The Joyce and Elizabeth

Hall Center for the Humanities

Fall 1994 Communiqué

The University of Kansas

In this issue:

The Hall Center Communiqué is published twice a year. It circulates to humanities faculty at the University of Kansas, to other humanities centers around the country, and to other agencies which fund humanities programs.

Editor: Elizabeth Barnhill. Queries, responses or submissions may be directed to the Joyce and Elizabeth Hall Center for the Humanities, 211 Watkins Home, The University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045-2967; telephone (785) 864-4798; e-mail hallcntr@ukans.edu.

From the Director...

 By the time this Hall Center Communiqué comes out, I will have taken a year's leave from KU to become a fellow at Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. I readily confess to knowing no more about the behavioral sciences than a hog does of mathematics. The Behavioral Sciences Center knows that what I plan work on there is definitely humanistic, not scientific, in intellectual orientation. Still it seems they are willing to let me join the "ologists," as I sometimes refer to them (in awe)-and not just me but a sprinkling of other humanists as well, so that the forty-some fellows that represent this year's contingent at the Behavioral Sciences Center should end up with a good deal of interdisciplinary breadth. No doubt this will entail many unforeseen advantages for my own work.

Among the Hall Center programs for the coming academic year that I regret missing are the fall faculty seminar oncreativity, directed by Pete Casagrande, and the spring minicourse on convergences between the humanities and social sciences, directed by Allan Hanson. The fact that Allan, an anthropologist, served as a productive member of an earlier Hall Center faculty seminar, and that Pete, a Victorian literature specialist, will share with Allan in leading one session in this spring's minicourse testifies to the creative potential of dialogues between the humanities and the social sciences. I hope to return from Stanford with a clearer sense of how to facilitate such dialogue to the mutual benefit of both fields of study.

I also regret not being on hand to help with the Hall Center's new efforts to advise faculty colleagues on grant and funding opportunities for their research. With the support of the College and RGSPS, the Hall Center will be offering two services to any faculty member interested in exploring possible sources of funding for his or her research. Beginning in the fall 1994 the Center will add to its staff a grant coordinator whose job will be to search existing databases and other published resources to help individual faculty members think concretely about grants they might apply for. We have also set up a team of faculty advisors, headed by Maria Carlson, to provide peer review and consultation to colleagues who would like feedback about their proposals prior to final submission.

In the past when I thought of support for my research I considered only the familiar resources for humanists: the NEH, the ACLS, the American Philosophical Society, the Guggenheim, the National Humanities Center. Then serendipitously the chance to go to the Behavioral Sciences Center came my way. I hope that the Hall Center's new grant advising service will give all those who use it a similar sense of enhanced, perhaps even unexpected, opportunity for research support. In this issue...

Byron Caldwell Smith Competition Announced

 The 1995 Byron Caldwell Smith award competition is underway. The award is given biennially to an individual who lives or is employed in Kansas and who has had published an outstanding book in the calendar years 1993 or 1994. The book must be a work of scholarship or creative literature that meets the criteria of "originality and superiority in conception and execution, and of taste, proportion and outstanding scholarship." The 1993 award was split between Norman E. Saul (History and Russian & East European Studies at KU) for his book Distant Friends: The United States and Russia, 1763-1867, and Sandra Zimdars-Swartz (Religious Studies at KU) for her book Encountering Mary: From La Salette to Medjugorje.

The $2,000 award was established at the bequest of Kate Stephens, a former KU student and the University's first woman professor. As an undergraduate at KU, Kate Stephens learned to love the study of Greek language and literature from Professor Byron Caldwell Smith (who at the age of 24 was the youngest member of the faculty in 1872). Kate Stephens received her Master of Arts degree at KU and led the early struggle for women's rights and suffrage in this area. Professor Stephens taught Greek Language and Literature at KU from 1878 to 1885.

To nominate an author, submit a letter of nomination, three non-returnable copies of the nominee's book, and a statement regarding the nominee's Kansas residency to the Hall Center, Smith Award. Deadline for nominations is March 1, 1995. In this issue...

