Annual Humanities Center Book Celebration fetes, roasts authors and musicians
BY BARBARA PALMER
English Professor Kenneth Fields, left, chats with history Professor Emeritus Peter Stansky at the 13th annual Book Celebration at the Humanities Center on March 14. Five CDs and 66 books were recognized.
Research, writing and the production of art are serious business at the Stanford Humanities Center—except on the one afternoon each year when the center throws an irreverent bash to honor works written, edited and performed by humanities faculty members and published during the previous calendar year.
At the 13th annual Book Celebration, which was held March 14 at the center's Levinthal Hall, even what President John Hennessy described as "the most momentous of all measurements of academic weightiness—the footnote," was fair game.
The party feted 66 books and five CDs and their creators in a ceremony that was part roast and part toast. In his opening remarks, Hennessy presented the top five reasons why faculty in humanities and sciences will never be mistaken for Olympic bad boy Bode Miller. (Reason number two: "H&S faculty don't appear on magazine covers—at least not without their shirts on.") But the top reason, Hennessy said, is that although the athlete "takes great risks and pushes the boundaries, unlike Bode Miller, our faculty never fail to win the intellectual gold medal."
As for academic weightiness, the books and CDs weighed in at nearly 84 pounds, at a total length of 20,521 pages and five hours of music, Matthew Tiews, the center's associate director, reported. (In 2004, the total number of items produced by humanists was higher—90—with the weight and page count at 90 pounds and 23,686 pages.)
Humanities Center Director John Bender and Tiews jointly announced the book celebration's hallmark list of the winners of dubious awards and questionable contests, like the long-running battle between footnotes and endnotes. With the latter outnumbering the former by nearly 3-to-1, "I'm afraid that this year strikes the death knell for footnotes," Tiews said.
Some footnote users soldiered on. Philosophy Professor Michael Friedman was given the Gen. George A. Custer Citation for Bravery in the Face of Overwhelming Odds for "flagrantly" using footnotes in his edition of Kant's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. (On some pages the footnotes outflank the text itself by a ratio of 9-to-1, Bender pointed out.)
The Heavyweight Champ title went to history Professor Norman Naimark, co-editor of the nearly four-pound Soviet Politics in Austria 1945-1955: Documents from Russian Archives. German studies Professor Emerita Katharina Mommsen floated away with the Bantamweight title for the slim volume in Arabic, Goethe's Dialogues with the Arab World. "The dialogues apparently were few enough to weigh in at a mere 3 ounces," Tiews noted.
Among those cited for Achievement in Linguistic Example-Making was Peter Sells, professor of linguistics and Asian languages. Co-editor of Morphology and the Web of Grammar, Sells was awarded the Cardinal Ratzinger Prize for this query: "In what kind of bikini can you picture the pope?"
Sharon Long, dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences, awarded her own citation, for Most Striking Juxtaposition Within a Single Paragraph, to Denise Gigante, assistant professor of English and author of Taste: A Literary History. In that book, Gigante mentioned in one paragraph John Milton, English and comparative literature Professor Seth Lerer and Linda Blair's performance in The Exorcist. "And tied it all together," Long said.
Partygoers paused to note the recent deaths of two faculty members who had books published in 2005: Kennell Jackson and Annamaria Napolitano. Jackson, who was a professor of history, is the co-editor with drama Professor Harry Elam of Black Cultural Traffic: Crossroads in Performance and Popular Culture. Napolitano, who was a senior lecturer in Italian, was the author of a volume of poetry, Of Deserts and Rivers. "We mourn their loss, but remember them not least through their books, which will endure," Bender said.
