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The Kahn Institute has sponsored, and continues
to support in a variety of ways, numerous yearlong projects:
Evil
2011-2012
What is “evil”? Philosophers and saints, politicians and scientists have long grappled with the concept of evil. Some locate its origin in sin, others in our genes. For some it arises from ignorance, for others from resentment, and still others doubt whether it even exists at all. It is a vexing concept, one that has always fascinated and repulsed. The notion of evil has played a formative role in the varied cultures around the world and has had a tangible impact on the way societies interact with one another. This project explored the concept of evil and the practices of its invocation and reception, and examined and tried to determine the functions evil serves in various systems, actions, and interactions.
Renaissances: A Multiplicity of Rebirths
2011-2012
From Dublin to Calcutta, from Harlem to Ulan Bator, the term “renaissance,” or some variant thereof, has been used in distinct and intellectually stimulating ways. This term, always recalling—despite enormous differences in detail—the European Renaissance from 1420 to the 1600s, is used both to celebrate cultural recovery and assertion and to challenge regimes of power. This project considered the concept of "renaissance" as a process of change that involves broad social, scientific, economic, cultural and philosophical transformations of a society and its traditions in confrontation with modernity.
Why Educate Women? Global Perspectives on Equal Opportunity
2010-2011
Why educate women? What might appear to be a rhetorical question wass, instead, the starting point for our proposed cross-cultural examination of women’s ongoing struggle to become literate, educated participants in the societies into which they were born. The project initiated an interdisciplinary discussion of the rationales offered for efforts to expand, restrict, or redefine educational opportunities for women and it engaged scholars from throughout the Five Colleges, the United States, and the world.
Telling Time: Its Meaning and Measurement
2009-2010
Time matters, and in ways that we are not always fully conscious of. This project explored the definition, determination, meaning, and significance of time and examined the ways that temporal and temporality shape materials, events, and processes, as well as how people perceive, analyze, and create discourses using time and temporality. The general aim of the project wasto understand both the effects of time on things and the implications of the temporal dimension for our ways of seeing and interpreting the world and our place in it.
Wellness & Disease
2009-2010
This project considered the presence of illness and disease in our history, our culture, and our social arrangements, as well as in our mental constructions. It viewed disease not only in epidemiological terms, but also in the ways that it insinuates itself in our psyche, our cultural imagination, and our institutions, and it looked at how we have come to habituate ourselves to it.
Deceit: The Uses of Transparency and Concealment
2008-2009
Deceit, hypocrisy, and concealment are widespread practices that both sustain and undermine human relationships and social order. How has the play of deceit and revelation been represented in art and literature? How have they been manifested in historical contexts? How do different cultures handle deceitful practices? This project explored the tensions between deceit and truthfulness, between concealment and transparency, in a variety of contexts.
A Festival of Disorder
2008-2009
Toward the end of the twentieth century, scientists in many fields discovered that ‘disorder’ isn’t random; it’s a maze of subtle patterns with revolutionary implications. Disorder can be both illuminating and courageous. Change—social, artistic, scientific—is fueled by disorder, by distrusting and defying received and perceived patterns. This “Festival of Disorder” turned order upside down as participants probed the vast order/disorder spectrum.
Sustainable Houses, Homes and Communities
2007-2008
Examined how and why we as human beings continue to draw materials from the natural environment to build and maintain the structures we inhabit, knowing that these materials will not last forever. Can a house that is sustainable in environmental terms also be an emotionally sustaining, life-producing "home" for its inhabitants?
Undergrounds Underworlds
2007-2008
The creation of underworlds into which characters descend and the use of undergrounds in which revolutions are hatched have held meaning across wide spans of geographical and cultural space, and in every historical period. This project considered what occurs in the underworlds of mythology, ritual and poetry, as well as in undergrounds of subterranean space.
Marriage and Divorce
2006-2007
Examined how intimate relationships are defined and regulated by political and
religious authorities and explored the changing meanings and practices of marriage
and divorce in different societies and cultures, both past and present.
Narrative :
Identity
2006-2007
Investigated our capacity as storytellers to translate ourselves and our experiences
to others and to translate the experience of others in terms of our own experience.
City Lives and City
Life
2005-2006
An examination of the relationship of environment and landscape to cultural and
aesthetic production in a variety of modern urban contexts.
Form and Function
2005-2006
Sought to discover a proper understanding of the relationship between the "forms" under
study and the "functions" they perform.
Biotechnology and World
Health
2004-2005
Explored how the application of cellular and molecular biology to the solution
of practical health problems is transforming our lives in the 21st century.
Visual Languages
2004-2005
An exploration of the multiple roles of imagery in communication, in literacy,
in the preservation, transmission, translation, and growth of knowledge, and
in thought itself.
Problems of Democracy
2003-2004
An examination of the ideal "democracy" -- self-government by the people
who comprise a community.