Travel Grants Awarded

The Hall Center travel grants selection committee has awarded $5,000 for the period July 1, 1994 to December 31, 1994. These awards provided funds to Donna Koepp (Government Documents and Map Library) for research in Washington, D.C. on a checklist and index to about 50,000 maps from the U.S. Congressional Serial Set, 1789-1969; Pok Chi Lau (Design) to work on a photo-documentary essay on Shen Zhen, China; Paul Mirecki (Religious Studies) for an analysis of a twelfth century Greek scroll held by the Regenstein Library, University of Chicago; Isidro Rivera (Spanish and Portuguese) to visit the Library of the Hispanic Society of America in New York City to study the incunable of the Hystoria de Apolonia; Barry Shank (American Studies) for travel to the Popular Culture Library at Bowling Green State University to conduct research on his book-length study of the American greeting card industry; Hagith Sivan (History) to France to complete research for her contribution to The Princeton Atlas of the Greek and Roman World; Iris Smith (English) to New York City to research an article on productions staged since 1990 by the internationally-known theatre collective Mabou Mines; and Marsha Weidner (History of Art) for travel to China to conduct research for a book on the roles of Buddhist monasteries in the history of Ming painting. In this issue...

From the Library... Watson Opens Computer Lab

The transition from one generation of technology to another has been made visibly apparent over the summer in Watson Library, with the transformation of the Typing Room into a staffed computer lab. Named in honor of Marilyn Clark, retired reference librarian, the Clark Lab consists of ten networked PC's and six printers. Each workstation all donated by the Computer Center provides access to the Libraries' networked CD-ROM databases (the LAN), the Libraries' online catalog, Expanded Academic Index, telnet and FTP, selected Internet resources, Windows, and WordPerfect 5.1. It is located on Watson's main floor, between the Fines Office and Interlibrary Services.

The Clark Lab is designed as a facility for librarians to teach electronic resource retrieval skills to faculty, students, staff, and visitors. It was used in early August to teach several seminars designed expressly for KU faculty, and more seminars are planned. When the Lab is not scheduled for instruction, it may be used on a walk-in basis. Trained student assistants are on duty at all hours the Lab is open. It may also be reserved for group instructional sessions by contacting Cindy Pierard (864-3366; cpierard@ukanvm.cc.ukans.edu) at least two weeks in advance of the desired time.

Over twenty-five databases, including MLA International Bibliography, PsychLit, and Dissertation Abstracts, are currently available on the LAN. This number pales in comparison to the humanities-related information resources available through the Internet. Not only can the catalogs of many other research libraries be searched, but databases mounted by these libraries, such as the Dante Project, consisting of the full-text of the Commedia and hundreds of critical commentaries, are also accessible.

Contributed by Rob Melton, Publications Coordinator, and Cindy Pierard, Instruction Coordinator, of the KU Libraries. In this issue...

Faculty Panels

The Hall Center will sponsor two faculty panels during the Fall semester. The first will be held on Wednesday, September 21 at 3:30 pm in the Kansas Room, Kansas Union. "Spirituality and Power" will be moderated by Sandra Zimdars- Swartz (Religious Studies). The panel will include Lisa Bitel (History and Women's Studies), Robert Minor (Religious Studies), and Lucy Tapahonso (English). Spirituality is often distinguished from religion in everyday conversation and is either equated with or held to be the basis for individual and collective empowerment, while religion is seen as stultified and often oppressive. This panel will address such issues as the nature of spirituality, its relationship to religious and social institutions, and its effect on individuals and groups, especially those who are perceived to be socially disenfranchised.

"The Future of the Book" will be the topic of the second panel co-sponsored by KU Friends of the Library. Moderated by William Crowe (Watson Library), the panel will include David Bergeron (English), Susan Gauch (Electrical and Computer Engineering), C. Lee Jones (President of the Linda Hall Library), and Fred Woodward (Director of University Press of Kansas). The panel will be held on Thursday, November 3 at 3:30pm in the Summerfield Room, Adams Alumni Center. In this issue...

Tim Miller Receives NEH Grant

Tim Miller (Religious Studies) has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Miller's research, to begin in the summer of 1995, will focus on American communes from 1965-1975. Hundreds of thousands of youthful Americans were living communally during this period. This project seeks to consolidate the history of this diverse but socially and historically significant movement.

Miller will collect written documents and oral testimony of persons who were involved in communes of the period. This information will provide the research base for a book-length history of the wide variety of American communes operating between 1965 and 1975. In this issue...

New Faculty Honored

New faculty will be welcomed by the Hall Center at a get acquainted reception and two lunches designed to help new faculty learn more about the Center's programs. The reception will be held August 31 at 4:00pm.

