Interdisciplinary Seminar in the Humanities and Fine Arts

Earl Lovelace Reads from His New Novel

Monday, February 20th, 2012

On Tuesday, March 13th 4:30pm (location TBA) Earl Lovelace, the writer of Caribbean classics The Wine of Astonishment and Salt, will read from his new novel, Is Just a Movie. His new work has been hailed by The Times of London as “funny, moving, endlessly inventive”; Junot Diaz calls it “Lovelace ... at his soaring rhapsodic best.” Born in Toco, Trinidad, Lovelace has spent most of his life on the islands of Trinidad and Tobago, but he travels extensively to give lectures and readings of his work. His short stories are widely anthologized, and his books have been translated into German, Dutch, French, and Hungarian. Co-sponsored by the UMass Amherst English Department; Five Colleges, Inc. Lecture Fund; Amherst College Department of English; UMass Amherst Center for Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies; UMass Amherst W.E.B. DuBois Department of Afro-American Studies; Five College Latin American Studies Council; Professor Roberto Márquez, Mount Holyoke College; Smith College Department of English Language and Literature.

ISHA to Expand into the Interdisciplinary Studies Institute (IS)

Sunday, February 5th, 2012

ISHA is proud to announce that beginning in Fall 2012, we will become a fully-fledged institute--the Interdisciplinary Studies Institute (IS). The ISHA seminars, residencies, and events we have sponsored since 2001 will continue and be enhanced in the Institute, but our constitution and orientation will change to better address our needs as a truly interdisciplinary organization. We are grateful to the Provost and to the Deans of both the College of Humanities and Fine Arts and the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences for their support, and also to the Dean of the College of Natural Sciences for supplementary funding. We look forward to an exciting year!

Call for Applications 2012-2013:ISHA Seminar "Engagement: The Challenge of Public Scholarship"

Sunday, February 5th, 2012

In its inaugural year the newly established Interdisciplinary Studies Institute (IS) takes up the legacy of W.E. B. Du Bois for its first seminar entitled ‘Engagement: The Challenge of Public Scholarship’. Following in Du Bois’s footsteps, we’d like to consider what public engagement means to us today, in whatever fields we explore, whether in the humanities, arts, social sciences, or natural sciences. What does it mean to be an engaged scholar or artist? What lines do we cross over—or open up—when we transfer our spheres of learning and dissemination from the academic to the public? What examples do great public intellectuals and artists give us, what problems have they had to confront? We invite you to submit a proposal setting out your particular interests. All fellows will receive a $2000 research allowance.

Malcolm Purkey: Theater in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Lessons from an Artistic Director

Thursday, November 3, 2011

ISHA is proud to host the noted South African theater director and playwright, Malcolm Purkey, who will present a talk entitled ‘Theater in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Lessons from an Artistic Director’ on Thursday, November 10th, 5 pm, in Herter 231.

Eddie Daniels: ‘With Courage, For Justice’: Overcoming Apartheid in South Africa

Sunday, September 25, 2011

ISHA is delighted to host Eddie Daniels, noted South African anti-apartheid activist and former political prisoner. As repressive conditions in South Africa intensified, Daniels became a member of the African Resistance Movement, which initiated a campaign of sabotage against government utilities shortly before the African National Congress did the same. Arrested in 1964, he served a fifteen-year sentence on Robben Island, alongside other notable political prisoners such as Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, and Ahmed Kathrada. Join us to hear his compelling and inspiring story, as well as his particular perspectives on the struggle for justice in South Africa. The event will take place on Monday, October 3rd at 4:30pm in Herter Hall 301.

Paul Theroux: Faculty Symposium

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Faculty are invited to a special symposium with Paul Theroux. The gathering is from 4:00 to 5:30 p.m. in Bartlett 316. Registration is free, but required.

Call for Applications 2011-2012

Sunday, April 10, 2011

History is a story of transformation, while continuity and change tug at the inner dynamics of politics, society, culture, science. How have our very concepts of transformation changed? Or is transformation only an illusion? We at ISHA feel it is time to explore the provenance, prospects, and principles underlying transformation as approached by scholars in all disciplines. We invite you to join a group of faculty fellows who will engage with these issues for a year in our ISHA seminar for 2011-12.

