Alumni News
Teaching Medical Ethics Addressed on NPR
2011-12 Faculty Fellow and Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine Jay Baruch, MD was interviewed by NPR reporter Kristin Gourlay on the emerging and challenging subject of teaching biomedical ethics to students at Brown's Warren Alpert Medical School. Jay is the director of the Ocean State Ethics Network and on the faculty of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at the medical school. He is also the convener of the Cogut Center's Creative Medicine lecture series that started in 2010-11, bringing professionals in the medical arena to campus to engage in examinations of creative and non-traditional uses of the arts and humanities in the practice of medicine.
Read the article and listen to the interview.
"Brown Boys and Rice Queens: Spellbinding Performance in the Asias"
Eng-Beng Lim, 2012-13 Faculty Fellow and Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, will have his book "Brown Boys and Rice Queens: Spellbinding Performance in the Asias" published by New York University Press in November 2013.
Congratulations, Eng-Beng!
Elizabeth Kassab Wins Prestigious Award
Elizabeth S. Kassab, 2012 Visiting Professor in the Humanities, has just won the prestigious and much-coveted Sheikh Zayed 'Contribution of Nations' Book Award 2013. Her book, Contemporary Arab Thought: Cultural Critique in Comparative Perspective, was first published in English by Columbia University Press and the Arabic translation was carried forward by Centre for Arab Unity Studies in Beirut in 2012.
This award places the winner at the forefront of Arab thinkers and writers, something we knew about Elizabeth all along. The award will be presented officially in late April 2013 at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre as part of the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair.
Congratulations, Elizabeth!
"Cities and the Shaping of Memory in the Ancient Near East"
Ömür Harmanşah, 2012-13 Faculty Fellow at the Cogut Center and Assistant Professor of the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, has had his book "Cities and the Shaping of Memory in the Ancient Near East" published by Cambridge University Press. Ömür's book investigates the founding and building of cities in the ancient Near East. The creation of new cities was imagined as an ideological project or a divine intervention in the political narratives and mythologies of Near Eastern cultures, often masking the complex processes behind the social production of urban space. This volume combs through archaeological, epigraphic, visual, architectural, and environmental evidence to tell the story of a region from the perspective of its spatial practices, landscape history, and architectural technologies.
Congratulations, Ömür!
Read more here.
"Grammatology and Literary Modernity in Turkey"
Nergis Ertürk, 2008-09 Visiting Professor in the Humanities at the Cogut Center, and currently Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Pennsylvania State University, has been awarded the Modern Language Association's Prize for a First Book for Grammatology and Literary Modernity in Turkey, published by Oxford University Press. The committee's citation for Nergis's book reads in part: "Nergis Ertürk's Grammatology and Literary Modernity in Turkey is a pwoerful and elegant study of literary, linguistic, and historical change in Turkey. Whereas dominant accounts of Turkey as the birthplace of postwar comparative literature privilege the writings of European exiles, Ertürk examines modern Turkish literature to revise our understanding of literary modernities, both national and global."
Congratulations, Nergis!
Read more here.
"Our Bodies Belong to God"
Sherine Hamdy, Kutayba Alghanim Assistant Professor of Social Sciences, Department of Anthropology, and 2006-8 Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cogut Center, has had her book "Our Bodies Belong to God--Organ Transplants, Islam and the Struggle for Human Dignity in Egypt" published by the University of California Press. Sherine's book offers a fascinating description of debates over religious and medical authority in Egypt, in the context of a brutal political regime, the privatization of health care, the growing gap between rich and poor, and the increasing Islamization of the public sphere. Sherine first presented her book-in-progress at the weekly Cogut Center Fellows' Seminar when she was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow.
Watch a recent panel discussion on her book here.
Music is International
Sarah Wilbanks '12, alumna of our 2012 Berlin/Brown pilot program at the West-Eastern Divan Institute, announces that she just started work with the Nabeel Abboud Ashkar and the Polyphony Foundation. Among her interests are programs that emphasize an arts and humanities approach toward promoting coexistence and integration of socially marginalized groups. Sarah will be flying to Nazareth this fall for preparations for an October workshop.
Next Stop, London School of Economics
Dylan Nelson, 2010-11 Undergraduate Fellow, is heading to the London School of Economics to study political sociology supported by a Global Grant Scholarship from the Rotary International Foundation. Dylan's work will focus on non-governmental organizations in the context of international political structures and local social movements.
Wendy J. Strothman Faculty
Research Award Winner
Paja Faudree, 2011-12 Faculty Fellow, has been awarded the Wendy J. Strothman Faculty Research Award in the Humanities for 2012-13 for her proposal titled "Magic Mint: A Linguistic Ethnography of the Global Salvia Trade."
Felicitations, Paja!
Appointment of Named Chair
2011-12 Faculty Fellow Thangam Ravindranathan has been appointed the Manning Assistant Professor of French Studies. This appointment was ratified by the Corporation at its May 2012 meeting. Congratulations, Thangam!
Director Chosen to Lead the New Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice
2009-10 Faculty Fellow Anthony Bogues as been named
inaugural director of Brown's new Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice. Creation of the Center was among the recommendations of the University's three-year project on Slavery and Justice, undertaken in 2003 by a steering committee created by Brown President Ruth Simmons.
A copy of the Report of the Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice is available online.
What's new with the Marriage of Figaro cast?
The talented cast from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, who thrilled us in June 2011 with a spirited and beautifully sung production of The Marriage of Figaro has been hard at work over the past academic year.
Find out what they've been up to and what's next for these gifted performers.
Felicitations!
Community MusicWorks founder and MacArthur Foundation 'genius' grant winner Sebastian Ruth '97 will be awarded an honorary doctoral degree at Brown's 2012 Commencement ceremonies in late May.
Sebastian is a valued colleague of, and frequent collaborator with, the Cogut Center.
Congratulations, Sebastian!
New Publications
The Post-Secular in Question
Religion in Contemporary Society
New York University Press (2012)
edited by (among others)
David Kyuman Kim
Associate Professor of Religious Studies and American Studies at Connecticut College
2008-09 Cogut Center Visiting Professor in the Humanities
Nossa and Nuestra América
Inter-American Dialogues
Purdue University Press (2011)
by
Robert Patrick Newcomb
Assistant Professor of Luso-Brazilian Studies
University of California, Davis
2007-08 Cogut Center Graduate Fellow
Two articles about the revolution and counter-revolution in Egypt:
"Fieldnotes, Airplane Ride Back"
Cultural Anthropology
"Strength and Vulnerability after Egypt's Arab Spring Uprisings"
American Ethnologist
by Sherine Hamdy
Kutayba Alghanim Assistant Professor of Social Sciences
Anthropology, Brown University
2006-8 Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cogut Center