Research Workshops bring together faculty, staff, and independent scholars from UWM and other local institutions to discuss common interests across disciplinary lines. Workshops are open to UWM faculty and academic staff, and to researchers in the field from outside UWM.
The Call for Research Workshop Proposals is available as a PDF.
The Center is currently supporting the Research Workshops listed below. Please contact the group's coordinator if you wish to participate in a group. Coordinators' names and contact information appear at the link to the relevant group. The proposal process is non-competitive. We will accept and publicize any proposals that meet the guidelines. Please contact Kate Kramer or John Blum for more information.
Descriptions of the groups' topics, contact information for the coordinators, and meeting information are linked below:
- Ancient Mediterranean Studies/Classical Tradition
- Early Modern Group
- Science, Technology, Medicine and Society
- Feminist Theory
- Cognitive Studies
- Queer Theory Graduate Reading Group
The Ancient Mediterranean Studies Workshop is on hiatus for the Fall 2009-10 semester. It will start again during the Spring semester.
The Workshop would like to remind everyone that the Archaeological Institute of America-Milwaukee Society still has a full slate of lectures for the 2009-10 year.
In the past several years, the field of ancient classical studies has expanded at UWM with the addition of new faculty in the Departments of Art History, Foreign Languages and Linguistics (Classics), History, and Philosophy. Drawing on the resources of this expanded community and building on a tradition of interdisciplinary work that has long characterized the field of classical studies, this workshop seeks to create a forum for debate and discussion among UWM faculty with a research focus on the ancient Mediterranean world and the classical tradition. We seek to maintain a broad disciplinary scope that we hope will attract scholars working on the ancient Mediterranean (not only Greece and Rome, but also the Near East, Egypt, North Africa, Northern Europe) as well those researchers with an interest in the interpretation and meaning of classical influence in later periods.
The foundations of many modern institutions are to be found in the literary and material culture of antiquity; the study of these formative processes, as well as the recognition of their historical development, is crucial to assessing their continued meaning in the present. By committing ourselves to a broad geographical and chronological scope, we acknowledge the multi-faceted dynamics of cultural encounters between center and periphery and past and present. Moreover, analysis of the reception and/or rejection of classical ideas in later periods offers an ideal opportunity to cross chronological boundaries and examine not only the diffusion, but also the transformation of literary, artistic, philosophical, and even religious ideas in new environments.
This workshop provides the opportunity for faculty to engage in critical dialogue by reading and discussing each other's work as well as reviewing and evaluating new directions in the study of the ancient world and its legacy. From a more practical point of view, the group also seeks to devise strategies to (1) promote the study of the ancient world and the classical tradition at UWM; (2) suggest initiatives for education outreach into the larger Milwaukee community; and (3) foster professional development and collaborative research projects among its members. The workshop meets two or three times each term.
At present, the group consists of faculty members drawn from four different departments already collaborating in such collective projects as the creation of an undergraduate Certificate Program in Ancient Mediterranean Studies. We expect this group to expand further with the participation of faculty from other areas (e.g., Philosophy, Communications, etc.) in addition to graduate students with a research interest in antiquity and/or its reception in later periods.
Coordinators:
Derek Counts, Art History
Carlos R. Galvao-Sobrinho, History
First organized in Fall 2001, the early modern group provides a forum for interdisciplinary discussion among faculty members with research interests in the early modern period (ca. 1500-1800). Participating faculty are drawn from a number of departments: Art History, English, French, History, the Honors Program, Music, Philosophy, and Spanish. The group is composed of UWM faculty members as well as faculty from other institutions in the area such as Marquette, Lawrence, and UW-Whitewater. Testifying to the relatively expansive and porous boundaries of the period, the research interests of group members encompass a wide range of disciplinary, geographic, and chronological contexts (e.g., the medieval period).
The group typically holds three meetings each semester. In the past, our 90-minute meetings have discussed a pre-circulated work-in-progress from a group member. Papers have treated a range of topics: suicide in eighteenth-century France, Descartes's theories of vision, Luther and sexuality, internal colonialism in early modern England, and the materiality of voice in English Renaissance drama. In addition, the group will host invited speakers beginning in Fall 2003.
The early modern group welcomes new participants; please contact one of the coordinators.
Coordinators:
Barrett Kalter, English
Tanya Tiffany, Art History
This workshop brings together UWM faculty and staff who specialize in Science, Technology and Society (STS), in critical studies of health and medicine, and the overlap between these two fields.
Science, Technology and Society is broadly interdisciplinary, comprising historical, philosophical, and social scientific approaches. STS queries the production of scientific knowledge, the political stakes raised by scientific truth claims, and the cultural meanings and social impact of emerging technologies (biotechnologies and cyber-technologies, for example). STS scholars study the networks of knowledge and power by which scientific authority is created and challenged. They study how communities are formed around particular scientific representations and practices.
Critical studies of health and medicine are equally interdisciplinary, but focus specifically on the social context, discourse and ideology of medicine and other health professions. This field studies how expert authority about health is established, and how it changes cultural notions of selfhood, the body, and subjectivity. It examines the "objects of medicine" (disease categories, treatments, specialties, etc.) in their full social and historical context. It asks how the border between normal and pathological is policed, and how health and sickness affect personal identity and collective action.
We read and discuss members' works in progress and key texts in the fields. The workshop provides a forum for collaborative grant writing, especially about the social impact of medical and other technological innovation, which is a priority at several funding agencies. Finally, the workshop will potentially spark plans for mini-conferences and colloquia with invited speakers from the Madison and Chicago areas.
Exemplary authors and issues: Bruno Latour, Paul Rabinow and Donna Haraway; co-production of science and society; public understanding of science; ideology of genetics; biotechnology and reproduction; globalization of health, medicine, and pharmaceuticals; history of disease; bioethics and society; environment and health; life sciences and modernity; biopower; normalization of bodies.
