Humanities Day 2022 - Session 1

The Sex of Language

sspatterson — Wed, 03 Aug 2022 20:41:33 +0000

In-Person

Grammatical gender—a system of classifying nouns as masculine, feminine, or neuter—has long been the bane of language learners. That in German “a young lady has no sex, but a turnip has” led Mark Twain to lament “the awful German language.” But for 19th-century German linguists, grammatical gender was not capricious or irrational, but rather a deeply meaningful structure that provided insight into cultural norms and primitive forefathers. This session provides an overview of theories of grammatical gender from this period and explores how they centered on a fundamental question: Is it possible to imagine “the human” as unsexed?

(Virtual Session) The Greatest Lyric in English? Reading Wordsworth's Immortality Ode

sspatterson — Mon, 01 Aug 2022 20:55:30 +0000

Session 1

Virtual

This session addresses a single poem, Wordsworth's famous “Intimations of Immortality Ode,” a text that has supplied lines and phrases that reverberate in modern literary culture: "trailing clouds of glory," "Shades of the prison-house," "splendor in the grass," "The Child is father of the Man," and "Thoughts that ... lie too deep for tears." Taken in its entirety, the Immortality Ode is a particularly challenging lyric with complex twists and turns, a work that amply rewards the kind of critical patience and close attention we will be bringing to it.

Kafka's Hebrew Notebooks

sspatterson — Mon, 01 Aug 2022 18:27:19 +0000

Session 1

In-Person

Franz Kafka is known for his great modernist prose, his penetrating vision of the human condition, and his absurdist sense of humor. But did you know he was also an avid language learner? Over the course of his adult life, Kafka studied both Yiddish and Hebrew. Focusing on the latter, the presenter shares one of Kafka's Hebrew notebooks, which has only recently become available to researchers at the Israeli National Library in Jerusalem. The reasons for its long years of disappearance are interesting in themselves, and the speaker explains them. Most of the talk, however, will be devoted to thinking about the Hebrew notebook as an object, an archival document, and a biographic resource. Some of the questions the presenter addresses are: how are the materials in the notebook connected to Kafka's literary writing? What does it teach us about his relation to Judaism and to Zionism? What is the relationship between language pedagogy and aesthetics?

Chicago's Spanish-Speaking Neighborhoods: Past and Present Perspectives

sspatterson — Mon, 01 Aug 2022 16:52:28 +0000

Session 1

In-Person

Spanish has become one of the most useful languages in the U.S. While undergraduate students often search for study-abroad opportunities to practice and improve their Spanish, the interaction with local Spanish-speaking communities in the U.S. has not been explored for this same purpose. In this session, the presenter discusses exploring iconic Spanish-speaking neighborhoods such as Pilsen, La Villita, and Humboldt Park in Chicago and talks about many topics related to their history and status.

Honey-Complexioned: Humanizing the Past Through an Ancient Egyptian Biometric System

sspatterson — Mon, 01 Aug 2022 16:48:41 +0000

Session 1

In-Person

How would you describe how you look to a complete stranger? Today, we would use the familiar metrics of height, weight, and eye color. But in 4th century BC Egypt, these metrics were quite different, defining physical appearance through face shape, hair texture, location of scars on the body, among other characteristics. This session serves three purposes: first, exploring the use of physical descriptors in Egypt during this time as one of the world's first biometric systems; second, diving into self-perception of the physical form; and lastly, humanizing the past through re-created portraits of ancient people according to the ways they described themselves.

A Continuous Battle Between Language Policy and Language Identity in Haiti

sspatterson — Mon, 01 Aug 2022 16:46:17 +0000

Session 1

In-Person

Most Haitians are monolingual in Kreyòl, their native language. However, Kreyòl is not the primary language of education and administration in Haiti. Instead, French remains the main language used in those contexts, which has led to many negative consequences in Haitians’ lives from persistent low literacy levels to stratification in the society. Drawing on empirical data, the presenter will explain the discrepancy between the current language policy and language attitudes and language identity among Haitians. The session also examines an improved language policy, which would prioritize mother tongue literacy and could lead to biliteracy development.

The Greatest Lyric in English? Reading Wordsworth's Immortality Ode

sspatterson — Mon, 01 Aug 2022 16:44:09 +0000

Session 1

In-Person

***THIS PRESENTATION IS NOW SOLD OUT***

You can attend the presentation virtually through this link: Humanities Day 2022 Zoom Webinar Link (All of our hybrid presentations will have the same Zoom link).

Mapping the Social Dynamics of Renaissance Florence

sspatterson — Mon, 01 Aug 2022 16:42:37 +0000

Session 1

In-Person

At a time before the advent of a rationalized system of numbered addresses, people in cities understood the places in which they lived as a network of integrated spatial and social relationships between streets, people, institutions, and activities. This was true in 1427 in the case of the first “modern” tax census carried out in Florence. Known as the catasto, this massive experiment in developing a demographic portrait of the city required each household to declare where they stood, literally, in relation to the state and their immediate neighbor. By processing these relational stems of address, digital technologies now allow us the ability to build a social map of every Florentine household precisely at a moment when it was transforming, experimenting with, and inventing forms of cultural production, economic innovation, and political practices that have had lasting effects on the history of the West. The visualization of this map will help us to understand the way in which Florentines understood their collective identity, who they were, as a function of where they were: where they lived, where they worked, where they prayed, and even where they died.

***THIS PRESENTATION IS NOW SOLD OUT***

Sophie Salvo

sspatterson — Tue, 26 Jul 2022 21:34:07 +0000

Session:

Session 1

Sophie Salvo is a scholar of German literature and intellectual history who focuses on gender studies. Her current book project, “Articulating Difference: Sex and the Study of Language in the Long Nineteenth Century,” investigates the importance of ideas about sex and gender in the history of linguistics and the philosophy of language. Her writing has also appeared in MLN and The Germanic Review. At the University of Chicago, Salvo is Assistant Professor in the Department of Germanic Studies and the College.

Na'ama Rokem

sspatterson — Tue, 26 Jul 2022 21:28:57 +0000

Session:

Session 1

Na'ama Rokem studies modern Jewish literature and intellectual history, focusing especially on German-Jewish and Hebrew literature, and on the cultural history of the Zionist movement. She is interested in bilingualism, self-translation, and language ideology, and is a member of the Neubauer research project on language revival and reform movements across the Middle East in the early 20th century. Her first book is Prosaic Conditions: Heinrich Heine and the Spaces of Zionist Literature (Northwestern University Press, 2013), and Roken is currently completing a second book about a network of letters that cross between German and Hebrew and span the 20th century, with chapters on Franz Kafka, Yehuda Amichai, Hannah Arendt, and Paul Celan, among others. She is Associate Professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago.