Humanities Viewpoints Aimee Mepham

Today I’m talking with Dr. Charles Wilkins, Wake Forest Associate Professor of History, Wake Forest Senior Reid Simpson, and Dr. Anke Scharrahs, independent scholar and conservator.

Dr. Scharrahs is an internationally recognized conservator specializing in Islamic art and currently living in Germany. She is visiting Wake Forest as a scholar in residence from February 10th through the 20th. The focus of her attention will be a space in Graylyn Manor House known as the Persian Card Room, an early example of an Ottoman residential space dating from the early 18th century. The panels decorating the room were acquired by Reynolds Tobacco Company President Bowman Gray and his wife Natalie Lyons Gray during their tours of the Mediterranean in the 1920s. During her stay, Dr. Scharrahs will personally examine the Persian Card Room. Since early 2019, she has been conducting research on the room remotely by using an online gallery of digital images provided by University photographer Ken Bennett. Her personal examination is intended to verify her initial findings.

Dr. Scharrahs will also present two public lectures. The first, “The Persian Card Room at Graylyn Estate – Secrets of a Rare Interior from Damascus Revealed,” will take place at 5:00pm on Tuesday, February 18th in the auditorium of Reynolda House Museum of American Art. The second, “Relatives of the Persian Card Room at the Graylyn Estate: ‘Damascene Rooms’ in Collections Around the World Between 1880 and 2020,” will take place at 5:00pm on Wednesday, February 19th, also in the auditorium of Reynolda House Museum of American Art. Don’t miss these great opportunities, and please visit history.wfu.edu for more information.

These events are sponsored by the WFU Center for Global Programs and Studies, the History Department, the Art Department, the Department for the Study of Religions, the Middle East and South Asia Studies Program, and the Humanities Institute, with support made possible by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Dr. Anke Scharrahs is the author of the book Damascene Ajami Interiors: Forgotten Jewels of Interior Design. She is a conservator specializing in polychrome wooden surfaces with a special interest in Islamic art. She has a Ph.D from the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden, Germany and she has been engaged in research and conservation of Syrian-Ottoman interiors for many years, both in museum collections and in historic houses in Germany, New York, and Damascus.

Charles Wilkins joined the Wake Forest faculty in 2006 as Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern history. He is the author of Forging Urban Solidarities: Ottoman Aleppo, 1640-1700 (Brill, 2010).  Wilkins’ scholarly work is concerned with the social history of the Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern Period (1500-1800).  His current research focuses on the long-term social and cultural integration of the Arab lands into the Ottoman Empire.

Reid Simpson is a senior at Wake Forest University. He plans to enter a graduate program in history after graduation. He has been working with Dr. Wilkins as a research assistant on this project.

In this episode we discuss the origins of the panels of the Persian Card Room, the history of art collection in wealthy families like the Grays, and the poets who wrote the inscriptions on the panels. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

Today on the podcast, I talk with Lynn Book and Carrie Johnston about the Lynn Book Project, an uncommon Digital Humanities pilot project that preserves and reinvents the multimedia creative and scholarly work of Lynn Book at the nexus of the Arts and the Humanities. Since 2017, Book has been developing her archive that spans a framework of interrogations and serves as a pilot for Digital Humanities archiving practices with support from the Humanities Institute and the Digital Scholarship Initiative at Wake Forest University.

Lynn Book is a Teaching Professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at Wake Forest University with areas of expertise in Performance Art, Interdisciplinary Arts, New Media, and Creativity. Her 40-year history of interdisciplinary, transmedia practice cuts across boundaries between performance art, theater, dance, visual art, humanities, language and new music forms. She is active internationally, creating original, hybrid, experimental projects that have received citations, fellowships, and awards from among others, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and a residency at MacDowell Colony.

Carrie Johnston is the Digital Humanities Research Designer in Wake Forest's Z. Smith Reynolds Library. In her role at ZSR, she collaborates with faculty across disciplines to develop scholarly digital projects through humanistic inquiry. Her research considers the ways that technology has historically informed women's literary labor, and her work has appeared in American Quarterly and Studies in the Novel. She holds a PhD in English Literature from Southern Methodist University.

Special thanks go to Sophie Hollis, Senior English Major and Humanities Institute Work Study student for editing and transcribing this episode. Well done, Sophie!

My guests for this episode are Professor John Curley and Professor Leigh Ann Hallberg. They have both led the Wake Forest University Art Acquisitions Trip in which a group of six Wake Forest students purchase art from New York galleries to add to the Student Union Collection. Our conversation will touch on a number of topics related to this trip, including the history of the trip itself and how students prepare for it, the role of art in public spaces, what it means to build a collection, and how art can capture and reflect the cultural and political concerns of a particular time and place.

