13.02.08 Paper 08/RC/11
Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities
Report for College Research Committee, 13 February 2008
1.IASH Activities: December 2007 – February 2008
Copies of the Institute’s Spring Programme, giving details of the STAR meetings and the Enlightenment and Life Writing workshops, will be tabled at the meeting, for information. We continue to have weekly Work-in-Progress seminars by our Visiting Fellows which are open to all (February’s list attached as Appendix A). In addition the following events have been/are being held:
12 DecemberThe roundtable session on 'Idealism and Theology in Nineteenth- Century Scottish Literature', arranged by two of the Institute’s Postdoctoral Fellows, Dr. Timothy Baker and Dr. Tom Toremans,was a well-organised and successful event. A further meeting on the topic is being planned for later in 2008.
13 DecemberAn afternoon workshop on “Biography, National Narratives and History”, organised by Professor Liz Stanley (Sociology), attracted a large number of people. The event coincided with a short visit to Edinburgh of a group of scholars from the Department of Humanities at the University of Örebro,Sweden, who were interested to learn about the work of IASH.
10/11 JanuaryThe second two-day workshop of the “Embodied Values and the Environment” Research Project (funded by the BritishAcademy), on “Environmental Aesthetics and Ethics”, was held in the Institute. It brought together speakers from a number of disciplines – English and Creative Studies, Philosophy and Public Policy, Geography, European Culture and Language, and Social Anthropology – and UK universities. The third and final workshop will take place in June.
18 JanuaryMembers of the Renaissance/Early Modern Studies Group met in the Institute for the first of a series of fortnightly lunchtime discussions, organised by Dr. Jill Burke (History of Art). These interdisciplinary meetings are well-attended from across the College.
8 FebruaryThe first of this Semester’s Speculative Lunches is on the topic of “Decadence”.
11 FebruaryAs part of the Institute’s research theme “The Humanities in the 21st Century University”, Professor Andy Clark (Philosophy) is organising the first CHAT (Conversations in Humanities, Arts, and Technologies) session with guest speaker Professor Catherine Wilson (City University of New York). On the model of the Café Scientifique, these informal occasional discussions are dedicated to exploring the interface between humanities, arts and sciences in the 21st century. The topic on this occasion is “What does Biology have to do with Morality?”. The CHAT is being held in the Filmhouse Bar/Café and it is hoped will attract participants from both inside and outside the University.
2.Future Activities
In addition to the third “Embodied Values and the Environment” workshop (referred to above), the Institute will be hosting two other events in the next few months. On 27 March there will be a one-day symposium on “Transatlantic Ideas of the American Founding”. This event is being jointly organised with Professor Paul Kerry (Department of History, Brigham Young University; Visiting Fellow, Princeton University) and will include a number of speakers from the US: Colleen Sheehan (Villanova), David Armitage (Harvard), Elige Gould (New Hampshire), Paul Rahe (Hillsdale), Richard Beeman (University of Pennsylvania), Vikki Vickers (Weber State), Pamela Joan Edwards (Syracuse) and Craig Yiroush (UCLA). An IASH application to the BritishAcademy for a conference grant for this event was unsuccessful, but Professor Kerry has managed to raise sponsorship in the US to cover the costs of bringing the speakers to Edinburgh.
The first of a series of three one-day symposia organised by the Centre for the History of the Book on “Transnational Histories of the Book” will be held in the Institute on 30May. This project, funded by the BritishAcademy, seeks to provide an infrastructure in which to explore and to develop new methodologies for the analysis of transnational material culture.
3.Other Meetings
I attended a meeting of Directors of UK and Irish Institutes for Advanced Studies, hosted by Professor Sir Roderick Floud, the Director of the School of Advanced Study, The University of London, on 18 December. This was the third meeting of this group which is seeking to create a Consortium of Research Institutes. Sir Roderick undertook to produce a consultative document on membership criteria, administrative arrangements and a draft constitution for the Consortium to be discussed at the next meeting in early May.
4.Fellows and Fellowships
The Institute is delighted to have been awarded funding under the Leverhulme Trust Artist-in- Residence scheme to bring the internationally renowned Ong Keng Sen to Edinburgh. He is a leading interdisciplinary performance practitioner, theatre director, curator and researcher of artistic process, and has been Artistic Director of TheatreWorks, Singapore since 1988. In Edinburgh he is doing research into the Scottish diaspora which will result in a commissioned work for the 2009 Edinburgh International Festival. He will be at the Institute for three periods of one month (February, May and October 2008) and is keen to talk to appropriate colleagues in the College.
