Research Workshops

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1 Research Workshops Archaeology Faculty Coordinator: Ian Hodder (Cultural and Social Anthropology / Archaeology Center) Graduate Student Coordinators: Cori Fenwick (Classics), Rob Stephan (Classics) Human beings and their near ancestors have roamed this planet for something like five million years, but we only have written records for the past five thousand years. Archaeology is therefore our only source of evidence for the first 99.9% of human history. Even where we have written texts, they only tell us about certain social groups usually rich, powerful, and male. Our only direct source of information about the rest of human experience is archaeology. This workshop brings together people working on archaeological problems in different departments, with two goals: 1) synthesizing different approaches to archaeology in ways that have never been done before; and 2) redefining the relationships between prehistorical archaeology and historical archaeology, or the archaeology of eras for which there is also a written record. Constructing Space in Asia Faculty Coordinator: Jean Ma (Film and Media Studies) Graduate Student Coordinators: Christine Ho (Art and Art History), Emily Brink (Art and Art History) This workshop examines how space and place serve as conceptual categories structuring our understanding of Asia. The workshop will draw on concrete objects and sites such as landscapes, maps, architecture, townships, and iconography. Using ideas and methods from multiple disciplines, it will seek a more multifaceted understanding of Asia by considering how space is perceived, conceived, lived, and practiced in different cultural contexts. Construction of Meaning Faculty Coordinator: Beth Levin (Linguistics) Graduate Student Coordinator: Scott Grimm (Linguistics) This workshop provides a venue for addressing new developments in the treatment of meaning in linguistic theory, philosophy, literary analysis, and language education.

2 Critical Studies of Sexuality Faculty Coordinators: Penelope Eckert (Linguistics) Graduate Student Coordinators: Maura Finkelstein (CASA), Max Strassfeld (Religious Studies) LGBT/Queer Studies, both in its direct contribution to human rights and in its more theoretical applications, has become central to a growing body of scholarly work, the production of which requires consistent multidisciplinary dialogue. The workshop will emphasize the centrality of transgender and intersex issues to LGBT/Queer Studies. The focus will be on three areas, one per quarter: Defining and Critiquing Queer/LGBT Studies, Studies of Transnationalism and Imperialism, and Science. The workshop will bring together diverse interests in sexuality studies, combining work in the humanities and social sciences with work in the biological sciences. Feminist Theory Faculty Coordinators: Helen Longino (Philosophy), Paula Moya (English) Graduate Student Coordinator: TBA This workshop brings together scholars in different fields who work on feminist topics to investigate the latest work in feminist theory. The workshop will investigate international feminism, the encounter of feminist theory and queer theory, and feminist arts performance and aesthetics. Figuring the Present: The Contemporary Novel as Making Sense of the Now Faculty Coordinator: Amir Eshel (German Studies and Comparative Literature) Graduate Student Coordinator: Mike Benveniste (English) This workshop seeks to understand the social function and status of the contemporary novel. Fictional texts from the past three decades will be read along with other print publications (newspapers, magazines, etc.). Placing contemporary works of fiction in their historical and cultural context will allow a better understanding of how these works engage in the social sphere with issues like gender, identity, ethics, politics, and cultural memory.

3 French Culture Workshop Faculty Coordinators: Dan Edelstein (French) and J.P. Daughton (History) Graduate Student Coordinator: Sarah Streicher (French and Italian) The French Culture Workshop has a national reputation as a forum for the exchange of ideas on all aspects of modern French society. The workshop focuses on the period from 1700 to the present, placing particular emphasis on topics related to the research of current Stanford graduate students, such as political and intellectual history, imperialism and colonialism, gender and women, nationalism and national identity, and immigration and minorities. Global Justice Faculty Coordinators: Debra Satz (Philosophy and Ethics in Society); Joshua Cohen (Political Science, Philosophy, and Law) Graduate Student Coordinator: Adam Rosenblatt (MTL) This workshop examines questions of global justice including: poverty, inequality between nations, oppressive regimes, identity, human rights, and our duties to one another. The workshop brings together faculty and graduate students from across the university to investigate the complexities of these questions and to discuss possible answers. Law and History Faculty Coordinator: Carolyn Lougee Chappell (History), Matt Sommer (History) Graduate Student Coordinator: Liz Thornberry (History) Law and history are essential to understanding past societies as well as contemporary ones in comparative perspective. This workshop will bring together graduate students and faculty who will focus on the transplantation of legal institutions in different historical contexts. This historical work will represent a timely inquiry into current issues related to the rule of law and the implementation of democracy in transitional societies.

