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Humanities Institute Community Initiatives

The Humanities Institute sponsors a number of initiatives both in the university and in the community. The side navigation lists the Humanities Institute initiatives.

 

Buffalo Film Seminars

Celebration of the Book Series

Digital Humanities Initiative at Buffalo

Imagining America

Joyce in Buffalo

Open House

Reading Between the Lines for Adults Reading Groups

Science/Technology/Arts

Theater Collaborations

 

Buffalo Film Seminars

The Buffalo Film Seminars series takes place at 7 p.m. on Tuesdays during the academic year in the Market Arcade Film and Arts Center, 639 Main St., in downtown Buffalo . Hosting the series are Diane Christian, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of English, College of Arts and Sciences, and Bruce Jackson, SUNY Distinguished Professor and Samuel P. Capen Professor of American Culture in the departments of American Studies and English.

Celebration of the Book Series

Tom Toles

"On the Front Lines:

Journalists Challenge the New Censorship" 

September 30, 2006 

In conjunction with the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library and Just Buffalo Literary Society, the UB Humanities Institute presents the Celebration of the Book Series held annually featuring locally written and produced books, and those of University at Buffalo's humanities faculty and alumni. 

Digital Humanities Initiative at Buffalo [website]

The Digital Humanities Initiative at Buffalo functions as an applied think-tank for the humanities and related areas. It is designed to serve as an intellectual hub for scholars involved in innovative research and instruction at the intersection of the humanities, computing, and other emerging digital technologies and to provide an environment in which faculty are encouraged to experiment and develop digital solutions to challenges in research and instruction, or to experiment with digital technologies that may lead to new applications and project challenges.

At the local level, the DHIB serves in part to coordinate the multiple sites of excellence in digital technology, computing sciences, and humanities research already developed at UB in order to provide efficient management of shared resources, especially hardware, software, and technological expertise. This platform for shared information and cutting edge research across disciplines in turn grounds communication among members at the DHIB’s regular meetings, roundtables, and workshops. The DHIB will also sponsor conferences and lectures to bring in outstanding international practioners of digital Humanities scholarship and provide training in new digital technologies for members of the DHIB.

At the national and international level, the DHIB will serve as a leader in the development, application and interpretation of research in the Humanities and related areas. The outstanding collections in the UB Libraries will bring affiliated scholars to the Initiative, and the cutting edge research of UB faculty will draw postdoctoral fellows and scholars to participate actively in the DHIB community.

 

 

Joyce in Buffalo

The Joyce in Buffalo initiative promotes the major James Joyce assets here in Buffalo, which include the annual Bloomsday Buffalo celebration, the Finnegan's Wake Reading Group, and the Ulysses Circle, and one of Buffalo's richest treasures, the James Joyce collection in the University Libraries' Poetry and Rare Books Collection.
 
This incredible collection includes portraits, manuscripts, notebooks, corrected galley proofs, first editions, and much more, once owned by Sylvia Beach, the publisher of the first edition of Ulysses.   HI-sponsored Joyce events, in collaboration with riverrun, inc., Bloomsday Buffalo, the University Libraries and the Irish Classical Theatre include:
  • Cinegael Buffalo is an an Irish Film Festival held at a variety of venues throughout the city. Launched in 2006, it is now a major component of the annual Bloomsday Buffalo celebration.

  • James Joyce Birthday Celebration: Celebrating James Joyce's birthday with a multi-media program of music, performance, lectures and discussion, as part of the Albright Knox Art Gallery's Gusto at the Gallery series.

  • The James Joyce Fellowship: A visiting fellowship to the UB Poetry and Rare Books Collection, for scholars and graduate students whose research is centered on the writings of James Joyce, Modernism, Joyce related research, research on Sylvia Beach, Modernist publishers, Modernist genetic criticism, Joyce's literary circle, his literary colleagues or his influences.

  • James Joyce Lecture: an annual lecture by a major James Joyce scholar.

  •  In June 2009, the North American James Joyce conference will be held in Buffalo and the Humanities Institute is a major sponsor. Click here for more information

 

Humanities Institute Open House

The Open House is part of the Humanities Institute mission to develop and strengthen the University at Buffalo's ties to the community. It consists of a lecture by a UB humanities faculty member, followed by a discussion and reception. Institute Fellows are expected to attend, and other faculty actively participate in the discussion and engage with the audience.

