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New Humanities Initiatives
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Humanities War and Peace Initiative (HWPI)
 The Division of Humanities is delighted to announce a new 3-year project, the Humanities War and Peace Initiative (HWPI), fostering the study of war and peace from the perspective of scholars in the Humanities, in conversation with colleagues from around Columbia and the world. The HWPI will support a broad range of activities, including individual scholarship, new scholarly collaborations, projects and events within existing interdisciplinary structures, teaching, community outreach and programming, performance and exhibition, and ongoing dialogue in other forms. There will be a Core Curriculum dimension and we also warmly encourage projects that engage our global centers. Our understanding of war and its meanings is broad, accounting for war’s effects across the full spectrum of human experience.
The HWPI will be run by Sarah Cole, Dean of Humanities, and managed by the Director of Decanal Affairs in the Humanities, Jessica Lilien, and will be guided by a faculty steering committee. More detail and calls for proposals will be coming up; for now, we want to alert you to this initiative and encourage you to think about projects you might develop.
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New Humanities Faculty Salons
 Please join Division of Humanities Dean Sarah Cole in welcoming our newest colleagues from across the division. Hosted by the Division of Humanities in the Arts and Sciences and co-sponsored by the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities, the New Humanities Faculty Salons are an opportunity to meet the twelve faculty members joining the Columbia Humanities community during the 2018-19 school year. Over drinks and snacks, these new faculty members from across the departments will share their current research. All interested faculty and graduate students are encouraged to attend.
The series begins on:
Tuesday, December 11
5:00pm
Heyman Center for the Humanities, 2nd Floor Common Room
Spring salons have been scheduled for January 30 and April 4; the lineup for those events and other details about the series are available at fas.columbia.edu/salons.
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Ezra Tawil (Visiting Faculty, English and Core)
Between 1780 and 1800, authors of imaginative literature in the new United States wanted to assert that their works, which bore obvious connections to anglophone literature on the far side of the Atlantic, nevertheless constituted a properly "American" tradition. No one had yet figured out, however, what it would mean to write like an American, what literature with an American origin would look like, nor what literary characteristics the elusive quality of Americanness could generate. Literature, American Style: The Originality of Imitation in the Early Republic returns to this historical moment when a fantasy about the unique characteristics of U.S. literature first took shape.
Tawil's Literature, American Style was published this summer by UPenn Press.
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Brinkley Messick (MESAAS)
A case study in the textual architecture of the venerable legal and ethical tradition at the center of the Islamic experience, Shari'a Scripts: A Historical Anthropology is a work of historical anthropology focused on Yemen in the early twentieth century. There - while colonial regimes, late Ottoman reformers, and early nationalists wrought decisive changes to the legal status of the sharīʿa, significantly narrowing its sphere of relevance - the Zaydī school of jurisprudence, rooted in highland Yemen for a millennium, still held sway.
Messick will discuss Shari'a Scripts as part of the New Books in the Arts & Sciences series on December 5 at the Heyman Center, with Mashal Saif, Islam Dayeh, Guy Burak, Gil Anidjar, Intisar Rabb, and Mahmood Mamdani.
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Matthew McKelway (AHAR)
McKelway's Rosetsu: Ferocious Brush surveys Nagasawa Rosetsu’s art with sixty of his most important paintings, beginning with his earliest works in the realist mode of his teacher Maruyama Okyo, and ending with his haunting, visionary, and occasionally bizarre final masterpieces.
Co-written with Khanh Trinh, Rosetsu: Ferocious Brush accompanied the exhibition at Museum Reitberg in Zurich, also co-curated by McKelway and Trinh.
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Souleymane Bachir Diagne (French)
Diagne recently published En Quete d'Afrique(S). Universalisme et pensee decoloniale (Albin Michel) in France, co-authored with French anthropologist Jean-Loup Amselle. The book is a conversation between the two on postcolonialism, Afrocentrism, and the philosophical traditions of Africa.
