Center Hosts First Annual Humanities Book Publication Party
The BU Center for the Humanities and the Office of the Associate Dean of Faculty for the Humanities celebrated recent humanities publications by BU faculty in the College of Arts & Sciences at the first annual Humanities Book Publication Party on Tuesday, February 4.
Associate Dean Karl Kirchwey and BU Center for the Humanities Director and William Arrowsmith Professor in the Humanities Susan Mizruchi gave introductory remarks addressing the astonishing range of publications, which span many centuries, regions, languages, genres, and fields. “Nothing stages the vibrancy of the humanities at BU like this output,” Mizruchi said. “It’s glorious.”
Mizruchi also expressed pride in the collaboration and collegiality built into many of the publications themselves, some of which brought together the work of multiple BU faculty members into a single volume.
One such publication, Illusion and Disillusionment: Travel Writing in the Modern Age (Harvard University Press), is a collection of essays on travel writing edited by Professor Roberta Micallef (World Languages & Literatures) and features work by CAS faculty James Uden (Classical Studies), Eugenio Menegon (History), Elizabeth Goldsmith (Romance Studies), Sunil Sharma (World Languages & Literatures), Margaret Litvin (World Languages & Literatures), Mary Beth Raycraft (Romance Studies), and Sara Frederick (World Languages & Literatures). The second publication in a series inaugurated by Micallef and Sharma in 2011, Illusion and Disillusionment emerged from a longstanding travel writing reading group that, as Micallef noted, “is truly a BU project and is great fun.” This group, which includes both current and retired BU faculty, intends to produce another volume, with Uden assuming the role as editor.
The Book Publication party further illuminated the extensive breadth and cutting-edge subject matter that defines research in the humanities. Faculty members came from the departments of World Languages & Literatures, English, History of Art & Architecture, History, Religion, Anthropology, Romance Studies, and Philosophy to speak about their recent publications, many of whom noted both the BU colleagues with whom they collaborated and from whom they drew inspiration.
Professor Sanjay Krishnan (English) shared the intellectual and professional support he received from the Center and his BU colleagues as he wrote V.S. Naipaul’s Journeys: From Periphery to Center (Columbia University Press), a groundbreaking study of the late Trinidadian and Tobagonian Nobel Prize winning author.
Showing the ways in which BU faculty engage in transnational and global scholarship networks, some attendees shared their moving experiences working with colleagues from around the world. Cathy Vance Yeh (World Languages & Literatures), along with co-editors Barbara Mittler (Heidelberg), Joachim Gentz (Edinburgh), and Natasha Gentz (Edinburgh), published the last in a four-volume collection of essays titled China and the World—the World and China: Essays in Honor of Rudolf G. Wagner. The collection pays tribute to this renowned scholar through its scope and structure. As Heidelberg Press writes, “The expansive time frame from pre-modern to contemporary China in China and the World—the World and China reflect the breadth of his own scholarship. The essays are also testimony to his ability to connect with scholars across the globe, across disciplines and generations.” The celebration allowed us to remember Wagner (November 1941 – October 2019), who spoke at the Center’s Forum 2017: Recording Lives: Libraries and Archives in the Digital Age.
Foregrounding methodology, other faculty spoke about the critical importance of newly available archives to their research. Jennifer Cazenave (Romance Studies), for instance, was able to produce a comprehensive study of Claude Lanzmann’s seminal documentary Shoah (1985) using vast archives of “cutting room floor” material recently restored and digitized by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The broader field of humanities scholars will be enriched by these publications, which expand our conceptions of Cold War aesthetics, animals in nineteenth-century U.S.-American urban environments, ancient magic, travel writing, world literatures, cultures of leisure in China, Japan, and Indonesia, the films of John Schlesinger, and many other, fascinating topics.
“I am stupefied by the range of creativity and productivity of my colleagues,” said Kirchwey. The Center looks forward to celebrating further humanities faculty publications.