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University of Pittsburgh Humanities Center colloquium
Thursday, October 1st at 12:30 PM, CL 512
Prof. Adriana Helbig, Humanities Center Fellow (Music), will lead a discussion of her paper "Playing for Peace: Reggae-Rap and Hip-Folk Among African Migrants in Ukraine." She will also present some video clips. The paper for discussion can be obtained by contacting humctr@pitt.edu.

For more information about the event, contact Todd Reeser, Associate Director of the Center, at reeser@pitt.edu <mailto:reeser@pitt.edu> .

University of Pittsburgh
Lecture sponsored by the Humanities Center and Asian Studies Center
Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 4:00 PM, Cathedral of Learning 501
(Reception to follow)
Tony Day, Wesleyan University, "Time and Freedom in Asian Film"

   Making and viewing films have a history in Asia that stretches back to the early twentieth century. Still understudied, the impact of film on the cultures and politics of the region has been enormous. Since the 1980s, but particularly in the last ten years or so, films have become the vehicles for powerful artistic statements about the struggle for freedom in Asian societies. In my talk I want to focus on the representation of time and freedom in four rather different movies that received wide acclaim either domestically or internationally: Sepet (“Slant-Eye,” 2004, Malaysia); Mùa Hè Chiều Thằng Đứng (“summer solstice,” The Vertical Ray of the Sun, 2000, France/Vietnam); Sud Pralad (Tropical Malady, 2004, Thailand); and Hao Nan Hao Nu (好男好女, Good Men, Good Women, 1995, Taiwan). My talk will suggest variations but also common themes in the experience and perception of time, history, and human freedom in four different Asian societies.

   Tony Day grew up in Washington D.C., attended St. Albans School, and earned a B.A. in History and Literature from Harvard University in 1967. He received a Ph.D. in Southeast Asian History from Cornell University in 1981. In 1967-1969 he was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Calapan, Mindoro Oriental, the Philippines, and from 1978 to1998 he taught Southeast Asian and Performance Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. He was a visiting lecturer in the departments of History, Comparative Literature, and Asian Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 2000-2004. In 2004-2005 he was a Visiting Fellow at the Humanities Research Centre of the Australian National University and a Fellow of the National Humanities Center, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. His publications include Fluid Iron: State Formation in Southeast Asia (2002); Clearing a Space: Postcolonial Readings of Modern Indonesian Literature (2002), co-edited with Keith Foulcher; and Identifying with Freedom: Indonesia after Suharto, an edited collection of essays published by Berghahn Books in 2007. His essay “Honoured Guests: Indonesian-American Cultural Traffic, 1953-57” will appear in a collection of essays on Indonesian culture in the period 1950-65, to be published by KITLV Press, Leiden, the Netherlands, and he is editing a collection of essays on Southeast Asian film, theater, literature, and art during the Cold War with Maya Liem, to be published by SEAP Publications, Cornell University. An essay by him, “Imagining World Literature during the Cold War in Indonesia and Vietnam,” will appear in that collection. Since moving to New Haven CT with his wife and youngest son in 2005, he has been a visiting fellow in the Department of History (2005-2007).  He is currently an honorary consultant of the Southeast Asia Council at Yale and a visiting professor of history (part-time) at Wesleyan University (2006-2010).

The Humanities Center is now accepting applications for a 2010-2011 Residential Fellowship.

The Humanities Center welcomes Karen Piper, 2009-10 Fellow.

2009-10 Lecture Series:
Global Connections, Global Responsibilities

Spring Film Festival:
Faces of Globalization
(details forthcoming)

Links

Humanities Departments:

   English
   History
   Philosophy
   Modern Languages

College of Humanities and
Social Sciences

Center for the Arts in Society

The Center for the Advancement of Applied Ethics and Political Philosophy