Interviews with Diagne and reviews of the book are available at outlets including Le Monde, Le Figaro, and L'Express, as well as on Radio France Internationale and France Culture for the radio, and on television on Arte.
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Named Lectures & Presentations
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Jennifer Wenzel (English and MESAAS)
"In mining parlance, overburden is the technical term for the layers of dirt, rock, and water that must be excavated to get down to valuable minerals below. Borrowing Mary Louise Pratt's idea of the 'improving eye,' Wenzel contemplates what it means to see with an 'extracting eye.' She argues that overburden is an aesthetic judgment as well as an economic one: a way of seeing and a way of imagining what can't be seen. To see the earth as overburden requires a kind of X-ray vision whose image renders negative everything but profit."
Wenzel delivered the keynote address, "From Improvement to Overburden," at the conference "Resisting Extractivism in Border Zones: Art and Protest from the Arctic North to the Global South," at UiT, the Arctic University of Norway, in Tromsø, Norway.
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Emanuelle Saada (French)
Saada delivered the Edgar L. Newman Memorial Lecture at the Western Society for French History in Portland, Maine. Her talked was titled: "Without Distinction of … Sex. The Constitutional Politics of Race and Sex in Contemporary France."
Saada also recently published two pieces: a chapter titled "Constitutions and Forms of Pluralism in the Time of Conquest: The French Debates Over the Colonization of Algeria in the 1830s and 1840s" in Forms of Pluralism and Democratic Constitutionalism (Andrew Arato, Jean L. Cohen, Astrid von Busekist eds., CU Press) and a chapter titled "The Longue Durée of French Decolonization" in the Oxford Handbook of the Ends of Empire.
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Chris Washburne (Music)
"The film’s Expressionistic visual style of odd angular forms and dark shadows fits perfectly with the unexpected, sometimes jarring, contours of jazz, and vice versa. ... Silent screen movement isn’t smooth; the jazz here is sharp around the edges, too."
Washburne and his ensemble, Rags and Roots, accompanied a screening of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari at the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts with a live performance of his original score. His work was praised as bringing "new, revelatory definition" to the film in The Berkshire Edge.
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Katja Vogt (Philosophy)
"For philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, there is no deep divide between philosophical accounts of action, and accounts in psychology, biology, and physics. There are different questions and different foci, different kinds of insights one can aim for from the perspectives of these fields. But the goal is to understand action. I like this goal, and to achieve it, philosophers need to talk to and learn from researchers in other fields."
Vogt was interviewed by Istvan Zoltan Zardai for Philosophy of Action
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James Shapiro (English)
"For those who believe that literary studies ought to be an agent of social change, the election of Trump has been both a rebuke and a wake-up call."
Shapiro published "The Winter of Our Discontent" in The New York Review of Books.
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Hussein Rashid (Religion)
"A lot of people might assume Muslim immigration started in 1965 when the U.S. had a period of immigration reform, others will date it back to the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, yet others to the 9/11 attacks, but usually no one looks further back than the 1960s and certainly not beyond the 20th century for this history at the popular level."
Rashid spoke with USA Today about the long history of Muslims living in America.
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Ed Morales (LAIC)
"Reading Morales’s dissection of Latinx identity formation...one begins to believe that the x in 'Latinx' is more than just a means of providing gender-neutrality. As in algebra, the x is variable. How a Latino or Latina perceives himself or herself - and how he or she is perceived by others - often depends on context."
Read a review of Morales's book, Latinx: The New Force in American Politics and Culture, in The New York Times. Morales also spoke about the term "Latinx" in The New York Times's El Espace.
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Jack Halberstam (English, IRWGS)
"Knowing and learning is about being open to hearing different points of view and things that challenge your way of being. A university [that] lacks [a Women's and Gender Studies] program is doing injustice for its students. If it goes, a lot more goes with it.”
Halberstam spoke at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn in support of their recently defunded WGS program. The issue was covered in AM New York.
