Gregory Maertz was trained in Comparative Literature, Germanistik, and Art History at Northwestern, Harvard, and Heidelberg. As a professor of English and Art History at St. John's University in New York City his teaching and research is divided between Romanticism and Fascism Studies, in particular the art of the Third Reich and intersections between Classical Modernism and Nazi Modernism. Maertz has published extensively on German and British Romanticism, the later nineteenth century, and the emergence of Modernism. His research on art in the Third Reich, which draws heavily on his discovery of nearly 10,000 previously unknown works of art as well as the recently opened archives of the Haus der Deutschen Kunst, is appearing as a trilogy with Yale UP—The Invisible Museum: Unearthing the Lost Modernist Art of the Third Reich, House of Art: A Cultural History of Nazi Germany, and The Last Taboo: The Rehabilitation of Nazi Artists in Postwar Germany.

One of the organizers of the exhibition Kunst und Propaganda im Streit der Nationen, 1930-1945 that opened at the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin in January 2007, he is currently preparing an exhibition of previously unseen Nazi-era German art.

Maertz has received grants for his work on the reconstruction of the art world in National Socialist Germany from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Center for the Advanced Study of the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, the NEH, the DAAD, the Gerda Henkel Stiftung, and the Wolfsonian in Miami Beach. In 2008-2009 he came to the National Humanities Center as a Fellow. This year, with the support of the ACLS, he continues as a resident associate working on two new books, Modernism and Nazi Art and a new translation of Friedrich Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals.

» Reserve space for this event, Thursday, January 14, 2010 at 5:00 p.m.

Ana Mariella Bacigalupo is associate professor of anthropology at the State University of New York, Buffalo. As a researcher, Bacigalupo has worked extensively with the Mapuche, indigenous inhabitants of central and southern Chile and southern Argentina. Her interests include ethnomedicine, anthropology of the body and religion, ritual and healing, shamanism, gender and sexuality, discourses and practices of power, the politics of tradition and modernity, identity politics and notions of self, as well as social memory and history.

Bacigalupo is the author of three books, including Shamans of the Foye Tree: Gender, Power, and Healing among the Chilean Mapuche (2007); La Voz del Kultrun en la Modernidad: Tradición y Cambio en La Terapéutica de Siete Machi Mapuche (2001); and Adaptación de lost Métodos de Curación Tradicionales Mapuche: La Prática de la Machi Contemporánea en Chile (1996). She is also co-editor, with Armando Mariello Ricardo Salas, Ramón Curivil, Cristián Parker, and Alejandro Saavedra, of Modernización o Sabiduría en Tierra Mapuche? (1995). As a Fellow this year at the National Humanities Center, Professor Bacigalupo is working on a project entitled Shamanic Memory and Historical Consciousness: The Making of Francisca Colipe and Her Mapuche Community in Chile.

» Reserve space for this event, Thursday, February 4, 2010 at 5:00 p.m.

Larry Todd, the 2007-08 William J. Bouwsma Fellow at the National Humanities Center, is the author of Mendelssohn: A Life in Music, which was named best biography of 2003 by the Association of American Publishers. Todd's new book, Fanny Hensel: The Other Mendelssohn, explores the life of Mendelssohn's sister, herself a composer of over 400 works, whose musical contributions were rediscovered in recent years.

Professor Todd will give a talk and perform selections of Fanny Hensel's music. He will sign copies of his new book following his presentation, and copies will be available for sale at the Center the day of the performance.

» Reserve space for this event, Sunday, February 21, 2010 at 3:00 p.m.

Michael Kulikowski is Professor of History and Classics at Pennsylvania State University where he will take up his position as Head of the department of history next year. A specialist in the history of the western Mediterranean world of Late Antiquity, he has published three books: Late Roman Spain and Its Cities (2004); Rome's Gothic Wars from the Third Century to Alaric (2006); and Hispania in Late Antiquity: Current Perspectives (2005) which he translated and edited with Kim Bowes. He has also published numerous articles on a wide range of subjects including a variety of late Roman texts from the Notitia Dignitatum to Ammianus Marcellinus, the politics of Rome's fall, and the careers of notable individuals in the second through fifth centuries of the common era.

