Visiting Scholars Program, 2005-2006

Chair of the Visiting Scholars Program

Scholars

Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh – Ph.D., Indiana University. B.A., University of Arizona. The Advance of American Archaeology and Resurgence of Native America. A critical investigation of the complex moral and social relationship between modern and historical archaeological practices and Native America. He explores the ethical dilemmas that arise when archaeological practices are viewed by native peoples as a desecration of their ancestors and a disregard for current beliefs. Whereas most analyses of archaeological ethics look at isolated case studies and lack a theoretical framework, Colwell-Chanthaphonh’s work will focus on the intersection between anthropology and moral philosophy.

Jenny Davidson – Assistant Professor, Columbia University. Ph.D., Yale University. B.A., Harvard University. Breeding: Nature and Nurture Before Biology. An examination of how 18th-century scholars thought about the concept of breeding. At the time, prior to the development of scientific terms like heredity and genetics, breeding was a catch-all term that could refer to pregnancy, nature or nurture, hereditary resemblance, manners, moral character, social standing and more. By exploring the works of literary figures such as Shakespeare, Locke, Defoe and Swift, Davidson offers a fresh perspective on a world that was struggling between the belief that a person’s birth determined his place in the world and one where virtually anyone could be transformed through education.

Elizabeth Lyman – Assistant Professor, Harvard University. Ph.D. University of Virginia. A.B., Stanford University. Performing Visual Information: Stage Directions Past, Present, and Future. A critical study of performance notation which draws attention to emerging forms of theatrical stage direction, and to the unrecognized interpretive influence of graphic elements in scripts ranging from punctuation and typography, to diagrams, symbols, and abstract and representational drawings. While most forms of stage direction are verbal, Lyman looks at non-verbal directions that borrow their notation from other disciplines, and argues that specific forms of indeterminate notation are particularly fruitful for stimulating artistic performance.

Jennifer Marshall – Postdoctoral Scholar, University of California, Los Angeles. B.A., University of Arizona, Tuscon. The Stuff of Modern Life: Formalism and Pragmatism in Interwar American Aesthetics. An analysis of the role of ordinary objects in the formation of American modernism in the decades between the two world wars. She focuses her examination on the 1934 Machine Art exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York—a display of approximately 400 objects of mass-production including airplane propellers, metal springs and ball bearings.

Jason Puskar – Assistant Professor, Boston College. Ph.D., Harvard University. M.Phil., University of Oxford. B.A. and B.S.J., Ohio University. Underwriting the Accident: Narratives of American Chance, 1871-1936. An examination of the effects of a growing interest in chance and accident on American literature and culture during the years between Reconstruction and the New Deal. Through the spread of probabilistic thinking in popular culture, predominantly fostered by the insurance industry, Americans began to consider social, economic and material life as fundamentally uncertain. Puskar’s work focuses on how American novels both popularized the new thinking about indeterminacy and were transformed by it.

Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen – Assistant Professor, University of Miami. Ph.D., Brandeis University. B.A., University of Rochester. Neither Rock nor Refuge: A History of Nietzsche in America. An examination of the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche’s ideas and image on twentieth-century American thought and culture. By exploring the American appropriation of Nietzsche’s “Übermensch” (Superman), his claims for the death of God, and his critique of Christianity and democracy, her study investigates why Americans have been so fascinated with a thinker who made a career of challenging ideals central to their way of life.

Sarah Song – Assistant Professor, M.I.T. Ph.D., Yale University. M.Phil., Oxford University. B.A., Harvard University. Culture, Gender, and Equality. An examination of a variety of conflicts between minority group rights and women's rights. Drawing upon political theory, history, and law, she explores how such conflicts might be resolved by democracies that seek both equal justice for minority groups and equal justice for women.

Sharon Weiner – Assistant Professor, School of International Service, American University. Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology. M.A., University of Lancaster. B.A., Truman State University. Our Own Worst Enemy? U.S. Bureaucracies, Nonproliferation Policy, and the Former Soviet Union. A critique of U.S. government programs to reduce the risk of former Soviet scientists selling their weapons-making knowledge to rogues states or terrorist groups. In the short term, U.S. efforts to reduce this proliferation risk have helped provide support to weapons scientists who would have otherwise been unemployed or poverty-stricken; however, rivalry between programs and insufficient coordination have hindered long-term success. Weiner explores how bureaucratic obstacles and politics in the United States have impeded these nonproliferation programs.

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