Urban Humanities Lecture: Dr Todd Herzog "Berlin on film"

Urban Humanities Lecture Series

Todd Herzog, professor of German Studies at the University of Cincinnati

Gives the Talk: "Berlin on Film"

Date of the lecture: Nov 18, 2010

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Medical Humanities Lecture: Dr. Cheli Reutter "The Medical Humanities and UC"

Medical Humanities Lecture


Dr. Cheli Reutter, University of Cincinnati

Gives the talk "Medical humanities at UC"

Date of the talk: November 17, 2010


ABSTRACT: In this talk I will briefly trace the history of the medical humanities (a relatively young but classically derived discipline) as context for the examination of various medical humanities-related endeavors in which UC faculty and students have participated in the last few years. I will also relate the visions of various members of the faculty for future medical humanities developments. I will illustrate with a few examples how literature and film can work for different constituencies seeking to benefit from a medical humanities perspective. Examples discussed in the talk will include Stephen Crane's The Monster, Audre Lorde's Cancer Journals and Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper.

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Medical Humanities: Barbara N. Ramusack, University of Cincinnati "Medical Women and Maternal and Infant Health Programs in Colonial South India"

Medical Humanities Lecture

Dr. Barbara N. Ramusack, University of Cincinnati

Gives the talk: "Medical Women and Maternal and Infant Health Programs in Colonial South India"

In 1917 the Madras municipality in colonial south India, comprised mostly of Indian men, inaugurated maternal and child welfare centers to provide ante- and post-natal care in the poorest areas of the city. This lecture focuses on the Indian medical women who operated these centers and the challenges they faced, especially the expectations of the members of the Municipal Council of Madras. Improved maternal health and infant mortality rates were the stated goal, though gender biases and professional rivalries are shown to be as potent as racial biases in devaluing the performance of Indian medical women in the child welfare centers.


Date of lecture: Nov/9/10

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Taft Lecture: Medical Humanities. Dr Elizabeth Watkins "Stress and the American Vernacular: Popular Perceptions of Disease Causality"

Dr. Elizabeth Watkins, Vice chair and Director of graduate studies at the University of California-San Francisco School of Medicine, Department of Anthropology, History, and Social Medicine. University of Cincinnati

Gives the talk: "Stress and the American Vernacular: Popular Perceptions of Disease Causality"

This paper explores popular understandings of and references to stress as a cause of disease, looking at how and when stress made its way into common parlance in America. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, people blamed a variety of symptoms or ills on their nerves. Nerves were replaced by stress in the mid-20th century, after Hans Selye's first use of the term in the 1930s. The source material for this paper is popular periodicals, which both shape and reflect public understanding of scientific and medical topics. I am interested in how illness is differently explained within different historical frames (using the metaphor developed by Charles Rosenberg). These frames reflect the social and cultural constraints under which medicine operates; both physicians and patients live within the context of their times and are subject to contemporary values and attitudes, as well as the latest theories about physiology and pathology. Rosenberg also acknowledges the critical role of laypeople in shaping the illness experience. I have long been interested in the transmission and translation of scientific and medical ideas from experts to the lay public. In this study, stress serves as a case study of how a medical idea makes its way from professional discourse into everyday vernacular.

Date of the talk: 10/27/10

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Taft Lecture, History: Dr. Peter Holquist: "Crimes Against Humanity: The Genealogy of a Concept 1815-1945

Dr. Peter Holquist, Professor of the Department of History, University of Pennsylvania Gives the Talk "Crimes Against Humanity: The Genealogy of a Concept, 1815-1945"


Friday, October 22, 2010

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Taft Lecture. Urban Humanities: Dr Jeffrey M. Timberlake: "Confined to the Inner Ring? Patterns of Minority Suburbanization in US Metropolitan Areas.

