey City University, located in Jersey City, is looking for an adjunct to teach a section of Hist 162-Introduction to Latin American Civilizations for the spring 13 semester. The class time is Wednesday, 4-6:50. The pay is $3,600.

If you are interested, please contact the department chair, Rosemary Fox Thurston, at 201-200-3251 or rthurston2@njcu.edu.

Rosemary Fox Thurston

Chair, History

New Jersey City University

Hunter College Seeks Spring Instuctor

By
Marilyn Weber
 – January 28, 2013Posted in: Job Opportunities

We need an instructor for History 111 (World History before 1500) taught M/Th: 8:10-9:25 at Hunter College. There are currently 35 students enrolled in the class. Please contact: Prof. Mary Roldan at mrol@hunter.cuny.edu if you are interested in teaching this class.

1/30 – “Dialects, Speech and Information: Chao Yuen Ren’s Route to Cybernetics”

By
Marilyn Weber
 – January 28, 2013Posted in: GC Events

Chen-Pang Yeang

Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology,University of Toronto

Dialects, Speech and Information:Chao Yuen Ren’s Route to Cybernetics

A founder of modern Chinese linguistics, Chao Yuen Ren (1892-1982) is famous for his extensive surveys of dialects and promotion of a national language. This paper examines a less familiar part of his later career: his thought and use of cybernetics. Chao’s cybernetic vision concerned the statistical distinctiveness of morphemes, quantitative measure of redundancy, and varying degrees of meaning in Chinese. Although he attributed languages’ information-theoretic “forms of meaning” as products of long-term negative feedback, he nonetheless stressed their stability and non-plasticity, unlike the contemporary Western cognitive scientists that highlighted feedback’s open-endedness or the later Communist technocrats that championed the power of human actions in controlling feedback systems. I will explore aspects of Chao’s intellectual trajectory that may have given rise to this view: his lifelong preoccupation with oral languages in both field and laboratory, his commitment to structuralism, and his attempt to modernize a longstanding humanistic area of study among Chinese literati – phonology – with “scientific methods” that characterized the intellectuals of the May Fourth generation.

Chen-Pang Yeang is an associate professor at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto. His research areas include the history of physics and engineering science in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, focusing on the interactions between theory making, experimental practice, instrument development, and technological applications. He is a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, in 2012-13.
To RSVP for dinner with the speaker following the lecture, please contact Etienne Stockland [ps2617@columbia.edu]. Our next meeting will be on February 27th, 2013: James E. McLellan III (Stevens Institute of Technology), “The Colonial Machine: French Science and Overseas Expansion in the Old Regime.” This meeting will be held in Room 801, NYU, 1 Washington Place.

For additional information please contact either Matthew Stanley at ms5100@nyu.edu, Pamela Smith ps2270@columbia.edu, Joseph W. Dauben at jdauben@gc.cuny.edu.

Metropolitan New York Section of the History of Science Society

City University of New York Ph.D. Program in History, History of Science Lecture Series

Columbia University
Colloquium for Science, Technology, Medicine and Society and University Seminar in History and Philosophy of Science

New York Academy of Sciences, Section for History and Philosophy of Science and Technology

New York University, Gallatin School of Individualized Study

January 30th, 2013 6:00 PM* CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue at 34th Street, Room 9206

2/8 – Revolutionizing American Studies

By
Marilyn Weber
 – January 25, 2013Posted in: GC Events, Other Events

The spring lineup for the Revolutionizing American Studies seminar is exciting (and is being finalized as I type), but as usual I like to draw particular attention to the more historically-minded offerings. Full details for the spring semester will soon be posted at http://centerforthehumanities.org/seminars/revolutionizing-american-studies, but in meantime please consider marking the following event on your calendars.
-Cambridge Ridley Lynch

8 February — Matthew Frye Jacobson

William Robertson Coe Professor of American Studies & History at Yale University, Matthew Frye Jacobson is the current president of the American Studies Association.  He is the author of numerous books including What Have They Built You to Do?: The Manchurian Candidate and Cold War America (with Gaspar Gonzalez, 2006); Roots Too: White Ethnic Revival in Post-Civil Rights America (2005); Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876-1917 (2000); Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (1998); and Special Sorrows: The Diasporic Imagination of Irish, Polish, and Jewish Immigrants in the United States (1995).  His teaching interests are clustered under the general category of race in U.S. political culture 1790-present, including U.S. imperialism, immigration and migration, popular culture, and the juridical structures of U.S. citizenship.

Seminar, 12:30-2, 8201.01:  ”Where we Stand: US Empire at Street-Level and in the Archive,” Matthew Frye Jacobson’s Presidential Address to American Studies Association Annual Meeting; also, presidential addresses by Amy Kaplan, Janice Radway, and Mary Helen Washington. (CRL note: Readings to be posted at http://centerforthehumanities.org/seminars/revolutionizing-american-studies shortly, and most, if not all, are available through Project Muse – even if you can’t attend, I recommend these readings as a sort of state-of-the-field collection for American Studies.)

Lecture, 4-6, 8201.01:  ”The Historian’s Eye:  Interpreting the ‘Post’ of ‘Post-Civil Rights’ in Obama’s America.”

Historian’s Eye (www.historianseye.org) is a multimedia documentary project devoted to the peculiar compound of hope and despair that makes up the current political and social climate in Obama’s America.  Beginning as a modest effort to capture in photographs and interviews the historic moment of our first black president’s inauguration in early 2009, the project has evolved into an expansive archive of some 4000+ photographs and an audio archive that would fill nearly two days of non-stop listening.  Materials collected from across the country address the Obama presidency, the ’08 economic collapse and its fallout, two wars, the raucous politics of healthcare reform, the emergence of a new right-wing formation in opposition to Obama, the politics of immigration, Wall Street reform, street protests of every stripe, the BP oil spill, the Occupy movement, natural disasters in the south and northeast, and the controversy over a proposed Muslim community center in lower Manhattan and the escalation of anti-Muslim sentiment nationwide.  The project seeks to trace out the fate of “our better history,” in Obama’s own phrase, in affecting and telling photographs and in the recorded voices of ordinary people, as the nation faces unprecedented challenges with a president at the helm who is inspirational to some, fully unnerving to others.

2/22 – Prof. Josh Freeman leads a panel on “American Empire”

By
Marilyn Weber
 – January 23, 2013Posted in: History Program Events


American Empire

Joshua B. Freeman, History, The Graduate Center and Queens College, CUNY

David Harvey, Anthropology, The Graduate Center, CUNY

Lisa McGirr, History, Harvard University

Adolph Reed, Political Science, University of Pennsylvania.

In the decades after the Second World War, a profound democratic revolution took place in the United States. These social, cultural, and political changes were also linked to a period of enormous economic growth that, in the 1970s, ground to a halt. What followed was a shift in economic and political power from the wider populace to corporations and the rich. At the same time, the US transformed itself into a new kind of empire, with consequences we are still living with today. How can we account for the rise of consumerism, globalism, and prosperity in post-WWII America? What are the social forces that later overturned decades of work in civil rights and labor movements? Join four distinguished scholars as they consider the history and future of the American empire as we know it.

Fri Feb 22, 6:00pm

Martin E. Segal Theatre
Cosponsored by the PhD program in History; the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics; and the Murphy Institute

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