Taft Research Center

Taft Lecture, Poetry: Arturo Gutierrez Plaza

2011-06-13T13:53:00.000-07:00

Arturo Gutiérrez-Plaza

Bilingual poetry reading

Poet, essayist, and professor Arturo Gutiérrez-Plaza was born in Caracas in 1962. He earned a MA in Contemporary Latin American Literature from the Universidad Simón Bolívar, Venezuela in 1991 and a PhD in Romance Languages and Literatures from UC in 2009. Gutiérrez-Plaza was a 1997 fellow at the International Writers Program at the University of Iowa and director of the Rómulo Gallegos Center for Latin American Studies, Venezuela from 1995 to 2000. His work has earned the 1995 Third Biennial Mariano Picón Salas Poetry Prize, the 1999 Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Spanish-American Poetry Prize, and the Prize of the Foundation for Urban Culture, Venezuela in 2009. His publications include scholarly monographs, anthologies, essay collections, and the poetry collections Al margen de las hojas (1991), Principios de contabilidad (2000), and Pasado en limpio (2006). Gutiérrez-Plaza currently serves as Professor of Language and Literature at the Universidad Simón Bolívar.

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Taft Lecture, Political Science: Dr David Baker

2011-06-13T13:43:00.000-07:00

Thursday, May 19, 2011

3:00 pm

Taft Research Center

David Baker

Warwick University, UK. (Retired)

Hon Fellow: Political Economy Research Centre, University of Sheffield, UK

Gives the talk: Markets Against Democracy – the Political Economy of the Tea Party Movement

An examination of the economic ideas of the Tea Party and their potentially destabilizing consequences for American pluralist democracy.

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Taft Lecture, Spanish: Dr Roberta Johnson

2011-06-13T13:34:00.000-07:00

Roberta Johnson

Professor Emerita, University of Kansas

& Visiting Professor, UCLA

Gives the talk: Spanish Feminist Thought and the Contemporary Spanish novel.

The feminist movement in Spain has had a long history of allying itself with prose fiction. The lecture provides historical precedents for this phenomenon in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries before concentrating on the Franco era (1939-1975) when other forms of feminism were forbidden. More recent developments in Spanish feminist thought will be explored in novels written from 1975 to the present.

Date of the lecture: May 18, 2011

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2010-11 Taft Annual Symposium Keynote Event: Dialog Michael Hardt - Raj Patel

2011-05-26T20:05:00.000-07:00

"The Commons: What It Is, How to Reclaim It" A Dialogue and Debate between
Michael Hardt (Duke University) and Raj Patel (UC-Berkeley)

Date: May 12, 2011

Who owns the earth's riches? Radical notions of the Commons suggest that our shared inheritance should be held in common, rather than commodified. In what is sure to be a thought-provoking and timely discussion, theorists Michael Hardt and Raj Patel come together to debate ideas of the Commons.

Introduction by Adrian Parr, Associate Professor of Women's, Gender and
Sexuality Studies (A&S) and Urban Design (DAAP).

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Taft Lecture, Spanish: Dr Jose Quiroga

2011-05-26T13:06:00.000-07:00

Dr. José Quiroga
Professor of Spanish, Emory University
Keynote Speaker, 31st Annual Cincinnati Conference on Romance Languages and Literatures

Givs the talk: Language Games

Poetry turns language into a spectacle—it twists and bends and forces language to speak of itself while also speaking about something else: reality or unreality, oppression or freedom, social conditions or inner spaces. In Latin America,
poetry has always played with and recombined languages. What forms of temporality does this create, and how does it render legible our distinct ways of being in the world?

May 5, 2011

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Taft Lecture, Spanish: Jose Prats Sariol

2011-05-25T11:18:00.000-07:00

José Prats Sariol

Gives the talk: Baroque times in Latin America: José Lezama Lima y el Curso Délfico

April 29, 2011

Literary critic, novelist , essay writer and university professor, José Prats Sariol (La Habana, 1946) has published the novels Mariel (1997, 1999), Guanago Gay (2001), and the essays Estudios sobre poesía cubana (1988), Criticar al Crítico (1983), Fabelo (1994) y No leas poesía ( 2007). Prats Sariol was part of the group of critics that prepared the final edition of Paradiso, by José Lezama Lima, for the UNESCO in 1988, and has offered conferences in universities and cultural centers of Austria, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Norway, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Denmark, Mexico, Venezuela and the United States.