Featured Speakers:

 

2006 Spring

Jack Peradotto, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus, UB Department of Classic

The Greeks Revolutionize the Alphabet

2006 Fall

Kathleen Woodward, Director, Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington at Seattle

Memory, Mood and the Fort-Da of Old Age: Communications Technology and the Aging

2007 Spring

Robert Daly, Distinguished Teaching Professor, UB Department of English

 Why We Have to Read (and Worse Yet, Think About) This Stuff: New Work on the Practical Value of Literature and Even Theory

2007 Fall

Georg Iggers, Emeritus SUNY Distinguished Professor of History & Wilma Iggers, Emeritus Professor of History, Canisius College

Two Lives in Uncertain Times: Facing the Challenges of the Twentieth Century as Scholars and Citizens

2008 Spring

David Schmid, Associate Professor and Associate Chair, UB English Department

'Hard, Isolate, Stoic and a Killer': What Do the Humanities Have to Say About Violence and the American Character?

2008 Fall

Donald E. Pease, Professor, Avalon Foundation Chair of the Humanities, Dartmouth College; UB Humanities Institute Distinguished Scholar in Residence

The Unclaimed Scene of Writing in Whitman's "Song of Myself"

       

 

 

Reading Between the Lines for Adults Reading Groups

 

The New York Council for the Humanities selected the UB Humanities Institute as a partner in its Reading Between the Lines for Adults program, which enables members of the public in facilitated conversations about books chosen to illuminate significant themes in American history, culture and life. "

 

The goal of the program is to encourage informed public discussion." These four-session public discussions are held at libraries, museums, historical societies and other community gathering spaces and are led by graduate students in the humanities who propose the series topics and syllabi through a competitive process managed by the Humanities Institute and the NYCH. The program is funded by the NEH-sponsored "We the People" initiative.

Science/Technology/Arts

 

The science research campus located in downtown Buffalo (which includes Hauptman Woodward Institute, the UB Life Sciences Building, and Roswell Park memorial Cancer Institute) is the largest UB presence in the urban center of Buffalo.
 
It represents major investments in cutting edge scientific research of international significance. The research has broad impact and interest in the cultural and economic life of both the University and the city. The Science/Technology /Arts series brings well-known academics to campus for lectures and conferences, but has a strong public component as well. The ongoing public event series creates opportunities not only to familiarize the broader public with the scientific research but also to investigate the interface between science, technology and the arts. Previous events have included:
  • The Dark Side of the Universe: a lecture at the downtown Buffalo and Erie County Public Library by UB physicist, Dr. Will Kinney;
  • Art Meets Science in Pluto's Cave: an interactive encounter between members of UB's Art and Physics departments based on the installation organized by UB artists Gary Nickard and Reinhard Reitzenstein. The installation illustrated how quantum physics predicates a world of unpredictablility and subjective self-questioning;
  • Whitehead Today Symposium: an on-line conference between UB, Stanford, and Duke Universities, a major segment of which was devoted to the work of James Bono, UB professor of History and Medicine and member of the HI Faculty Council;
  • Velvet Revolution at the Synchrotron: Technology, Meaning, Intervention lecture by Park Doing, Cornell University;
  • Artificial Paradises: by British media artists Johathan Kemp and Martin Howse;
  • Digital Humanities Lecture and Workshop by University of Georgia Professor Steve Ramsay

 

Theater Collaborations

International Theatre Project: High school students and teachers, theatre lovers, and the Spanish and French speaking communities in the Greater Buffalo area will enjoy annual performances from the International Artistic and Cultural Exchange Program of UB's Department of Theatre and Dance and La Théâtre de la Chandelle Verte.

Le Théâtre de la Chandelle Verte is a vibrant national educational theater company devoted to the performance of works for contemporary French theater. It was co-founded by Christian Flaugh, UB assistant professor of romance languages and literatures.

The Jewish Repertory Theatre and the Humanities Institute presented a performance and panel discussion in 2006 of the late, great playwright Wendy Wasserstein's The Sisters Rosenzweig. In Fall 2007 the Institute will partner again with the JRT as well as the Buffalo and Erie County Publioc Library for a Panel Discussion entitled Refugees and Rescues: Understanding the Children of the Kindertransport. The presentation will take place at the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library Thursday, November 15 from 5:00-6:30 p.m.  Click here for more information