The first lunch, to be held September 8 at noon, will feature information from faculty members who have received National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipends and Hall Center Travel Grants. They will discuss how and when to apply for these grants. The second lunch, to be held September 14 at noon, will feature information about the grant locating and advising services available through the Hall Center.

New faculty in the humanities will be receiving invitations to these activities. In this issue...

1994 Faculty Seminar: "Creativity"

The Hall Center is sponsoring a faculty seminar this fall on "Creativity." This topic will be explored on as broad as possible a scale, with attention to both the expanses of creativity theory and the minutiae of creative practices. The seminar will be directed by Pete Casagrande, Professor of English and Associate Dean of CLAS, and will meet from 3:00 to 5:00 on Thursdays, beginning August 25.

The participants, selected in a faculty-wide competition of paper proposals last spring, are: Tim Bengston (Journalism), "Creative Practice on Madison Avenue;" Amy Devitt (English), "Between Constraint and Choice: Genre's Creative Gap;" Reva Friedman (Educational Psychology/Special Education), "Choosing a Creative Life: Exploring the Impact of Crystallizing Experiences;" Stephen Grabow (Architecture), "From Goethe to Chaos: Creativity in Morphic Analogues;" Sadye Logan (Social Welfare), "Creativity in Social Work Practice;" Judith Major (Architecture), "'Ganook and the Sacred Well': Myth as Creative Impetus in the Architectural Design Studio;" Chester Sullivan (English), "Invention in the Novels of Claude Mauriac: A Case Study;" and Ted Wilson (History), "Creativity and Historical Narrative." After an organizational first meeting, the seminar will discuss its members' contributions to the seminar topic. In late September the seminar will welcome as guest presenter, Howard E. Gruber, Visiting Professor of Psychology at the Teachers College, Columbia University.

The seminar is open to all KU faculty. Any faculty member interested in attending the seminar on a regular or occasional basis may obtain copies of the seminar schedule and of the papers from the Center.

The Center sponsors a similar seminar each fall semester. For the fall of 1995, Professors Janet Sharistanian and Ann Schofield will co-direct a seminar centered on "Gender as Concept and Method." A call for applications by presenters will be made early in the spring semester. Please call the Hall Center for further information. In this issue...

Hall Fund for the Improvement of Teaching Events

Applications for the Hall Fund for the Improvement of Teaching awards, supported by a 1983 grant from the Hall Family Foundations, are due at the Hall Center on November 1. The funds for this year's awards total approximately $11,000. Grants submitted under this program should be for projects occurring during the 1995-96 academic year.

Recent projects that have been funded include pedagogical workshops on the teaching of foreign languages, programs for new GTA training, interdisciplinary lecture series and symposia, development of writing-across-the-curriculum programs, and short-term teaching residencies for outstanding scholar-teachers. Priority will be given to those projects that promise broad and/or sustained impact on teaching in the humanities at KU.

This fall the Department of Spanish and Portuguese will sponsor a workshop on September 8. "Ties That Bind: The Integration of Teaching and Research" will feature Lucile Kerr (Professor of Spanish, University of Southern California), John Kronik (Professor of Spanish, Cornell University and former editor of PMLA), Francine Masiello (Professor of Latin American and Comparative Literature, University of California at Berkeley), and Randolph Pope (Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature, Washington University, St. Louis) as panelists for the presentation.

A two-day seminar will be conducted on "Integrating Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Issues into the Curriculum" October 14-15. This seminar is being organized by William Comer (Slavic Languages and Literature), and is co-supported by the departments of American Studies and Religious Studies.

The Watson Library Reference Department will be working with Humanities faculty to improve the teaching of library-based research skills. The results of this collaboration will be a packet of handouts on the design of effective library-based research assignments for undergraduates.

Finally, the Women's Studies Program will be conducting a lecture and symposia series on Gender and Theory in the Spring of 1995. The guest speakers will be Ann Fausto Sterling (Professor of Biology and Medicine at Brown University), and Patricia Hill-Collins (Professor of African American Studies at the University of Cincinnati). In this issue...

Humanities Lecture Series

Humanities Lecture Series begins its 47th year at the University of Kansas. This year's series opens on September 29 with Janet Sharistanian, Associate Professor of English at KU. Sharistanian will speak on "Gender, Modernism, Politics: The Case of Tess Slesinger."

On October 18, Sheldon Hackney, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, will speak on "Beyond the Culture Wars."

Manning Marable, Director for the Center of African American Research at Columbia University, New York City, will be at KU on November 10. His lecture will be "Beyond Black and White: Unlearning Racism."