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Taft Lecture, English: Dr Sue J. Kim

2011-05-25T11:15:00.000-07:00

Sue J. Kim
Associate Professor of English
University of Alabama at Birmingham

April 21, 2011

Gives the talk: 'This Game is Rigged, Man': Cognition, Race, & the Politics
of Anger in 'The Wire'

Sue J. Kim is the author of Critiquing Postmodernism in Contemporary Discourses of Race (2009). Her current project, On Anger, seeks to bring together insights into political anger developed in the fields of ethnic, postcolonial, and women's studies with recent work on emotion in cognitive studies and narrative theory.

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Taft Lecture, History: Dr Leo Lucassen

2011-05-25T11:11:00.000-07:00

Leo Lucassen

Institute for History, Leiden University

Gives the talk: "Yet Another Great Divergence? Moving to the City Since the Late

18th Century, A Global Perspective"

Thursday, April 14, 2011

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Taft Lecture, Anthropology: Dr. Brigitte Demes

2011-05-03T20:28:00.000-07:00

Dr. Brigitte Demes
Department of Anatomical Sciences, Stony Brook University

Gives the talk: Facultative bipedalism in primates: Understanding the evolution of human gait

Abstract: Bipedal posture and locomotion are the earliest features that distinguish fossil hominids from their quadrupedal primate ancestors. South American capuchin monkeys, versed in both of these gait modalities, offer the opportunity to study what gait a quadrupedal primate adopts when it gets up on its hind legs. I have studied the mechanics of capuchin bipedalism in our primate gait laboratory and found that they use a bent-hip, bent-kneed running gait. The facultative bipedalism of other non-human primates, including our closest relative the chimpanzee, is also unlike the habitual bipedalism of humans. Based on these findings and anatomical constraints I conclude that the origin of human habitual bipedalism likely started as a bent-hip, bent-kneed gait. Speed would have been significantly impaired compared to quadrupedal limits, and the evolution of this gait was probably also not motivated by increasing locomotor efficiency.

Date of the talk: Monday, April 4, 2011

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Taft Lecture, History: Michael O'Malley

2011-03-28T07:21:00.000-07:00

Taft Lecture, History: Michael O'Malley, George Mason University

Lecture: Compensated Emancipation: Why Does It Fail?

Date of the lecture: Tuesday, March 8, 2011

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Taft Lecture, Sociology: Dr. Mary Pattillo

2011-03-28T07:16:00.000-07:00

Dr. Mary Pattillo, Harold Washington Professor of Sociology, and African American Studies at Northwestern University is the author of the books "Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril among the Black Middle Class" and "Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City", both published by the University of Chicago Press.

Lecture: Race, Poverty, and the Rise of Choice Policies

Date of the Lecure: Friday, March 4, 2011

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Taft Lecture, History. Dr Matthew Gordon.

2011-03-28T07:10:00.000-07:00

Dr. Matthew Gordon, Miami University
Gives the Talk: Singers and Soldiers: Slavery in Early Abbasid Society

Brief Abstract: Individuals of slave descent led significant households in Baghdad and Samarra, the capitals of the Abbasid caliphate, the second great empire of the Muslim world. Elite singers (qiyan), properly considered courtesans, and officers (quwwad), men of Turkish/Inner Asian descent serving as commanders of the Abbasid caliphate's slave military, played prominent roles in society and politics. Both groups achieved significant social mobility and the established extensive, independent households.

Date of the Talk: Feb 22, 2011

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Urban Humanities Series Lectures: Dr Stan Corkin

2011-02-22T12:40:00.000-08:00

Urban Humanities Lecture Series
Stan Corkin, professor in the English and cpmparative literature department at the University of Cincinnati

Gives the Talk:

"Representing the Post-industrial: HBO's The wire and the Discrete Spaces of Baltimore"

Date of the lecture: December 2, 2010

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

2010-12-07T17:31:00.000-08:00

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"

2010-12-07T17:27:00.000-08:00

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"

2010-12-07T17:20:00.000-08:00

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"

2010-12-07T17:06:00.000-08:00

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

2010-10-22T15:44:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-10-22T15:40:00.000-07:00

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"

2010-10-19T05:44:00.000-07:00

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"

