Warren Center Fellows investigate ‘Cultural Reverberations’

Howard Mumford Jones Professor of American Studies Lizabeth Cohen, director of the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, has announced the names of seven resident scholars participating in the Warren Center’s 2006-07 workshop, “Cultural Reverberations of Modern War.” Leading the workshop are Nancy Cott, the Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History, and Carol Oja, William Powell Mason Professor of Music.

“As the 20th century has moved into the annals of history, it has become an increasingly vigorous site for scholarly investigation,” said Oja, adding, “Our cross-disciplinary workshop takes modern warfare, one of the grim realities of that century, as the focus for an exploration of cultural trends in the United States, especially those with transnational resonances.”

Added Cott, “The topic has generated a group of Warren Fellows who represent a range of disciplines, including music, cultural studies, and history of art, as well as history, so the workshop promises to be an especially stimulating forum for discussion.”

Workshop discussions will be further enlivened by the presence of a number of scholars in training. As with all recent Warren Center workshops, this year’s program is linked with a graduate course on the same subject. This year’s course, a research seminar on cultural history in an international context, has attracted graduate students from African-American studies, English, architecture and urban planning, history of American civilization, and music, and a cross-registrant from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Students enrolled in Warren Center-affiliated courses gain immeasurably from the opportunity to interact with the Warren Center’s resident fellows, affiliated Harvard faculty, and local area colleagues as they develop their own projects,” noted Cohen.

As they have since the center’s inception, Warren Fellows share their work with each other and scholars from Harvard and the Boston area, in the long-established workshop series that is the heart of the center’s intellectual community. Also making presentations in this year’s series will be invited guests, established scholars in a variety of fields, all working on projects connected with the theme of war and culture. The workshop meets from 4 to 6 p.m. on Tuesdays when there is no meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, in Robinson Hall’s History Library (enter opposite Room 101). Papers are often precirculated for discussion. Visit http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~cwc for more information on the workshop schedule and other Warren Center programs.

The Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History was established in 1965 with a bequest from Annielouise Bliss Warren in honor of her husband, Charles Warren, an eminent lawyer and legal scholar. The gift was designed to further the study of American history at Harvard and to share Harvard’s rich historical resources with scholars from the United States and around the world.

The 2006-07 Warren Center Fellows and their workshop topics are as follows:

Alan Braddock, Department of Fine Arts, Syracuse University. “Gun Vision: American Art and Logistical Perception, 1861-1918”

Susan Carruthers, Department of History, Rutgers University. “Cold War Captives: Prisoners and Escapees in Popular Culture and Geopolitics”

Suzanne Cusick, Department of Music, New York University. “Listening for War”

Beth Levy, Department of Music, University of California, Davis. “World War and the Changing Face of Race in American Music Criticism”

David Lubin, Department of Art, Wake Forest University. “The Look of War: How Modern Warfare from Gettysburg to Baghdad Has Altered Our Ways of Seeing”

Kimberley Phillips, American Studies Program, College of William and Mary. “‘And We Return Trembling’: Black Cultural Production, War, and Civil Rights”

Susan Zeiger, Department of History, Regis College. “War Brides and Yank Soldiers: Intercultural Marriage and U.S. International Relationships in the 20th Century”