The Byzantine Empire, which existed as a political entity from the founding of Constantinople in 330 CE to the sack of that city in 1453, left a profound, diverse, and often disputed legacy in Russia, East-Central Europe, the Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean, Turkey, and Armenia, influencing art, literature, language, architecture, and political structures, among others. This legacy and its impact for the modern world is the focus of this workshop, which seeks to examine in what ways the history of Byzantium might have relevance for the development of a European Union today.
Coordinator: Paul Stephenson, Assistant Professor of History
Stories teach us values, give life meaning, entertain, break down barriers, and perhaps most importantly transform our ways of thinking, knowing, seeing, and being. Stories have no boundaries-they are told, seen, heard, and interpreted by people of all ages, classes, cultures, and creeds. Using Robert Coles's book of the same title as a starting point, this workshop explores the power of stories and how stories are used in teaching and learning through examination of a variety of story traditions, including literary stories, oral storytelling, dance, music, and film.
Coordinator: Doreen Holmgren, University Relations Specialist, Dance Program
As a major focus of human anxiety, postmortem existence-an afterlife-is a part of every religion and a primary focus of religious ritual; it is also a theme of some of history's most profound and moving art and literature. This workshop examines the afterlife across vast chronological and geographic distances, from the Ten Kings tradition in East Asian Buddhism to Dante's Inferno to Andean mortuary practices to seventeenth-century American Protestant practices, from a variety of academic approaches, including history, literature, art, religion, and anthropology.
Coordinator: Quitman Phillips, Professor of Art History
Language lies at the core of human creativity and reflection; human language is unique in its intricate ways to express ideas. But those who study language fall under many different academic disciplines and do not always communicate this work to one another. This workshop, now in its second year, seeks to bring people together from across the university campus to discuss such issues as language processing, language acquisition, patterns of structure across human languages, the relationship between form and meaning, and nonverbal modes of communication.
Coordinator: Anja Wanner, Assistant Professor of English
Human language is profoundly metaphorical, and literature in particular expands and foregrounds-while simultaneously challenging-the metaphoric potential of language. The study of metaphor, however, is not limited to literature and is in fact dispersed across a number of disciplines not only within the humanities but also in the social and natural sciences. This workshop provides a forum for discussion of various topics related to metaphor, including different approaches to metaphor, the functions of metaphor in the humanities and sciences, cross-cultural uses of metaphor, and nonverbal metaphor or gestures.
Coordinator: Sabine Gross, Associate Professor of German
Celtic Studies embraces the history, language, music, mythology, art, literature, folklore, and material culture of Celtic people both in traditionally Celtic areas and throughout the world. This workshop looks to promote these studies as a discipline through discussion of recent scholarship, ranging from contemporary historiography of the Irish potato famine to re-consideration of medieval Welsh poetry to an examination of Celtic influences on northern Midwestern regional musical styles.
Coordinator: John Niles, Professor of English