This winter and spring quarter, the Portland Center for Public Humanities launches a new project to supported by the James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation. The Humanities Sustainability Research Project will facilitiate public and campus-wide reflection on the conflicting notions of what sustainability means, how it attaches to our values, histories, and imagination, and how it signifies ethically, ideologically, and culturally.

The project research team will sponsor reading groups and discussion panels, organize community and student events, plan lectures by distinguished scholars, and build a humanities sustainability resource website. In late May, the project will culminate in a national conference on the Meanings of Sustainability. This project seeks to amplify and reflect upon the larger sustainability mission of the university.

For further information, please contact Professor Marcia Klotz (English, PSU), the project's Spring quarter faculty coordinator.

Update: We have added a separate web site that will be continually updated with information about the conference. The address for that site is www.understandingsustainability.org.

Beginning in February 2009, PCPH is hosting an ambitious series of faculty workshops and public lectures by leading scholars on the subject of "Cosmopolitanism." How and when do we form social relations, loyalties, and meanings that are global in scope? What is the relationship of these cosmopolitanisms to traditional borders of nation, race, or religion? What do they mean for international community? domestic politics, war, religion, capitalism, or the mass media? The questions will be explored by a distinguished group of scholars from a wide range of disciplines.

Winter and Spring:

• On March 12, Bruce Robbins, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, gave a talk entitled: "Chomsky as Extraterrestrial"
• On March 30, Saskia Sassen, Professor of Sociology and the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University, will give a lecture entitled: "The World's Third Space: Neither Global nor National"
• On May 19, Kenneth Reinhard, Professor English, Comparative Literature, and Jewish Studies, will be speaking on "The Cosmopolitan Neighborhood: Political Theological Models for an Open World."



The Bruce Robbins and Saskia Sassen lectures have been arranged in a new collaboration between PCPH and the Public Policy Lecture Series at Reed College.




Academic Year 2009-2010: Speakers slated to speak in this series for the next academic year are: Thomas Bender (Professor of History, New York University), Srinivas Aravamudan (Professor of Literature, Duke University), Etienne Balibar (Professor of Philosophy, University of Paris and University of California, Irvine), David Theo Goldberg (Professor of Comparative Literature and Director of the UC Humanities Research Institute), and Michael Curtin (Professor of Communication and Global Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison).

On June 16-20, 2009, the Portland Center for Public Humanities will be hosting the Marxist Literary Group's distinguished "Institute on Culture and Society." An organizational affiliate of the Modern Language Association, the MLG gathers scholars from around the the nation to discuss new directions in marxist and materialist criticism. In the wake of this year's massive financial crisis, the conference theme will be "new directions in marxist political economy." Please see the MLG website for more information on the organization and its annual conference. Further information will appear on this website as well.