| Faculty Seminars
One of the Institute's most important programs will be regular Faculty Semester Seminars and Working Groups, which will bring together colleagues from different departments and disciplines for semester-long investigations of interdisciplinary topics. Click here to submit a seminar proposal.
Fall 2008 Seminars
• Fictocriticism: Organized by Michael Taussig, Professor of Anthropology
This seminar's aim is to encourage alternative and experimental approaches to social science and history as is suggested by “creative nonfiction” or “fictocriticism.” The media involved would be writing, of course, but also poetry, song, music, film, visual arts, and theater-performance.
Participating Faculty: Grahame Shane (Adjunct Professor of Architecture), John Pemberton (Associate Professor of Anthropology), John Szwed (Professor of Music), Michael Golston (Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature), Caterina Pizzigoni (Assistant Professor of History), Carla Stang (Visting Scholar in Cultural Anthropology), and Brigitte Weingart (Adjunct Assistant Professor of Germanic Languages).
Spring 2009 Seminars
• Ghosts: Organized by Michael Cumo, Professor of Religion.
This seminar will explore the role of ghosts both as an analytic category and as important, at times dominant, religious players within a variety of religious landscapes. In so doing, it will take advantage of the fact that ghosts have been the focus of theoretical discourse within a number of non-western religious traditions. Since at least the time of the oracle bones in ancient China, for instance, ghosts in China have been a nodal point in both political and religious discourses concerning ancestors, kinship, ritual and land. They have also been sites of intense, often violent contestation between “elite” Buddhist and Taoist traditions on the one hand and local spirit cults on the other. Whether in East Asia or South Asia, however, most would agree with Fei Xiatong’s assertion that a cultic horizon without ghosts would be barren indeed.
• Secular Space/Religious Space: Organized by Reinhold Martin, Associate Professor of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
This seminar on religion, space and architecture is in cooperation with the Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture.
Click here to view Spring 2008 seminars.
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