Informational meeting, 11 am, Sept., Wed 29th at 313 University Club, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

This A.W. Mellon Interdisciplinary Workshop in the Humanities invites your participation in a series of workshops, lectures, and a research collective.

We wish to renew the engagement between history, literature, anthropology and other disciplines by developing a research collective in which we think about thinking. Our pursuit is organized around three independent but interrelated themes that are accessible to diverse groups around campus, but that collectively will help orient the new research of a core group of scholars who engage all three themes related to "lived inquiry" in historical, literary/artistic, and anthropological perspective:

Intellectual History (Fall 2010)
The Mind in Motion, to be led by an artist’s creative scholarship (Spring 2011) Knowledge and Performance, to be directed by anthropological inquiry (Fall 2011) Each will be pursued separately over an entire semester, through a program of readings and a public lecture open to a broad audience.

Explored over consecutive semesters, these themes will also build common ground for discussion and workshop participation amongst those members of the campus community who can see ways of developing some aspect of their own research in creative conversation with the overarching topic. (Do you have an idea you would like to pursue, a paper, dissertation chapter, or project that engages these themes?) A workshop in Spring 2012 will draw together the work carried out, and may provide the basis for a collected volume. We now issue an open call for interest and engagement. The ambit, aims and organization of the project will be discussed in an informational meeting at 11 AM on Wednesday September 29. Subsequent meetings will triangulate the interests of those present, the specific themes of each semester, and our intent to foster lived inquiry. Please join us.

Schedule, Fall 2010
Informational meeting
Wed. Sept. 29 at 11 am, Center for the Humanities conference room,
313 University Club
Framing meeting
Mon. Oct. 11 at 6 pm or Wed. Oct. 13 at 11 am, 313 University Club (we will settle on one of these dates/times at our first organizational meeting)
Public lecture
Jim Miller (The New School of Social Research), “Examined Lives: The Case of Diogenes”
Wed. Oct. 27 at 4 pm, location 984 Memorial Library
Workshop discussion with Jim Miller
Thurs. Oct. 28 at 8:30 am, 313 University Club
Workshop meeting on Lived inquiry in historical perspective
Mon. Nov. 29 at 6 pm or Wed. Dec. 1 at 11 am, 313 University Club
(Meetings and workshops will be held in the Center for the Humanities conference room, 313 University Club.) Organizers Hunter Martin (History), Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen (History), Richard Staley (History of Science), Michael Witmore (English) with Florence Hsia (History of Science) and Claire Wendland (Anthropology) This program is part of the A.W. Mellon Interdisciplinary Workshops in the Humanities, sponsored by the Center for the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

-- Irene Hansen Research Coordinator, Center for the History of Print Culture in Modern America