The exhibition from the most recent trip, ex postGlobal: New Acquisitions to the WFU Student Union Collection of Contemporary Art, is currently on view through October 15th at the Charlotte and Philip Hanes Art Gallery on the Wake Forest Reynolda campus. For more information, visit hanesgallery.wfu.edu.

John Curley is Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art in the Department of Art, where he teaches courses in twentieth and twenty-first century art, as well as the history of photography. His research explores the ways that postwar art, primarily in the United States and Europe, intervenes into larger realms of visuality, the mass media, and politics, especially during the period of the Cold War. These concerns are addressed in his award-winning first book: A Conspiracy of Images: Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter, and the Art of the Cold War (Yale University Press, 2013). He has also published numerous essays in journals and international exhibition catalogs. His current book project Art and the Global Cold War: A History is under contract with Laurence King and should appear in 2018. His research has been supported by the Getty Research Institute, the Yale Center for British Art, the Henry Moore Institute, and the Terra Foundation, among others. At Wake Forest, he received a Teaching Innovation Award in 2012 and co-led the Art Buying Trips in 2009 and 2013.

Leigh Ann Hallberg was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1956. She received her BA, Magna Cum Laude, from Mount Union College in 1978 and her MFA from University of Colorado Boulder in 1989. Hallberg has exhibited at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Verge Art Fair NY, the Museo Archeologico Nazionale – Ferrara, Italy, Museo Civico Archeologico, Stellata, Italy, Plymouth Rock Gallery in Zurich, Switzerland and Unterhammer im Karistal, Germany among other venues. Hallberg is a Teaching Professor at Wake Forest University where she has been a Hoak Family Fellow and awarded numerous grants.

Today on Humanities Viewpoints I talk with professors Gillian Overing and Ulrike Wiethaus about the recent publication of the book they co-edited: American/Medieval: Nature and Mind in Cultural Transfer. The project began with the Humanities Institute-sponsored interdisciplinary faculty seminar called American/Medieval, which led to the group representing the institute and Wake Forest in organizing a roundtable discussion on the American/Medieval at the Leeds International Medieval Congress in 2014. We discuss this project from a number of different angles, including developing a definition, connections between American/Medieval and our contemporary world, approaching these topics in the classroom, and future projects inspired by all of these collaborations.

To hear even more about the book and to meet some of the contributors, Wake Forest faculty, staff, and students are invited to attend a Book Launch Celebration for American/Medieval at 4:00pm on Tuesday, March 14th in the Ammons Lounge of Tribble Hall. Join us for conversation, readings, and refreshments to celebrate this exciting new work!

Gillian R. Overing is a Professor of English at Wake Forest University where she teaches courses in Medieval Narrative, Old English language and literature, Gender and Landscape studies, History of the Language, Linguistics, and Women's and Gender Studies, as well as seminars in the English Major, multiple team-taught Interdisciplinary Honors courses, and seminars in Major British Writers. She received her PhD from the State University of New York at Buffalo before joining the Wake Forest faculty in 1993. She has published numerous articles in scholarly journals and was a Commissioned Editor with Clare A. Lees of Gender and Empire, a special volume of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 34.1 (2004). Her books include Language, Sign and Gender in Beowulf (Southern Illinois University Press, 1990); Landscape of Desire: Partial Stories of the Medieval Scandinavian World, with Marijane Osborn (University of Minnesota Press, 1994); A Place to Believe In: Locating Medieval Landscapes, co-edited with Clare A. Lees (Penn State Press, 2006), Double Agents: Women and Clerical Culture in Anglo-Saxon England, with Clare A. Lees (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), reprinted by University of Wales Press, 2009, and most recently American/Medieval: Nature and Mind in Cultural Transfer, co-edited with Ulrike Wiethaus, (Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2016).

Ulrike Wiethaus received a PhD in Religious Studies from Temple University. She holds a joint appointment in the Department for the Study of Religions and the American Ethnic Studies Program at Wake Forest University. Her research interests focus on the history of Christian spirituality with an emphasis on gender justice and political history, and most recently, historic trauma and the long-term impact of US colonialism. Her most recent book-length publications include American/Medieval: Nature and Mind in Cultural Transfer, co-edited with Gillian Overing (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016); American Indian Women of Proud Nations: Essays on History, Education, and Language, co-edited with Cherry Beasley and Mary Ann Jacobs (Peter Lang Publishing, 2016); Medieval German Mysticism and the Politics of Culture (Peter Lang Publishing, 2015); and Trauma and Resilience in African American and American Indian Southern History, co-edited with Tony Parent (Peter Lang Publishing, 2013).

Samuel F.B. Morse is perhaps best known for his invention of the single-wire telegraph system and the co-inventor of Morse code. However, he was also an artist, and his work, The Gallery of the Louvre, is the subject of today’s episode, a conversation with Morna O’Neill, Associate Professor of Art History at Wake Forest University. Professor O’Neill discusses Morse’s identity as an artist, his intentions in creating The Gallery of the Louvre, his relationship to technology, and the questions this particular painting raises for contemporary audiences.

