2013-2014 ANNUAL REPORT
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T H E H U MAN ITIES I N ITIATIV E AT N EW YORK U N IV ER S ITY
CONTENTS
WELCOME
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COMMUNITY
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Strengthening relationships between students, faculty, and staff in the humanities at NYU
ENGAGEMENT
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INNOVATION
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Connecting with the public by hosting a variety of intellectually stimulating events
Experimenting with projects and programs to celebrate the humanities in new ways
ALLIANCES
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Supporting deep humanities awareness and education through external partnerships
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WELCOME
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T H E H U MAN ITIES IN ITI ATIV E AT NEW YORK UN IV ER S ITY
A YEAR OF MOMENTUM It is my great pleasure to share with you the results of another wonderful year at the Humanities Initiative. Special highlights included the launch of a new collaborative essay project about the future of the humanities and the creation of The Humanities Ambassadors, our first undergraduate student organization. We also had a terrific seventh season of our “Great New Books in the Humanities” event series and of Authors’ Cocktails, while continuing to host symposia, lecturers, and workshops in our space at 20 Cooper Square. And at the heart of our program, as always, were our fellows in residence, who met for weekly lunches to share their work and their ideas about the humanities and organized a highly successful symposium on the future of the archive at year’s end. 2013-14 marked the arrival of two new staff members: Gwynneth Malin (Director) and Chris Alexander (Media and Communications Coordinator), who have brought lots of new ideas and energy to the Initiative. I want to thank them for all their hard work. Warm thanks to Deni Valentin (Administrative Aide) for her ongoing commitment to the Humanities Initiative. We enjoyed collaborating this year with the new Director of the New York Institute for the Humanities (NYIH), Eric Banks, and we look forward to more joint projects with the NYIH in the future.
OUR TEAM JANE TYLUS Faculty Director Professor of Italian Studies and Comparative Literature GWYNNETH C. MALIN Director CHRIS ALEXANDER Media and Communications Coordinator DENELIA VALENTIN Administrative Aide SHARI WOLK Graduate Student Assistant
Finally, a special thanks to the hard-working members of our Advisory Board and of our selection committees for Faculty Fellows, Graduate Student Fellows, Public Humanities Fellows, and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Stipend finalists. I want to thank our five Leadership Alliance Mellon Initiative (LAMI) faculty mentors as well, who worked closely with their undergraduate students over the summer. It is clear that the interactions that take place on the 5th floor at 20 Cooper — so full of intellectual rigor and generosity — continue to foster the humanities at NYU. We hope that you will enjoy this annual report, which is enhanced with media links on several images. Visit our website at humanitiesinitiative.org to learn more about our programs and to explore our video archive.
JANE TYLUS Faculty Director 5
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COMMUNITY
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T H E H UMA N ITIES IN ITI ATIV E AT NEW YO RK UN IV ER S ITY
Strengthening relationships between students, faculty, and staff in the humanities at NYU
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ADVISORY BOARD Our Advisory Board consists of faculty and administrators chosen from among NYU’s many schools that offer a humanities curriculum. Generally, members serve for a three-year term. The Advisory Board meets several times each year to discuss strategic planning, annual programming, and to select the winners of the Team-Teaching Stipends and Research Collaboratives.
