Masters’ Academy

Professor James Phelan, Ohio State University

Applied Humanities: The Example of Narrative Medicine

In recent years, scholars in the humanities have been drawing on their scholarship to address social and cultural problems. In part, this development is a natural evolution of humanities research, and in part, it is a response to cultural discourses questioning the value of the humanities. After making this general case, I will offer some brief glances at work in the environmental humanities and the medical humanities. I will then take a longer look at the narrative medicine movement, with special attention to the work of Rita Charon and her colleagues at Columbia University as well as an offshoot of that work I have been developing called Rhetorical Narrative Medicine. I will conclude with a discussion of Rhetorical Narrative Medicine in practice by sketching a model for
Rhetorical Narrative Medicine Workshops.

BIO:

James Phelan
teaches and writes about narrative theory, the medical humanities, the English and American novel, especially from modernism to the present, and nonfiction narrative. He is the first person in the history of the English department to be awarded both the Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award (2007) and the Distinguished Scholar Award (2004). He is the author or co- author of 10 books and editor or co-editor of another 10, as well as approximately 175 essays. His research has been devoted to thinking through what it means to conceive of narrative as rhetoric, even as his individual books have focused on specific aspects of that conception. He has written about style in Worlds from Words (1981); about character and narrative progression in Reading People, Reading Plots (1988), about a rhetorical approach to a range of narrative techniques and their consequences in Narrative as Rhetoric (1996); about character narration in Living to Tell about It; about judgments and narrative progression (again) in Experiencing Fiction (2007); about literary history and 10 American novels in Reading the Twentieth-Century American Novel (2013); about the larger project of rhetorical poetics in Somebody Telling Somebody Else (2017); and about his concepts of mimetic, thematic and synthetic components of narrative in a dialogue book with Matthew Clark, Debating Rhetorical Narratology (2020).  Since 1992, Phelan has been the editor of Narrative, the journal of the International Society for the Study of Narrative, recently ranked first in the category of “Literature and Writing” by googlescholar. Phelan co-edits, along with Katra Byram and Faye Halpern, the Ohio State University Press book series, The Theory and Interpretation of Narrative. Among the volumes Phelan has also edited or co-edited are the Blackwell Companion to Narrative Theory (with Peter J. Rabinowitz, 2005); Teaching Narrative Theory (with David Herman and Brian McHale 2010); After Testimony: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Holocaust Narrative (with Jakob Lothe and Susan R. Suleiman, 2011); Fact, Fiction, and Form: Selected Essays of Ralph W. Rader (with David H. Richter, 2011); and the forthcoming Fictionality in Literature: Core Concepts Revisited (with Lasse Gammelgaard, Stefan Iversen, Louise Brix Jacobsen, Richard Walsh, Henrik Skov Zetterberg-Nielsen and Simona Gjerlevsen Zetterberg-Nielsen.  In 2013, Phelan was awarded an honorary degree from Aarhus University. An Honorary Award video showcases his achievements. In 2016 he was elected a member of the Norwegian Academy Science and Letters. In 2021 he was named the winner of the Wayne C.
Booth Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for the Study of Narrative.

Dr Hans C. Hönes, University of Aberdeen

DISSOLVING DISCIPLINES? REASSESSING ABY WARBURG’S LEGACY

The German-Jewish art historian Aby Warburg has become one of the most important reference points for a wide range of disciplines in the arts and humanities. In particular, he is lauded for developing a unique interdisciplinary approach to research – what he called Kulturwissenschaft – that ranges programmatically across multiple academic fields such as art history, archaeology, religious studies, media studies, and philology.
In recent years, Warburg’s ideas have found purchase not only among art historians, but also among thinkers who advocate a fundamental reordering of academic research, according to the idea of a transdisciplinary, “problem-based” approach to research. Instead of pursuing our respective disciplinary endeavours in a siloed and particularized way, scholars of all kinds should come together and pool their knowledge, to tackle the most pressing challenges of the contemporary world, from climate change to artificial intelligence.
The lecture takes Warburg’s life and career as a springboard to reflect on the opportunities and challenges of such an approach. What are the gains and losses when proposing to dissolve longstanding disciplinary boundaries?

BIO:

Dr Hans C. Hönes is a Senior Lecturer in Art History at the University of Aberdeen/Scotland. He has published extensively on the history of art historiography, and written and edited books on (among others) Heinrich Wölfflin, British antiquarianism, and Aby Warburg. His latest monograph Tangled Paths. A Life of Aby Warburg has been published by Reaktion Books in 2024, with translations into Italian and German forthcoming.

