The University Record, September 17, 1997
From the Institute for the Humanities
The Institute for the Humanities will host a varied group of visiting fellows in the coming academic year, according to Thomas Trautmann, newly appointed director of the Institute. “It is a pleasure to be able to bring distinguished scholars such as these to campus. We hope many will take advantage of their presence to visit them at the Institute.”
During their residencies, each will illuminate a different aspect of the theme “Narrative,” participate in the Fellows Seminar with the 11 faculty and graduate students announced last spring, and meet informally with faculty and student colleagues.
Alain Boureau (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, and director of the Centre de Recherches Historiques) is a specialist in the intellectual history of medieval European thought. His research centers on the religious aspects of political institutions and the political elements of religious trends. As the Norman Freehling Visiting Professor, Boureau is leading a seminar on “Franciscan Medieval Eschatology.” The U-M Press will publish an English translation of his 1988 book on Pope Joan in 1998 or 1999. (In residence fall 1997)
Norma Field (East Asian languages and civilizations, University of Chicago) was born and raised in Tokyo. Trained in classical Japanese literature, Field now finds herself transfixed by the Japanese fascination with Jean-Henri Fabre, a French entomologist. She is studying the narratives of nature, technology, aesthetics, masculinity and boyhood/adulthood that developed around Fabre’s work in prewar and post-war Japan. She will teach a minicourse on “Insects, Nature, and Modernity” Jan. 7-Feb. 4. Field’s visit to Michigan is cosponsored by the Center for Japanese Studies, which invited her to come as their Toyota Visiting Professor. (Jan. 5-March 21, 1998)
Jonathan Levy (theater arts and English, State University of New York at Stony Brook; Harvard Graduate School of Education) is a playwright interested in those areas where theater and education intersect. His visit will enhance the mounting of Avery Hopwood’s The Best People, a collaboration between the Hopwood Program and the Theatre Department. Besides participating in panel discussions about that production, he will offer a reading of a dramatic work-in-progress. (Feb. 1-21, 1998)
François Lissarrague (Greek anthropology and iconography, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris) is mainly interested in the social uses of images in ancient Greek culture and the relationship between writing and painting. He currently is writing a book titled Images and Rituals in Ancient Athens. During his residency, he will deliver a lecture on “Time, Ritual, and Narration in Attic Vase Painting.” (Oct. 12- Nov. 1.)
Ngozi Onwurah is a film writer and director, and founding director of Non-Aligned Communications in London. Her first film, Coffee Coloured Children, won first prize in the BBC Showreel in 1988. Semi-autobiographical, this unsettling film conveys the experience of children of mixed racial parentage and bears powerful witness to their struggle for self-definition as they deal with the internalized effects of racism. Plans for her visit include screenings of several of her films, culminating in a free, public showing of her first, prize-winning, feature film, Welcome II The Terrordome, at the Michigan Theater. Onwurah will be the Paula and Edwin Sidman Fellow in the Arts. (March 8-April 11, 1998)