2013-2014 MEMBERS JANE TYLUS, Chair Faculty Director, The Humanities Initiative; Professor of Italian Studies and Comparative Literature, FAS THOMAS AUGST Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Department of English, FAS ERIC BANKS Director, New York Institute for the Humanities JAMIE BERTHE Ph.D. candidate, Department of Media, Culture and Communication, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development BENOÎT BOLDUC Associate Professor and Chair, Department of French, FAS JOY CONNOLLY Dean for Humanities, Professor of Classics, FAS JONATHAN HAIDT Professor, Business & Society Program Leonard N. Stern School of Business
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STEPHEN HOLMES Professor, Department of Politics, FAS; Walter E. Meyer Professor of Law AISHA KHAN Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology; Associated Faculty, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, FAS
DIANA TAYLOR University Professor; Founding Director, Hemispheric Institute, FAS; Professor of Spanish and Performance Studies, Tisch School of the Arts THELMA THOMAS Associate Professor, Institute of Fine Arts
PERRI KLASS Professor and Director, Arthur L. Carter Institute of Journalism; Professor of Pediatrics, NYU School of Medicine
JERRY WAKEFIELD University Professor; Professor of Social Work, Silver School of Social Work; Professor of the Conceptual Foundations of Psychiatry, NYU School of Medicine
ERIC KLINENBERG Director, Institute for Public Knowledge; Professor, Department of Sociology, FAS
BARBARA WEINSTEIN Silver Professor; Chair, Department of History, FAS
GWYNNETH C. MALIN Director, The Humanities Initiative
SUSANNE WOFFORD Dean, Gallatin School of Individualized Study; Associated Faculty, Department of English, FAS
MICHAEL STOLLER Director of Collections and Research Services, Division of Libraries MARITA STURKEN Professor, Department of Media, Culture, and Communication, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development
T H E H U MAN ITIES IN ITIATIV E AT N EW YOR K U N IV ERS IT Y
RESEARCH FELLOWSHIPS for
GRADUATE STUDENTS AND FACULTY
Each year, our fellows forge a collegial community that allows for extended intellectual discussions about their work. Beyond exchanging feedback on their own scholarship at our weekly lunches, our fellows also participate in broader discussions of the future of the humanities within their discipline and across the globe. This year’s cohort hailed from five NYU schools and their projects ranged from a study called Living with Cancer in Contemporary India to Pier Paolo Pasolini’s aesthetics to a cultural history of color television to “the changing face of secular masculinity” in the time of Charlemagne. Our fellows enjoyed our writers’ retreat in November in Cold Spring, NY, and participated in an annual fellows’ symposium held in May called Encountering the 21st Century Archive. 2013-2014 FELLOWS ADEMIDE ADELUSI-ADELUYI Graduate Student Fellow History, GSAS
THOMAS LOOSER Faculty Fellow East Asian Studies, FAS
ANDREW ROMIG Faculty Fellow Gallatin
DWAIPAYAN BANERJEE Graduate Student Fellow Anthropology, GSAS
EDUARDO MATOS-MARTÍN Postdoctoral Fellow Comparative Literature, FAS
CARA SHOUSTERMAN Public Humanities Fellow Linguistics, GSAS
J. M. DELEON Graduate Student Fellow Performance Studies, Tisch
ARA MERJIAN Faculty Fellow Italian Studies, FAS
DELIA SOLOMONS Graduate Student Fellow Institute of Fine Arts
JENNIFER HEUSON Graduate Student Fellow Media, Culture, and Communication, Steinhardt
SUSAN MURRAY Faculty Fellow Media, Culture, and Communication, Steinhardt
ZEB TORTORICI Faculty Fellow Spanish & Portuguese Languages and Literatures, FAS
DANIA HUECKMANN Graduate Student Fellow German, GSAS
MELISSA RACHLEFF BURTT Faculty Fellow Art and Art Professions, Steinhardt
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RESEARCH COLLABORATIVES To encourage interdisciplinary exchange on topics with a humanistic focus, the Humanities Initiative sponsors Research Collaborative grants which last for a two year period. The Initiative envisions a Research Collaborative as bringing together NYU faculty and graduate students in a carefully planned series of meetings on a focused topic in the humanities where interdisciplinary approaches are likely to be particularly fruitful. The Initiative expects that the work achieved by the Research Collaborative will generate new curricular offerings, publications, conferences, or collaborative faculty projects. 2013-2014 RESEARCH COLLABORATIVES Cultures of War and Post-War This research collaborative has two main objectives. The first is to define the role of scholars in the humanities in pursuing a rigorous theoretical, historical, and ethical account of modern war cultures across various disciplines. The second goal is to reflect on cultural policy outcomes that might address the profound social, economic, and psychic challenges confronting contemporary citizens entering post-war societies. Faculty directors: Patrick Deer, Associate Professor of English; A.B. Huber, Assistant Professor, Gallatin; Bill Blake, Assistant Professor of English. New York Scapes NewYorkScapes is a research community exploring the application of concepts, tools, and resources in the digital humanities to the study of urban space. Through conversation and collaboration among scholars, archivists, artists, and activists, it seeks to facilitate the development of projects related to interpretation, curation, and communication of the documentary record of New York City, and projects engaging with the aesthetics, art, literature, design, and other experiences of the city. Faculty directors: Thomas Augst, Associate Professor of English; Peter Wosh, Clinical Associate Professor of History. Psychoanalytic Humanities TOP: Anne Karle-Zenith, Digital Services Manager for the Metropolitan New York Library Council MIDDLE: Don Mennerich, Digital Archivist, NYU BOTTOM: Peter Wosh, Director of the Program in Archives and Public History at NYU, with Lacy Schutz, Director of Collections at the Museum of the City of New York at the NewYorkScapes conference.
