Month: September 2019
Amherst College Hosts Book Talk with Christian Rogowski
Filmed in 1986/87 in still-divided Berlin, Wim Wenders‘s “Wings of Desire” is both a utopian fairy tale and a fascinating time capsule of that late Cold War moment. Together with legendary French cinematographer Henri Alekan and Austrian author Peter Handke, Wenders created a multilayered filmic poem of dazzling complexity: the skies over Berlin are populated with angels bearing witness to its inhabitants’ everyday concerns. One falls in love with a beautiful young woman, a trapeze artist in a traveling circus, and decides to forfeit his immortality. Wenders’s groundbreaking film has been hailed as a paean to love, a rumination on the continued presence in Berlin of a troubled German history, as well as an homage to the life-affirming power of the cinematic imagination. Christian Rogowski guides the reader through the film’s many aspects, using archival research to bring out new insights into its making and meanings. Rogowski is a G. Armour Craig Professor in Language and Literature in the Department of German at Amherst College.
The talk is on Tuesday, October 22 at 5PM in the Center for Humanistic Inquiry (CHI) at Amherst College.
Kerill O’Neill on the Creation and Role of Colby Humanities
Kerrill O’Neill, director of the Colby Center for the Arts and Humanities is lead author of an article for the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) on the history of the Colby Center and the critical role that it plays in the pedagogical and intellectual mission of the College and the life of its students and faculty. Colby Center was founded in 2008 thanks to a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the support of Colby College president and administration.
Northeastern Humanities Center Year in Review Features NEHC
Our colleagues at Northeastern University Humanities Center had quite the productive 2018-2019 academic year, including funding residential fellowships, and sponsoring and hosting various events and programs, the latter of which included events funded or sponsored by the New England Humanities Consortium (NEHC). With generous support from the Mellon Foundation, NEHC and its member institutes, including Northeastern, hosted a number of events as part of the Time’s Up: What Now? series, which explored current expressions of the “Time’s Up” movement, sexism, misogyny, and romance. Northeastern was also among three NEHC-member institutes to host Laurie Essig, professor of Gender, sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Middlebury College. Her visit was part of an alternative Valentines’ Day activity to discuss “feminist perspectives on online dating and romance.” Finally, Northeastern professor of history, Martin Blatt, received $9,500 in funding from the NEHC toward his project “William Apess’ Eulogy on King Philip – Public Reading and Panel Discussion.” Read about these and much more on the Northeastern Humanities Center Website.
UCHI Awarded Luce Foundation Grant for “Seeing Truth” Exhibits
The University of Connecticut Humanities Institute (UCHI) is proud to be the recipient of a $275,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation to support the programming of an exhibition entitled ““Seeing Truth: Art, Science, and Making Knowledge (1750-2023).” This exhibition will be presented at the William Benton Museum of Art during the 2023 academic year in collaboration with the American Museum of Natural History. UConn President Thomas C. Katsouleas made the announcement at the reception marking the 19th season of UCHI’s fellowships. The grant, whose principle investigator is UCHI Director of Academic Affairs, Alexis Boylan, will bring together various scientific, cultural, and educational artifacts to challenge our notions and ideas of what counts as a “scientific” object or a work of “art.” Seeing Truth is one part of UCHI’s larger upcoming initiative entitled The Future of Truth. To learn more about Seeing Truth, visit a UConn Today article on the grant.