Events

Signification, Circulation, Emanations
April 26 & 27
at the Franke Institute for the Humanities

We are delighted to invite you to Signification, Circulation, Emanations, a two-day conference that reflects and builds on the scholarship of Michael Silverstein (1945–2020), with specific focus on his work on the semiotics of culture in the latter part of his career and the future paths of inquiry it opens.

Register here to attend in-person at the Franke Institute for the Humanities or online via Zoom.

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Visit the website for the conference program and more information.

Accessibility accommodations…

Access UChicago Now provides information and resources for greater inclusion at the University of Chicago.

This event is sponsored by the Department of Anthropology, the Department of Linguistics, the Franke Institute for the Humanities, MAPSS, and the Center for the Study of Communication and Society.

THIS IS AN IN-PERSON EVENT AND WILL NOT BE LIVE STREAMING.

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

This two-day conference brings together scholars with an interdisciplinary focus on sound and writing in East Asia from across the academic fields of literature, history, music, media, sound, and performance. The purpose of the event is to facilitate innovative approaches to understanding and articulating intersections of aural and print cultures. While these explorations of sound and text may be situated specifically within the contexts of China, Japan, and Korea, the conference aims to foster scholarly contributions beyond the field of East Asian area studies.

PROGRAM SCHEDULE

April 27 (Saturday)

9:30-10:00 am Light breakfast on conference site (available to participants and registrants)

10:00-12:00 pm Panel 3: Language

Discussant: Sarah Nooter (Classics, University of Chicago)

• Janet Chen (Princeton University), “Medium or Message? The Politics of Language in Broadcasting in Taiwan, 1955-1975”
• Elvin Meng (University of Chicago), “Rituals of the Wild: The Concept of Orality in the History of Manchu Thought”
• Alex Murphy (Clark University), “Sound-Writing and Acoustics in Kanetsune Kiyosuke’s Structure of Japanese Language and Song”

12:00-1:00 pm Lunch on site (available to participants and registrants)

1:00-3:30 pm Panel 4: Media

Discussant: Thomas Lamarre (CMS & EALC, University of Chicago)

• Linshan Jiang (Duke University), “Voicing Queer Sexuality in Chinese BL Novel and Audio Drama”
• I Jonathan Kief (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), “Listening across Borders in the Cold War Koreas”
• Jiarui Sun (University of Chicago), “In My Words You Feel: Amateur Script Writing and Platformed Care”
• Hang Wu (University of Chicago), “Broadcasting Infrastructures and Electromagnetic Fatality: Listening to Enemy Radio in Socialist China.”

3:30-4:00 pm Tea Break

4:00-5:00 pm Keynote Speech

Jina E. Kim (University of Oregon), “Sonic Contact Zones”

1227 E 60th St, Chicago, IL 60637

SPONSORS

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Chicago, with support from a Title VI National Resource Center Grant from the U.S. Department of Education, the Franke Institute for the Humanities, the University of Chicago Library, and the Arts & Politics in East Asia Workshop.

PHOTOGRAPHY/VIDEOGRAPHY

Please note that there may be photography taken during this educational event by the University of Chicago Center for East Asian Studies for archival and publicity purposes. By attending this event, participants are confirming their permission to be photographed and the University of Chicago’s right to use, distribute, copy, and edit the recordings in any form of media for non-commercial, educational purposes, and to grant rights to third parties to do any of the foregoing.

Quirky, at times impossible, yet always fun, Scavenger Hunt—or Scav—has set UChicago students dashing on multiday searches for eclectic lists of miscellany since 1987. Simultaneously a break from coursework and a thinly veiled learning exercise, Scav has become an enjoyable rite of spring for undergraduates, as well as some graduates and alumni.

Beyond the dorms, Scav unifies the student body in a way that sports teams build school-specific spirit at some colleges. Students recognize Scav as uniquely UChicago and players back the game with fierce intensity and school pride.