2010-06-19T14:47:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-06-19T14:41:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-19T14:32:00.000-07:00

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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Taft Lecture, History: Dr Graydon Tunstall

2010-05-14T11:19:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-14T10:38:00.000-07:00

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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Taft Lecture, Medical Humanities Series: Dr Jeff Jacobson

2010-05-14T10:32:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-14T10:21:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-28T10:47:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-28T10:44:00.001-07:00

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

2010-04-26T09:44:00.000-07:00

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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Taft Co-Sponsors the Ohio Festival of the Short Story

2010-04-26T09:25:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-26T09:01:00.000-07:00

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"

2010-04-23T14:03:00.000-07:00

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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Taft Launches Medical Humanities Lecture Series

2010-04-22T09:28:00.000-07:00

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/

Taft Lecture, Spanish: Javier Blasco "Anonimia y creación literaria en los siglos de oro"

2010-04-21T15:30:00.000-07:00

Invited by the Romance Languages Department of the University of Cincinnati, Professor Javier Blasco (University of Valladolid Spain) gives the talk "Anonimity and literary creation in the Spanish Golden Age"

Several major works of Spanish Early Modern literature were anonymous. The lecture explores the social and textual implications of anonymity and draws from several disciplines, including forensic linguistics.

Muchas piezas mayores de la temprana literatura moderna en lengua española son anónimas. Esta conferencia explora las implicaciones sociales y textuales de la anonimia, abrevando de distintas disciplinas, incluyendo la lingüística forense.

Lecture date: April 19, 2010

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

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

Taft Lecture: Medical Humanities Series Jennifer Malat: "A Critical Evaluation of Culture, Race, and Cultural Competence in Health Care"

2010-04-18T16:43:00.000-07:00

Jennifer Malat, Associate Professor of the Department of Sociology at the University of Cincinnati: "A Critical Evaluation of Culture, Race, and Cultural Competence in Heath Care"

Lecture date: April 16, 2010

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

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

Taft Lecture. African Studes: Dr. Kwakiutl L. Dreher "Piercing the 4th Wall: Getting Close With My Celebrity Sistahs"

2010-04-18T16:15:00.000-07:00

In this talk Professor Dreher (University of Nebraska – Lincoln) will speak on her personal and community responses to performances and autobiographical writings by Black women celebrities including Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll, and others.

Lecture Date: April 7, 2010

Dr.Dreher highlights how the autobiographical "I" of the black woman celebrity connects with the collective black literary community by narrating her journey of harrowing familial persecution and communal expulsion, mean poverty, embarrassing insecurity, betrayal, and the threat of violence in conjunction with racism and sexism. Her work maintains that the black celebrity autobiographical narrative coexists on the continuum of black written expression as it has been practiced throughout history by black women. The discussion of Mary Wilson's autobiography Dreamgirl: My Life as a Supreme (Motown's stellar girl group The Supremes), for example, can stand with Toni Morrison'sSula, Alice Walker's The Color Purple and Gloria Naylor's Women of Brewster Place. Wilson examines the dynamics of friendship between young women in the entertainment industry, specifically Motown, just as Morrison and Walker do via their stories about Nel and Sula and Shug Avery, Celie, and Sophia respectively in their own communities. The late Eartha Kitt joins Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God)as well in her critique of intra-racial dynamics in the black family and community. An examination of Kitt's autobiographies brings to relief the practice of verbal, sexual, and physical abuse within the black community, just as Morrison does in The Bluest Eye, Sula, and Paradise.

By talking about themselves in the literary realm, black female celebrities dance with other black women who, throughout history, have used literature, in particular the genre of autobiography, to choreograph themselves on the stage of U.S. history. Overall, these autobiographies joins the life-writing as expressed by black women such as Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road and Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

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

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

Taft Lecture, Philosophy: Dr William Bechtel. " Dynamic Mechanistic Explanations and Endogenously Active Brains"

2010-04-18T16:05:00.000-07:00

Dr WIlliam Bechtel,

Department of Philosophy, Center for Chronobiology, Science Studies Program, and Interdisciplinary Program in Cognitive Science University of California, San Diego.