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Katherine Franke (IRWGS)
"Ironically, the arguments made by attorneys working for the Justice Department provide greater protection to bighorn sheep in Southern Arizona than to human beings, whether they be migrants at risk of death or people of faith coming to their aid."
Franke submitted amicus briefs on behalf of seven scholars of religious liberty law in two cases in which the federal government is prosecuting members of the Tucson-based group No More Deaths/No Más Muertes. Access the amicus brief in United States of America vs. Caitlin Persis Deighan, et al, the amicus brief in United States of America vs. Natalee Renee Hoffman, et al, or read more details here.
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Andrew Delbanco (English)
"Despite its title, Andrew Delbanco’s The War Before the War isn’t so much about confrontation as it is about the earnest, and often self-defeating, methods used to avoid it. In other words, this is a story about compromises - and a riveting, unsettling one at that."
Delbanco's newest book, The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul From the Revolution to the Civil War was reviewed in The New York Times.
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Denise Cruz (English)
"In the world of Manila couture, we have a group of men and women, many of them queer men and women, who have become involved with the elite, and have been essential to that power structure in Manila. What happens when you shift the stage in terms of labor from the traditional notion of laboring bodies, to instead more elite producers? You see this group of people, for instance gay men, who are really essential to making some of the most powerful women in the city look beautiful. And in the Philippines, looking beautiful has had a long history of actually manifesting political power."
Cruz spoke with anthropologist Kevin Lewis O'Neill about the couture fashion industry in the Philippines for "Slow Fashion in the Philippines" on the CDTS podcast.
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Akeel Bilgrami (Philosophy)
"Politics is a demanding and difficult terrain. Anyone with a humane politics cannot allow the world to sober her too much. Anyone with a sensible politics cannot allow her idealism to make her politics remote and arcane. How to navigate these twin constraints, pulling in different directions, requires a sense of balance that is hard to maintain. Nothing seems more important today than maintaining it."
Read Bilgrami's "An Alliance With We The People" in Outlook.
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 New Books in the Arts & Sciences:
Celebrating Recent Work by Brinkley Messick
Shari'a Scripts: A Historical Anthropology
Wednesday, December 5
4:15pm
The Heyman Center, 2nd Floor Common Room
A case study in the textual architecture of the venerable legal and ethical tradition at the center of the Islamic experience, Sharīʿa Scripts is a work of historical anthropology focused on Yemen in the early twentieth century. There - while colonial regimes, late Ottoman reformers, and early nationalists wrought decisive changes to the legal status of the sharīʿa, significantly narrowing its sphere of relevance - the Zaydī school of jurisprudence, rooted in highland Yemen for a millennium, still held sway.
Featuring:
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 Queer Studies: Here, There and Elsewhere
Friday, December 7 - Saturday, December 8
Columbia Global Centers | Paris at Reid Hall
This conference brings scholars together from France and the US to discuss queer theory, race, nation, and immigration in Columbia’s Global Center in Paris. In the wake of a fierce "anti-gender" movement in Europe, queer theory has been characterized as a foreign import, as an American imperialism promoting ideas fundamentally antithetic to French political culture. What fantasies of contagion and reproduction lie at the heart of this French (conservative) version of “queer theory” and what is the actual state of queer theory in the French academy today? The goal of this conference is to bring together French and American scholars to reflect on these questions, exchange ideas, and foster collaborations.
Details, including the full program, are available at globalcenters.columbia.edu. |
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 New Humanities Faculty Salon
Tuesday, December 11
5:00pm
Heyman Center for the Humanities, 2nd Floor Common Room
Please join Division of Humanities Dean Sarah Cole in welcoming our newest colleagues from across the division. Hosted by the Division of Humanities in the Arts and Sciences and co-sponsored by the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities, the New Humanities Faculty Salons are an opportunity to meet the twelve new faculty members joining the Columbia Humanities community during the 2018-19 school year. Over drinks and snacks, these new faculty members from across the departments will share their current research. All interested faculty and graduate students are encouraged to attend.
