Visitors spur lively exchange
Thirty-two experts on topics ranging from modern civil rights history to media coverage of international news will visit the Princeton campus during the 2000-01 academic year under the auspices of the Humanities Council.
The guests will include 16 visiting fellows, five Ferris Professors of Journalism, the McGraw Professor of Writing, two Hodder Fellows, six Fellows in the Liberal Arts (see related story this page) and two Belknap Visitors in the Humanities. Nineteen of the guests will spend a semester or more at Princeton, while the others will come for intensive shorter periods of lectures, seminars and colloquia.
Here is some information on the visitors:
Long-term visiting fellows
• Ahmed Akbar, anthropologist and fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge, writes about Pakistan society and modern Islam. He collaborated on the feature film, "Jinnah," and a television documentary, "Mr. Jinnah: The Making of Pakistan." Akbar will spend the year at Princeton as a Stewart Fellow in Religion and Anthropology.
• Aleida Assmann of the University of Konstanz in Germany studies memory and temporality, communication theory, cultural history and archaeology. As an Old Dominion Fellow in Germanic Languages this spring, she will lead a graduate seminar on cultural memory.
• Annette Gordon-Reed of New York Law School has written three books, including "Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy." This spring she will discuss law, race relations and modern civil rights history during her term as an Old Dominion Fellow in American Studies.
• Katherine Hayles, author of "How We Became Posthuman," is an unusual literary scholar whose first degree was in chemistry. A professor of English at the University of California-Los Angeles, she is an Old Dominion Fellow in English this fall, leading seminars for students and faculty on the intersections between literature and technology.
• Roger Little, a literary scholar at the University of Dublin, will spend the spring as a Class of 1932 Fellow in Romance Languages, teaching a course on French literatures from Africa and the Caribbean.
• Fergus Millar, an Oxford University ancient historian, will be an Old Dominion Fellow for the next three years, spending the month of March in Princeton and leading a seminar about the ancient world.
Short-term visiting fellows
• Robert Adams, philosopher of religion and chair of the philosophy department at Yale, will be a Stewart Fellow in Religion this March. His most recent book is "Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics."
• Gianni Celati, Italian writer and critic, treats subjects as varied as ancient storytelling, silent films and postmodern philosophy. His latest short story collection, "Adventures in Africa," will be published this fall. Celati, who also writes documentaries for Italian television, is a Fellow in Romance Languages this month.
• Lawrence Conrad, a scholar of late antiquity and early Islam at the Wellcome Institute in London, will be a Stewart Fellow in Near Eastern Studies, working with students and faculty in the neighboring fields of history, classics and religion.
• John Forrester has written five books on Sigmund Freud. A historian of the human sciences at Cambridge, he will be a Whitney J. Oates Fellow in History in February, focusing on how the sciences use case studies.
• Hermione Lee, biographer of Virginia Woolf, Oxford University professor of English literature, and host of a successful book program on British television, will spend two weeks in March as a Whitney J. Oates Fellow in English and Women's Studies, talking about Woolf and biography.
• Eric Lott examines race, politics and American culture. A professor at the University of Virginia, he is the author of "Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class," a study of the formation of white subjectivity. Lott will be a Fellow in English.
• Sharon Marcus of the University of California-Berkeley works on English and French literatures as well as film, architecture and literary theory. Her "Apartment Stories: City and Home in 19th-Century Paris and London" develops original readings of space and gender. She was a Fellow in English earlier this month.
• Ann Moss, a specialist of Renaissance literature and rhetoric at the University of Durham, will be a Whitney J. Oates Fellow in Renaissance Studies in April. She has studied vernacular humanistic culture in Western Europe and the function of mythology in early modern French poetry.
• Kevin Phillips is a leading commentator on modern American politics who writes about emerging trends. His 1959 book, "The Emerging Republican Majority," proved prophetic in forecasting a conservative upsurge. Phillips will be a Fellow in American Studies in December, commenting on the presidential election.
• Paolo Puppa, Italian theater critic and professor of theater history at the University of Venice, will talk about theatrical avant-gardes from Futurism to Dario Fo during his stay in Romance languages this month.
Ferris Professors of Journalism
• Jill Abramson, Washington editor of The New York Times and co-author of "Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas," is teaching a seminar this fall on the dilemmas of investigative journalism and writing about the private lives of public figures.
• Ralph Begleiter brings to Princeton 30 years of broadcast journalism experience. A veteran CNN world affairs correspondent, he is teaching a seminar on media influence in international policy this fall.
• Juanita Darling, Central America bureau chief for The Los Angeles Times and recipient of a Robert F. Kennedy Award for Print Journalism, will use the drug wars as a prism for teaching investigative reporting this spring.
• Maria Ressa, CNN international correspondent, has served as bureau chief in Jakarta and Manila during turbulent times for both countries. A 1986 Princeton alumna, she will return this spring to lead a seminar on media coverage of international news.
• Michael Vitez of The Philadelphia Inquirer won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism. Convinced that "In a world overrun with facts, channels, Web sites, information, the best way to reach people, to move people, is by telling a story," he will teach narrative non-fiction this spring.
McGraw Professor of Writing
• Paula Span of The Washington Post writes about national issues, cultural life and trends. She is teaching this fall on "The Art of the Profile."
Hodder Fellows
Recipients of this fellowship are humanists of exceptional promise who spend a year in Princeton, pursuing an independent project. They are:
• Karen Hartman, a playwright whose work as been produced in more than a dozen theaters.
• Greg Hrbek, novelist and author of "The Hindenburg Crashes Nightly."
Belknap Visitors in the Humanities
These visitors spend one day on campus. They are:
• Maurice Sendak, author and illustrator of such classics as "Where the Wild Things Are" and "In Grandpa's House," who will talk about his work Wednesday, Oct. 18 (see story on page 8).
• Wim Wenders, the eminent filmmaker, who will come this spring.
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October 16, 2000 Contents • Close
encounter: Crowd relishes access to
president • Imaginations
drive wall • Spotlight
/ People
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