Only recently have philosophers of science caught up with biology and psychology in recognizing that explanation often involves specifying a mechanism responsible for a phenomenon rather than subsuming the phenomenon under a law. But the accounts of mechanistic explanation advanced often neglect the dynamics exhibited by complexly organized mechanisms. Dynamical systems theory offers tools for describing dynamical behavior but downplays the importance of identifying the parts and operations of the mechanism producing that behavior. I argue that there is an important class of explanations – dynamic mechanistic explanations – in which the tools of dynamical systems analysis and mechanistic science are coordinated. In this talk I show how this provides a framework for understanding endogenously active brains and their contribution to cognition. This contrasts with the reactive approach that has long been dominant in psychology and neuroscience, as reflected in mechanistic models that downplay dynamics and, specifically, neglect endogenously generated dynamics. I review some of the evidence for endogenous activity in brains and consider the implications not only for understanding cognition but also for accounts of explanation offered by philosophers of science.

Lectre date: Monday, March 15, 2010

Visit the Taft research Center Website: http://www.artsci.uc.edu/taft/

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

Taft Lecture, Political Science. Dr David W Moore: How Public Polls Undermine Democracy.

2010-03-10T05:59:00.000-08:00

Dr. David W Moore, Senior Fellow of the Carsey Institute of the University of New Hampshire and author of The opinion Makers, gives the lecture: How Public Polls Undermine Democracy.

Lecture Date: March 4th 2010

Dr. Moores talk focuses on how mass media-sponsored public opinion polls on
issues of public policy such as health care reform and ''cap and trade legislation"
often undermine the democratic process in American politics and society.

Visit the TAFT research center website: http://www.artsci.uc.edu/taft/

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

Taft Lecture, poetry: Floriano Martins "La efigie sospechosa" (The suspicious effigy)

2010-03-05T08:35:00.000-08:00

Taft Research Center at the University of Cincinnati

Lecture Date March 2, 2010

Taft Invited Professor for the department of Romance Languages of the University of Cincinnati, Floriano Martins (Fortaleza, 1957)is a poet, editor, essayist, translator, lyricist, visual artist and one of the most important researchers of surrealism and Spanish poetry in Brazil. He has published several books, which include poetry, essays, translations and collections.

Visit the Taft Research Center website: http://www.artsci.uc.edu/taft/

Taft Research Center

Taft Lecture, Poetry: Arturo Gutierrez Plaza

Taft Lecture, Political Science: Dr David Baker

Taft Lecture, Spanish: Dr Roberta Johnson

2010-11 Taft Annual Symposium Keynote Event: Dialog Michael Hardt - Raj Patel

Taft Lecture, Spanish: Dr Jose Quiroga

Taft Lecture, Spanish: Jose Prats Sariol

Taft Lecture, English: Dr Sue J. Kim

Taft Lecture, History: Dr Leo Lucassen

Taft Lecture, Anthropology: Dr. Brigitte Demes

Taft Lecture, History: Michael O'Malley

Taft Lecture, Sociology: Dr. Mary Pattillo

Taft Lecture, History. Dr Matthew Gordon.

Urban Humanities Series Lectures: Dr Stan Corkin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Taft Lecture, History: Dr Graydon Tunstall

Taft lecture, Medical Humanities Series: Dr Lisa Meloncon

Taft Lecture, Medical Humanities Series: Dr Jeff Jacobson

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

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

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

Guggenheim-winning Poet Li-Young Lee at Taft

Taft Co-Sponsors the Ohio Festival of the Short Story

About the Authors

Taft Fellow Arranges Important Library Acquisition

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

Taft Launches Medical Humanities Lecture Series

Medical Humanities Lecture Series ScheduleFriday afternoons 2:00–3:00 pm

Taft Lecture, Spanish: Javier Blasco "Anonimia y creación literaria en los siglos de oro"

Taft Lecture: Medical Humanities Series Jennifer Malat: "A Critical Evaluation of Culture, Race, and Cultural Competence in Health Care"

Taft Lecture. African Studes: Dr. Kwakiutl L. Dreher "Piercing the 4th Wall: Getting Close With My Celebrity Sistahs"

Taft Lecture, Philosophy: Dr William Bechtel. " Dynamic Mechanistic Explanations and Endogenously Active Brains"

Taft Lecture, Political Science. Dr David W Moore: How Public Polls Undermine Democracy.

Taft Lecture, poetry: Floriano Martins "La efigie sospechosa" (The suspicious effigy)

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