Fellowships to emeritus faculty in the Arts and Sciences are funded by a generous contribution from the family of Emeritus Professor of Psychology Alfred B. Heilbrun, Jr.

Click here to read the announcement below for the next competition

 

On Wednesday, February 28, at 3:30, in the Luce Center, Room 130, EUEC Member Howard Kushner will be talking about his new book, On the Other Hand: Left Hand, Right Brain, Mental Disorder, and History.  It is a real treat for us to get to hear Howard because he is now at the Laboratory for Comparative Human Cognition, Department of Communication, at the University of California, San Diego.  For those of you who don't know him, Howard is the Nat C. Robertson Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the Center for the Study of Human Health at Emory.

Note:  An interview that Howard did earlier this month can be heard by clicking here.

Click here to read below about the activities of our members, including those who participated in the Feast of Words

 

Click here to jump below to the list of our new, and newly retired, members

Healthy adults 65+ are needed for this Emory study.  Information below:

Katherine will speak about works from her recent exhibition at the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts at Appalachian State University, an exhibition funded in part by one of the Bianchi Grants awarded by the Emeritus College. The original inspiration for these two-dimensional mixed media drawings and paintings was a beloved white oak on her property that had become diseased. The works serve as talismans for the tree, for Katherine herself, and for all of the endangered environment.

As always, these works show Katherine's interest in architectural form, and the layering of systems and patterns, as well as her interest in the natural world. In this case, the layers include texts taken from her journals, from poetry, and from various prose readings, including quotations from Henry David Thoreau, Gregory Bateson, and others.

In the fall, the exhibition will be on view again at the Circle Gallery at the University of Georgia. We of the EUEC hope to arrange a field trip for those who'd like to see it.


Additional information can be found in the following:

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Dwight A. McBride, Provost and Executive Vice President of Academic Affairs, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of African American Studies, Distinguished Affiliated Professor of English, and Associated Faculty in Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies

Dr. McBride's 40-minute talk (with additional question-and-answer period) centered on his forthcoming book, Poetics, Politics & Phillis Wheatley: Her Critical History, Our Critical Story.  It was a high-energy, informative presentation, in which the deep personal interest and involvement of the distinguished lecturer registered strongly with his audience.   No one left the room without knowing something significant about Phillis Wheatley.  Her importance in historical, political, cultural, and literary contexts is such that bringing her more into light is a force majeure for which Dr. McBride should be commended.    

 

There are so many inter-connecting timelines, references, and features to this story.   Some basic facts provided in the presentation, concerning Wheatley's chronology, included the following:

 

    --   Phillis Wheatley was born in 1753 perhaps along the Gambia River in Africa.  She arrived in Boston Harbor aboard the slave ship Phillis in 1761, the vessel for which she was named.  She was "bought" shortly thereafter by John and Susanna Wheatley.

    --   Wheatley's first known writing was an undated letter to Samson Occorn, a Mohegan Indian minister. (This letter no longer exists.)

    --   Her first published writing came in 1767, a poem entitled "On Messrs. Hussey and Coffin,"  when she was about fourteen.

    --  Her first published volume was in 1773 , entitled Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral.  This work was published in London.   

    --  Phillis Wheatley died in 1784; the first American printing of her poems took place in Philadelphia in 1786.

 

During the consideration of the life and times of Phillis Wheatley, a number of perspectives on this history were illuminated in this presentation, including the views of various well-known figures on aspects of slave traits and capabilities, e.g, Thomas Jefferson, Wendell Phillips, and Harriet Beecher Stowe among them. (Wendell Phillips, for example, stated in 1852,  "In a land where wealth is the basis of reputation, the colored man must prove his sagacity and enterprise by successful trade or speculation.  To show his capacity for mental culture, he must BE, not merely claim the right to be, a scholar....")

