For Faculty: Seminars/Working Groups
Seminars / Jump to Reading & Working Groups
Framing Photographs: Contexts & Transpositions
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Mission
Academic life at the College is at its most stimulating and engaging when faculty members are brimming with new ideas, debating and sharing them with one another, and revising and extending their teaching and research in light of these fresh perspectives. Haverford has long been an institution favorable to this kind of collaborative intellectual excitement and fertility, if only because a strong force of natural selection--the mandate to present its students a broad spectrum of arts and disciplines in microcosm--has favored the evolution of a faculty rich in eclectic intellectual pursuits.
Enjoined to provide a seething diversity of humanistic thought within a compact sphere, these teacher-scholars have mastered an ever-expanding panoply of critical idioms pertinent to their own fields while working together to forge interdisciplinary dialogue and curricular expansion. Given such individual breadth, congeniality, and improvisatory spirit in its faculty, the College offers an ideal site for a much-needed form of conversation: a speculative, but confident, grappling with ideas, terms, and problems that have emerged as fundamental to contemporary cultural and intellectual understanding. By its historical condition and intrinsic character, Haverford is a good place to rechannel the cacophony raised in laments about a "crisis in the humanities," to transcend mere consternation at the vast critical array and reflect more deeply on its disquieting vitality. Through the Faculty Seminars program, humanist scholars gathered at Haverford are empowered to tap and direct the boisterous energy of interpretive conflict.
The Center's Faculty Seminars, then, are designed to weigh concepts integral to contemporary humanistic inquiry and to examine their strategic usage in cultural and scholarly discourse. The participants––a rotating complement of Haverford faculty selected from many departments across the academic divisions and joined by Mellon Postgraduate Fellows––will be challenged continually through wide-ranging reading and discussion to define what they think about the activity of humanistic study and to examine the terms by which they justify it. Together, these faculty will forge an intellectual arena in which the irreducible activity of questioning may be nurtured and reinvigorated, renewing the philosophic courage to test the limits of specific discourses while exploring the limitlessness of humanistic curiosity. The Seminars' aim is thereby to generate and disseminate scholars refreshed in their understanding of the competing perspectives that continue to quicken humanistic dialogue, and to enrich teaching, conversation, and research at Haverford in myriad, and often unpredictable, ways.
Format
Faculty Seminars meet throughout the academic year following a schedule established by their participants, but generally twice a month on a rhythm that allows both for extensive reading and continuity of focus. Though seminar members share responsibility for crafting a syllabus, the seminars are coordinated by individual faculty members who make proposals to the Center for the seminars they would like to lead.
A schedule of seminars for several years in advance will be developed, and faculty members will be able to join particular seminars that promise to enhance their own research and teaching interests and afford them rewarding collaborative or interdisciplinary interactions. In addition to offering opportunities to bring the faculty's research into a wider forum for debate and discussion, each seminar will have a broad thematic focus and a shared syllabus of works to be read and discussed in common. In some years, the theme of the faculty seminar may dovetail with the focus of Center speaker or performance/arts series, and the Center may sponsor additional opportunities for seminar participants to interact with visitors. Seminar coordinators and participants will receive released time for their participation (with the seminar coordinator receiving additionally a stipend).
Once the Steering Committee has accepted a proposed topic for a year's Seminar, it will entertain applications to that Seminar from any interested faculty, seeking a lively cross-section of disciplinary interests, research and teaching backgrounds, and career stages.
Current Seminar - 2009-10
"Material Identity"
Darin Hayton, History
Hank Glassman, East Asian Studies
Jesse Shipley, Anthropology
Ken Koltun-Fromm, Religion (Leader)
Laura McGrane, English
Ruti Talmor, Anthropology (Mellon Fellow)
Travis Zadeh, Religion
View the Full Seminar Description
The seminar will explore the myriad ways that persons do things with things, and so perform a kind of material expression of personal identity. But it will also integrate philosophical, visual, and literary works in order to bridge—or better, to critically examine—the often "high" and "low" tensions in cultural theory. Much of my present work, for example, draws Jewish religious philosophy into the orbit of material culture in order to show how cultural discourses inform conceptions of the religious self. I am presently concerned with issues of Jewish visuality, and the ways in which Jews see themselves and Judaism in America. The general and unwieldy term "material" is meant to invite a wide range of interests and research projects that include visual, cultural, psychological, social, anthropological, historical, biological, and other interdisciplinary adventures that uncover the various modes of human flourishing. How do we express meaning through objects? Do we invest personality, emotion, and histories in things? Do visual displays constitute objects as well as subjects? What is the role of memory and nostalgia in the production and consumption of materials? Do we engender objects? These and other questions suggest that objects do things for us, as much as we do things with objects.