Fall 2009
The group will meet from 12-1:30 p.m. once a month.
Meetings will be in the Center Conference Room, Curtin Hall 939, unless noted differently.
Upcoming Speakers for Fall 2009
Friday, September 18: Kal Applbaum (Anthropology)
"'Why Only Zyprexa Only in Japan?': A Study in Global Pharmaceutical Marketing and Damage Control"
Friday, October 2: Ellen Amster (History)
"Modernity and the Muslim Midwife: Tuberculosis, Obstetrics, and Birthing the Moroccan Family"
Friday, November 6: Katie Paugh (History)
"The Great Pox: Yaws, Syphilis and the Fantasy of Hygienic Containment during the Era of the Atlantic Slave Trade" (Word document)
Friday, December 4: Michael Oldani (Anthropology, UW-Whitewater)
"From 'Good Compliers' to 'Drop-em' Status: Assessing the Relative Value of Diabetic Patients Treated through a Corporate/Medical Compliance Model"
Coordinators:
Barbara Ley, Journalism and Mass Communication
Paul Brodwin, Anthropology
Resources
Course Syllabi
Here is a list of UWM courses about science, technology and society as well as the critical study of health care and medicine: the themes of this workshop. Please consult individual professors for information about scheduling and enrollment.
Links
Member Research
The Feminist Theory Research Workshop is currently on hiatus.
You can contact the workshop coordinator if you have questions, or would like to be placed on the group's listserv.
The Feminist Theory Research Workshop aims to bring together feminist scholars from across disciplines to read and discuss recent works in feminist theory and to cultivate members' research programs as these relate to feminist theory. Themes that we have explored in recent semesters include: post-feminism, class, and labor; Third Wave feminism; Queer Theory; the history and future of Women's Studies; feminism and pedagogy; gender and professionalization; and feminist perspectives on care and dependency. Recent readings have included excerpts from Judith Halberstam's In a Queer Time and Place (2005) and Astrid Henry's Not My Mother's Sister (2004), as well as papers by Wendy Brown, Eva Feder-Kittay, Sarah Projansky, Joan W. Scott, Michelle Sidler, Audrey Thompson and Andrew Gitlin, Robyn Wiegman, and others. Several participants have also presented their own works-in-progress. In earlier semesters the group focused on themes such as feminism and multiculturalism, transnational feminisms, and feminism and postcoloniality, and read works by Chandra Mohanty, Susan Moller Okin, Seyla Benhabib, and others. In 2006-07 we will continue to read and discuss recent works in feminist theory and works-in-progress by our members.
The workshop meets approximately once a month, with topics and readings chosen in advance by members. The group is currently composed of faculty and graduate students from English, Sociology, Education, History, Political Science, Nursing, Philosophy, Journalism and Mass Communication, Comparative Literature, Anthropology, and Women's Studies. We also have participants from the Women's and LGBT Resource Centers at UWM and from the Milwaukee school of Engineering. We welcome participants from other departments and disciplines. Please contact the coordinators for further details.
Coordinator:
Pew T. Bose, Women's Studies
The Cognitive Studies Research Group has been meeting once a week for more than 20 years. Over that period we have explored a variety of aspects of cognition but the main focus of the group has been on issues concerning the acquisition, use, and understanding of language.
The study of cognition is by nature an interdisciplinary undertaking. Members of the group include faculty and students from several schools and departments including Linguistics, Philosophy, Educational Psychology and others, as well as from a range of departments at other universities in Southeastern Wisconsin.
During the 2007-08 academic year the focus of the group will be on current issues in the field of cognitive science such as modularity of the mind, innateness of language components, representation, mental rules and consciousness. Readings will come primarily from Robert Stainton's edited volume titled Contemporary Debates in Cognitive Science.
Meetings take place on Fridays from 2:00 to 3:00. Students and faculty from all disciplines are welcome to join. Those who are interested in joining the group should contact: John Surber surber@csd.uwm.edu or 229.5097
Coordinator: John Surber (Educational Psychology)
The Queer Theory graduate reading group is on hiatus.
Please contact one of the coordinators for more information.
Queer theory is a historically situated, highly contentious and continually shifting field of inquiry. It exists in relation to politically engaged movements outside the academy, strands of feminist and lesbian/gay intellectual work, as well as continental philosophy and literary theory. It is an interdisciplinary mode of inquiry that examines any sexual activities and identities that fall into both “normative” and “deviant” categories. The Queer Theory Group thus attempts to generate new ways of thinking about and working with existing categories and concepts situated within hegemonic social and cultural formations.
The field of Queer Theory is a cross-disciplinary construction that has no singular disciplinary origin. Further, Queer Theory is an interdisciplinary mode of inquiry and as such the readings for our group will repeatedly engage topics across various disciplines. Importantly, the group fills an existing institutional gap for graduate students studying queer theory across disciplines at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
We plan to meet once a month to discuss readings we select jointly. Group meetings may also be devoted to professional development activities (e.g. helping members prepare papers for the Midwest Interdisciplinary graduate Conference or other conferences, interviews, etc). Some presentations of graduate student research will be organized in conjunction with the Modern Studies graduate student colloquium in 2007-08.
Copies of the readings available at the Center office, Curtin 929 please call (229-4141) or email Maria Liesegang ahead.
coordinator:
Andrew Anastasia, Modern Studies-English
Meridith Kruse, Modern Studies-English
- postal address: p.o. box 413 milwaukee, wi 53201
- street address: curtin hall 929 3243 n downer ave milwaukee, wi 53211
- phone: 414.229.4141
- fax: 414.229.5964
- email: ctr21cs@uwm.edu