Books and CDs honored at the celebration include:
Mark Applebaum,56-1/2 ft.The Bible Without God Maya Arad,The Righteous ForsakenRoots and Patterns: Hebrew Morpho-Syntax Bernard Barryte,Cantor Arts Center Journal: Volume Three 2002-2003 Eavan Boland,New Collected Poems Helen B. Brooks,The Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne, Vol. 7: The Holy Sonnets Gordon Brotherston,Feather Crown: The Eighteen Feasts of the Mexican Year George Collier,Basta! Land and the Zapatista Rebellion in Chiapas, Jean-Pierre Dupuy,Petite metaphysique des tsunamis Harry Elam,Kennell Jackson,Black Cultural Traffic: Crossroads in Performance and Popular Culture Kristine Elliott,Inspired by Symphony (Inspired By Series) Hilarie Faberman,Fired at Davis: Figurative Ceramic Sculpture by Robert Arneson, Visiting Professors and Students at the University of California at Davis from the Paula and Ross Turk Collection Kenneth Fields,Classic Rough News, a Book of Poems Paula Findlen,Maria Gaetana Agnesi et al. and the Accademia dei Ricovrati, The Contest for Knowledge: Debates over Women's Learning in 18th-Century ItalyPossessing Nature: Museums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy, Shelley Fisher Fishkin,TheSport of the Gods and Other Essential Writings by Paul Laurence DunbarMark Twain at the Turn-of-the-Century, 1890-1910 Lazar Fleishman,Boris Pasternak I literaturnoe dvizhenie 1930-kh godov Gabriella SafranWord, Music, History: A Festschrift for Caryl Emerson Luis Fraga Robert Reich,Democracy at Risk: How Political Choices Undermine Citizen Participation, and What We Can do About It Michael Friedman,Carnap, Cassirer, Heidegger; Geteilte Wege,La filosofia al bivio; Carnap, Cassirer, Heidegger,Kant: Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science Denise Gigante,English Taste: A Literary HistoryGusto: Essential Writings in 19th-Century Gastronomy Maria Gough, The Artist as Producer: Russian Constructivism in Revolution Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht,Producción de Presencia,Lob des Sports,Floema/Caderno de Teoria e História Literária EspecialIn 1926: Living at the Edge of Time, Akhil Gupta,The Anthropology of the State Patrick Hunt,House of the Muse: Poems from the British Museum Archaeology and History of the Great St. Bernard Matthew Kohrman,Bodies of Difference: Experiences of Disability and Institutional Advocacy in the Making of Modern ChinaMaixiang Jiankang Lu Seth Lerer,The Yale Companion to Chaucer Beth Levin,Argument Realization Andrea Lunsford,Everyday Writer, Lynn Meskell,Embedding EthicsArchaeologies of Materiality Katharina Mommsen,Crimean SonnetsGoethe's Dialogues with the Arab World,Goethe and Several of His Favorite Arab Poets Ian Morris,The Greeks: History, Culture and SocietyThe Ancient Economy: Evidence and Models Norman Naimark,Sowjetische Politik in Oesterreich 1945-1955: Dokumente aus russischen Archiven—Sovetskaia politika v Avstrii 1945-1955gg: Dokumenty iz Rossiskikh arkhivov Annamaria Napolitano,Of Deserts and Rivers Sianne Ngai,Ugly Feelings Stephen Orgel,From Script to Stage in Early Modern England Bissera V. Pentcheva,Icons and Power: The Mother of God in Byzantium Claire Perry,Young America: Childhood in 19th-Century Art and Culture Barbara Pitkin,The Formation of Clerical and Confessional Identities in Early Modern Europe Richard Roberts,Litigants and Households: African Disputes and Colonial Courts in the French Soudan, 1895-1912 Jorge Ruffinellli,Victor Gaviria: Los Margenes al CentroSueños de realidad. Fernando Pérez: tres decades de cine Thomas Ryckman,The Reign of Relativity: Philosophy in Physics 1915-1925Gabriella Safran, Lazar FleishmanWord, Music, History: A Festschrift for Caryl EmersonPerepisat' evreia: tema evreiskoi assimiliatsii v literature Rossiiskoi imperii (1870-1880gg) St. Lawrence String Quartet (Barry Shiffman, Christopher Costanza, Geoff Nuttall, Lesley Robertson),Awakening Stephen Sano Laura Dahl,7 Joys of Christmas & Beyond Londa Schiebinger,Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce and Politics in the Early Modern World Carol Shloss,Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake Jeffrey Schnapp, Revolutionary Tides: The Art of the Political Poster 1914-1989 Peter Sells,Morphology and the Web of Grammar Dongfang Shao,Textual Criticism and Historical Inquiry Elizabeth Traugott,Lexicalization and Language Change (Research Surveys in Linguistics) Rega Wood,Albertus Magnus and the Beginnings of the Medieval Reception of Aristotle in the Latin West: From Richard Rufus to Franciscus de Mayronis Sylvia Yanagisako,Unwrapping the Sacred Bundle: Reflections on the Disciplining of Anthropology Wojciech Zalewski,Religia w Sluzbie Zycia, Eseje Humanistyczne
