‌Simon Evnine

Professor of Philosophy
University of Miami

Making Objects and Events:
A Hylomorphic Theory of Artifacts, Actions, and Organisms

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Making Objects and Events: A Hylomorphic Theory of Artifacts, Actions, and Organismsis a study in the metaphysics of the world we make around us, the world of humble artifacts like tables and chairs, as well as sublime artifacts like symphonies, novels, and paintings. Artifacts such as these present a host of philosophical puzzles. How much change can they undergo without ceasing to exist? When they have functions (as chairs have the function of being sat on), how do they come to have these functions, and how are those functions related to the intentions of their makers? In providing answers to these and other questions, the book develops a vision of artifacts as being the impressions of minds on matter; their essences lie in the ways they come to exist, the ways in which makers impose their intentions onto the matter available to them.

Simon Evnine is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Miami. His areas of research include epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind. He is the author of Epistemic Dimensions of Personhood (Oxford University Press, 2008), Donald Davidson (Stanford University Press, 1991), and articles in such journals as Mind, Synthese, and Journal of the History of Philosophy on topics in epistemology and the philosophy of mind, Locke, Hume, and Freud.

2016-2017 Center for the Humanities ‌Fellows Symposium

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Annette Gordon-Reed

Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History, Harvard Law School
Professor of History, Faculty of Arts & Sciences, Harvard University

Making Black Citizenship: The Importance and Limits of the Law (Public Lecture)

Cosponsored by  
the Joseph Carter Memorial Fund, the Center for the Humanities,
the Institute for Advanced Study of the Ameicas, Center for Hispanic and Caribbean Legal Studies, Marta S. Weeks Chair in Latin American Studies, American Studies Program, Hemispheric Caribbean Studies, Latin American Studies Program, the Departments of History, Philosophy, and English.

Hemispheric Caribbean Studies: Collaborative Research and Teaching Proposals

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Richard P. Martin

Antony and Isabelle Raubitschek Professor of Classics
Stanford University

Homeric Poetry and Local Religion: Cults of Zeus in the Iliad (Public Lecture)

“The Language of Heroes: Speech and Performance in the Iliad] is a major contribution to classics, literary criticism, and oral poetics.” 
— Michael N. Nagler, The Journal of American Folklore

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 Sponsored by the University of Miami College of Arts & Sciences, the Center for the Humanities, and the Department of Classics

Chrissy Arce

Associate Professor of Spanish
University of Miami

México’s Nobodies:
The Cultural Legacy of the Soldadera and Afro-Mexican Women

México’s Nobodies examines two key figures in Mexican history that have remained anonymous despite their proliferation in the arts: the soldadera and the figure of the mulata. Chrissy Arce unravels the stunning paradox evident in the simultaneous erasure (in official circles) and ongoing fascination (in the popular imagination) with the nameless people who both define and fall outside of traditional norms of national identity. The book traces the legacy of these extraordinary figures in popular histories and legends, the Inquisition, ballads such as “La Adelita” and “La Cucaracha,” iconic performers like Toña la Negra, and musical genres such as the son jarocho and danzón. This study is the first of its kind to draw attention to art’s crucial role in bearing witness to the rich heritage of blacks and women in contemporary México.

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Elizabeth Hill Boone

Professor of History of Art
Martha and Donald Robertson Chair in Latin American Art
Tulane University

Spatial Grammars: The Union of Art and Writing in the Painted Books of Aztec Mexico (Public Lecture)

Sponsored by the Department of History's Speakers Series

Thomas W. Laqueur

Helen Fawcett Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley
Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar

Why Do We Care for the Dead?