ISHA Residency 2011 Announced

Friday, April 1, 2011

This April, ISHA will host three remarkable jazz musicians, Gary Smulyan, Ray Drummond, and Kenny Washington in collaboration with the UMass Amherst Department of Music and Dance and Amherst College for the ‘Beyond Borders’ Residency Program. The Residency will feature a Master Class with the musicians on Friday, April 8th from 4:30-6:30pm at UMass Amherst in Room 44 of the Fine Arts Center, as well as a concert on Saturday, April 9th at 8pm in the Amherst College Buckely Recital Hall, followed by a discussion with the audience.

ISHA Announces 2011 Annual Lecture by Kenneth Miller

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

ISHA is proud to announce the 2011 Annual Lecture: “The Evolution Wars: Why Do They Matter? Why Do They Continue?” by Kenneth Miller of Brown University. Eighty years after the notorious Scopes Monkey Trial, the powerful Intelligent Design movement continues to claim that evolution is ‘only a theory.’ The ensuing debates go to the heart of what counts as rational and scientific in the public arena. Professor Kenneth Miller was the lead witness in the historic Dover Trial, where his testimony proved instrumental in the judge’s ruling that the local school board had no right to require teachers to offer Intelligent Design as an alternative to evolution. Professor Miller is a bestselling author and repeat guest on The Colbert Report; his books include Only A Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul. The topic of the Annual Lecture coincides with the ISHA theme for the year, on ‘(Ir)rationality and Public Discourse.’ The lecture will take place on Thursday, March 31st at 4:30pm in the Campus Center, 165-69.

"Who Made English the Global Language?": A Public Lecture by Professor David Northrup

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

ISHA will be co-sponsoring a public lecture, "Who Made English the Global Language?" by Professor David Northrup, historian of Africa at Boston College on Thursday, March 24th at 5pm in 601 Herter Hall. Professor Northrup's work on Africa encompasses economics, labor and culture, and his several books include Beyond the Bend in the River: A Labor History of Eastern Zaire, 1870-1940; Indentured Labor in the Age of Imperialism, 1834-1922; Africa’s Discovery of Europe, 1450-1850; and Crosscurrents in the Black Atlantic, 1770-1965: A Brief History with Documents.

Interested faculty and graduate students are further invited to participate in Professor Northrup's Five-College seminar the following day, Friday, March 25, from 2-4pm in Bartlett Hall 316 University of Massachusetts. Seminar participants will read and discuss Professor Northrup's work on Africans in Atlantic world cities, including nineteenth-century Freetown, Sierra Leone, with background reading from his Africa's Discovery of Europe.

Intersections Intersected: The Photography of David Goldblatt

Sunday, February 13, 2011

ISHA is a proud co-sponsor of “Intersections Intersected: The Photography of David Goldblatt” at the University Museum of Contemporary Art. David Goldblatt (b. South Africa, 1930) is one of the great photographers of our time. As both citizen and photographer, he was witness to apartheid’s infiltration into every aspect of South African life. The exhibition of over 100 photographs, taken by Goldblatt during the past 50 years, focuses on South Africa’s human landscape in the apartheid and post-apartheid eras. Visit the Museum website to learn more.

ISHA 2010-2011 Seminar: (Ir)rationality and Public Discourse

Thursday, January 20 2011

We appear to be in an era when rationality and irrationality are at war with one another. Consider the manifestations, from ‘tea party’ rage, to the persistence—if not renaissance—of creationism; from suicide bombing as a form of political language to an insistence that government should keep its hands off the government program of Medicare. There are ‘birthers’ and conspiracy theorists of all descriptions, controversies around the science of global warming, indeed controversies about the nature of science altogether. Bloggers feel entitled to say anything about anything, and what is true may no longer be of interest or value. The US, having bailed out Wall Street, is accused of drifting towards socialism. Certainly there are examples of reasoned argument, in settings ranging from the political to the juridical and beyond. And yet, rationality has its own complicated history: a European enlightenment which tolerated and even propagated slavery; the sciences of past and present regarding race, sexuality and gender, or normal and abnormal behavior. And to take it further: what of the arts, whose deepest inspirations may come when going beyond the ‘rational’? Certain trends in psychology suggest that our ‘reasons’ are prompted in preconscious ways that have very little to do with rationality. Given these challenges, is anything left that one could call ‘rational’? When we seem to need rationality more than ever, are there clear rules for what counts as rational discourse? How is reason constructed? What are its limits? Can reason prevail? See the website for list of Fellows and their projects, as well as past seminars.