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Psychoanalysis in its earliest incarnation was practiced more by scholars of literature, philosophy, law, and other humanities’ disciplines than those in the medical fields proper. This research collaborative seeks to reinvigorate an exploration of the spirit of psychoanalytic theory in productive relation to literature, philosophy, and the arts in general, and away from any clinical or psychiatric focus on therapy. It has as its concrete goal the establishment of an undergraduate minor program housed at either the Gallatin School or the College of Arts and Sciences Comparative Literature Department. Faculty directors: Nina Cornyetz, Associate Professor, Gallatin; Jacques Lezra, Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, Comparative Literature. TH E HU MAN ITIES IN ITIATIV E AT N EW YOR K U N IV ER S ITY
TEAM-TEACHING STIPENDS This program is designed to foster creative and dynamic teaching across humanistic disciplines. This year, the Initiative supported three teamteaching pairs from various academic disciplines with diverse methodologies. 2013-2014 TEAM TEACHING RECIPIENTS 1) Exploring the Archive: New York City & Beyond [Spring 2014] KAREN KARBIENER , Master Teacher of Humanities, Global Liberal Studies, Faculty of
Arts & Science
MARVIN TAYLOR , Director of the NYU Fales Library and Special Collections
2) Comparative Literary and Performance Theory in Contemporary Black Studies [Spring 2014] JAY GARCIA , Associate Professor, Comparative Literature, Faculty of Arts & Science TAVIA NYONG’O, Associate Professor, Performance Studies, Tisch School of the Arts
3) Text and Technology [Fall 2014] LISA GITELMAN, Professor, Media Culture & Communication, Steinhardt School of
Culture, Education, and Human Development
CHRISTOPHER LESLIE, Instructor of Media, Science and Technology Studies, Polytechnic Institute of NYU
In fall 2014, we are pleased to support an innovative team teaching collaboration between Steinhardt and the Polytechnic Institute for the first time. For their course Text and Technology, Professor Lisa Gitelman and Instructor Chris Leslie will run two courses concurrently at the two campuses to examine literary, non-literary, and literary-critical works that imagine the textual and the technological together. Students registered in an advanced English elective on the Washington Square campus and students registered in an advanced Technology, Culture, and Society elective at Poly will meet together once a week to discuss readings in common, in addition to engaging with each other online and in small group projects. Karen Karbiener, Marvin Taylor, Tavia Nyong’o and Jay Garcia talk about their pedagogical collaborations.
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A N N UA L R E PORT 2013-14
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GRANTS-IN-AID for
BOOK PUBLICATION SUBVENTIONS
Given the rising costs involved in publishing a monograph or edited collection, we have focused our Grants-in-Aid funding toward providing financial assistance for these endeavors. All full-time faculty with contracts in hand for a book with a humanistic focus are eligible to apply once every three years for awards of up to $1,500 to be applied toward costs incurred in the publication process. 2013-2014 AWARDEES PEDER ANKER, Gallatin
Global Design
AMY BENTLEY, Nutrition, Food Studies & Public Health, Steinhardt Inventing Baby Food: Taste, Health, and the Industrialization of the American Diet
Stefanos Geroulanos (Experimente im Individuum: Kurt Goldstein und die Frage des Organismus) and Nicholas Wolf (An Irish-Speaking Island: State, Religion, Community and the Linguistic Landscape in Ireland, 1770-1870) were featured panelists in two of our events: Symposium: Grant Writing for Graduate Students in the Humanities and Using Digital Tools in the Classroom and in Research, respectively.