Future Seminars
2010-2011 "Sex, State, and Society" • Lisa Jane Graham, History (Leader) View the Full Seminar Description
How To Apply
In the Fall Semester, faculty who are on tenure track or on a continuing appointment are invited to apply for the following full academic year's Seminar. Faculty receive one course release for their participation and a $400 book allowance.
To apply, describe your interest in the seminar in a substantial paragraph and indicate specific ways in which your teaching and scholarly interests might contribute to and/or benefit from the seminar.
The leaders and schedule of upcoming seminars is set through the 2010-11 academic year. The Center will solicit seminar proposals for its next cycle of seminars during the 2009-2010 academic year. Seminar leaders receive a $2,000 honorarium, a course release, a generous budget for the conduct of the seminar, and a $400 book allowance.
Faculty will be invited to participate in the 2010-11 seminar in the Fall of 2009.
Propose a Seminar
The Hurford Humanities Center is currently accepting proposals for Faculty Seminars in the Humanities, which will take place in 2011-12 and 2012-13. Seminar plans should define the topic and articulate the object of study, along with relevant issues, traditions, or methodologies to be addressed. 
The deadline for proposals is October 19, 2009.
We expect that the nature of seminars will vary considerably, depending on faculty interest and expertise. Some may be closely related to the seminar leader's scholarly interests, while others may arise from new directions in the leader's intellectual development; some seminars may focus from the outset on clearly defined content, while others may shape themselves more precisely through conversations among seminar participants; some may be organized around particular themes or content, while others may begin from methodological or theoretical questions.
As you ponder the possibilities, you might find it helpful to keep in mind the following elements of the Faculty Seminar program:
- When issuing invitations to faculty members to join particular seminars, the Center’s Steering Committee will seek to honor specific interests while also providing the broadest opportunities for faculty participation and the richest assemblage of disciplines and intellectual agenda for each seminar. Participants in the seminar (usually no more than 7), also include a Mellon Post-Doc Fellow, a recent Ph.D. whose expertise will directly contribute to the success of the Seminar.
- With an expanded professional Exhibitions Program now under the wing of HHC, the Seminar presents opportunities for public exhibitions using College collections and other-sourced materials, under the curatorial direction of the Seminar participants and with the guidance of Exhibitions Coordinator Matthew Callinan.
- Seminar participants will receive a one-semester course release and a $400 discretionary book stipend (conditional to submission of final report: see Guidelines and Proposal Procedures, below), and seminar leaders will receive an additional $2,000 stipend.
- A fund is made available to the Seminar to defray operating expenses, including books, xeroxing, videos, other materials, and refreshments.
Guidelines and Proposal Procedures
Reading & Working Groups / Jump to Seminars
Reading Groups
The Center sponsors ongoing Faculty Reading Groups which gather regularly to study texts of mutual interest. Up to $500 is available for books and refreshments.
Note: Students and staff may be included, but only when faculty organizers choose to invite them into the group.
How to Apply
Proposals for Reading Groups should include a description that includes format, possible participants, timing, and schedule, and projected budget, as well as an explanation of the intellectual scope of the project and its relationship to Haverford's academic program.
Reading Group Application Form
Proposals may be submitted at any time and are reviewed on a rolling basis. Please email your application to Associate Director Emily Cronin at ecronin@haverford.edu.
Working Groups
The Center provides up to $3,500 per year for Faculty Working Groups of local scholars focusing on a common research interest. Groups should be led by a Haverford faculty member and generally be constituted by at least five members, several of whom should be drawn from Haverford's faculty.
Current Groups
- American Studies—Tina Zwarg, English, czwarg@haverford.edu
How to Apply
Proposals for Working Groups should include a description that includes format, possible participants, timing, and schedule, and projected budget, as well as an explanation of the intellectual scope of the project and its relationship to Haverford's academic program.
Working Group Application Form
Deadlines: Please email your application to Associate Director Emily Cronin at ecronin@haverford.edu by by Friday, October 23rd, 2009 or Friday, April 2nd, 2010.