Dr Jeffrey M. Timberlake, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Cincinnati gives the Talk: "Confined to the Inner Ring? Patterns of Minority Suburbanization in US Metropolitan Areas.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

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Taft Lecture, Urban Humanities: Dr Amy Lind "Why Sexuality Matters in Urban Research: Reflections on Development Policies in Latin American Cities"

Dr. Amy Lind, The Mary Ellen Heintz Endowed Chair & Associate Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies of the University of Cincinnati gives the talk: "Why Sexuality Matters in Urban Research: Reflections on Development Policies in Latin American Cities"

Thursday, October 14, 2010

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Taft Lecture, History: Dr Paul Gootemberg, "The 'Pre-Colombian' Era of Drug Trafficking in the Americas"

Paul Gootenberg, Professor of History at Stony Brook University, and author of "Andean Cocaine: The Making of a Global Drug" (UNC Press, 2009) discusses a dramatic chapter in the transnational history of global commodity flows: the invention of illicit cocaine. The sudden emergence of shifting drug trafficking centers and innovating trafficker diasporas from South America to the United States, from 1947-1973, followed a surprising logic of the U.S.-exported Cold War and repressive drug policies —leaving, in its wake, one of the largest and most notorious commodity booms of world history.



Date of the talk: May 28, 2010

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Taft Lecture, poetry: Pedro Lastra, lectura de poemas.

Pedro Lastra was born in Chile in 1932. Poet and essayist, Lastra graduated from the University of Chile. Between 1966 and 1973 he served as the literary advisor to the University Press in Chile, where he founded and directed the Letras de América collection. From 1972 until 1994, Lastra was a professor in the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, where he is now Professor Emeritus. In addition to being a corresponding member of the Academia Chilena de la Lengua, Lastra is also an honorary professor at the University of San Marcos (Lima, Peru) and the University of San Andrés (La Paz, Bolivia).

Some of his works of poetry include Traslado a la mañana (1959), Y éramos inmortales (1969, 1974), Cuarderno de la doble vida (1984), Diario de viaje y otros poemas (1998), Canción del pasjero (2001), and Palabras de amor (2002). Lastra has published many articles and he is also the author of several books: Conversaciones con Enrique Lihn (1980, 1990), Relecturas hispanoamericanas (1987), Invitación a la lectura (2001), and Leido y anotado: Letras chilenas e hispanoamercianas (2002).

May 26, 2010

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The rest of the talk is available in our YouTube Channel at: http://www.youtube.com/user/TaftResearchCenter

Taft Lecture, Spanish: Dra Pilar Celma "Miguel Delibes, un castellano de alcance universal"

Invited by the Romance Language Department of the University of Cincinnati, Dr Pilar Celma (University of Valladolid, Spain) gives the lecture: "Miguel Delibes, castellano de alcance universal"

Date of the lecture: May 24, 2010

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The rest of the talk is available in our YouTube Channel at:

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Taft Lecture, History: Dr Graydon Tunstall

Dr Graydon Tunstall (University of South Florida) gives the talk "The forgotten front: The first world War in the Carpathian Mountains"

Date of the Lecture: May 12 2010

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Taft lecture, Medical Humanities Series: Dr Lisa Meloncon

Dr Lisa Meloncon, Assistant Professor, English and Comparative Literature of the University of Cincinnati gives the Talk:
"Articulating Episteme: Vernacular Medical Texts in Early Modern England"


Date of Lecture: May 7 2010

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The rest of the talk is available in our YouTube Channel at: http://www.youtube.com/user/TaftResearchCenter

Taft Lecture, Medical Humanities Series: Dr Jeff Jacobson

Jeff Jacobson, Assistant Professor, Anthropology and Family Medicine of the University of Cincinnati gives the Talk:
"Carried Away: Sociocultural Dimensions of Dissocia tive Distress in Two Central American Communities"

Date of the talk: April 30 2010

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The rest of the talk is available in our YouTube Channel at: http://www.youtube.com/user/TaftResearchCenter

Taft Lecture, Anthropology: Dr Matthew Restall "Are the maya really afro-maya?"

Dr. Matthew Restall
(Pennsylvania State University) Gives the talk:Are the Maya Really Afro-Maya? (The Lost History of Afro-Yucatan)

Professor Restall recently published The Black Middle, the first full-length study of black African slaves and other people of African descent in the Spanish colonial province of Yucatan. Using Spanish and Maya-language documents from the 16th through 19th centuries, found in a dozen archives in four countries, Restall explores such topics as slavery and freedom, militia service and family life, bigamy and witchcraft, and the ways in which Afro-Yucatecans interacted with Mayas and Spaniards. The book has profound implications for the study both of the African Diaspora and of the Maya since the Conquest.

