2005-2006 Events
Archive
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Baker-Nord Seminar, Fall 2005
"Childhoods" |
During the fall of 2005, the Baker-Nord Center hosted the second of four annual integrated seminar programs supported by Senior Faculty Fellowships, Seminar Scholarships, and distinguished Baker-Nord Seminar Visiting Fellows. Members include scholars, artists, and community leaders drawn from the Case faculty as well as from other University Circle and Cleveland area cultural institutions. The seminar meets regularly throughout the semester and is organized around the general theme of “Childhoods,” with a particular interest in the political invisibility of children and with a particular concern for the children of Cleveland.
The Schubert Center for Child Development at Case has been working closely with the Baker-Nord Center on seminar planning as well as on other events and programs related to this year’s theme. Both centers see this as a most exciting opportunity for collaboration between the arts, humanities, and social sciences.
We are very pleased to announce our two Baker-Nord Seminar Visiting Fellows for Fall 2005: Angela Johnson, award-winning children’s book author and a McArthur Fellow; and Myra Bluebond-Langner, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Director of the University Center for Children and Childhood Studies at Rutgers University.
The Baker-Nord Center’s Humanities Week in April 2006 will be related to the theme of the fall seminar, and seminar members will participate in the planning process for that program. Beyond this, we hope that the seminar will lead not only to new scholarly progress for the individual seminar members but also to new collaborative projects. |
Myra Bluebond-Langner
Myra Bluebond-Langner is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Founding Director of the University Center for Children and Childhood Studies at Rutgers University. Her honors include the Margaret Mead Award and the Charles Corr Award for contributions to the literature on children and death. Her books include The Private Worlds of Dying Children (Princeton, 1978),In the Shadow of Illness Parents and Siblings of the Chronically Ill Child (Princeton, 1996), and The Psychosocial Aspects of Cystic Fibrosis (with Denise Angst and Bryan Lask, Oxford, 2001).
“I see myself as a humanistic anthropologist. The questions I raise and the ways I address them bear the marks of the humanities as well as the social sciences. Perhaps nowhere is this more apparent than in my research and writing about chronically and terminally ill children, their families, and the clinicians involved in their care and treatment. I use plays and short stories derived from verbatim transcripts of interactions among children, parents, and clinicians to draw the reader in. In the course of fieldwork, I try to stay poised on the hyphen between participation and observation as I experience, observe, and record daily life with the children and the adults in their worlds. As a Baker-Nord Seminar Visiting Fellow, I will be working on a book, Choiceless Choices: Decision Making for Children with Cancer When Cure is Not Likely, based on a two year ethnographic study of the daily lives, meetings, discussions, and decisions of the children, parents, and clinicians at two major pediatric oncology centers in the U.S. and England. The seminar affords me the opportunity to explore some of the fundamental issues that emerge from study of this tragic situation - from the physical, emotional, social, and economic costs of care for seriously ill children to the meaning and nature of children, childhoods, and adults’ responsibilities and obligations to them. What I will learn from colleagues in a variety of fields at Case cannot but help to enhance the forthcoming special issue of the American Anthropologist on children, childhood, and childhood studies which I am editing with Jill Korbin, Professor of Anthropology, Co-Director of the Schubert Center for Child Development, and Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences at Case.”
Angela Johnson
Angela Johnson is an award-winning author of over forty children’s books ,including teen novels and children’s picture books. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship in 2003,her books have won several awards, including the American Library Association’s Printz Award and the Coretta Scott King Award for the best book of the year by an African American writer. Her most recent picture books include Just Like Josh Gibson (Simon & Schuster, 2004),Violet’s Music (Dial, 2004), and A Sweet Smell of Roses (Simon & Schuster, 2005). Her most recent novels include The First Part Last (Simon & Schuster, 2003), A Cool Moonlight (Dial, 2003), and Bird (Dial, 2004). Her current interest is hip hop poetry and its influence on teen literacy. She lives in Kent, Ohio.
“I am interested in the Baker-Nord Seminar on ‘Childhoods’ because of my belief that we live in a country that would like to think that it respects the lives and rights of children; but in reality policies and legislation in recent years have made this a fallacy. I have spent most of my life writing about and caring for children, and I find the current state of education, services for children, and public sentiment concerning rights for the young depleting year by year. While participating in the seminar, I hope to finish a novel about childhood trauma and the eventual emotional fallout attributed to that trauma. From the seminar I hope to garner more insight into the world of children and some strategies for encouraging children to express themselves through writing.” |
September 15, 2005
HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR.
"Pursuing a Dream: W.E.B. DuBois and His Encyclopedia"
11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Severance Hall
Registration Required
The Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities and SAGES (SeminarApproach to General Education and Scholarship) are pleased to announce a new partnership with the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards and The Cleveland Foundation.The Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards recognize books that have made important contributions to our understanding of racism or our appreciation of the rich diversity of human cultures. Administered by The Cleveland Foundation, these prestigious awards are announced in the spring and a public award ceremony takes place in Cleveland in the early fall. This year marks the 70th anniversary of theseawards. For more information visit www.anisfield-wolf.org.
We are very happy to welcome Henry Louis Gates, Jr. as our inaugural Anisfield-Wolf Lecturer. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities and Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is the author of many books, including The Signifying Monkey,winner of the American Book Award; Loose Canons; The African American Century, co-authored with Cornel West; Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man; and his memoir, Colored People. Professor Gates has edited or co-edited several anthologies, including The Norton Anthology of African American Literature and The Oxford-Schomburg Library of Nineteenth Century Black Women Writers, winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.