The spring will bring Elizabeth Broun, Director of the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Broun will speak on February 16 on "Childe Hassam's America." The final speaker of the year on March 15, 1995 will be Drucilla Cornell, Professor of Law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, New York. Cornell will speak on "Pornography's Temptation."

Humanities lectures are free and open to the public. All of this year's lectures will be held in the Spencer Museum of Art Auditorium at 7:30pm. Visiting humanities speakers usually spend two days on our campus meeting with classes and colleagues in addition to delivering their lectures. In this issue...

Rockefeller Program in Nature, Culture and Technology

The Program in Nature, Culture and Technology, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, is beginning its third year at the University of Kansas with the appointment of two new research fellows. Scholars from the University of California at Berkeley and York University, Toronto, recently arrived at the Center to begin their year-long residency as Rockefeller Fellows. Directed by Donald Worster, Hall Professor of History, this program aims to examine environmental issues from a humanities perspective. This year's fellows "come highly recommended as innovative thinkers, active and outgoing colleagues, and hard-working scholars," states Worster.

M. Kat Anderson, a recent Ph.D. recipient from the University of California at Berkeley, will be working on the role of Great Plains Indians in shaping the landscape. Anderson's research aims to improve our understanding of Native American concepts of land use and wilderness. Worster reports that "the implications of her work for current land- use practices are multiple; conservationists, park managers, even agriculturists need to have a better understanding of the environment that was here before the coming of white Euro-American civilization."

Elinor G. K. Melville, assistant professor of History and Environmental Studies at York University, Toronto, is an up and-coming scholar on the history of Mexico. Her fellowship project will provide a conceptual framework for Latin American environmental history. "Like Anderson," Worster notes, "she works with interdisciplinary materials to develop a historical perspective on ecological problems."

Supported by a $250,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Program in Nature, Culture and Technology has focused attention on the importance of environmental studies in the humanities.

This year the Environmental Colloquium will continue monthly. The Colloquium will include not only the Rockefeller fellows, but also faculty and graduate students from across the university community interested in humanistic and historical perspectives on environmental and technological issues. Participants may present their own work for critical reaction or lead the discussion of a common reading. In this issue...

HLS Interviews Available

The 1993-94 Humanities Lecture Series season marked the beginning of a new tradition. Humanities lecturers are now being interviewed informally by KU faculty. These interviews are being transcribed and are available upon request from the Hall Center. In this issue...

Faculty in the Art Museum Fall 1994 Schedule

Sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
The Spencer Museum of Art and the Hall Center for the Humanities announce the fall schedule for the Faculty in the Art Museum program. The program introduces faculty to the museum and its collection and encourages its use in teaching. Open to KU faculty and graduate assistants in all units, the sessions meet on alternate Thursdays for approximately one hour beginning at 5:00pm. Participants may attend any or all sessions. For additional information or assistance incorporating museum visits or objects in classes, contact the SMA education department at 864-4710.

Sept. 22--Prints and Drawings
Stephen Goddard, Curator of Prints and Drawings, Associate Professor of Art History
Oct. 6--Behind the Scenes at the Spencer Museum of Art
Andrea S. Norris, Director
Oct. 20--Japanese Art in the Asian Collection
John Teramoto, Curator of Asian Art, Assistant Professor of Art History
Nov. 3--Making Sense of Art
Pat Villeneuve, Curator of Education, Assistant Professor of Visual Arts Education (Design)
Nov. 17--Photography
John Pultz, Curator of Photography, Assistant Professor of Art History
Dec. 1--Medieval Art
Marilyn Stokstad, Curator of Research, Judith Harris Murphy Distinguished Professor of Art History
(Schedule is subject to change)
In this issue...

Spring 1995 Mini Course for Faculty: Bridging Disciplines

The Spring 1995 Hall Center Faculty Mini-Course is now being planned. "Bridging Disciplines: Methodological Links between the Humanities and the Social Sciences" is being organized by Allan Hanson (Anthropology) and will be held in February 1995. In its basic strategy, this mini-course brings together four teams each composed of a social scientist and a humanist who are working with similar methods. The aim is to compare the utility and potential of these methods as they are applied to issues in the social sciences and the humanities, and to explore the degree to which methods developed in one family of disciplines are relevant to problems in the other. The hope is that people who attend for the mini-course will broaden their acquaintance with methods currently in use, and will discover some methodological leads that may be relevant to their own research.