EMANUELA BIANCHI, Comparative Literature, FAS The Feminine Symptom: Aleatory Matter in the Aristotelian Cosmos
SUSAN MURRAY, Media, Culture & Communication, Steinhardt Brought to You in Living Color
ROBERT FITTERMAN, Liberal Studies, FAS “No Wait, Yep. Definitely Still Hate Myself.”
MARILYN NONKEN, Music & Performing Arts, Steinhardt
STEFANOS GEROULANOS, History, FAS Experimente im Individuum: Kurt Goldstein und die Frage des Organismus
LUCIEN NOUIS, French, FAS
ANDREI GURUIANU, Expository Writing Department, FAS
Transatlantic Parallaxes: Toward Reciprocal Anthropology
The Spectral Piano: From Liszt, Scriabin, and Debussy to the Digital Age
Made In the Image of Stones
ALEX JASSEN, Hebrew and Judaic Studies, FAS
Scripture and Law in the Dead Sea Scrolls
De l’infini des biliotheques: L’archive epuree au XVIIIe siècle
SUSAN CAROL ROGERS, Anthropology, FAS
AVITAL RONELL, German, Comparative Literature, English, FAS
Loser Sons: Politics and Authority
NICOLE STAROSIELSKI, Media, Culture & Communication,
ILYA KLIGER, Russian and Slavic Studies, FAS
Persistent Forms: Explorations in Historical Poetics
Steinhardt The Undersea Network
MICHAEL KUNICHIKA, Russian and Slavic Studies, FAS
JANE TYLUS, Italian Studies and Comparative Literature, FAS
“Our Native Antiquity”: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Culture of Russian Modernism
JO LABANYI, Spanish and Portuguese, FAS
Engaging the Emotions in Spanish Culture and History
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Siena: City of Secrets
NICHOLAS WOLF, Ireland House, FAS
An Irish-Speaking Island: State, Religion, Community, and the Linguistic Landscape in Ireland, 1770-1870
T H E H U MAN ITIES I N ITIATIV E AT NEW YOR K UN IV E RS ITY
COCKTAILS for
NYU AUTHORS IN THE HUMANITIES
On March 3, 2014, NYU Press and the Humanities Initiative hosted our 7th annual Authors’ Cocktails. This festive event celebrates humanities faculty who published a book during the previous year. Our book exhibit featured over 100 books in humanities related fields and many authors generously donated a copy to our Graduate Student Reading room. President John Sexton and Provost David McLaughlin attended the event and President Sexton encouraged further humanities research collaborations and publications. Faculty Director Jane Tylus presented awards based on the books’ titles — some serious, some tongue-incheek, such as: Most prolific author (5 books in one year): Jean-Louis Cohen Most alliterative title: Laurence Maslon’s Superheroes: Capes, Cowls, and the Creation of Comic Book Culture Putin award: James Gilligan’s Why Some Politicians Are More Dangerous Than Others
View the 2014 Authors’ Cocktails photo gallery
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AN N UA L REPORT 2013-14
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ENGAGEMENT
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T H E H UMAN ITIES I N ITIATIV E AT NEW YORK UN IV ER S ITY
Connecting with the public by hosting intellectually stimulating events
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PANEL DISCUSSIONS YO RK , NY H FL R, NE W SQ UA RE , 5T 20 CO O PE R
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In true interdisciplinary form, these events create a space where a group of speakers can engage in discussion around a topic in the humanities. An evocative exhibit on ancient maps at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World uptown inspired an evening of discussion downtown called Measuring and Mapping Space on December 11, 2013. On April 1, 2014, Joan Breton Connelly, Greg Grandin, and Jo Labanyi shared their stories about publishing with trade presses, and editors Erika Goldman (Bellevue Literary Press), Alex Star (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and Robert Weil (Liveright / W.W. Norton) talked about the publishing industry today. On May 13, 2014 we concluded the year with a collaborative event called Encountering the 21st Century Archive, featuring the Founding Director of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, Professor Diana Taylor, and the Humanities Initiative fellows. COS PON SORE
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GREAT NEW BOOKS in the HUMANITIES This series comprises our signature book events held each month to highlight NYU faculty and their most recent publications. Books celebrated this year included:
