PROJECTS ASSOCIATED WITH MY
HUMANITIES PROFESSORSHIP, 2007-08

THE LECTURE

On Thursday, September 13, I kicked off the year's activities with a presentation, “How Do I Love Thee, Science? A Taxonomy of Sorties Across the Great Divide.”  Administration Building Auditorium, 7:30 p.m.  Here is the slide presentation.

CARLOS ARMESTO AND EMILY DeCOLA: THE SERENDIB PROJECT

Carlos Armesto is Associate Artistic Director of New York's Ensemble Studio Theatre and coordinator of EST's ten-year alliance with the Sloan Foundation to produce the First Light Festival.  During the 2007 festival, Carlos directed David Zellnik's Serendib, a play about a band of Sri Lankan monkeys and about a team of scientists who have been studying their behavior for more than three decades.  It's also about a crew of documentary filmmakers who have come to make a movie about the scientists and the monkeys.  Carlos and Emily DeCola--creator of the puppets which represent the monkeys--were on campus September 10-15 working with actors and playwrights in the MFA program.  They presented a scene from Serendib at the Hartung Theatre on Friday, September 14.

MIKE FINKEL'S TRUE STORY

Mike Finkel, former contributing editor for the New York Times Magazine and currently a staff writer for National Geographic, visited campus on February 6-7.  He gave a public presentation and reading based on his 2005 book True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa and met with journalism and English classes to discuss science writing and media ethics.

CROSS-CULTURAL CONVERSATIONS

On several occasions through the academic year, the campus community heard faculty from the sciences, the arts, and the humanities converse informally about the alliances among their disciplines--and the differences.   On the roster  were Judy Parrish, James Foster, Jodie Nicotra, Sanford Eigenbrode, Michael O'Rourke,  Dan Bukvich, Tom Bitterwolf, Larry Forney,  Jason Johnstone-Yellin, and Matthew Slater.   More... 

SPRING 2008 COURSE: IMAGINING SCIENCE (ENGLISH 404-06)

This course examines ways in which people with roots in the humanities and arts  have represented scientific issues.  More . . .

BERGLAND AND WALD: WRITING SCIENCE FROM THE HUMANITIES

Renée Bergland of Simmons College and Priscilla Wald of Duke University, both professors of English, stretch the borders of the discipline in their 2008 books.  They spoke about their work on Thursday, April 3, at 7:30 p.m., in the Commons Whitewater Room.

Bergland is the author of Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science: An Astronomer among the American Romantics, a study of how science closed its doors to women in the nineteenth century, told through the story of an American astronomer who achieved international fame .   "The best thing in its line since Dava Sobel's Longitude. Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science tells a great, if too little known, story of an intellectual woman in 19th century New England. And it is beautifully told: I simply could not put it down. Anyone who cares about women's education in America should read this compelling and indispensable book." —Robert D. Richardson, author of Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind, Emerson: The Mind on Fire, and William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism

 Wald's work, Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative, examines how we understand the fear and fascination elicited by accounts of communicable disease outbreaks.  "Rippling across the span of the twentieth century, Priscilla Wald's book traces the trajectories of `outbreak narratives,' stories about the spread and conquest of contagious diseases. With beautifully crafted prose, Wald shows how the scientific and fictional, social and microbial intermingle as outbreak narratives confront an essential paradox, that human connectedness both imperils and saves us. Contagious is essential reading for science studies, for the field of literature and medicine, and indeed for anyone interested in the social, discursive, and cultural implications of epidemiology."--N. Katherine Hayles, University of California, Los Angeles

THE HUMANITIES OUTREACH PROJECT

Funded by a grant from University Extension and Outreach.  UI students majoring in humanities disciplines mentored high school students from Deary, Troy, and Kendrick High Schools.  More . . .

Project Coordinator: Jeff Jones
UI Students:  Ben Cleveland (Music), Kimbre Lancaster (Theatre & Film), Alli Ockinga (English), Mike Rush (Philosophy, Chemistry)

THE CLEMENTE COURSE PLANNING PROJECT

With the assistance of a planning grant from the Idaho Humanities Council, I researched the feasibility of establishing a Clemente Course in northern Idaho.  This program, begun at Bard College in 1996, has brought high-quality humanities courses to low-income adults all over the country.  More . . .

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