The four teams and their presentation titles are: Allan Hanson (Anthropology) and Peter Casagrande (English), "Analyzing Structure and Creativity in Culture and the Arts;" Burdett Loomis (Political Science) and Thomas Lewin (History), "Anecdotes, Stories, and Data: Explorations in Interviewing;" Don Stull (Anthropology) and Akira Yamamoto (Linguistics), "There are no Engineers in this Group: Collaborative Research in Anthropology and Linguistics;" and William Staples (Sociology) and Carl Strikwerda (History), "Understanding Social Change: The Intersection of Sociology and History."

Information regarding registration for the "Bridging Disciplines" mini-course will be distributed in October to all faculty. In this issue...

NEH Summer Seminars Successful

During the summer of 1994 the Hall Center hosted two National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminars for School Teachers and one NEH Summer Seminar for College Teachers.

"American Women as Writers: Wharton and Cather," directed by Professor Janet Sharistanian (English), brought school teachers from around the country to explore the individual and comparative study of two major modern American women writers who were near contemporaries, Edith Wharton (1862 1937) and Willa Cather (1873-1947). The four week seminar included a weekend trip to Red Cloud, Nebraska, the home of Willa Cather.

Professor Phillip Paludan (History) directed "Society, Slavery, and Civil War," also for school teachers. Paludan led this year's participants in a detailed study of four figures--Harriet Beecher Stowe, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Mary Chesnut--considering how slavery was entwined in the fabric of American culture and society. A tour of local Civil War sites featured commentary by Paul Stuewe, local historian and Lawrence High School teacher. Beryl Jones, a participant from Topeka, remarked at the close of the seminar, "as an English teacher, this has been a phenomenal opportunity for me to gain a historical insight into the events that shaped the literature of the Civil War period."

Professor David Katzman (History) repeated his successful seminar for college teachers on "The Growth of African American Urban Communities." Participants studied the development of the forces of urbanization from the time of the slave communities to the rise of urban black enclaves in the 1920s. In this issue...

Hall Center Deadlines

NEH Summer Stipends Applications, September 15

Faculty Travel Grants Applications, October 15

Hall Teaching Fund Award Applications, November 1

Hall Center Research Fellowship Applications, November 1

Hall Center Creative Fellowship Applications, November 1

Mini-Course Registration, November 15

The Fall 1994 Communiqué Calendar will serve as a reminder of the events you may wish to attend. If you have not received this semester's calendar, please call Susan at the Hall Center at 864-4798. In this issue...

Joyce and Elizabeth Hall Center for the Humanities

The Center's policies are determined by an Executive Committee, whose members are drawn from among Humanities faculty at the University. The Center reports to the Vice Chancellor for Research, Graduate Studies, and Public Service. It is located in the Watkins Home, south of Watson Library on Sunflower Road on the KU Campus.

Staff: William L. Andrews, Director; Janet S. Crow, Acting Director; Donald Worster, Faculty Advisor; Elizabeth A. Barnhill, Secretary; Susan E. Pauls, Secretary.

Executive Committee: Stephen Goddard, Art History; John Gronbeck- Tedesco, Theatre & Film; Roberta Johnson, Spanish & Portuguese; Elizabeth Kuznesof, Latin American Studies; Cheryl Lester, English; Donald Worster, History. Exofficio: Robert Bearse, Assoc. Vice Chancellor-RGSPS; Peter Casagrande, Dean-Liberal Arts; Stan Shumway, Assoc. DeanFine Arts; John Sweets, History-Chair, 1994 Humanities Lecture Committee; Vicky Unruh, Spanish & Portuguese-Chair, 1995-97 Humanities Lecture Committee.

Advisory Board: Charles Battey--Chairman, KN Energy, Inc.; Robert P. Cobb--Professor Emeritus, University of Kansas; Michael Fields--William T. Kemper Foundation; Harold Herd- Justice, Kansas Supreme Court; Clifford Hope, Jr.--Hope, Mills, Bolin, Collins & Ramsey; John Laney--The Hall Family Foundations; Connie Menninger--Kansas State Historical Society; Tom Murray--Barber, Emerson, Springer, Zinn & Murray; James W. Scott--Kansas City Star (retired); Estelle Sosland--A Civic Volunteer; John H. Stauffer--Stauffer Communications, Inc.; Deanell Reece Tacha--Circuit Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals. In this issue...