TransBuddhism: Transmission,
Translation, and Transformation
2003-2004
Attempted to discern just how Buddhism has changed and been changed by the
societies into which it has been introduced.
The Question of Reparations:
The U.S. Context
2002-2003
Sought to determine whether racial minorities in the United States are due compensation,
and in what form, for injustices endured before, during and after slavery.
Other Europes / Europe's
Others
2002
Reconsidered Europe both as a concept and as a historical reality constituted
by plural identities, bringing the broad gamut of experiences of immigrants,
women, minority cultures and religions to the foreground.
Religious Tolerance
and Intolerance in Ancient and Modern Worlds
2001-2002
Questioned the patterns of thought and behavior generated by various world religions
and what happens when the realities that these religions construct for their
adherents collide.
The Anatomy of Exile
2000-2001
Investigated the causes and consequences of forced migration, the dependency
of the dispossessed, the sociology of alienation and the politics and morality
of refugee policies.
From Local to Global:
Community Activism in the New Millennium
2000-2001
Examined activism in two convergent contexts - community activism in the United
States and activism arising from disputes over "borders."
Star Messenger: Galileo
at the Millennium
1999-2000
Examined the interconnections of art, science, and ethics in the Renaissance
and today.
Exploring the Ecologies
of Childhood
1998-1999
Studied the impact of public policies and various
living and learning environments on the social development
of children.
Liquid Worlds,
2010
Neilson-Kahn Seminar: Ecological Democracy,
2010
Immigration, Nativism, and the 'Limits of Tolerance',
2010
Music and Science,
2009
Reinventing Eurasian Identities,
2009
How Useful Is The Science of Learning,
2009
The Aesthetics of Data and Its Analysis,
2008
Translating, Perserving, and Promoting Minority Languages,
2008
Portraying
Scientific Discovery,
2008
The
Nature and Uses of Memory,
2008
Open
Labs / Open Studios, 2007
The Meaning of Matter,
2007, explored the interpretation of material things. It
probed ways of understanding the vast sediment of concrete
objects, past and present, in the broadest sense: everyday
stuff and artistic creations, bodies and food, totemic and
disposable goods, and scientific objects.
Pierre Bourdieu: Research,
Representation and Commitment, 2007, delved into
the relationship between Algeria and the work of Pierre Bourdieu,
seeking to understand whether, how, and to what extent the
specificity and originality of Bourdieu's conceptual apparatus
was shaped by his encounter with the Algeria of the 1950's.
South vs. North: In
the World and in the Imagination, 2007, provided
an opportunity for a scholarly dialogue on the relationship
between south and north across geographic settings and
across a broad range of disciplines, including history,
anthropology, visual arts, literature, landscape studies,
geography, and sociology.
Empires in Discourse
and Practice, 2005-06. The first part of the project
identified key questions and theoretical problems that
stem from the use of "empire" as a descriptive
label and as an analytical category. The second meeting
addressed the theory and practice of empire, including
how the "West" has sought to explain its empire
to itself and how it came to dominate so much of the world,
as well as the consequences of the erosion of that domination.
Spin and Revolution, 2005,
explored whether a vibrant public relations industry ensures
that citizens exercise their first amendment right to "petition
the government for redress of grievances," or has limited
rational argument by manipulating emotions to secure conformity
and social stability.
Life-Writing Through
Difference: Exploring the Right to Write, 2004,
participants in this two-part workshop explored theories
of life-writing focusing on questions regarding form, methodology,
and terminology.
Marriage and Divorce:
Culture, Law and the State, 2004, investigated
some of the meanings of marriage and divorce, and how states
have sought to regulate them as civil and religious practices.
Diaspora-as-Object in
Contemporary Visual Culture, 2003, examined, through
works of African artists, the notions of diaspora as "objects" of
inquiry rather than "places" from which to subjectively
speak, act, represent or know.
Who is Buddha? Understanding
Buddhahood Past and Present, 2003, a series of
colloquia which culminated in a public conference, focused
on the philosophical and historical dilemmas of just what
a Buddha actually is.
Buddhism and the West, 2002,
(which developed into the long-term project on TransBuddhism)
sought to identify the complex webs of interaction that have
existed between Buddhists and non-Buddhists, as well as within
various Buddhist traditions, in both the modern and the post-modern
world.
The Sensual Woolf, 2002,
explored Virginia Woolf's representation of the pleasures
of the five senses, as well as more abstract issues as gender
fluidity, mourning, and maternal longing.
Agriculture as a Model
of Knowledge, 2001, investigated how agricultural
practices can provide a window into the substantive and
conceptual boundaries that have existed between science
and spirit, between the technological and the aesthetic.
Frames
and Framing, 2001,
an interdisciplinary workshop on the literary, artistic,
musical, philosophical, scientific and sociological
concepts of framing.
Orpheus, 2001, examined the many-sided
mythological figure of Orpheus -- musician, poet, tragic lover, shaman and founder
of a mystery religion.
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