4 Literary Studies and the Digital Library: Beyond Search and Access Faculty Coordinator: Matthew Jockers (English) Graduate Student Coordinator: Ed Finn (English) This workshop brings together graduate students, faculty, librarians, and others to discuss the specific sort of humanities research that has been made possible by recent advances in information technology. It provides a forum in which to think about and explore a sort of research that has never been possible before. What if scholars could perform a search for the word love in all of nineteenth-century British fiction and get a graphical representation of the frequency of the word in books written in different geographical locations? It might change our notions of Romantic and Victorian literature. This workshop will think through the rich ways in which digital resources might be mined for new ways of understanding. Media, Memory, and the Ancient Past Faculty Coordinator: Richard Martin (Classics) Graduate Student Coordinator: Darian Toten (Classical Archaeology) This workshop will bring together scholars of the ancient past as well as historians and critics of more recent eras to discuss the roles that different media (such as oral traditions, texts and book culture, physical objects, etc.) play in constructing and embodying individual and group memory. Multidisciplinary Approaches to Medieval and Early Modern Studies Faculty Coordinators: David Riggs (English) and Philippe Buc (History) Graduate Student Coordinator: Noah Millstone (History) and Corey Tazzara (History) Study of the medieval and early modern period is by definition interdisciplinary, comprising languages and literatures, history, art history, musicology, philosophy, religion, and other related fields. This workshop brings together faculty and graduate students working on the long and important centuries between the ancient world and the modern era, who will share perspectives and enrich each other s work. The workshop also provides a forum for those working toward creating a Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies at Stanford.

5 Music, Aesthetics, and Society Faculty Coordinator: Tom Grey (Music) Graduate Student Coordinators: Erick Arenas (Musicology), Jessica Balik (Musicology), Johanna Yunker (Musicology) This workshop provides a forum in which current issues in aesthetics, criticism, and interpretation are explored especially in relation to broader questions about society. Aesthetics is by nature an interdisciplinary subject. By focusing on aesthetics, this workshop allows musicological questions to be connected to issues in related disciplines. The Philosophical Reading Group Faculty Coordinator: Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht (Comparative Literature, French and Italian) Graduate Student Coordinator: Melanie Conroy (French and Italian) The Philosophical Reading Group is now in its 19th year of existence at Stanford and has long been a Humanities Center workshop. The PRG meets weekly to discuss philosophical texts chosen in advance. Graduate students and faculty present and analyze philosophical work, and graduate students have the opportunity to relate their own research to philosophical questions raised by the text. The Postcolonial City: An Interdisciplinary Workshop on Remapping the Geography of Theory and Urbanism Faculty Coordinator: Paulla Ebron (Cultural and Social Anthropology) Graduate Student Coordinators: Austin Zeiderman (Cultural and Social Anthropology), Maura Finkelstein (Cultural and Social Anthropology) This workshop promotes an interdisciplinary dialogue on the contemporary city through the lens of the postcolonial, broadly conceived. It brings together scholars from the humanities, the social sciences, and the professional disciplines to reexamine notions of urbanism in light of the growing importance of urban spaces throughout the world. Seminar on Enlightenment and Revolution, Faculty Coordinator: Blakey Vermeule (English) Graduate Student Coordinator: Natalie Phillips (Engllish) The Enlightenment and Revolution workshop crosses national boundaries and disciplines by bringing together a variety of eighteenth-century scholars with different research

6 interests and methods to investigate an extremely rich historical period, with a focus on the categories of Enlightenment and Revolution. Social Ethics and Normative Theory Faculty Coordinators: Agnieszka Jaworska (Philosophy), Tamar Schapiro (Philosophy) Graduate Student Coordinator: Peyton McElroy (Philosophy) This workshop brings together scholars from disciplines such as philosophy, political science, economics, and law to discuss the norms that guide the behavior of individuals and groups. The workshop addresses foundational issues in the study of normative ethics and integrates relevant empirical research from psychology, political science, and economics. The Workshop in Poetics Faculty Coordinator: Roland Greene (English and Comparative Literature) Graduate Student Coordinator: Harris Feinsod (Comparative Literature) The Workshop in Poetics is concerned with the theoretical and practical dimensions of the reading, criticism, and theoretical elaboration of poetry. This workshop is especially focused on poetics as an arena for theory and interpretive practice, and historical poetics as a particular set of challenges for the reader and scholar. Workshops in Development Ancient China How Things Disappear: A Comparative Investigation of Unintentional Loss Heritage Ethics Workshop State, Market, Civil Society and Philanthropy