Date of Lecture: April 29 2010

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The rest of the lecture is available in our YouTube Channel at: http://www.youtube.com/user/TaftResearchCenter

Taft Lecture, History: Dr William Chase: “Stalinism in a Spanish Key: Moscow, Madrid, Mexico City"

Invited by the department of History of the University of Cincinnati, Dr William Chase gives the talk: “Stalinism in a Spanish Key: Moscow, Madrid, Mexico City”.

Lecture Date: April 27, 2010

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The rest of the talk is available in our YouTube Channel at: http://www.youtube.com/user/TaftResearchCenter

Taft Lecture, History: Dr Borac Ergene "Why did Ummu Gulsum go to court?

Invited by the department of history of the University of Cincinnati, Dr. Borgac Ergene (University of Vermont) gives the talk: "Why did Ummu Gulsum go to court? Ottoman Legal Practice between History and Anthropology"

We only have a 10 min sample of this lecture.

Lecture Date: April 26, 2010

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Guggenheim-winning Poet Li-Young Lee at Taft

A READING AND LECTURE ON POETICS
4:00 pm, May 14, 2010
Charles Phelps Taft Research Center, University of Cincinnati

The Charles Phelps Taft Center at the University of Cincinnati is pleased to announce a reading and lecture by renowned poet Li-Young Lee. Lee is the keynote speaker of the Taft Center’s three-day Annual Symposium.

Li-Young Lee is the author of four critically acclaimed books of poetry including his most recent, Behind My Eyes (Norton, 2008). Earlier volumes include Book of My Nights (BOA, 2001); Rose (BOA, 1986), winner of the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award; The City in Which I Love You (BOA, 1991), the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection; and a memoir entitled The Winged Seed: A Remembrance (Simon and Schuster, 1995), which received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation.

Lee's honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lannan Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

"What characterizes Lee's poetry is a certain humility…a willingness to let the sublime enter his field of concentration and take over, a devotion to language, a belief in its holiness."—Gerald Stern

This event is free and open to the public.

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Please, visit the Taft Research Center website: http://www.artsci.uc.edu/taft/

Taft Co-Sponsors the Ohio Festival of the Short Story

Short story writers from Edgar Allan Poe to Jhumpa Lahiri are read and loved both inside and outside the classroom. Yet the short story is the stepchild of American publishing, passed over in favor of its more marketable sibling, the novel.

To redress this imbalance, The Cincinnati Review at the Department of English and Comparative Literature, University of Cincinnati, hosts The Ohio Festival of the Short Story on May 7-8, 2010.

The Festival brings together noted authors, editors, and scholars to celebrate and discuss the short story. It features public readings and a discussion with noted Ohio authors Donald Ray Pollock, Margaret Luongo, Nancy Zafris, and Lee K. Abbott (bios below).


Formal panels and casual breakout sessions will address various aspects of short story craft and scholarship. Festival participants can enjoy the singular pleasures of the short story while learning something new.

As Festival co-organizer Peter Grimes notes, "The Ohio Festival of the Short Story presents a unique opportunity for individuals of diverse groups—academics and the community at large, scholars and creative writers—to come together to discuss narrative's oldest form."

All events are free and open to the public. Click for more information and a schedule.

About the Authors

A native of Knockemstiff, Ohio, Donald Ray Pollock is author of Knockemstiff, which won the 2009 PEN/Robert Bingham Award and the 2009 Devil’s Kitchen Award for Fiction. Knockemstiff has been published in England, Italy, and France. Margaret Luongo is author of If the Heart Is Lean and a professor of creative writing at Miami University. Her stories have been published in Tin House, The Cincinnati Review, and Jane. Nancy Zafris is author of Flannery O’Connor Award-winner The People I Know as well as The Metal Shredder and Lucky Strike. She is the former fiction editor of the Kenyon Review. Lee K. Abbott is author of seven short story collections, including All Things, All at Once: New and Selected Stories. His stories and book reviews have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, and The New York Times Book Review.

-Suzanne Warren, University of Cincinnati

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Taft Fellow Arranges Important Library Acquisition

Fall 2009 Taft Visiting Fellow Enrique Jaramillo-Levi has organized a donation to the University of Cincinnati Libraries of 409 books by Panamanian authors. "Only a handful of libraries in the United States own any of these titles, making the Panama Collection an important addition" to UC libraries, notes Melissa Cox Norris, Director of Library Communications in an article about the new collection.

