RESIDENT FELLOWS SEMINAR
Once each month, the resident fellows of the Hall Center, namely the four humanities research fellows, the one creative research fellow, the one Sias graduate fellow and the Hall distinguished chair will meet as a seminar. On each occasion, one of the research fellows will offer remarks on some aspect of his/her work-in-progress. These seminars are open to all interested faculty.
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Forrest Pierce, Assistant Professor of Music, will spend his time at the Hall Center working on Il Cantico del Sol, a ten-movement cycle for unaccompanied choir that will set texts from the Cantico delle Creature of Francis of Assissi. Rooted in the tradition of Western musical mysticism, the work will also incorporate Sufi concepts drawn from the Chishtiyya lineages, as well as harmonic language derived from the Rock era. The project is commissioned jointly by the choirs of the University of Hawai'i, University of Wyomin, and University of Kansas, and will have its premieres in 2013.

Kathryn Rhine, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, will work on her book project "The Unseen Things: HIV, Secrecy, and Wellbeing among Women in Nigeria." The ethnography describes, the skillful ways in which HIV-positive Nigerian women attempt to deceive others. Secrecy, Rhine argues, is not the passive withholding of information, but rather an active set of embodied and social practices that women employ in their attempt to secure wellbeing and a sense of hope for the future.

Ann Rowland, Associate Professor of English, will work on her book project "Keats in America," which takes up the question of what role Americans, an idea of America, and the transatlantic exchange of cultural capital haved played in the formation of Keats' posthumous reputation. "Keats in America" uses the study of Keats' American reception to expose the transatlantic shaping of Keats' reputation as a major Romantic poet and the literary values we have traditionally associated with Keats and with "English Romanticism."

Paul Scott, Associate Professor of French & Italian, will work on his book project "Surreptitious Subversions: Breaking Institutional Codes in Ancien Régime France." Focusing on subversion in early modern France, Scott's project identifies and analyzes printed sources of subversion of social, political, and religious codes, particularly more covert transgressive sentiments, by French writers and thinkers.

Click here for Past Hall Center Humanities Research and Creative work Fellows.

SIAS GRADUATE FELLOWSHIP IN THE HUMANITIES

Damon Talbott, doctoral candidate in American Studies, will spend the 2012-2013 academic year in residence at the Center working on his dissertation, "Making Sense of Taste: Duncan Hines and American Gastronomy, 1930-1960." Talbott's project will aruge that a distinctly "American" gastronomy emerged between 1930 and 1960 as middle-class consumers, setting out to explore the country, created a national, homogeneous sense of taste from various regional foodways. Talbott asserts that taste is a process, not an object or state, and he argues that an assemblage of knowledge, technologies, institutions, and media supported this burgeoning consciousness and lent social significance to its cultural production.

SIMONS PUBLIC HUMANITIES FELLOW

Science writer and journalist Bill Lattanzi is the Simons Public Humanities Fellow for 2012-2013. Lattanzi, a highly accomplished writer, has spent the last ten years working in cable television as a content creator and producer. While in residence at the Hall Center, he will work on a documentary play on the writer David Foster Wallace, built out of materials available in the public record, as well as the letters and documents available in the Harry Ransom Archives at the University of Texas. He will be working with Leslie Bennett of the Theatre department toward a staged reading at the end of his fellowship.