2010-11 Events

October 15-16, 2010
A.D. White House, Cornell University

Global Aesthetics: Intersecting Culture, Theory, Practice
 

Friday, October 15

9:00 a.m. Opening Remarks

• Timothy Murray, Director, Society for the Humanities
• Durba Ghosh, Chair, Humanities Council
• Peter Jemison, Artist & Manager, Ganondagan Historic Site, Seneca Nation, Welcome, Heron Clan, Seneca Nation of Indians

9:30 - 10:45 a.m.

• Iftikhar Dadi, Art/History of Art, Cornell, Art Between Global Media and the Urban Subaltern
• Yao Jui-Chung, Fine Arts, Taipei National University of the Arts, National Taiwan Normal University, Mirage - Discussed Public Property in Taiwan

10:45 a.m. Featured Speaker

• Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Artistic Director, Documenta 13, Kassel, Germany, Entanglement: Notes Toward Documenta (13)

1:00 - 2:15 p.m.

• Grace Quintanilla, Director, Pedro Meyer Foudnation, Mexico City, Mexico, Familiar/Memorable
• Jolene Rickard, Society for the Humanities/Art, History of Art, American Indian Program, Cornell, Performing Indigeneity at the Venice and Sidney Biennale: Rebecca Belmore, James Luna and Skeena Reece

2:15 - 3:30 p.m.

• Kay Dickinson, Society for the Humanities, Media & Communications, Goldsmiths College, University of London, Red and Green Stars in Broad Daylight: Syrian-Soviet Journeys through Cinema
• Sharon Willis, Art History, Visual & Cultural Studies, Univeristy of Rochester, Lost Objects: The Museum of Cinema

3:45 - 5:00 p.m.

• Andrew McGraw, Society for the Humanities/Music, University of Richmond, Quasi-Collaboration and the Poetics of Pedophilia in Bang on a Can's "House in Bali" (2010)
• Salah Hassan, History of Art and Africana Studies, Cornell, Contemporary "Islamic" Art: Western Curatorial Practices of Representation Post-9/11

5:15 p.m. Plenary Speaker

• Bruno Bosteels, Society for the Humanities/Romance Studies, Cornell, Global Aesthetics and Its Discontents

Saturday, October 16

9:00 a.m. - 10:15 a.m.

• Akinwumi Adesokan, Comparative Literature, Indiana Univeristy, Ousmane Sembene: Disalienating Modernity
• Jennifer Bajorek, Society for the Humanities/Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London, Photography of the Governed: Photo-Graphic Reason and the Theory of the African State

10:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

• Shin-Yi Yang, Curator, Beautiful Asset Management, Beijing, China, Why Chinese Art Still Needs Realism
• Sui Jianguo, Sculpture, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China, A Chinese Sculptor's Story

2:00 - 3:15 p.m.

• Brenda Croft, Indigenous Art, Culture & Design, University of South Australia, Sight/Site Lines: Seeing Beyond the Surface
• Tejumola Olaniyan, English, University of Madison, Wisconsin, On Postcolonial Urban Garrison Architecture

3:15 - 4:30 p.m.

• Gregg Lambert, Director, Central New York Humanitie Corridor, The Baroque Tsunami: An Incident-Analysis of Neo-Baroque Form
• Yukiko Shikata, Director, Media Art Consortium, Japan Agency for Cultural Affiars, Tokyo, Japan, Invisible Dynamics: World as Interaction Process

4:45 - 6:00 p.m. Roundtable

• Naoki Sakai, Asian Studies and Comparative Literature
• Karen Pinkus, Romance Studies and Comparative Literature
• Patricia Zimmerman, Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival/Cinema, Photography & Media Arts, Ithaca College

Co-sponsored by The Humanist Foundation, Rose Goldsen Lecture Series, Deparmtent of Art, Institute for Comparative Modernities, Diacritics, Central New York Humanities Corridor

Wednesday, March 2, 2011, 4:30 p.m.
Guerlac Room, A.D. White House

Alexander R. Galloway
Media, Culture & Communication, New York University

Are Some Things Unrepresentable?

Alexander R. Galloway is an author and programmer. He is a founding member of the software collective RSG and the creator of the Carnivore and Kriegspiel projects. The New York Times has described his practice as "conceptually sharp, visually compelling and completely attuned to the political moment." Galloway is the author of Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization (MIT, 2004), Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture (Minnesota, 2006), and most recently The Exploit: A Theory of Networks (Minnesota, 2007), cowritten wtih Eugene Thacker.

Also: Thursday, March 3, 2011, 11:00 a.m. - 1:25 p.m.
CIT Lab, Tjaden Hall Room 221

The Tinker Factory
A hands-on workshop with Alexander Galloway and Project Carnivore

Co-sponsored by Central New York Humanities Corridor and the Society for the Humanities Digital Humanities Initiative

March 4, 2011
Guerlac Room, A.D. White House

Capital Poetics: Poetry and the Economic Turn

10:00 - 10:30 a.m. Introduction

• Joshua Clover

10:45 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. Value Theories

• Bruno Bosteels
• Anna Kornbluh
• Jasper Bernes

1:15 - 2:30 p.m. Specters & Marks

• Juliana Spahr
• Timothy Kreiner
• Jonathan Monroe

2"45 - 4:00 p.m. Crisis & Inferno

• Geoffrey Gilbert
• Tatiana Sverjensky
• Christopher Nealon

4:500 - 5:00 p.m. Roundtable

• Annie McClanahan
• Jennifer Bajorek

PhD Student, German Studies

I am a PhD student in German studies, working on notions of rupture, continuity and return. I taught two introductory courses at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and worked as an academic mentor to students in their last stages of their MA. 