The Institute has also been successful with two applications for European funding under the Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowships scheme. Dr. Jochen Petzold from the English Department at the University of Freiburg has been awarded a two-year Fellowship at IASH from January 2009 to work on “Scientific Discoveries and the Public Debate on ‘The Human Condition’ in Victorian Britain: An Analysis of Periodicals for Young Readers, 1850-1900”. Dr. Silvia Sebastiani, a recent post-doctoral Fellow, has been offered a Marie Curie Fellowship at the Centre des Hautes Etudes in Paris, with IASH acting as a secondary host institution.
Dr. Rajesh Kumar from the Department of Political Science, PPNCollege, Kanpur, has just arrived to take up this year’s Charles Wallace India Trust Fellowship at the Institute, in association with the Centre for South Asian Studies. He will be at IASH for three months.
We have recently been contacted by the American Philosophical Association seeking to revive their scheme to nominate an APA Fellow at IASH. They invite and receive applications for the Fellowship and forward a nomination to the Institute for approval. They have set a deadline of 14 February 2008 for applications for 2008-9 and we look forward to receiving a recommendation from them.
A list of current Fellows is attached (Appendix B).
5.Timetable for Fellowship Elections in 2008
Applications are currently being received for the next round of Visiting Research Fellowships and Mellon Fellowships at IASH. We would be most grateful for your assistance in grading these applications as in previous years. The timetable for this is as follows:
12 MarchApplications to be sent to Heads of Research for grading
28 MarchDeadline for the return of gradings and comments to IASH
We would propose to send the relevant applications to you on CD, unless you prefer paper copies.
Could you please let Anthea Taylor know ():
a) if you will not be available in the period 12-28 March to look at the applications. If this is the case, we would be most grateful if you could nominate a colleague in your School who would be willing to do this; and
b) if you would prefer to receive paper copies of the applications
Dr. Karina Williamson
February 2008
APPENDIX A
Work-in-Progress Seminars
February 2008
Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities
Hope Park Square
Wednesdays at 1 p.m.
6 FebruaryDr. Genevieve Warwick(Department of Art History, University of Glasgow)
Bernini: Art as Performance
13 FebruaryDr. Mateusz Borowski(Drama Department, JagiellonianUniversity, Krakow)
Stories to Share. Storytelling as a Means of Redefining Stage-Audience Relationship in Contemporary Scottish Playwriting
20 FebruaryDr. Ovidiu Verdeş (Department of Literary Theory, University of Bucharest)
The Study of Autobiography in Post-Communist Romania
27 FebruaryDr. John Docker (Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University)
The Scandal of Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe in Nineteenth Century British Culture
APPENDIX B
IASH Fellows in Residence: February 2008
NAME AFFILIATIONRESEARCH PROJECT
Dr. Dorothy Alexander / Freelance writer and creative writing tutor, BordersCollege / The Border Ballad into the 21st Century: applying experimental poetics to contemporary narratives in Borders ScotsDr. Timothy Baker / English Literature, University of Edinburgh / The Reception of German Idealism in Scottish Literature, 1830-1900
Professor Desmond Bell / Film Studies, QueensUniversity, Belfast / Diaspora, autobiography and self-fashioning: a documentary case study of navvy poet Patrick MacGill
Dr. Mateusz Borowski / Drama Department, JagiellonianUniversity, Krakow / Staging Testimony: Storytelling and Identity Construction in Contemporary Scottish Playwriting
Dr. James Clapperton / Russian, University of Edinburgh / Collection and Analysis of personal testimonies of the siege of Leningrad (1941-44)
Ms Kristin Cook / English Literature, University of Edinburgh / Jefferson, 18th Century Literary Studies and Transatlantic Performativity; STAR Research Officer
Dr. John Docker / AustralianNationalUniversity, Canberra / The Rebecca File: The Strange Afterlife of Ivanhoe’s Rebecca in the Nineteenth Century
Dr. Abbie Garrington / English Literature, University of Edinburgh / Touching Texts: The Haptic Sense in Woolf and Richardson
Dr. Rajesh Kumar / Political Science, PPNCollege, Kanpur / Revisiting Kargil: Was the Stability/Instability Paradox at Play?
Ong Keng Sen / Artistic Director, TheatreWorks, Singapore / Leverhulme Artist-in-Residence
Dr. Suzanne Owen / Divinity, University of Edinburgh / Self-Disclosure in the Study of Indigenous Religions
Dr. Roxana Preda / University of Edinburgh / American Gothic fiction in the 20th Century
Dr. Mandy Treagus / English, University of Adelaide / Maggie Papakura: Constructing Self and Iwi in Performance, Photography and Anthropology
Dr. Ovidiu Verdeş / Literary Theory, University of Bucharest / Autobiography in a Post-Communist Context
Dr. Genevieve Warwick / Art History, University of Glasgow / Art as Performance in Bernini’s Rome
Ms. Aishih Wehbe-Herrera / University of La Laguna, Canary Islands / (De)Constructing Chicano Masculinity(ies): Crossing Borders, re-mapping the self, transforming the world
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