Univ.-Prof. Dr. Paulina Sliwa, University of Vienna

Bad Perspectives

Social epistemologists appeal to “echo chambers” to make sense of a range of phenomena: belief polarisation, conspiracy theories, resistance to expert testimony. But what is an epistemic echo chamber? In an influential paper, Nguyen defines echo chambers as belief systems that constitute ‘distortions in the ecology of trust’: they include beliefs that fellow group members – and only fellow group members – are trustworthy. My aim is to challenge such doxastic accounts of echo chambers. I argue that we should think of echo chambers as constituted by bad perspectives – ways of thinking about a subject matter that include what is salient, what is puzzling, as well as associations and metaphors. This requires both an account of perspectives and what makes them suspect.

BIO:

Paulina Sliwa is Professor of Moral and Political philosophy at the institute of Philosophy, University of Vienna. Prior to that she was senior lecturer at the faculty of philosophy at the University of
Cambridge and a fellow at Senior Sussex College. She studied Physics and Philosophy at Balliol College, University of Oxford and gained a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Prof. Rosemarie de La Cruz Bernabe, University of Oslo

Responsible Open Science

The practice of Open Science aims to democratize access to scientific research, fostering transparency, reproducibility, and collaboration. This two-hour talk delves into the ethical and integrity challenges inherent in Open Science and will use the ROSiE Guidelines on Responsible Open Science as a springboard for discussion. ROSiE refers to the recently concluded Horizon 2020 project, Responsible Open Science in Europe, which developed the first European ethics and integrity guidelines on open science. Key topics will revolve around the application of ethical values integral to scientific research utilizing open science procedures and cover areas such as policy reforms; informed consent; privacy protection; balancing openness with cultural and environmental preservation; quality-focused assessment systems; comprehensive training for researchers and citizen scientists; equity in access, supporting low- and middle-income countries; and encouraging citizen involvement to enhance public trust. Through these topics, the talk will highlight the essential ethical guidelines governing responsible open science, addressing both opportunities and challenges, and equipping researchers, policymakers, and stakeholders with the knowledge and tools needed to foster a responsible Open Science ecosystem.

BIO:

Rosemarie Bernabe is professor of research ethics and research integrity at the University of Oslo. Her research interests are in areas within the intersection of research ethics and regulatory science and has contributed to the literature on capabilities approach, Aristotelian ethics, risk-benefit task of research ethics committees, ethical risk-benefit assessment, ethics and fiduciary obligations, ethical issues of informed consent in phase 4 clinical trials, patient participation in regulatory systems, ethical mandate in clinical trial regulation, ethical issues encountered during clinical trial inspections, post-approval responsibilities of research ethics committees, post-trial access, among others. She is project coordinator of several Horizon 2020/Horizon Europe projects and some nationally-funded projects, namely the following:

ROSiE (the Responsible Open Science in Europe Project),
BEYOND (Beyond Bad Apples: Towards a Behavioural and Evidence-Based Approach to Promote Research Ethics and Research Integrity in Europe),
XR4Human (the Equitable, Inclusive, and Human-Centered XR Project)
AccessAfrica (Improving Post-trial Access in Africa)
AccessAfrica2 (Strengthening Clinical Trial Regulatory and Ethical Review oversight in East Africa)
Pandemic Ethics (Developing national and global agendas for the ethics of post-trial arrangements in LMICs during pandemics/epidemics)
ETHIMED (Ethics in Research and Clinical Practice)

Dr Alexandros Tsakos, University of Bergen

Decolonizing Nubian Studies

My nomination by PhD candidates in the Department of Archaeology of the University of Warsaw for one of its master seminars this semester is an excellent opportunity for me to look back at the years I spent in the field in Sudan as an archaeologist, museum curator, cultural agent, and tourist guide. My recollections will offer insights into current trends in Sudan archaeology and situate the field in the debate about decolonizing Nubian studies and other disciplines in the humanities. Nubian studies have been characterized by a focus on archaeology, first in Egypt and then in Sudan, primarily as a result of salvage projects due to the construction of multiple dams in the region. Particularly the Aswan High Dam Campaign, which played a foundational role in the development of Nubian studies, has recently been revisited as a colonizing project. In this vein, in his keynote speech at the latest International Conference for Nubian Studies in Warsaw, Vincent van Gerven Oei exposed the colonial context in which archaeology has been conducted on both sides of the border between Egypt and Sudan. Today, this context has taken a different form, with the international community and regional actors betting on the outcome of the ongoing war in Sudan—a war that is devastating life and monuments in the country, calling for contemplation of the role that everyone involved in Nubian studies and Sudan archaeology must assume. This seminar will provide an opportunity to reflect on these topics, aiming to increase the participants’ awareness of the ethics of work that they should embrace in their future careers.