As a tutor, I am interested in working with students from all disciplines on organizing their writing, making sure their most important ideas and arguments receive the place they deserve. In any sort of project and in any stage of its composition, I pay close attention to the framework, flow and the tone of the text. I enjoy asking questions and exploring the text together with its writer in addition to discussing writing techniques and strategies. 

Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Kroch Library and A.D. White House

Video Art: Practice, History, and Archive

The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art collaborates with the Mellon Central New York Humanities Corridor and the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF: Ithaca College) to stage a celebration of two new large video art archives that have been donated to the Goldsen Archive: "Elayne Zalis Video Studies ARchive" and "ETC: Experimental Television Center Archives."

1:15 p.m. Welcoming Remarks

• Timothy Murray, Director, Society for the Humanities and Curator, Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, Cornell Library
• Anne R. Kenney, Carl A. Kroch University Librarian
  • Elaine Engst, Director, Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell Library

1:30 - 2:30 p.m. Archiving the Video Archive

• Elayne Zalis and Timothy Murray in conversation, History of the Zalis Archive
• Sherry Miller Hocking, ETC, and Patricia Zimmerman, Co-Curator, FLEFF, History of ETC

3:00 - 4:00 p.m. Video Art: Practice in and through the Finger Lakes

• Chair: Renate Ferro, Department of Art
• Philip Mallory Jones, Media Artist, Co-Founder and Director, Ithaca Video Projects (1971-85)
• Barbara Lattanzi, Interactive Art, Alfred University

4:30 - 6:00 p.m. Plenary Lecture

• Anne-Marie Duguet, University of Paris 1 (Sorbonne), Anarchives: Project and Process

Sponsored by The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, Society for the Humanities, Mellon Central New York Humanities Corridor, Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF), The Tinker Factory

Note: In addition to the major requirements outlined below, all students must meet the college graduation requirements.

No prerequisites are required to enter the comparative literature major.

All majors in Comparative Literature are expected to have completed ten, three to four credit courses, with the minimum of thirty credits, half of which must be devoted to the study of works in languages other than English that the student will read in their original language. Five of these courses must be taken in the Department of Comparative Literature and must include the following two courses: a designated course in theory and formerly noted as Core Course, COML 3001 - Methods of Comparison, offered in the fall, both usually taken in the junior or senior year. If elected, Honor Majors should complete thirty-eight credits, which include  COML 4930 - Senior Essay (first semester) and  COML 4940 - Senior Essay (second semester), one of which will count as one of these required five comparative literature courses.

Students will choose among a number of theory courses designated as fulfilling the requirement every year. For 2021-2022, designated theory courses are: COML 3541 - Introduction to Critical Theory offered in the fall and offered in the spring are:  COML 3021 - Literary Theory on the Edge and COML 3811 - Theory and Practice of Translation. Students must earn a minimum grade of C for a course to be counted toward the major.

An honors essay (COML 4930 - COML 4940) of roughly fifty pages is optional. It is to be written during the senior year under the direction of a faculty member, preferably from within the department, who has agreed to work in close cooperation with the student. Students are urged to begin research on their thesis topic during the summer preceding their senior year.

Students who elect to do a double major with another literature department may count up to three courses from that major toward their requirements in Comparative Literature.

The department encourages students to study abroad in pursuit of their cultural and linguistic interests, and the number of courses that may be counted toward the major will be determined in consultation with the faculty advisor and with the approval of the director of undergraduate studies.

The major enables students to pursue this commitment to a comparative study that includes a substantial non-English component by offering two tracks.

1. Comparative Literary Studies. This track is designed for students who wish to place greater emphasis on literary study in their course work. Students who select this track are required to complete:
   1. Five courses in Comparative Literature at the 2000 level and above, including the Seminar in Theory and the Core Course.
   2. Five courses in literature or other areas of the humanities at the 2000 or higher level, to be taken in one or more foreign literature departments. Texts must be read in the original language. A student may offer one advanced-level foreign language course (conversation, composition, etc.) toward fulfilling this requirement.
       
2. Literary, Visual, and Media Studies. This track is designed for students who wish to pursue their comparative study of literature and theory by integrating rigorous work on film, video, or other arts and media. Students who select this track are required to complete:
   
   1. The Seminar in Theory and the Core Course offered in the Department of Comparative Literature must be included among the ten required courses.
   2. Four courses in literary study at the 2000 or higher level offered by the Department of Comparative Literature or other humanities departments or programs.
   3. Six courses in visual arts or media studies at the 2000 or higher level offered by the Department of Comparative Literature or other humanities departments or programs

The following guidelines might be used to determine whether a course in Literary, Visual, and Media Studies may be counted toward the five courses in non-English cultural study required of all majors. Where the media involve a large component of speech or writing (such as film, video, or hypertext), the student would need to work with this material in the original foreign language. Where text or speech in a foreign language is peripheral in a course that focuses on visual material (such as art or architecture) from non-English cultures, the student would need to draw on primary and secondary materials in a foreign language for oral reports, papers, and so forth.

Because of the flexibility and interdisciplinary range of this track, students who select it should work closely with their faculty advisor to organize a coherent plan of study and to determine, with the approval of the Director of Undergraduate Studies, which courses satisfy the foreign language requirement of the major.

How to apply: Interested students are invited to complete the online Major Request Form.

The Comparative Literature Major emphasizes individuality and interdisciplinary study; as such, it can be helpful to understand how different students have chosen their courses and program of study. Take a look at some of our student profiles to get an idea of how Comparative Literature can work for you.

Planning a Program of Study: Eliana Rozinov.

Planning a Program of Study: John Yoon.