 

Not far from the essence of the story are two irrefutable truths:  Wheatley was a literate, articulate, brilliant young woman who was a beacon - as well as an anomaly - for people who held either positive or stereotypically negative opinions of the character and capabilities of the African slave and culture.  (To many supporters of slavery, accomplishments such as Wheatley's were considered a source of threat and danger!)

 

Some other early black authors, like George M. Horton (The Hope of Liberty), were critical of Phillis Wheatley.  A point of contention from different quarters was the view that Wheatley was basically not political and critical enough of her slave status versus her accomplishments in the creation of her literary works.  However, Dr. McBride pointed out in discussion that Wheatley -- by virtue of her very history and the vicissitudes of her life - has become the personification of an author writing in a political context in which certain historical assumptions and opinions surrounding her and her times must be questioned or re-examined.

 

The various chapter titles of Dr. McBride's book reveal steps in the scholar's pathway to a revealing and dynamic subject study:

 

Preface: Finding My Pathway to Phillis Wheatley  

Chap 1: "A Shrewd Accommodationist under the Puritan Petticoats": The Case for Wheatley as Abolitionist

Chap 2:  Surprised by Reason:  18^th-Century Responses to Wheatley, 1760-1807

Chap 3:  Between Appropriation and Neglect: Wheatley's 19^th-Century Critics, 1808-1877

Chap 4:  Early 20^th-Century Wheatley Commentary and the Politics of Racial Uplift, 1878-1979

Chap 5:  The Wheatley Critical Remix: Beyond Context and Biography, 1980-2015

Bibliography:  Wheatley's Recent Critical Bibliography, 1981-2015  (And Works Cited)       

 

 One gathers in the following quote from Thomas Jefferson something of the prevailing attitudes -- among many educated whites of the time - showing what was assumed about black culture:

 

"Misery is often the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry. Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry...." 

 

By contrast, Wheatley's accomplishments speak for themselves: 

 

1779, October 30 - "First publication of Wheatley's final proposals for yet another volume of poems, this book to contain thirteen letters as well as thirty-three poems ..."

 

--R. Cary Bynum

 

 

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The Feast of Words is an annual celebration of faculty who published books in the previous year.  Our members were well represented there:

Hay, Peter (Law, emeritus), Patrick J. Borchers, and Freer, Richard (Law). Conflict of Laws: Private International Law. 15th edition. Foundation.

 

Holladay, Carl R. (Theology). Introduction to the New Testament: Reference Edition. Baylor UP.

 

Kushner, Howard (Center for Human Health and Behavioral Sciences and Health Education, emeritus). On the Other Hand: Left Hand, Right Brain, Mental Disorder, and History. Johns Hopkins UP.

 

Robbins, Vernon K. (Religion), Walter S. Melion (Art History), and Roy R. Jeal, eds. The Art of Visual Exegesis: Rhetoric, Texts, Images. Society of Biblical Literature.

 

Saliers, Don (Theology, emeritus), E.J. Costa, ed., and M. Pescatori, trans. Musica e Teologia. Queriniana.

 

Schuchard, Ronald (English, emeritus), Iman Javadi, and Jayme Stayer, eds. The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot: The Critical Edition, Volume 5: Tradition and Orthodoxy, 1934-1939. Johns Hopkins UP and Faber and Faber.

 

Schuchard, Ronald (English, emeritus) and David E. Chinitz, eds. The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot: The Critical Edition, Volume 6: The War Years, 1940-1946. Johns Hopkins UP and Faber and Faber.

 

Sheth, Jagdish (Marketing). Genes, Climate, and Consumption Culture: Connecting the Dots. Emerald.

 

Taulbee, James Larry (Political Science, emeritus). Genocide, Mass Atrocity and War Crimes in Modern History: Blood and Conscience, Volumes 1 and 2. Praeger.

 

Taulbee, James Larry (Political Science, emeritus) and Gerhard von Glahn. Law Among Nations: An Introduction to Public International Law, 11th edition. Routledge.