Nicasio Urbina, UC professor of Latin American Literature remarks, "I want to thank Professor Jaramillo-Levi for his generosity and energy in negotiating this donation, and to highlight the importance of the Taft Research Center and the Taft Research Seminars, which facilitate this kind of interaction."

Bravo, Professor Jaramillo-Levi!

Link to the full article by Melissa Cox Norris here.

- Suzanne Warren, University of Cincinnati

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Taft Lecture, Medical Humanities Series: Dr. Wendy Kline "Childbirth Made Difficult: Raising Consciousness on the Delivery Table"

Dr. Wendy Kline, Associate Professor of the Department of History of the University of Cincinnati gives the talk "Childbirth Made Difficult: Raising Consciousness on the Delivery Table"

Lecture date: April 23, 2010

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The rest of the talk is in our Youtube Channel at:http://www.youtube.com/user/TaftResearchCenter

Taft Launches Medical Humanities Lecture Series

In 1998, Michael Schiavo petitioned the Sixth Circuit Court of Florida for permission to disconnect the feeding tube of his wife, Terri Schiavo, thus ending her five-year vegetative state. Over the next seven years, the Schiavo case attracted international attention, setting off fierce debates in the medical, legal, and religious communities.

"Because it brings the ethics of care to the forefront of cultural consciousness, Schiavo is one of a growing number of high-profile medical cases that might benefit from the wisdom of the medical humanities," notes Dean Valerie Hardcastle (Philosophy) of the College of Arts and Sciences.

"As medical treatments become more sophisticated, doctors and lawyers confront complex ethical questions. Scholars working in the medical humanities aim to weigh in on these crucial medical and scientific matters," she explains.

The Taft Research Center is proud to launch a new spring lecture series on the medical humanities devoted to these and other questions, including "the sociocultural aspects of health and disease and their meanings, as well as biological factors," remarks Professor Wendy Kline (History), who lectures on April 23.

The series begins Friday, April 16 at 2:00 pm with "A Critical Evaluation of Culture, Race, and Cultural Competence in Health Care" by Professor Jennifer Malat (Sociology) and features three subsequent Friday afternoon lectures (see schedule below).

The lecture series is sponsored by the Taft Center Medical Humanities Research Group, an affiliation of scholars of anthropology, English, history, philosophy, and sociology who wish to examine the import of the humanities disciplines for medical research and practice. Dean Hardcastle observes that the medical humanities are necessarily cross-disciplinary because "they grapple with real-world questions. If you isolate them, you don’t get a complete answer."

The Taft Center Medical Humanities Research Group invites lecturers, arranges colloquia, writes and submits grants to the NEH and NIH, and aims to design curricula for an interdisciplinary and cross-college program in medical humanities at the University of Cincinnati.

Dean Hardcastle is developing a certificate program for undergraduates interested in health professions that will provide tools to "help understand the complex intellectual issues associated with practicing medicine today."

The general public as well as humanities scholars and medical and scientific practitioners are encouraged to attend the lecture series. As Dean Hardcastle notes, "at some point any of us might need to consider a do-not-resuscitate form or discuss medical issues with a person of a religious or educational background different than his or her own."

Whether the issue is end-of-life care, culturally-specific meanings of health and disease, or gender bias in scientific protocols, "medical humanities touch everybody’s lives."

- Suzanne Warren, University of Cincinnati

Medical Humanities Lecture Series Schedule
Friday afternoons 2:00–3:00 pm

April 16, 2010
Jennifer Malat, Associate Professor, Sociology
A Critical Evaluation of Culture, Race, and Cultural Competence in Health Care

April 23, 2010
Wendy Kline, Associate Professor, History
Childbirth Made Difficult: Raising Consciousness on the Delivery Table

April 30, 2010
Jeff Jacobson, Assistant Professor, Anthropology and Family Medicine
Carried Away: Sociocultural Dimensions of Dissocia­tive Distress in Two Central American Communities

May 7, 2010
Lisa Meloncon, Assistant Professor, English and Comparative Literature
Articulating Episteme: Vernacular Medical Texts in Early Modern England

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Please, visit the Taft Research Center website: http://www.artsci.uc.edu/taft/