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This series provides an opportunity for UW humanities scholars to discuss their recently published books.
Fieldwork Connections tells the story of the intertwined research histories of three anthropologists working in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China in the late twentieth century. Chapters are written alternately by a male American anthropologist, a male researcher raised in a village in Liangshan, and a highly educated woman from an elite Nuosu/Chinese family. As decades of mutual ethnographic research unfold, the authors enter one another's narratives and challenge the reader to ponder the nature of ethnographic "truth." Stevan Harrell is professor of anthropology at the University of Washington and curator of Asian ethnology at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture.
Language Development and Age December 4, 2007 In this book Herschensohn examines whether early childhood is a critical period for language acquisition after which individuals cannot learn a language as native speakers. She argues that a first language is largely susceptible to age constraints, showing major deficits past the age of twelve. Second language acquisition also shows age effects, but with a range of individual differences. The competence of expert adult learners, the unequal achievements of child learners of second languages, and the lack of consistent evidence for a maturational cut-off, all cast doubt on a critical period for second language acquisition. Julia Herschensohn is Professor and Chair of the Department of Linguistics.
The Persistence of Allegory: Drama and Neoclassicism from Shakespeare to Wagner January 15 , 2008 This book traces a complex history of neoclassicism in which new allegorical forms flourish and older ones are constantly revitalized. Brown reveals the allegorical survivals in the works of such major figures as Shakespeare, Calderón, Racine, Vondel, Metastasio, Goethe, and Wagner and reads tragedy, comedy, masque, opera, and school drama together rather than as separate developments. Throughout, she draws illuminating parallels to modes of representation in the visual arts.
Nocturnal Ciphers: The Punning Language of Dreams in the Ancient Near East January 24 , 2008 This monograph seeks to understand the cultural context and function of word play as employed in the Ancient Near East. The impact of this investigation provides insights into a variety of subjects including the social context of divination and the production of literary texts, the role of writing and script in the divinatory process, the impact of Mesopotamian intellectual thought, the authorship of certain biblical pericopes, the relationship of oneiromancy to prophecy, and the function of ancient Near Eastern literary devices. In so doing, this work draws attention to broader theoretical concerns that confront the study of the ancient world.
The Offense of Poetry February 12 , 2008 Poetry, Hazard Adams argues, exists to offend - not through its subject matter but through the challenges it presents to the prevailing view of what language is for. Poetry's main cultural value is its offensiveness; it should be defended as offensive. Adams specifies four poetic offenses - gesture, drama, fiction, and trope - and devotes a chapter to each, ranging across the landscape of traditional literary criticism and exploring the various attitudes toward poetry, including both attacks and defenses, offered by writers from Plato and Aristotle to Sidney, Vico, Blake, Yeats, and Seamus Heaney, among others.
The Emergence of Genetic Rationality: Space, Time, and Information in American Biological Science, 1870-1920 April 8 , 2008 The emergence of genetic science has profoundly shaped how we think about biology. Indeed, it is difficult now to consider nearly any facet of human experience without first considering the gene. But this mode of understanding life is not, of course, transhistorical. Phillip Thurtle takes us back to the moment just before the emergence of genetic rationality at the turn of the twentieth century to explicate the technological, economic, cultural, and even narrative transformations necessary to make genetic thinking possible. |
Julia Herschensohn (Linguistics)
Jane Brown (Germanics and Comparative Literature)
Scott Noegel (Near Eastern Languages & Civilization)
Hazard Adams (Professor Emeritus, Comparative Literature)
Phillip Thurtle (Comparative History of Ideas) |
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