Humanities Day 2015 - Session 3

The Emergence and Evolution of Language: Some Ecological Perspectives

tpopelka — Wed, 19 Aug 2015 13:55:51 +0000

Presenter:

Over the past 2-3 decades, linguists have attempted to account for the emergence of language in mankind on the Darwinian evolutionary model. The scholarship has generally focused on articulating various ecological factors, chiefly changes in the hominine anatomy and mental capacity, which account for the protracted and incremental way in which language may have arisen. Capitalizing on inter-individual variation and population structure, this talk speculates on how linguistic diversity and community-specific norms emerged (while the agency lies in individuals) and on how the phenomena of language birth and death seem to have recurred several times over since the dispersal of our species out of East Africa about 50,000 years ago. These phenomena make it difficult to reconstruct a primordial language, if there is any reason at all to prefer language monogenesis over polygenesis.

Cinema’s Perspective, or, Why Should Renaissance Painting Matter for Cinema?

jsjoyce — Tue, 18 Aug 2015 20:39:06 +0000

Presenter:

Daniel Morgan

Session 3

A persistent way of thinking about cinema relies on the formative influence of linear perspective. Renaissance perspective, the story goes, was incorporated into the technology of photography, then carried over into motion picture cameras where it shapes the image on screen. This presentation sets out a different approach. Ranging across cinematic theories and practices, as well as camera technologies, it recasts the relation of painting to cinema—and, ultimately, the way we experience moving images.

Translation and the Implosion of National Literatures

jsjoyce — Tue, 18 Aug 2015 20:31:20 +0000

Presenter:

Mario Santana

Session 3

As the instrument that facilitates the circulation of texts, translation is often hailed for its role in the globalization of culture, but also ignored in the study of individual literatures. And yet, while translation breaks down national boundaries, it also localizes the global, and thus it does not necessarily make national literatures obsolete, but rather complicates them. This presentation will focus on the multilingualism of the Spanish literary system as a fertile ground for the exploration of the impact of translation in the configuration of national literatures.

The Finch and the Phoenix: Birds Across Worlds

jsjoyce — Mon, 17 Aug 2015 21:03:37 +0000

Presenter:

Successful collaborations between humanists, artists, and scientists are all too rare. The Arts|Science|Culture Initiative unites graduate students across disciplines to bring such collaborations to life. Hear from two A|S|C teams and learn about their research projects. “Syntax & Songbirds” analyzes the syntax and biophysics of finches to interpret birdsong through sound and imitation by an instrument of the research team's own invention. “The Phoenix Index” uses photographs of 130 years' worth of birds in the Field Museum’s collection to devise a novel means of tracking industrial pollution in the Great Lakes region.

The Civic Knowledge Project on the History of Diversity at UChicago

jsjoyce — Mon, 17 Aug 2015 20:28:21 +0000

Presenter:

Bart Schultz

Session 3

For over a decade, the Civic Knowledge Project (CKP) has worked to enhance diversity at the University of Chicago. By building rich South Side community connections based on humanities programming, the CKP has introduced thousands of members of the University community to such leading South Side figures as Timuel D. Black, the legendary Bronzeville historian and civil rights activist. Recent projects have also included a documentary on the UChicago origins of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and a tribute to the work of Dr. Julian Herman Lewis, the first African American to serve on the UChicago faculty (starting in 1917). Please join us—and some distinguished guest speakers—as we review the results of the CKP’s research on the historical meaning of diversity at UChicago and engage in a lively discussion of where we should go from here.

Matters of Semantics

jsjoyce — Mon, 17 Aug 2015 20:25:28 +0000

Presenter:

Itamar Francez

Session 3

Saying that something is a matter of semantics is usually a way of saying that it is unimportant in a particular way: that it is a matter only of how we define things. Semantics, however, is also a branch of the science of linguistics, the branch that deals with the systematic ways in which linguistic expressions relate to an extralinguistic reality. This presentation will explore some matters of semantics—what is and isn’t systematic about linguistic meaning, what kinds of discoveries have linguists made about meaning, and how the relation between sound and meaning figures in verbal art.

James J. Tissot and His Prodigal Son Etchings at the Smart Museum

jsjoyce — Mon, 17 Aug 2015 20:18:24 +0000

Presenter:

Olga Solovieva

Session 3

James J. Tissot’s cycle of five “Prodigal Son” etchings projects a parable from Luke’s Gospel into the modern life of England of the 1880s. In their intriguing treatment of the parable, the etchings reflect the pitfalls of meritocratic thinking as well as Tissot’s mystique as a figure of subversion and contradiction. The talk introduces the conundrum of the piece and the artist.

Impersonating Angels: The Journey of Stories from India to Europe

maskinner — Thu, 06 Aug 2015 17:41:41 +0000

Presenter:

Gary Tubb

Session 3

A great many of the stories told in Europe come ultimately from India, and some of the history of their journey has been traced through a series of translations, teaching us much about the connections between scholarship and the rise of empires. In this talk the evidential importance of narrative oddities is examined through a fresh look at Sanskrit texts reflecting what must have been the Indian original of Boccaccio's tale of the friar who seduced a lady by impersonating the angel Gabriel.

Muralism vs. Abstraction: Competing Ideas of Political Art in Latin America

maskinner — Thu, 06 Aug 2015 17:40:09 +0000

Presenter:

Megan Sullivan

Session 3

In the early twentieth century, artists in Latin America broke free from the elite sanctuary of the academies and began to imagine new forms of art that would speak directly to the masses. Between the 1920s and the 1940s, two radically opposed solutions emerged: muralism and abstraction. This presentation will examine the very different ways in which each sought to define the masses of the Americas and will investigate their conflicting claims to be a truly revolutionary art for the region.

The Evil Empire Strikes Back, or, Why Russia is Hollywood's Filmic Nemesis...Again

maskinner — Thu, 06 Aug 2015 17:38:55 +0000

Presenter:

Malynne Sternstein

Session 3

After a short interlude when “Western” horror, suspense, and action films looked to sites other than Eastern Europe for its villain—think of the spectacular failure of the remake of Red Dawn (2012) with North Koreans instead of the Soviets—the Russian scourge is back (it never left) and its specter haunts the screens of the “civilized world” arguably more so now than during the Cold War. Why does the Eastern European foe endure in mass media? What use does the construed and especial “immanence” of the Other Europe have and enjoy in popular media today over twenty years after the fall of the “Evil Empire”?