Summer Institute for Art Scholars Offers Free Lectures

A series of public lectures will be held as part of the first-ever Summer Institute in Visual and Cultural Studies organized by the University of Rochester and funded by the Getty Grant Program.

Twenty scholars in art history and related fields from Central and Eastern Europe have begun meeting with 10 colleagues from the United States and other parts of the world for an intensive introduction to new theoretical and interpretive strategies in the humanities. The University was awarded a $350,000 grant last year to design and host the institute.

All lectures will be held at 8:15 p.m. in the Gowen Room of Wilson Commons on the University's River Campus. They are free and open to the public. The lecture topics and speakers are:

"Attachments of Art History" by Stephen Melville, Ohio State University, July 2; "World Spectators" by Kaja Silverman, University of California, Berkeley, July 7; "Patterns in the Shadows" by Michael Ann Holly, University of Rochester, July 9; "Cultural Studies and the Sociology of Culture" by Janet Wolff, University of Rochester, July 14; "The Victory of Culture: Mediation and the Limits of Cultural Theory" by Lawrence Grossberg, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, July 16; "Todd Haynes and Queer Cinema" by Norman Bryson, Harvard University, July 21; "Getting the Warhol We Deserve: Cultural Studies and Queer Culture" by Douglas Crimp, University of Rochester, July 23; "A World of Difference: Post-Colonial Interventions in the Study of Visual Culture" by Annie Coombes, Birkbeck College, London, July 27; "Visual Studies in Diaspora: From Multiculturalism to Globalization" by Kobena Mercer, New York University, July 28; and "Reintegrating Byzantium: A New Project for the Orientalist Critique?" by Stephen Bann, University of Kent, July 30.

Michael Ann Holly, chair of the University's Department of Art and Art History, and Janet Wolff, director of the University's doctoral program in Visual and Cultural Studies, designed the institute along with Keith Moxey of Barnard College and Columbia University.

The institute has more participants from Central and Eastern Europe to help accelerate the exchange of ideas that was not possible under Communist-controlled regimes. "This is an extraordinary opportunity for those who have had little or no chance to do research and to apply for grants in the past," said Moxey.

Beyond covering the costs of the institute, the Getty Grant Program will give participants from Central and Eastern Europe special travel stipends to undertake supplementary research in the United States.