The series begins on Tuesday, December 11, at 5:00pm, with: Spring salons have been scheduled for January 30 and April 4; the lineup for those events and all other details about the series are available at fas.columbia.edu/salons. |
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Fellowships, Grants, & CFPs
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The National Humanities Center is offering its Summer Residency Program in Research Triangle Park, NC from June 3–29, 2019. This summer program serves to facilitate progress on a research project for selected faculty from sponsoring institutions. NHC will provide residents with access to facilities, library and dining services, and the opportunity to spend time on focused scholarly work, while also housing them at a nearby hotel with unlimited access to the Center. More information about this program can be found here.
For information on how to apply, contact Jessica Lilien at jl3880@columbia.edu.
Deadline: December 2018, until spaces are filled
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The Anthem World Epic and Romance series publishes rigorous, innovative scholarly studies dealing with epics and chivalric romances from across the globe, both written and oral, in poetry and prose, as well as adaptations in theater and cinema. The series seeks to foster new comparative and cultural understandings of heroic narratives, focusing on literary and geopolitical context, ranging from antiquity through the medieval and early modern period to contemporary society.
We welcome submissions of proposals for challenging and original works from emerging and established scholars that meet the criteria of our series. We make prompt editorial decisions. Our titles are published in print and e-book editions and are subject to peer review by recognized authorities in the field. Should you wish to send in a proposal for a monograph (mid-length and full-length), edited collection, handbook or companion, reference or course book, please contact us at: proposal@anthempress.com.
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The Italian Academy invites applications for their 2019-2020 Fellowships. They will be awarding one Alexander Bodini Fellowship in Developmental and Adolescent Psychiatry, one Alexander Bodini Fellowship in Transitions from Globalism to Nationalism and Populism, up to four Weinberg Fellowships in Architectural History and Preservation, and approximately 14 fellowships devoted to the themes of cultural heritage and of migrations and, as in the past, of humanities & neuroscience. Applications are encouraged from all countries. Candidates must be at the post-doctoral or faculty level. Fellows receive a stipend, health benefits, travel allowance, and an office in the Academy on the Columbia University campus.
Deadline: December 3, 2018
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The Massachusetts Historical Society will offer more than forty research fellowships for the academic year 2019-2020.
For those studying the U.S. Civil War, its causes, or its memory, the Boston Athenaeum and the MHS offer the Suzanne and Caleb Loring Fellowship on the Civil War, its Origins, and Consequences. Fellows spend at least four weeks at each institution. This fellowship carries a stipend of $4,000.
For more information, visit masshist.org/research/fellowships, email fellowships@masshist.org, or phone 617-646-0577.
Deadline: February 15, 2019
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Columbia's annual Presidential Awards for Outstanding Teaching recognize teaching excellence at both the undergraduate and graduate levels and honor those who have had a lasting influence on the intellectual development of our students. Each year the University bestows these awards on five faculty members and three graduate student instructors to honor individual excellence and celebrate the important contributions they make. All full-time, part-time, and adjunct faculty may be nominated (except prior winners). Details are available here. Nominations for Faculty may be submitted here.
Deadline: February 1, 2019
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The goal of the Columbia Population Research Center (CPRC) seed grant program is to help faculty lay the groundwork for intellectually innovative research projects in population, health, and society to the point where they can attract external funding. The CPRC is interested in proposals that address one or more of our research priorities. Applications should 1) focus on the CPRC’s four primary research areas; 2) link cutting-edge research in neuroscience with the social, behavioral, or health sciences; 3) propose globally focused research; 4) develop research methodology; and/or propose policy-related research oriented toward pressing social issues in the domestic or international arena.
Seed grant applications will be accepted on a rolling basis. Please submit your application to cprc@columbia.edu. Applicants will typically be notified within one month of submission.
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