For nearly four decades, Scavenger Hunt has evolved, adapted with technology, and garnered local, national, and international press, yet throughout time, it has retained its characteristic spirit of humor, playful rigor, and inclusion that reflects core UChicago values and has become an endearing student tradition.

This exhibition features materials donated to the University of Chicago Archive and items on loan from the Scavenger Hunt’s founding members, former judges, past players, and current teams. Notable items include the first Scavenger Hunt list and items used in the 1999 creation of a breeder reactor, along with an array of t-shirts, photographs, and judges’ notes that document the lengths Scavvies will go to in search of fun and to be part of a beloved UChicago tradition.

Luigi Pistaferri, Stanford University
Topic: TBA

April 29, 2024
3:00 PM
315 Haskell Hall

What the hell is biocultural? A productive friction for Anthropology
Dr. Agustín Fuentes
Princeton University

ABSTRACT: Seeing bodies and evolutionary histories as quantifiable features that can be measured separate from the human cultural experience is an erroneous approach. Seeing cultural perceptions and the human experience as disentangled from biological form and function, and evolutionary history, is equally misguided. Anthropology is the academic field that, arguably, has as its raison d’être the correction and avoidance of these errors. But disagreements and lack of integration and communication within and across anthropologies continue to hinder the quest to achieve such lofty goals. Here I offer a view of the biocultural, with examples from human development and multispecies relations, as productive friction for anthropology. (Re)Engaging the concepts/dynamics of culture and biology, rejecting a bio/cultural binary, and placing them in dialogue as co-constructors of the human I hope to drive home what a biocultural approach is and how it is generative for a 21st century anthropology. Not every anthropological question must touch on the biocultural nor should all anthropologists be doing biocultural work. However, everyone who seriously wants to do an anthropology should know what a biocultural frame is, what the possibilities such a context offers, and why and how it can be integral to serious engagement with the human.

BIOGRAPHY: Agustín Fuentes, a Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University, focuses on the biosocial, delving into the entanglement of biological systems with the social and cultural lives of humans, our ancestors, and a few of the other animals with whom humanity shares close relations. Earning his BA/BS in Anthropology and Zoology and his MA and PhD in Anthropology from UC Berkeley, he has conducted research across four continents, multiple species, and two-million years of human history. His current projects include exploring cooperation, creativity, and belief in human evolution, multispecies anthropologies, evolutionary theory and processes, gender/sex, and engaging race and racism. Fuentes’ books include Race, Monogamy, and other lies they told you: busting myths about human nature (U of California), The Creative Spark: how imagination made humans exceptional (Dutton), and Why We Believe: evolution and the human way of being (Yale). 

Please join us for a reception on Haskell’s mezzanine immediately following Dr. Fuentes’s talk.

Nigel Smith is the William and Annie S. Paton Foundation Professor of Ancient and Modern Literature at Princeton University

Jo Guldi, Professor of Quantitative Methods at Emory University, will lead a masterclass on her book, The Dangerous Art of Text Mining,on April 30 from 9am-12pm in the Tea Room (SSRB 202). 

From the publisher (Cambridge University Press): The Dangerous Art of Text Mining celebrates the bold new research now possible because of text mining: the art of counting words over time. However, this book also presents a warning: without help from the humanities, data science can distort the past and lead to perilous errors….The book ends with an impassioned vision of what text mining in defence of democracy would look like, and why humanists need to be involved.

Please RSVP by 3 PM on April 25 for a lunch.

Jo Guldi, Professor of Quantitative Methods at Emory University, will lead a masterclass on her book, The Dangerous Art of Text Mining,on April 30 from 9am-12pm in the Tea Room (SSRB 202). 

From the publisher (Cambridge University Press): The Dangerous Art of Text Mining celebrates the bold new research now possible because of text mining: the art of counting words over time. However, this book also presents a warning: without help from the humanities, data science can distort the past and lead to perilous errors….The book ends with an impassioned vision of what text mining in defence of democracy would look like, and why humanists need to be involved.

Please RSVP by 3 PM on April 25 for a lunch.