The Weight of Photography: a symposium

March 18th 2010, Thursday, Noon-4:30pm, Martin E. Segal Theatre

Has photography become weightless? In the midst of an increasingly global and digital culture, can we still talk about photography as a distinct entity? Should museum departments, exhibitions, schools and academic classes continue to be devoted to photography alone? Join us for a half-day symposium exploring philosophical and historical questions regarding the nature of photographic representation. Featuring presentations by scholars such as Willem Elias, Johan Swinnen, Luc Deneulin, and Tamara Berghmans of the Free University of Brussels, alongside curators, such as Chris Phillips, from International Center for Photography as well as scholars from the US, this symposium offers a distinctively international perspective on photography’s identity just as it has become particularly uncertain. Moderated by Geoffrey Batchen, Professor of Art History, The Graduate Center, CUNY.

A full schedule will be posted here shortly.

Co-sponsored by the PhD Program in Art History

End of Biography: Purpose, Promise, Prospects

The Annual Conference
March 19th 2010, Friday, 10:30am-6:00pm, Elebash Recital Hall

Why read biography?  For information?  Aesthetic pleasure?  What can biography contribute to a compassionate knowledge of our world, what understanding of ourselves or of the past? What is its relation to the said and the not-said?  Mull over these questions at the Second Annual Conference of Leon Levy Center for Biography, with distinguished guests including keynote speaker Arnold Rampersad (Stanford, and author of acclaimed biographies of Langston Hughes, Jackie Robinson, and Ralph Ellison).  

Other participants include Catherine Clinton (Queens University Belfast, Mrs. Lincoln: A Life), Gary Giddins (CUNY, Jazz), Molly Haskell (film critic, Frankly, My Dear), Langdon Hammer (Yale, Hart Crane and Allen Tate), Richard Howard (Columbia, Pulitzer prize winning poet, translator, essayist), Caryn James (film critic, What Catherine Knew), D.T. Max (New Yorker), Jed Perl (art critic, The New Republic; Antoine’s Alphabet), Andrew Sarris (prize-winning film critic, The American Cinema), Eric Salzman (composer, The New Music Theater), Ileene Smith (editor-at-large, Yale University Press), Amanda Vaill (Somewhere: The Life of Jerome Robbins), Steve Wasserman (literary agent, former editor of the LA Times Book Review), and Brenda Wineapple (Director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography, White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson).

Check leonlevycenterforbiography.org for updates, schedule, and a list of other participants. Or contact the Leon Levy Center for Biography at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , 212-817-2008.

Co-sponsored by the Leon Levy Center for Biography

A Workshop with Kyoo Lee

Foundational Texts in Enlightenment Political Theory

March 19th 2010, Friday, 12:00pm-2:00pm, Room 8400

Join us for a discussion of Atlantic Studies Seminar readings with Kyoo Lee, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at John Jay College and Resident Mellon Fellow at the Center for the Humanities.

Byzantine Archaeology: New Approaches, New Discoveries

March 22 2010, Monday, 4:00pm, Room 9205

Joachim Henning, Professor at Institut für Archäologische Wissenschaften, Abteilung Vor- und Frühgeschichte, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main, will speak on "Excavations at Pliska, Capital of the First Bulgarian Empire."

This lecture series aims to introduce some of the most important projects currently underway in Byzantine archaeology, a rapidly developing field of interdisciplinary studies dedicated to the interpretation of the material remains of the former Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire (c. 330-1453 CE). By combining traditional textual interpretations with archaeological analyses of artifacts, human and organic remains, architecture, and settlements, Byzantine archaeology has ultimately revealed entire landscapes. The speakers are paired with respondents from the CUNY faculty from a variety of disciplines. All events will be moderated by Eric Ivison, Professor of History at the Graduate Center and the College of Staten Island, CUNY.

New Visions, New Activism, New American Poetry: Margaret Randall in Conversation

March 22nd 2010, Monday, 6:30pm, The Skylight Room (9100)

The poet, political activist and publisher Margaret Randall helped shift the frame of New American Poetry beyond the US with her own political activism and by publishing El Corno Emplumado / The Plumed Horn (1962-1969), a forum for innovative writing from all parts of the Americas featuring the work of major poets from the United States, Canada and Latin America in English, Spanish and Portuguese. Join her and the Graduate Center’s Ammiel Alcalay, Professor of English and Comparative Literature in a conversation about her work and El Corno Emplumado, then on the cutting edge of independent publishing and now an archival treasure.

Co-sponsored by the Ph.D. Program in Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Languages and the Doctoral Students Council