On December 8th, 2011, Charles Esche, Director of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, will be speaking at the Graduate Center, CUNY on the contemporary art museum’s experimental approach ...
New at the Center
Reflections on Jerome Rothenberg @ 80
By: Kendra Sullivan
On Friday, December 9th, thirty-three friends and collaborators gathered to honor poet, translator, editor, and anthologist, Jerome Rothenberg on the occasion of his 80th birthday. Organized by Charles Bernstein, Pierre Joris, and Steve Clay, the evening featured tributes presented by: Ammiel Alcalay, Bruce Andrews & Sally Silvers, Homero Aridjis, Steve Clay, Peter Cockelbergh, Monica de la Torre, Rachel Blau duPlessis, Al Filreis, Michael Heller & Jane Augustine, Susan Howe, Robert Kelly, Basil King, Ligorano-Reese, Ernesto Livon-Grosman, Pete Monaco, Charlie Morrow and Maija-Leena Remes, Rochelle Owens & George Economou, Nicole Peyrafitte, George Quasha, Jeffrey Robinson, Diane Rothenberg, Hiroaki Sato, Carolee Schneemann, Danny Snelson, Anne Tardos, Lee Ann Brown & Tony Torn, Quincy Troupe, Ian Tyson, Anne Waldman, and Mark Weiss.
Historical Times: The Capacities of an Art Museum and How it Comes to Terms with the World Today
On December 8th, 2011, Charles Esche, Director of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, will be speaking at the Graduate Center, CUNY on the contemporary art museum’s experimental approach towards art’s role in society. Below are some fascinating clips of Charles Esche responding to questions about art and its relationship to society, politics, and human engagement with the world from the Play Van Abbe Research Project on the museum in the 21st century at the Van Abbemuseum:
Is There Anything More to See? Civil War Photography and History
How do photographs from the Civil War function as historical documents that continue to shape our vision of the past in distinct ways? How do they continue to inform our imagination of Civil War history in the present? What is the link between imaging and imagining? These were just some of the questions provoked by what was an incredibly stimulating panel on Civil War photography and history last week. The talk, sponsored by the American Social History Project as a part of their, “Still Hazy After All These Years” series, featured a panel of noted art and American historians that included, Martha Sandweiss, Anthony Lee, Mary Niall Mitchell and Deborah Willis, “to address the persistence of photography’s influence over the vision of the Civil War and what remains to be learned from the war’s visual record.”
Art, History, and Popular Culture with Deborah Kass
As a part of out Artists and Writers series here at the Center for the Humanities, Deborah Kass will be in conversation with Nancy K. Miller, Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the Graduate Center, this coming week. For those not familiar with her work, Kass’ paintings examine the intersections of art, history and popular culture. Check out this interview with her from a few years back courtesy of Velvetpark. Enjoy!
Searching for the Global Hip Hop Generation…
Last Monday, Sujatha Fernandez and a group she described as her “dream panel” that included, Imani Perry, William Upski Wimsatt, Marlon Burgess and Julio Cardenas, got together to celebrate the publication of her most recent book, Close to the Edge: In Search of the Global Hip Hop Generation. The book continues Fernandez’s incisive scholarship that explores localized manifestations of global hip hop culture and social movements outside of the United States (you can read more about her earlier work here and here). The panel, which included academics, emcees, and a journalist, is without a doubt a testament to her ability to tap into the diversity of global voices participating in hip hop today, and in part speaks to the mission of the book itself.
Tropic of Chaos: A Discussion with Christian Parenti
(This interview initially appeared on September 29th, 2011 at the Institute for Policy Studies Foreign Policy in Focus site. It is reposted here with permission from Michael Busch.)
In many respects, 2011 has been marked as much by the mayhem of nature as it has by the upheavals of men. Although challenges to political authority have captured the imaginations of millions and produced exciting tremors of revolution across the continents, Mother Nature’s increasingly ferocious response to the heavy environmental footprint of industrial production will likely be judged the most profound source of social change around the world in the years to come.
Citizenship as Identity
On Friday October 14th, Leti Volpp, professor of law at Berkeley, attended the Revolutionizing American Studies seminar at the Center for the Humanities to discuss the concept of citizenship prior to her afternoon talk on the indigenous as alien. Here are the opening remarks for the seminar given by Cambridge Ridley Lynch, reposted with her permission from the Revolutionizing American Studies blog.
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Neurocultures…
At the intersections of contemporary art and neuroscience with Suzanne Anker’s MRI Butterfly. Enjoy!
What is Conservatism? Probably not what you think.
This past Thursday, Chris Hayes, Editor-at-Large at The Nation and MSNBC host, sat down with Corey Robin, professor of political science at the CUNY Graduate Center and Brooklyn College, to discuss his new book, The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin. The fact that it was standing room only should come as no surprise given the topic of Robin’s latest work and the discussions it has already provoked since its release (see the compilation of early reviews and interviews here). The exchange was as productive as it was entertaining. The relaxed format and the ease with which Hayes and Robin played off one another allowed for a clear and thoughtful exposition of the ideas in Robin’s book. In case you missed it, here are some of the highlights:
