Associate Professor, Department of History
Hofstra University
“The (Egyptian) Artist: Mohamed Bayoumi and Silent Cinema in Cairo”

Although not widely known, Mohamed Bayoumi was one of the great pioneers of Egyptian cinema. Born in 1894, Bayoumi left Egypt in 1920 to study filmmaking in Berlin. When he returned in 1923, he created his own newsreel and proceeded to shoot a series of short silent films. In this talk, I examine one of Bayoumi’s earliest films, Barsum yabhath ‘an wazifa/Barsum is Looking for a Job. Barsum represents Bayoumi’s first stand-alone directorial effort and deals with contentious social issues such as urban poverty and Coptic-Muslim relations in Cairo. I revisit this pioneering work and ask why Bayoumi championed the notion of film as an object of possibility, humor, and political significance.

Co-sponsored by the Program in Middle East Studies, Bryn Mawr College

Associate Professor
Department of Anthropology
Bryn Mawr College

“Female Voice-Body Relationships and the Acoustic Organization of Tamil Cinema, 1940-1960”

This talk will explore how relationships between the female voice and the female body were managed in South Indian Tamil-language cinema of the 1940s and 1950s, during the transition from singing actresses to the division of labor between professional playback singers who recorded their voices in the studio and actresses who appeared on screen.  While the relationship between the female voice and the female body was managed through a combination of technological, discursive, and performative means in the world of South Indian classical music, it was simultaneously being negotiated in the context of cinema, where technological mediation provided expanded possibilities for representing voice-body relationships. Examining several Tamil films from this period, we can see a variety of ways in which the potentially problematic spectacle of a performing female body was presented.

Visiting Assistant Professor
Department of History of Art
Bryn Mawr College

“The Limits of Documentary: Identity and Urban Development in Agnes Varda’s Daguerreotypes (1975)”

French filmmaker Agnes Varda’s experimental documentary Daguerreotypes (1975) is often viewed as a quaint, cinematic portrait of a Parisian street, the rue Daguerre, where she lives and works.  In contrast, this presentation excavates the film’s previously unacknowledged sources, demonstrating how Varda drew on a range of visual media—photography, film, and contemporary art—to create sophisticated social and political commentary on urban and economic transformations taking place in France in the late 20th century.

Director, Infinity Burial Project
TED Fellow
Visiting Scholar, UC Berkeley
Research Affiliate, MIT

“The Body/Self and Decompiculture”

Jae Rhim Lee will discuss her latest project, the Infinity Burial Project. The Infinity Burial Project is a proposal for an alternative postmortem option which promotes and facilitates the process of corpse decomposition and toxin remediation.  The Project features the training of existing edible mushrooms to decompose and remediate toxins in human tissue (Infinity Mushroom), the development of a decomposition ‘kit’ consisting of a cocktail of capsules which hold various decomposing organisms (Decompiculture Kit), burial suits embedded with decomposition activators, and a membership society (the Decompiculture Society) devoted to the promotion of death acceptance and the practice of decompiculture (the cultivation of decomposing organisms).

Professor of Art History, University of Sydney
Clark/Mellon Curatorial Fellow, Clark Art Institute

“Monochromy, Polychromy, Photography: Kandinsky, Münter and Klee in Tunisia”

Two key figures of the German avant-garde, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee, travelled to paint in Tunisia in 1905 and 1914 respectively. This paper examines their luminous color works – ethno-decorative in Kandinky’s case, cubo-orphist and cryptic in Klee’s – in dialogue with contemporary photography. Local studio photography by Garrigues or Lehnert & Landrock provided a vocabulary of the colonial scene, while black and white snapshots taken by Gabriele Münter, Kandinsky’s artist companion, and by Klee’s jocular friend August Macke, escape the colonial paradigms of the Ansichtskarte.

President, Lafayette College
President-elect, Haverford College

“Towards a New Conception of Crusader Art: Reflections on the Sainte-Chapelle, the Morgan Library Book of Kings, and the Capetian Court”

*Please note: This lecture will be held in Thomas 110*

Among the greatest achievements of thirteenth century art in France, the Sainte-Chapelle and the Morgan Library Book of Kings were also complex reflections of the crusading agenda of King Louis IX and the Capetian dynasty.  During the past decade, our understanding of Capetian politics and the Frankish role in the Crusades has been advanced by close study of these works, which anticipate a new secular era in art, even as they arise from a venerable medieval tradition.