An influential cultural critic and public intellectual, his honors include a MacArthur Fellowship, a George Polk Award for Social Commentary, a National Humanities Medal, and a listing in Time magazine’s “25 Most InfluentialAmericans” (1997). Professor Gates grew up in the small town of Piedmont, West Virginia. He earned his undergraduate degree, summa cum laude, from Yale, and earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in English literature from Clare College at Cambridge University. His supervisor was Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian writer who became the first African to receive a Nobel Prize in literature. Gates first came to national attention in 1981 when, as a junior faculty member at Yale, he was in the first group of recipients of a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant.” Before coming to Harvard in 1991 to chair the Department of Afro-American Studies, Professor Gates taught at Yale, Cornell, and Duke. This inaugural Anisfield-World Lecture is co-sponsored by the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities and SAGES, in conjunction with the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, which are administered by the Cleveland Foundation. The Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards recognize works that have made important contributions to our understanding of racism or our appreciation of the rich diversity of human cultures. This year marks the 70th anniversary of these awards.
September 21, 2005
ROBERT P. MADISON, FAIA ARCHITECT
"The Decline of Cities and the Human Spirit"
4:30 p.m.
Thwing Student Center Ballroom
11111 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland
Free and Open to the Public
One of the most distinguished architects in the U.S., Mr. Madison’s long and illustrious career includes such building projects as the United States Embassy (Dakar, Senegal), the Engineering and Nuclear Facility at Tuskegee University (Alabama), the State of Ohio Computer Center (Columbus), the Science and Research Center of Cleveland State University, the Continental Airlines Concourse “C” at the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, the RTA Waterfront Line, the Rocky River Courts Building, and the Theater and Performing Arts Complex at Cuyahoga Community College Eastern Campus. He also played key roles in the design and development of the Cleveland Browns Football Stadium, Gund Arena, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, and the Great Lakes Science Center. He was Restoration Architect for the Louis Stokes Wing of the Cleveland Public Library Main Branch.
Mr. Madison, a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), is the recipient of numerous awards and distinctions, including the National AIA Whitney M. Young, Jr., Award, the AIA Ohio Gold Medal, and the Leadership Award of the Cleveland Engineering Society, Architect of the Year of the National Technical Association, the Whitney M. Young Humanitarian Award of the Urban League of Greater Cleveland, and the Cleveland Arts Prize for distinguished service to the arts.
Mr. Madison received honorary degrees from Howard University, Case Western Reserve University, Kent State University, and Cleveland State University. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Cleveland Engineering Society, the Ohio Assembly of Corporate Councils, and the Northeast Ohio Business Hall of Fame.
Over 50 years ago, Mr. Madison opened a door previously closed to African-Americans by becoming the first African-American to be registered to practice architecture in Ohio. He has held the door open for others ever since and has made it his personal mission to mentor and support promising minority students in pursuing their dreams of careers in architecture, engineering, and city planning. Over the years, his firm has trained nearly 200 African-American architects and engineers. Mr. Madison’s commitment to future generations of young architects is demonstrated by his establishment of the Aspire! The Robert P. Madison Scholarship in Architecture fund to support and encourage African-American students in the fields of architecture and urban design. The fund is administered by the Cleveland Foundation.
Madison Lecture text PDF
November 3, 2005
Seminar: "Religion and Terrorism"
Principally sponsored by the Institute for Global Security, Law and Policy in the Case School of Law, and co-sponsored by the Baker-Nord Center and the Interdisciplinary Initiative on Religion and Culture in the College of Arts and Sciences, this seminar will bring together scholars of law, religionk, and religious practitioners to explore the relationships between religion and terrorism in the United States and around the world.
Closed to the public.
April 2-8, 2006
Humanities Week -- Click here for complete information on Humanities week keynote speaker Anne Lamott (author of Bird by Bird, Operating Instructions, and other books), Philip Nel (Humanities Week Visiting Scholar), Film Series on "Childhoods", a creative writing workshop for school children, and other speakers and events.
Late March/Early April, 2006
Internment
Produced by the Mather Dance Center, this collaborative project involves faculty and students from Case and the Cleveland Institute of Music and will explore internment as experienced by Japanese Americans during World War II and by those being held in relation to the war on terror and the Iraq war.
Directed by Gary Galbraith, Artistic Director (Mather Dance Center), Associate Professor of Dance. Project conception and original score by Mark George, Director of Distance Learning at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Choreography by Karen Potter, Associate Professor of Dance and Director of Dance, with assistance from Heather Sakai, second year graduate student in Dance and a fourth generation Japanese American. Set and costume design by Russ Borski, Associate Professor of Theater. Voice and text by Beth McGee, Associate Professor of Theater.
Coming in Late April, 2006 -- Watch for announcements:
Material Religion -- Manor House Symposium
Manor House at Squire Valleevue Farm
Too often the study of religion has focused on religious ideas and institutions to the exclusion of its material-cultural dimensions. Hosted by the Interdisciplinary Initiative on Religion and Culture in cooperation with the editorial board of the journal Material Religion, this two-and-a-half-day symposium will explore the challenges and possibilities of the material aspects of religion.