Until recently Kulikowski was a member of the history faculty at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville where he served as Riggsby Director of the Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. In 2009-10, Kulikowski is working at the National Humanities Center on his current project, The Rhetoric of Being Roman: Ideology and Politics in the Fourth Century, for which he has been awarded an ACLS Burkhardt Fellowship.

» Reserve space for this event, Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 5:00 p.m.

Rüdiger Bittner is professor of philosophy at the University of Bielefeld, Germany. His scholarly interests and writing have included work on action theory, moral philosophy, political philosophy, religion, aesthetics, and philosophical psychology, as well as studies of Augustine, Hobbes, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche. He has published eight books and over sixty articles on these subjects, including Moralisches Gebot oder Autonomie [Moral imperative or autonomy] (1983); Doing Things for Reasons (2001); Friedrich Nietzsche: Writings from the Late Notebooks, editor (2003); and, Fiktionen der Gerechtigkeit [Fictions of justice], edited with Susanne Kaul (2005).

As a Fellow this year at the National Humanities Center, Professor Bittner is working on a project entitled Do We Have a Will?

» Reserve space for this event, Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 5:00 p.m.

This spring the National Humanities Center will once again co-host a series of lecture at the North Carolina Museum of History. Sponsored by the North Carolina Museum of History Associates and NHC, these lectures will feature Center Fellows discussing the institution of slavery in colonial America, the phenomenon of child star Shirley Temple during the Great Depression, and the role played by disease and innovations in medicine on the Civil War.

Tues., February 9 — 7:00 p.m.
"Rethinking Slavery and Freedom in Early Virginia and the British Atlantic"
Holly Brewer, North Carolina State University

Tues., March 16 — 7:00 p.m.
"The Little Girl Who Fought the Great Depression: Shirley Temple and 1930s America"
John Franklin Kasson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Tues., April 13 — 7:00 p.m.
"The South's Secret Weapons: Disease, Environment, and the Civil War"
Margaret Humphreys, Duke University

The status and purpose of the study of literature have never been more uncertain. Changing priorities within the university, the impact of technology on the literary artifact and on reading habits, the dominance of a predominantly visual popular culture, the forces of globalization, and the continuing effects of theoretical and culturalist revolutions within the academy have shaken the traditional rationales for literary study without leaving anything definite in their place.

"The State and Stakes of Literary Study" will gather together some of the leading literary scholars in the world in an attempt to understand and assess this situation, and to light the way forward.

Among those scheduled to appear are scholars who have led the Center's summer institutes in literary study:

• Richard Brodhead, Duke University
• Sharon Cameron, Johns Hopkins University
• Jonathan Culler, Cornell University
• Frances Ferguson, Johns Hopkins University
• Kate Flint, Rutgers University
• Catherine Gallagher, University of California, Berkeley
• Marjorie Garber, Harvard University
• Seth Lerer, University of California, San Diego
• Deidre Lynch, University of Toronto
• Toril Moi, Duke University
• Patricia Spacks, University of Virginia
• Michael Wood, Princeton University

Please note: Online registration is now closed. For information about registration or conference details, please contact Martha Johnson by e-mail at mjohnson@nationalhumanitiescenter.org or phone at 919-549-0661.

» Conference Program (PDF)

» Reserve a room at the Doubletree Hotel.

	"Momma's Eulogy," 40" x 30", cotton and silk fabrics enhanced with lace made by the artist's mother, c. 1930

The African American Quilt Circle (AAQC) was founded in 1998 and now involves over sixty quilters and quilt aficionados from the Research Triangle and eastern North Carolina. In monthly gatherings at the Hayti Heritage Center in Durham, through exhibitions of members' work and skills seminars, and numerous other ways, the AAQC encourages and helps preserve the traditions of quilting in the black community. Members of the group have received national recognition for the creativity and skill of their work, which has been featured in numerous exhibitions across the region and around the world.

Most recently, quilts from the members of the Circle were selected for inclusion in The Journey of Hope in America: Quilts Inspired by President Barack Obama (2009), a book and travelling exhibit that opened in Yokohama, Japan and will be featured in galleries around the world over the next four years.

Lectures and exhibits at the National Humanities Center are free and open to the public. They are supported by the North Carolina GlaxoSmithKline Educational and Cultural Outreach Endowment Fund.

For more information, please contact Martha Johnson by phone (919) 549-0661, ext. 110 or e-mail mjohnson@nationalhumanitiescenter.org.

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