Professor O’Neill will also moderate the special event for Wake Forest Faculty, “Decoding Morse”: Cross-Disciplinary Conversation and a Viewing of Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre at 3:00pm on Friday, February 24th. You can find more information about this event at humanitiesinstitute.wfu.edu/decodingmorse.

Morse’s painting is on display during the exhibition Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre and the Art of Invention at the Reynolda House Museum of American Art, which opens Friday, February 17th and runs through June 4, 2017. Visit www.reynoldahouse.org for more information.

Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre and the Art of Invention was organized by and with support from the Terra Foundation for American Art. Reynolda House is grateful for the generous sponsorship of this exhibition from Major Co-Sponsor Wake Forest Innovation Quarter and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, Contributing Sponsors the Terra Foundation for American Art and an anonymous donor, and Exhibition Partners Joia Johnson and Jeff and Sissy Whittington.

Morna O'Neill is associate professor of art history in the Department of Art at Wake Forest University, where she teaches courses in eighteenth and nineteenth-century European art and the history of photography. Prior to her arrival at Wake Forest, she taught in the History of Art Department at Vanderbilt University and served as a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Research at the Yale Center for British Art. Her scholarship addresses the conjunction of art, design, and politics at the end of the nineteenth century. She is the author of Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics (Yale University Press, 2011). She also curated the exhibition 'Art and Labour's Cause is One:' Walter Crane and Manchester, 1880-1915 (Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester, August 2008-June 2009). She is currently preparing a book manuscript on the art dealer Hugh Lane (1875-1915) and the rise of the global art market. She is the co-editor, with Michael Hatt (University of Warwick), of The Edwardian Sense: Art, Design, and Performance in Britain, 1901-1910 (Yale University Press, 2010).

This month’s episode marks the first Roundtables episode of Humanities Viewpoints in which a group of Wake Forest faculty gather to discuss a topic from the lens of their respective fields. Today, our topic is “Familiar Prejudices from Unexpected Sources.” Our conversation includes discussions of anti-Greek sentiments in Roman satire, Ancient Greek and Roman anti-Semitism, women’s involvement in the second era Ku Klux Klan, imagined histories, and the rhetoric of the 2016 Presidential campaign.

My guests are T.H.M Gellar-Goad, Jeffrey D. Lerner, and Lynn S. Neal.

T. H. M. Gellar-Goad is Assistant Professor of Classical Languages at Wake Forest University. He specializes in Latin poetry, especially the funny stuff: Roman comedy, Roman erotic elegy, Roman satire, and — if you believe him — the allegedly philosophical poet Lucretius.

Jeffrey D. Lerner is a Professor of History at Wake Forest University. His research focuses on the Hellenistic Period in the East. He teaches a variety of courses on Ancient History, including History 312: Jews, Greeks, and Romans.

Lynn S. Neal is a scholar of American religious history. She is the co-editor, with John Corrigan, of Religious Intolerance in America, and the author of a number of articles on religious intolerance, including "Christianizing the Klan: Alma White, Branford Clarke, and the Art of Religious Intolerance," "The Ideal Democratic Apparel: T-shirts, Religious Intolerance, and the Clothing of Democracy," and "They're Freaks!: The Cult Stereotype in Fictional Television Shows, 1958-2008." She is Associate Professor and Associate Chair in the Department for the Study of Religions.

I hope you enjoy our conversation.

Here is a list of the readings and sources my guests draw from during this discussion:

From Dr. Gellar-Goad:
Translation of Juvenal's Third Satire by A. S. Kline: http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/JuvenalSatires3.htm
Translation of Catullus 63 on Attis by A. S. Kline: http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Catullus.htm#anchor_Toc531846788

From Dr. Lerner:
Dio Cassius, Roman History, Volume 9: Books 71-80. Translated by Cary, E., Foster, H.B., Loeb Classical Library 177 (Harvard University Press, 1927). See 75.32

Tacitus, Annals, Volume 4: Books 4-6, 11-12. Translated by Jackson, J. Loeb Classical Library 312 (Harvard University Press, 1937). See 12.54.

Tacitus, Histories, Volume 3: Books 4-5. Annals: Books 1-3. Translated by Moore, C.H. Classical Library 249 (Harvard University Press, 1931). See 5.1-13.

For Claudius’ edict concerning the inhabitants of Alexandria, see Select Papyri, Volume 2: Public Documents. Translated by Hunt, A.S. and Edgar, C.C. Classical Library 282 (Harvard University Press, 1934). See Chapter 3 (pp.78-89).

For Manetho, see Josephus, The Life. Against Apion. Translated by Thackery, H.St.J. Classical Library 186 (Harvard University Press, 1926). See 1.26-31 (227-287).