UF MEMS Faculty participates in Fall 2019 “Border-Walls, Fire-Walls, Sea-Walls” Symposia

Global-Cultural Resources as Limits

How do walls—man-made and otherwise—define global-cultural limits? How do the physical/material characteristics of walls bear on/inform/reflect/etc. their religious, political, social, and economic meanings, and vice versa? How do walls mark cultural relations of infinity and finiteness, abundance and lack, presence and absence, etc.? What kinds of cultural dynamics are generated in/by walls? What kinds of cultural (self-)reflections might be delimited, inscribed, or circumscribed in/by walls?

Premodern Walls Symposium:

October 9th and 10th, with Professor David Frye of Eastern Connecticut State University, author of Walls. A History of Civilization in Blood and Brick.

walls

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Walls/David-Frye/9781501172700

Lecture by Professor Frye on October 9, 2019, at 5:00-6:45 pm in Dauer 219 (Ruth McQuown Room): “How Ancient Walls began Modern Barriers.”

Panel Discussion “Premodern Walls: Literal and Figurative Functions,” with Professor Frye and UF faculty on October 10, 2019, at 5:00-6:45 pm in Dauer 219 (Ruth McQuown Room). With brief presentations by Eleni Bozia (Classics): “‘All Roads Lead to Rome’: When your Walls Include the World”; Nina Caputo (History): “Real and Imagined Walls in Premodern Jewish Culture”; Florin Curta (History): “Justinian’s Walls and the Ethnogenesis of the Slavs”; Ashley Jones (Art History): “Gemstones and the Walls of the Heavenly Jerusalem”; and Richard Wang (Languages, Literatures, and Cultures): “Ethnic and Religious Interactions along the Great Wall in the Ming Dynasty.” Moderated by Mary Watt (Languages, Literatures, and Cultures).

Modern Walls Symposium:

November 13 and 14, with environmental journalist Dr. Susanne Götze, author of Land Unter im Paradies. Reportagen aus dem Menschenzeitalter (Underwater in Paradise. Reports from the Anthropocene).

book

https://www.oekom.de/nc/buecher/vorschau/buch/land-unter-im-paradies.html

Lecture by Dr. Götze on November 13, 2019, at 5:00-6:15 pm in Dauer 219 (Ruth McQuown Room): “‘Walls in the Head’: Challenges Facing Global Action on Climate Change.”

Panel Discussion, “Walls of Present and Future: The Genuine, the Imaginary, and the Fake in Global Climate Change Discourse,” with Dr. Götze and UF faculty on November 14, 2019, at 4:00-5:30 pm (the Ocora Room, Pugh Hall). Discussants: Terry Harpold (English), Marcel Lewandowsky (Center for European Studies), Jasmine McNealy (Journalism), Ken Sassaman (Anthropology), and Robert T. Walker (Geography).

All these events will be livestreamed and recorded by the Sustainable Online Network for Global Cultural Studies. Please continue to visit this website for further details.

Tertia Comparationis

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Cueva de las Manos, Argentina

And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the LORD caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground: and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left. Exodus 14: 21-22.

And the LORD said unto Joshua, See, I have given into thine hand Jericho, and the king thereof, and the mighty men of valour… So the people shouted when the priests blew with the trumpets: and it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city. Joshua 6: 2/20

Jerusalem shall be inhabited as towns without walls for the multitude of men and cattle therein: For I, saith the LORD, will be unto her a wallof fire round about, and will be the glory in the midst of her. Zechariah 2: 4-5

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