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Vincent Brown

Charles Warren Professor of History
Professor of African and African American Studies
Harvard University

The Coromantee War: Charting the Course of an Atlantic Slave Revolt (Public Lecture)

“Vincent Brown makes the dead talk. With his deep learning and powerful historical imagination, he calls upon the departed to explain the living. The Reaper’s Garden stretches the historical canvas and forces readers to think afresh. It is a major contribution to the history of Atlantic slavery.”
— Ira Berlin, author of Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America

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Pamela Geller

Assistant Professor of Anthropology
University of Miami

The Bioarchaeology of Socio-Sexual Lives: 
Queering Common Sense About Sex, Gender, and Sexuality

Presented by the Center for the Humanities Animal Studies & Environmental Humanities Interdisciplinary Research Group

Alan Mikhail

Professor of History, Yale University

Live Stocks: Animals and Economic Transformation in Ottoman Egypt

This talk offers a template for understanding how rural economies based both on animal wealth and the shared labor of humans and animals changed at the end of the eighteenth-century to effect the global transition of early modern rural societies from subsistence to commercialized agriculture. Combining the literatures of human-animal relations, early modern agriculture, and Ottoman economic and social history, this talk argues for the importance of nonhuman histories in understanding global economic, energetic, and political transformations.

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Dylan C. Penningroth

Professor of History and Law
University of California, Berkeley

Law for a Gospel Church: African American Religion and Legal Culture, 1865-1970 (Public Lecture)

“Penningroth applies an intellectual framework laden with insights gleaned from African Studies and anthropology, making this book [The Claims of Kinfolk] an ambitious exercise in interdisciplinary scholarship and comparative history.”
— American Historical Review

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Presented by the Center for the Humanities Animal Studies & Environmental Humanities Interdisciplinary Research Group

Alan Mikhail

Professor of History, Yale University

Live Stocks: Animals and Economic Transformation in Ottoman Egypt

This talk offers a template for understanding how rural economies based both on animal wealth and the shared labor of humans and animals changed at the end of the eighteenth-century to effect the global transition of early modern rural societies from subsistence to commercialized agriculture. Combining the literatures of human-animal relations, early modern agriculture, and Ottoman economic and social history, this talk argues for the importance of nonhuman histories in understanding global economic, energetic, and political transformations.

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The Many Fourteenth Amendments is presented by the Department of History and co-sponsored by the Office of the President, Office of the Provost, College of Arts & Sciences, University of Miami School of Law, Center for the Humanities, University of Miami Libraries, Departments of English and Political Science

 Lunch Seminar on Expanding Career Opportunities for PhDs:

"The Humanist Entrepreneur: Deploying Your Graduate Training Beyond the Academy"

Amyrose McCue Gill

Founder of TextFormations

This event is aimed at graduate students thinking about more and less outside-the-box answers to the question "Why am I doing a PhD?". Amyrose McCue Gill (PhD Berkeley, Italian Studies) is the co-founder and an editor and translator with TextFormations, a manuscript preparation services partnership launched in 2015. She will share her postdoctoral experiences and describe how her doctoral work in the humanities came to inform her current career path in unexpected ways. Amyrose is happy to answer questions from questing graduate students and postdocs about everything from the academic job market to balancing family and career; from business concerns (like finances and marketing) to publishing processes (like editing and translation).

Amyrose McCue Gill holds a PhD in Italian Studies from the University of California at Berkeley with specializations in Renaissance literature, early modern history, and women and gender studies. She has been a translator, editor, and project manager for over a decade, and handle projects in English, Italian, French, and Spanish. Her work in North America and Europe. With her colleague Lisa Regan, who earned her PhD in the History of Art, also from Berkeley, she established TextFormations, which provides customized support for writers and researchers in higher education, who are undertaking translation, writing, research, and publishing projects in North America, Europe, Asia, the UK, and the Commonwealth. They have assisted in bringing books to publication from university presses such as Cambridge, Yale, Oxford, Stanford, Toronto, as well as Palgrave, Brepols, Brill, Routledge, and many others; as well as articles published in peer-reviewed journals such as Representations, The Art Bulletin, and Renaissance Quarterly.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

"Writing and Revising Articles, and Getting Them Published"

Amyrose McCue Gill & Mihoko Suzuki

Mihoko Suzuki (journal editor) and Amyrose McCue Gill (article editor) are available to answer all of your questions about publishing articles in academic journals. What makes for a successful article? How do you choose an appropriate journal? What is the submission and peer review process like? When should I publish an article and how many should I publish? How long does it all take? This event will have a seminar format and will be driven by participant questions; come with all your worries and excitement about article publishing!