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AGAINST WORLD LITERATURE: ON THE POLITICS OF UNTRANSLATABILITY Emily Apter
OOKS GREAT NEW B S IN THE HUMANITIE BOOKS
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THE RILKE ALPHABET Ulrich Baer
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JOH ENT R, DEPARTM COMMISSIONE ON, NYC OF SANITATI
DICTIONARY OF UNTRANSLATABLES: A PHILOSOPHICAL LEXICON Edited by Barbara Cassin Translation edited by Emily Apter, Jacques Lezra, & Michael Wood
Photo: Mitchell
LESSONS IN SECULAR CRITICISM Stathis Gourgouris
MODERATED
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MALIN GWYNNETH HUMANITIES
DIRECTOR, THE NYU INITIATIVE AT
ALEXANDRIAN COSMOPOLITANISM: AN ARCHIVE Hala Halim SECURITY: POLITICS, HUMANITY, AND THE PHILOLOGY OF CARE John Hamilton THE HUMAN SNAPSHOT Thomas Keenan PICKING UP: ON THE STREETS AND BEHIND THE TRUCKS WITH THE SANITATION WORKERS OF NEW YORK CITY Robin Nagle
FEELING BEAUTY: THE NEUROSCIENCE OF AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE G. Gabrielle Starr
A N N UA L RE PORT 2013-14
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These evenings are designed to bring together writers of fiction and non-fiction to share their stories and discuss their craft. Authors Zoe Heller, Gilbert King, and Maaza Mengiste joined us to illuminate their process of developing characters and incorporating historical context into their work. A group of writers and scholars gathered to discuss the legacy of British novelist Barbara Pym.
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Photo by Mayotte Magnus ©The Barbara Pym Society
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IC.
SPECIAL EVENTS and
GRADUATE STUDENT WORKSHOPS
In the fall, we hosted the inaugural gathering of the New York City Digital Humanities group (NYCDH), which was a weekend of lively conversations about digital scholarship. In addition to a robust offering of special events on the humanities, we designed two symposia to serve graduate students across the University. An informative discussion around grant writing and a panel about using digital tools in the classroom were productive and well attended. Videos of these events are available on our website, allowing us to deliver this important content to an even broader audience.
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INNOVATION
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T H E H UMAN ITIES I N ITIATIV E AT N EW YOR K UN IV ER S ITY
Experimenting with projects and programs to celebrate the humanities in new ways
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HUMANITIES AMBASSADORS UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT CLUB NYU’s first ever Humanities Ambassadors club seeks to strengthen the voice and identity of the humanities undergraduate student community with a special focus on exploring how a humanities education can prepare students for a wide range of successful careers. We began the Humanities Ambassadors in January 2014 by selecting our student leadership team from a group of over 25 applicants. 2013-2014 STUDENT LEADERSHIP TEAM
RAVI PERSAUD CAS
ALEX TAYLOR CAS
SHAYNA GARKOFSKY CAS
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CARLY KRAKOW GALLATIN
ALEX BRAVERMAN CAS
THOMAS COLLINS GALLATIN
DANIELLE BENEDETTI CAS
T H E H U MAN ITIES IN ITIATIV E AT NEW YORK U N IV ER S ITY
The students organized an event entitled “What can you do with a B.A. in the Humanities?”. Six speakers shared with students the impact that a humanities major had on their lives and careers. The event inspired an article in NYU Local called “Think Your Liberal Arts Major Won’t Get You A Job? Humanities Ambassadors Disagree.” NYU Local reported that the, “Humanities Ambassadors Club intends to deal with the issue of undergrad’s bewilderment when answering the what are you gonna do with that question.” Alex Braverman, a student on the leadership team, added, “The response to being a humanities major is always sort of negative. So part of the thing we wanted to do was to create awareness that humanities isn’t a poor choice or a dumb choice. It’s just as valid as any other career option.”