BIO: Alexandros Tsakos studied history and archaeology in Greece and did his Master on ancient polytheisms in Belgium. He has worked as a field archaeologist in Greece, Syria and Sudan. Alexandros lived in Sudan between 2003 and 2008, where he organized the Greek Cultural Center “Ergamenis” in Khartoum. He has led the renovation of the Museum at Jebel Barkal, and he was the contractor of UNESCO for the rehabilitation of the Permanent Exhibition of Medieval Antiquities in the Sudan National Museum. He has published several articles on Medieval inscriptions from Nubia, one of which concerns the Christian inscriptions from Sai, the second largest island on the Nile where he has directed three field seasons of the Medieval Sai Project. Alexandros defended his Ph.D. thesis at Humboldt University, Berlin in February 2013. The title is “The Greek Manuscripts on Parchment Discovered at Site SR022.A in the Fourth Cataract Region, North Sudan”. Between 2014 and 2018, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bergen with a project on “Religious Literacy in Christian Nubia”. Apart from the material from Sur Island, the data basis for this research consisted of the textual record discovered at the sites of Qasr el Wizz (to be published in the Oriental Institute of Chicago Nubian Expedition monograph series, vol. 15), Serra East (to be published in the Oriental Institute of Chicago Nubian Expedition monograph series, vols 12 and 13), Attiri Island (published in 2016 as the first monograph of the Nubiological journal Dotawo), and sites of the Alwan kingdom with extensive textual sets in the form of graffiti (in collaboration with Corenlia Kleinitz from Humboldt University, Berlin). He has co-edited four collections of articles on different topics of Nubian and Sudan Studies, and has received several grants for the organization of workshops and seminars in Norway and Greece. He has been invited to give lectures in Norway, Greece, France, Austria, and Germany. Since 2014, he is responsible for the field of Sudan History and South Sudan History in the online Great Norwegian Encyclopedia. Since 2018 he is the editing manager of the Nubiological journal Dotawo. Since September 2018, he is the Academic Manager of the Manuscripts and Rare Books Collection at the Special Collections of the University of Bergen library, one of the most important repositories of Arabic manuscripts from Sudan.

Prof. Monika Zin, Universität Leipzig

Borrowing the forms, shifting the meanings – Contacts between West and East in the first centuries of our era

It is a well-known fact that Alexander the Great travelled as far as India and that this part of Asia (modern Pakistan and Afghanistan) was influenced first by Hellenistic and later by Roman culture. What is less well known is that the south of the subcontinent also adopted much from the West. At present, science even recognises that these influences were far more direct, because thanks to the recognition of the seasonal monsoon winds, a ship could make it from Mediterranean to India and back in just one year. However, when we recognise certain Western forms in Indian art, the question arises as to what has actually migrated: only the forms or also their meanings?

BIO: Monika Zin studied literature, art history and Indology in Krakow and Munich. After teaching art history of South, Southeast and Central Asia in Munich, Leipzig and Berlin, Zin currently is the head of the research group “Buddhist Wall Paintings of Kucha on the Northern Silk Road”. She has written numerous articles on Buddhist narrative art and books on the Ajanta paintings and the Kanaganahalli Stūpa (An Analysis of the 60 Massive Slabs Covering the Dome). Her books on depictions of the Parinirvāṇa Narrative Cycle and Gods, Deities and Demons in the Paintings of Kucha deal with the Central Asian survival of Indian culture in the Buddhist sites of Kucha, among other topics. Zin’s themes further include mutual contacts and influences between Rome and the Indian subcontinent.

Prof. Vahram Atayan, Heidelberg University

What data tells – or rather shows: Data visualization in linguistics

The last decades have witnessed a major paradigm shift in linguistics towards empirical approaches in research. The compilation of large corpora and the development of a wide range of corpus and computational linguistic methods opened up entirely new perspectives for contrastive linguistics and translation studies. Computational linguistic tools allow the automatic annotation of different linguistic categories on the language surface. Moreover, machine learning methods provide access also to more abstract semantic categories (such as sentiment and argumentation). Nevertheless, humans are still much better than automated systems at analyzing highly abstract phenomena. This is the reason why we consider the combination of manual annotations of abstract phenomena with statistical evaluation a particularly promising approach in linguistics and in the humanities in general. Since humans are usually not very adept in processing numerical data, which constitutes the standard output of statistical analysis, we also believe that the visualization of statistical results is of great importance. In our talk, we will discuss some types of research questions concerning nominal data and different scenarios for statistical evaluation and data visualization.

BIO: Vahram Atayan is Full Professor of translation studies for French and Italian at the Institute of Translation and Interpreting at Heidelberg University. He studied physics in Yerevan (Armenia), then computer science and translation in Saarbrücken (Germany). In his PhD Thesis, he analyzed the macrostructures of argumentation in German, French and Italian. His research interests cover translation studies, contrastive linguistics, languages for special purposes, temporal semantics and corpus-based discourse linguistics.