Book Development Workshop:

"From Pitching Proposals to Peer Review and Production"

Amyrose McCue Gill & Ben Doyle

Text Formations; Publisher and Head of Literary Studies for the Scholarly Division at Palgrave Macmillan

This workshop, led by Ben Doyle (publisher for literature with Palgrave) and Amyrose McCue Gill (editor and translator with TextFormations), is aimed at scholars with monograph projects (in mind or in hand) who want to know more about 1. How to pitch a book to a publisher; 2. How to revise a dissertation or manuscript for publication; 3. How to handle the peer review process; and 4. How to prepare for production and publication. We will also touch on edited volumes and on developmental editing but there will be time for lots of Q & A. Come with questions about any and all aspects of publishing books. 

Amyrose McCue Gill holds a PhD in Italian Studies from the University of California at Berkeley with specializations in Renaissance literature, early modern history, and women and gender studies. She has been a translator, editor, and project manager for over a decade, and handle projects in English, Italian, French, and Spanish. Her work in North America and Europe. With her colleague Lisa Regan, who earned her PhD in the History of Art, also from Berkeley, she established TextFormations, which provides customized support for writers and researchers in higher education, who are undertaking translation, writing, research, and publishing projects in North America, Europe, Asia, the UK, and the Commonwealth. They have assisted in bringing books to publication from university presses such as Cambridge, Yale, Oxford, Stanford, Toronto, as well as Palgrave, Brepols, Brill, Routledge, and many others; as well as articles published in peer-reviewed journals such as Representations, The Art Bulletin, and Renaissance Quarterly.

Ben Doyle is Publisher and Head of Literary Studies for the Scholarly Division at Palgrave Macmillan. He has worked on the list for nine years, originally starting in 2009 as an Editorial Assistant. Ben overseas an editorial team of five people, based in London and New York

 CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

Karen Rose Mathews

Assistant Professor of Art History
University of Miami

Conflict, Commerce, and an Aesthetic of Appropriation in the Italian Maritime Cities, 1000-1150

‌Ginema del Rio Riande

Professor of Medieval Studies, University of Buenos Aires 

Refounding the Digital Humanities from the South

Ingrid D. Rowland

Professor of History, University of Notre Dame
Professor, University of Notre Dame School of Architecture, Rome

Two Renaissance Magnates: Agostino Chigi and Jakob Fugger (Public Lecture)

“[Rowland] brings this lost world back to the three-dimensional life and vivid color [in The Culture of the High Renaissance]… a splendid writer whose words evoke unforgettable images of Renaissance society.” 
— The New York Review of Books

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Joshua Knobe

Professor of Cognitive Science and Philosophy, Yale University

IRG Cognitive Studies Lecture: "Norms and Normality"

People ordinarily distinguish between ways of behaving that are "normal" and those that are "abnormal." But how exactly is this distinction to be understood? This talk will discuss a series of experimental studies designed to explore people's ordinary notion of normality. The key result is that people's ordinary notion of normality is not a purely statistical one (e.g., the type of behavior that is most frequent) or a purely prescriptive one (e.g., the type of behavior that is ideal). Instead, our ordinary notion of normality appears to mix together statistical and prescriptive considerations. I discuss implications of these findings for a variety of questions in cognitive science.

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Rebecca Doran

Assistant Professor of Chinese
University of Miami

Transgressive Typologies:
Constructions of Gender & Power in Early Tang China

Rebecca Doran is Assistant Professor of Chinese and Director of Chinese Studies in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Miami. Her research and teaching interests include Chinese literature, historiography, and Chinese language. More specifically, her work examines Tang and Song literature and cultural history, with particular interests in women’s literature, gender studies, and material culture.

William Germano

Professor of English, The Cooper Union

William Germano is author of Getting It Published: a Guide for Scholars and Anyone Else Serious about Serious Books (University of Chicago Press, 3/e 2016) and From Dissertation to Book (University of Chicago Press, 2/e 2013). He writes a biweekly blog for the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Lingua Franca blog; he has also published essays on writing and publishing in the Chronicle and elsewhere. Other books: The Tales of Hoffmann (BFI Film Classics, 2013), on Powell and Pressburger’s 1951 opera-film, and Eye Chart (Bloomsbury, 2017), a short cultural history of visual measurement. During a first career as a scholarly publisher, he worked as editor-in-chief of Columbia University Press and as vice-president and publishing director at Routledge, a position he held for nineteen years.