THE MELBERN G. GLASSCOCK CENTER NAMES INTERNAL FACULTY FELLOWS FOR 2008-2009

The Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research has named its 2008-2009 Internal Faculty Fellows. They will be resident in the Glasscock Center in Spring 2009, pursuing scholarly projects under the theme “Journeys.” We conceive this theme to embrace considerations metaphorical and literal, contemporary and historical – of migration, travel, exile, transportation, exploration, tourism and more. We anticipate that conversation about journeys may include interrogation of any and all those terms by scholars from all the humanities disciplines and from the social sciences that adopt humanities perspectives. The recipients of these fellowships will be released from teaching during Spring 2009 and will receive a $1000 research stipend. In the Fall of 2009, they will present a symposium showcasing their work. The Center is pleased to announce the following Fellows and their projects.

Claire Katz, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies will explore, and respond to the flawed yet persistent model of education that governs the history of western philosophy and defines our contemporary views of education. The impact of this model is evident in the immediate influence it has on the educational process: the structure of the school, the content of curricula, and the pedagogical methods employed. It is also evident in how we think about and treat peoples and communities that are different from our own.

Robert R. Shandley, Associate Professor in the Department of European and Classical Languages and Culture, will concentrate on the recent representations of the expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe in recent German television mini-series. Several recent series concentrate on the expulsion and the fate of millions of civilian ethnic Germans at the end of the Second World War, returning the issue to the German public imagination.

Leah DeVun, Assistant Professor in the Department of History, will focus on understandings of intersex from the twelfth through fifteenth centuries, a critical period for the formation of ideas about sex, as well as for the establishment of professionalized fields such as medicine, surgery, and law, which demanded a dichotomous boundary between male and female. Enter Sex examines this crucial period in detail, and it considers how premodern thinkers produced a system of sex difference that continues to influence contemporary understandings of what makes humans male or female.

April Lee Hatfield, Associate Professor in the Department of History, will study how the legal and geographic distinctions that made the North American mainland and Caribbean borders function differently shaped profoundly the experiences of those who moved between empires and, therefore, the relations between empires. On the mainland, where Indians as well as Europeans drew and challenged borders, colonial enmities echoed those of Europe. By contrast, in the Caribbean the Atlantic context of political and religious rivalry delimited colonists’ and merchants’ less rigidly.

Other activities around the theme “Journeys” will include a lecture series by that name, a symposium in spring 2010, and other events. The Center will name further Internal Faculty Fellows for 2009-2010: a call for applications will be made in spring 2009. For further information contact James Rosenheim, Director, at j-rosenheim@tamu.edu, at 979-845-8328, or visit the Center’s website at http://glasscock.tamu.edu.