Kristen Mapes, Digital Humanities Specialist at Michigan State University, was one of six panelists at the event.
Christopher Leslie, co-director of the Science and Technology Studies program at NYU Poly, shared how his English Ph.D. equipped him for success today.
STUDENT LEADERS, LEFT TO RIGHT: Thomas
Collins, Alexandra Taylor, Alexandra Braverman, Carly Krakow, and Ravi Persaud. Photo: NYU Local.
Shortly after the article was published, USA Today picked up the story in a piece called “STEM vs. the Humanities. One, the Other, a Combination? Students Discuss.” In the article, Ravi Persaud, a member of the leadership team and a graduating senior said, “Our event on April 30 proved that there was still great and varied interest in the humanities. One hundred and two students attended the event from 9 of the schools at NYU. Aside from more traditional humanities majors, around 40% of [the audience] were from STEM fields.”
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ON BEING HUMAN With the help of a Curriculum Challenge Grant, Professor G. Gabrielle Starr and Professor Jane Tylus taught a course called “On Being Human,” which we hope will be the first of many team-taught freshman honors seminars focusing on a broad humanities topic. “On Being Human” is designed to introduce students to the nuts-and-bolts of humanistic inquiry – narrative, simile, ekphrasis, dialogue – as well as to the range of artistic and humanistic practices at NYU and in New York City. The course was held at our lovely space at 20 Cooper Square. Thanks to the generosity of numerous colleagues, students had the chance to learn in many hands-on ways. Aquila Theatre founder and Clinical Associate Professor of Classics, Peter Meineck, taught a class on acting. Students had the opportunity to meet with artist Vittoria Chierici, and to discuss her painting, Anghiari Verde, which we are fortunate to have on permanent display in our conference room. Students ended the semester meeting with the federal court judge John Koeltl.
TOP: Amani Dow, Kyle Carey, Brianna Lewis, Angela Baralo, Peter Meineck SECOND ROW: Aaron Hu, A.J. Samiljan BOTTOM ROW: Valentina Duque Bojanini, Christopher Connaughty, Chrissian Martinez,
Brianna Lewis, Wenyu Deng, Katherine Yang, Vittoria Chierici
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HUMANITIES in the NEXT QUARTER CENTURY Humanities in the Next Quarter Century is a collection of very brief essays in which our fellows addressed the overall umbrella theme of “What role can the humanities play in tackling the big challenges of the next quarter century?” Drawing from their own professional backgrounds and unique interests/talents, our fellows contributed essays that address the importance of the humanities in the face of the world’s big challenges.
CONTRIBUTORS ON LEARNING TO LIVE IN THE WORLD By Ademide Adelusi-Adeluyi NEUROHUMANITIES By Dwai Banerjee SELF-INDULGENCE By J. M. DeLeon
CITIZEN: HUMANIST By Ara H. Merjian OF THE NOW By Susan Murray SHADOW HISTORIES By Melissa Rachleff Burtt
WE ARE ALIVE & ON FIRE By Jen Heuson
SEVEN BILLION & GROWING By Andy Romig
FRANKENSTEIN By Dania Hückmann
DYNAMIC COMMUNITIES By Cara Shousterman
WHERE THE GOOD LIES By Tom Looser
LABORATORIES By Delia Solomons
IT TAKES TIME By Gwynneth C. Malin
ARCHIVING HUMANITY By Zeb Tortorici
BARE LIFE By Eduardo Matos-Martín
THE ART OF LISTENING By Jane Tylus
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The Humanities Initiative created an online publication of these essays available to readers on our website. A printed postcard advertising the publication was available at our many events.
