Humanities Day 2016 - Session 1

Imani Winds

tpopelka — Mon, 08 Aug 2016 20:29:29 +0000

Presentation:

The Imani Winds in Concert and Conversation

Session:

Music

Imani Winds are an internationally touring wind quintet noted for dynamic performances, adventurous collaborations, inspirational outreach programs, and a strong commitment to commissioning new works. Imani Winds will serve as the Don Michael Randel Ensemble-in-Residence at the University of Chicago for the 2016–17 and 2017–18 academic years.

The Imani Winds in Concert and Conversation

tpopelka — Mon, 08 Aug 2016 20:22:53 +0000

Presenter:

Imani Winds

Session 1

Meet the Imani Winds—the path-breaking, Grammy-nominating woodwind quintet recently appointed as the Don Michael Randel Ensemble in Residence at the University of Chicago. This dynamic chamber ensemble, known for its superb musicianship, culturally poignant programming, and inspirational outreach programs, presents an informal program of standard woodwind quintet repertoire and engaging orchestral transcriptions, capped by an interactive Q&A session with the audience.

Noir and the Refugee Experience

tpopelka — Mon, 08 Aug 2016 18:03:36 +0000

Presenter:

Vu Tran

Session 1

Vu Tran’s 2015 literary crime novel, Dragonfish, tells the story of a white American police officer searching for his Vietnamese ex-wife in the gambling dens of Las Vegas and amid the Vietnamese-American gangsters who’ve brought him there. Tran will read from Dragonfish and discuss how he used the conventions of noir fiction to tell a deeper story about the refugee experience and the shadow it casts over the lives of the Vietnamese-Americans in his novel.

Words to Music to Words

tpopelka — Mon, 08 Aug 2016 17:38:57 +0000

Presenter:

Lawrence Zbikowski

Session 1

A few years ago the music psychologist Diana Deutsch circulated an astounding recording in which everyday speech was magically transformed into music. Her recording prompts the first question I want to explore: what makes words change into music? And finally, using my research on relationships between words and music in songs—how does music change how we hear and understand words?

Lawrence Zbikowski

tpopelka — Mon, 08 Aug 2016 17:38:05 +0000

Presentation:

Words to Music to Words

Session:

Session 1

Music

Lawrence Zbikowski is Professor in the Department of Music. His principal research interests involve applying recent work in cognitive science to various problems confronted by music scholars, with a particular focus on music theory and analysis. He is the author of Conceptualizing Music: Cognitive Structure, Theory, and Analysis (Oxford University Press, 2002), which won the 2004 Wallace Berry Award from the Society for Music Theory.

Hittite Hacking and How to Avoid Seal Fraud

tpopelka — Mon, 08 Aug 2016 17:37:11 +0000

Presenter:

Theo van den Hout

Session 1

The loss of a credit card or your PIN code falling in the hands of hackers are concerns that people in the ancient Middle East some 3500 years ago could relate to. For them their personal seal was like a PIN: they used it to sign important records and transactions and those seals were traceable to them and them only. What was hacking like then and what could one do against it? This talk presents some relevant Hittite material from ancient Anatolia (nowadays Turkey) between 1500 and 1200 BC.

Theo van den Hout

tpopelka — Mon, 08 Aug 2016 17:35:47 +0000

Presentation:

Hittite Hacking and How to Avoid Seal Fraud

Session:

Session 1

Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

Theo van den Hout is the Arthur and Joann Rasmussen Professor of Hittite and Anatolian Languages in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and the Oriental Institute. Interested in all aspects of Late Bronze and Iron Age Anatolia, van den Hout focuses his research on Hittite culture, history, and language. The author of several books, most recently The Elements of Hittite (Cambridge University Press, 2011), he is also Executive Editor of the Chicago Hittite Dictionary.

Nakata Hideo's Ringu and the Memories of Atom Bombings

tpopelka — Mon, 08 Aug 2016 17:33:37 +0000

Presenter:

Olga Solovieva

Session 1

Nakata Hideo's horror film Ringu (1998) with its abundant allusions to the memories of atom bombings offers a contemporary example of the Japanese film genre called hibakusha cinema (films about the victims of the atom bomb). In the context of Fukushima, anti-nuclear activism, and President Obama’s historic visit to Hiroshima, Ringu’s atomic iconography acquires a historical and political dimension that harks back to the history of nuclear physics on the University of Chicago campus.

Of Trees, a Son, and Kingship: Recovering the First Chinese Dream

tpopelka — Mon, 08 Aug 2016 17:32:16 +0000

Presenter:

Edward Shaughnessy

Session 1

The first volume of the Tsinghua University Warring States bamboo-strip manuscripts contains a text with passages that match medieval quotations of a text referred to as Cheng wu程寤, or Awakening at Cheng, which in turn is said to be a lost chapter of the Yi Zhou shu逸周書, or Leftover Zhou Documents. The passages concern one of Chinese literature’s earliest interpretations of a dream, and were quoted in medieval encyclopedias in their sections on dreams. This presentation will discuss the significance of this discovery both for Chinese textual history and also for the early development of dream interpretation in China.

Edward Shaughnessy

tpopelka — Mon, 08 Aug 2016 17:31:10 +0000

Presentation:

Of Trees, a Son, and Kingship: Recovering the First Chinese Dream

Session:

Session 1

East Asian Languages and Civilizations

Edward Shaughnessy is the Lorraine J. and Herrlee G. Creel Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations. Shaughnessy is a scholar of ancient China who studies China's archaeologically recovered texts as well as the literary traditions in which they were born. His research interests lie heavily in bronze inscriptions and the Zhou Yi, both of which reached their full maturity toward the end of the Western Zhou period (1045 to 771 B.C.E.).