Short-Term Visiting Fellows 2009-2010
During intensive two or three-day periods, these Fellows lecture and participate in classes, colloquia and informal discussions. The Program was created with a gift from Frank E. Taplin, Jr. '37 in honor of Whitney J. Oates, the distinguished classicist and founder of the Humanities Council.
Geri Allen, pianist, composer, and producer teaches jazz and contemporary improvisation at the University of Michigan. Her sacred jazz work, For the Healing of Nations, in memory of 9/11, premiered on the eve of the fifth anniversary of that tragedy. As a guest of the Center for African American Studies in the spring, she will teach a master class and perform with her own quartet and with Princeton's jazz bands.
David Grossman, Israeli novelist and essayist, has written about the trials of Jewish statehood, the ongoing anguish of Palestinians, and juvenile delinquency. His novel See Under: Love, the story of a troubled childhood in the shadow of the Holocaust, has been translated into 25 languages. He will be hosted by Judaic Studies and Creative Writing in April.
Getatchew Haile, MacArthur Fellow and professor of medieval studies at St. John's University in Minnesota, is a scholar of Ge'ez (Ethiopic), the African liturgical and scholarly language in which Ethiopia's ancient, medieval and early modern literature is written. As a Fellow in Comparative Literature in October, he will talk about Ge'ez literature.
Morris Halle, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at MIT, has shaped the way we think about language through his writings about phonology, morphology, and poetics. He has collaborated on books with Roman Jakobson and Noam Chomsky. Halle will spend three days on campus as a guest of the linguistics program.
Ann Hamilton, artist and MacArthur Fellow, is known for her photographs and site-specific installations which combine elements of sculpture, video and performance. She makes frequent use of unconventional materials, such as textiles, books, light, typewriter ribbon, horsehair, peacocks and soybeans, which she mines for their poetic and historical associations. A professor at Ohio State University, she will be a fellow in the Art Museum, preparing a work for exhibit in the museum.
Jon Levenson, Professor of Jewish Studies at the Harvard Divinity School, is an expert on the Hebrew Bible in its ancient Near Eastern context. He also writes about the literary interpretation of the Bible, rabbinic midrash and the relations between Judaism and Christianity. He will talk about these topics during his visit as Stewart Fellow in Religion.
Adam Phillips, British psychoanalyst and essayist, writes about the relationships among psychoanalysis, literature and philosophy. His 14 books include expositions of psychoanalytic theory (Winnicott) and engagements with other disciplines: science (Darwin's Worms); politics (Equals); philosophy (Going Sane); biography; and the intersection of literature and psychoanalysis (Promises, Promises among others). His newest work is On Kindness, with historian Barbara Taylor. As a guest of the English department in October, he will give lectures, seminars and a reading.
Jörg Rüpke, Professor of Comparative Religion at the University of Erfurt, Germany, is a Stewart Fellow in Classics in October. An expert on Roman religion, he has studied the relationship between religion and such phenomena as war, empire, representation, and the Roman calendar. During his visit his will present a public lecture and participate in a seminar on Roman religion.
Kaja Silverman, Professor of Rhetoric and Film Studies at Berkeley, crosses many disciplinary boundaries in her work on cinema, semiotics and psychoanalysis. She engages with classic Hollywood movies; novels by Henry James, Proust of T.E. Lawrence; essays by Freud and Lacan; paintings by da Vinci; and video projections by James Coleman. Her visit in October is hosted by the English department, with Art and Archaeology and the Program in Media and Modernity.
Marilyn Strathern, Cambridge University anthropologist, began her career by studying the ethnology of New Guinea. This led her to explore the mutual embeddedness of legality, gender, sexuality, kinship and exchange. She studies the cultural implications of medial technology, especially genetic research and reproductive technology. She will be a Fellow in Anthropology.
Vittorio Storaro, internationally acclaimed cinematographer, has won Academy Awards for Apocalypse Now, Reds, and The Last Emperor. His concept of "writing with light," influenced by painters, such as Rembrandt and Caravaggio, and by the psychoanalytic theories of Jung, inspires him to seek a balance between light and shadow, conscious and unconscious, male and female. During his visit this spring, there will be showings and discussions around his films.