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ALLIANCES
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T H E H UM AN ITIES I N ITI ATIV E AT NEW YORK UN IV ER S ITY
Supporting deep humanities awareness and education through external partnerships
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PUBLIC HUMANITIES FELLOWSHIP The Humanities Centers Initiative of the
PARTNER INSTITUTIONS Cara Shousterman, Ph.D. Candidate in Linguistics at NYU, was the 2013-2014 Public Humanities Fellow at the Humanities Initiative. Her dissertation is titled Speaking English in Spanish Harlem: Language Change in Puerto Rican English.
The Graduate Student Public Humanities Fellowship was developed in partnership by the New York Council for the Humanities and seven humanities centers at universities in New York. This fellowship encourages emerging humanities scholars to conceive of their work in relation to the public sphere. Fellows train in public scholarship methods and explore the public dimensions of their research by working with community organizations and seeking to reach audiences beyond the academy. Cara Shousterman from the Department of Linguistics was our first public humanities fellow. Among her many activities during the year, she joined the New York Council for the Humanities staff in Albany to take part in the annual Humanities Advocacy Day.
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The City University of New York The Center for the Humanities Columbia University Heyman Center for the Humanities Cornell University Society for the Humanities New York University The Humanities Initiative State University of New York at Buffalo Humanities Institute State University of New York at Stony Brook Humanities Institute Syracuse University Humanities Center
T H E H U MAN ITIES I N ITIATIV E AT NEW YOR K U N IV E RS IT Y
LEADERSHIP ALLIANCE MELLON INITIATIVE (LAMI) For the past three years, the Humanities Initiative has been pleased to sponsor the NYU-LAMI Summer Research Program for undergraduates from historically underrepresented groups. This nine-week intensive summer program prepares outstanding undergraduates for doctoral study in the humanities. Students conduct their own research under the supervision of NYU faculty mentors in their fields of study. Students participate in a writing course, a research methodology course, and a GRE preparation course. Most importantly, students each design and execute an original research project for presentation at the Leadership Alliance National Symposium in July. SUMMER 2013 STUDENT PROJECTS ELSA HARDY Cultures of Power: Harlem Children’s Zone and Poverty Intervention Efforts AURORA LLAMAS Extending Rawls: A Philosophical Approach to Socialized Inequality VERONICA RIVERA-NEGRON (De)Composing the Self: Embodied Imagery, Theatrical Space and Gender in the Performance of Teresa Hernandez
FROM TOP: Elsa Hardy (Wesleyan University), Aurora Llamas (Cornell University), and Veronica Rivera-Negron (University of Puerto Rico)
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NATIONAL ENDOWMENT for the HUMANITIES (NEH) The NEH Summer Stipends Program is a national program that provides awards for individuals to pursue scholarly work in the humanities during the summer. Projects may contribute to scholarly knowledge in a particular discipline or to the general public’s understanding of the humanities, and they may address broad topics or focused research in a single field. Recipients typically produce scholarly articles, books, archaeological site reports, translations, editions, or other scholarly tools in either traditional print or electronic formats. NYU may submit two proposals to the NEH and the Humanities Initiative coordinates this nomination process each summer. A total of 77 scholars received the NEH Summer Stipend in 2014. We are pleased to announce that two NYU faculty members were among them. 2014 NEH SUMMER STIPEND RECIPIENTS AISHA KHAN
Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology; Associated Faculty, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, FAS Religion and the View from Caribbean: Obeah and Hosay KIMBERLY PHILLIPS-FEIN
Associate Professor Gallatin The 1975 New York City Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of the Age of Austerity
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HUMANITIESINITIATIVE.ORG Created in 2007, the Humanities Initiative at NYU draws on the talents and energies of our faculty and students across the University to provide a forum for cross-disciplinary discussion and collaboration in the humanities and arts. To foster and enhance the humanities community at NYU, the Initiative sponsors a number of endeavors aimed at promoting interdisciplinary dialogue, teaching, and research. Funding for the Humanities Initiative is provided by Provost David McLaughlin and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
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