Ropes Lecture Series 2011-2012

The English & Comparative Literature Department at the University of Cincinnati is proud to support the Ropes Lecture series, which each year focuses on a timely theme of wide-ranging interest in literature, rhetoric, and cultural studies. The Ropes Lectures serve as the focal point for a graduate seminar required of our first year doctoral and second year masters students, but they also anchor a group of activities to stimulate thought and discussion across campus and across town.

Our theme this year is Digital Humanities, a robust interdisciplinary movement that has significant implications for knowledge production, circulation, and reception in the 21st century. Our working definition of the field borrows from “The Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0,” in which the authors describe Digital Humanities as encompassing “an array of convergent practices that explore a universe in which: a) print is no longer the exclusive or the normative medium in which knowledge is produced and/or disseminated; instead, print finds itself absorbed into new, multimedia configurations; and b) digital tools, techniques, and media have altered the production and dissemination of knowledge in the arts, human and social sciences.”

Previous Ropes topics have included “Early Modern and Post-Modern Performance,” “Literature and the Public Intellectual,” “Race and Culture,” “Literature and Violence: The Humanities in a Post-9/11 World,” and “Ecocriticism.” Speakers have included Karen Finley, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Powers, Stephen Greenblatt, Francine Prose, E. L. Doctorow, Sven Birkerts, Percival Everett, Lawrence Buell, Stephen Greenblatt, and Bharati Mukherjee. Ropes events are scheduled throughout the year; keynote lectures are free and open to the public.

In addition to support from the English & Comparative Literature Department, the Ropes Lecture series this year benefits from the generous support of the UC Faculty Development Council, the Taft Research Center, the UC College of Law, and the Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies Department.