 

 

 

 

An Emory News article on the Feast can be read by clicking here.

Sidney Perkowitz  

Candler Professor of Physics Emeritus 

 

EUEC Member Sidney Perkowitz was featured on WBUR Boston's On Point program on February 13, in a story titled "It's Alive:  Frankenstein at 200."  You can hear the entire 50-minute program by clicking here.

Corinne A. Kratz

Emory Director, African Critical Inquiry Program

Professor Emerita of Anthropology and African Studies

 

Photo by Carol Beckwith of young Wodaabe men dancing geerewol

EUEC Member Cory Kratz reports that her article "The Case of the Recurring Wodaabe: Visual Obsessions in Globalizing Markets" has just appeared in the journal African Arts. The paper began as a keynote address for the Triennial Symposium on African Art and was also presented later as the Dean's Distinguished Lecture in Cape Town, and as a public lecture at both the School of Advanced Research and at Harvard. It has just been picked to be part of an International Workshop seminar group at the University of the Free State in South Africa. African Arts has made it available to all via open access on the journal's website and it can be read by clicking here.  Cory was a Heilbrun Distinguished Research Fellow, and the fellowship helped in the completion of the article.

 

Also, in two weeks she is on her way to Cape Town to take part in Missing and Missed: The Subject, Politics and Memorialisation of South Africa's Colonial and Apartheid Dead, which is the 2018 African Critical Inquiry Program workshop. Her paper there is called "Where Did You Cry?: Crafting Categories, Narratives, and Affect through Exhibit Design."

 

 

 

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Heilbrun Distinguished Emeritus Fellowships

  

With a stipend of $10,000, the Heilbrun Distinguished Emeritus Fellowships represent a fantastic opportunity for support of research and scholarship for emeritus faculty in the Arts and Sciences.  Below is the call for applications from Michael A. Elliott, Dean, Emory College of Arts and Sciences:

 

It gives me great pleasure to announce the 18th year of competition for the Heilbrun Distinguished Emeritus Fellowship.  Named in honor of our colleague Alfred B. Heilbrun, Jr., Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychology, and funded through an extraordinarily generous gift from his family, this wonderful Fellowship offers an opportunity for heightened engagement in research and scholarship, and plays an important role in supporting a vibrant Emeritus community.

 

The program will support two Fellowships in the amount of $10,000 each for a twelve-month term starting September 1st - the normal academic year.  In addition, each Fellow will be afforded exclusive use of a faculty carrel in the Woodruff Library.

 

I invite applications from all Arts and Sciences faculty who achieved emeritus status on or before September 1, 2017.  Interested faculty are requested to submit both a letter of application that describes in some detail the research project to be undertaken during the term of the Fellowship, specifying (if relevant) how the stipend might be budgeted for special research needs; and a curriculum vitae that includes activities undertaken since gaining emeritus status.  Submissions will be reviewed by the Committee on the Heilbrun Fellowship, composed of senior faculty in Emory College of Arts and Sciences.

 

The criteria for selection will include:

• The relationship of the proposed project to the candidate's previous research.
• The feasibility of completing the project within the term of the Fellowship.
• The pertinence of the research to resources available at Emory.
• The overall value of the research to the applicant's field or discipline.

 

Fellowship recipients will be asked to agree to the following conditions: 

• Submission of a written report to the Committee upon completion of the Fellowship.
• Formal acknowledgment of Fellowship support in any published work that results.
• Attendance at receptions and social gatherings sponsored by the Committee.

 

Applications should be mailed to The Committee on the Heilbrun Fellowship, c/o Susan Lee, Executive Assistant to the Dean, Emory College of Arts and Sciences, Mailstop 1580-002-2AB, 400 Candler Library, 550 Asbury Circle, Atlanta, GA 30322 and be received by April 6, 2018.  An announcement of awards should be forthcoming from the Committee by the first of May.

 

 

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