Deborah Nord is professor of English at Princeton University and the 2008-09 M. H. Abrams Fellow at the National Humanities Center. She is the author of The Apprenticeship of Beatrice Webb (1985), Walking the Victorian Streets: Women, Representation, and the City (1995), and Gypsies and the British Imagination, 1807-1930 (2006), and the editor of John Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies (2002). Her research interests include Victorian literature and culture; gender studies; women's writing; literature of the city; autobiography; non-fiction prose; social criticism; ethnicity and race in 19th-century writing; and American Jewish writers. Nord is a faculty fellow at Rockefeller College and a member of the Judaic Studies faculty committee. While at the Center, she is working on a project examining the public impulses of women's writing since 1800.

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Robert DuPlessis is Isaac H. Clothier Professor of History and International Relations at Swarthmore College and the 2008-09 William C. and Ida Friday Fellow at the National Humanities Center. DuPlessis’s research is generally focused on the cultural, economic, and social history of early modern Europe and the Atlantic world. Among his recent publications are books on the textile industries of central Italy and on the economic history of Europe, as well as articles on the emergence of new patterns of consumption in the Atlantic world, on the French overseas empire during the Ancien Régime, and on the advent of modern concepts of capital. His most recent book is Market Makers and Market Takers: A History of Natural Fibres Textiles in the Central Apennine Region (2005). While at the Center, he will be furthering his research on cultural and economic exchange across the Atlantic world (Africa, the Americas, Europe) during the first era of globalization—from the sixteenth-century age of exploration to the industrial revolutions of the late eighteenth century.

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Nancy MacLean is Professor of History and African American Studies at Northwestern University and the 2008-09 John Hope Franklin Fellow at the National Humanities Center. She studies the workings of class, gender, race, and region in twentieth-century social movements and public policy. Her first book, Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan (1994), was named a "noteworthy" book of the year by the New York Times Book Review, and received awards from the Organization of American Historians, the Southern Historical Association, and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. Her most recent book is Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace (2006) which received awards from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights, the Law and Society Association, the International Association of Labor History Institutions, the Southern Regional Council, and the Richard A. Lester Prize for the Outstanding Book in Labor Economics and Industrial Relations. While at the Center this year, she is working on a new project entitled: "Freedom Is the Answer": The Strange Career of School Vouchers.

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The National Humanities Center will host its final conference on "The Human & The Humanities," once again attracting scientists and humanities scholars to discuss how developments in science are challenging traditional notions of "the human." Events will begin Thursday evening, November 13, with a lecture from noted neurologist and author Oliver Sacks at the William and Ida Friday Center in Chapel Hill, NC. This event is free, but guests must register in advance to guarantee seating. Registration for the full conference is $30 and provides admission to all sessions along with meals during Friday and Saturday's events and guaranteed admission to the Sacks lecture on Thursday evening.

Other speakers and special guests confirmed for this year’s conference include:

Anthony Appiah, Princeton University
Patricia Churchland, University of California, San Diego
Michael Gazzaniga, University of California, Santa Barbara
Michael Gillespie, Duke University
Katherine Hayles, Duke University
David Krakauer, Santa Fe Institute
Jesse Prinz, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Peter Railton, University of Michigan
Oliver Sacks, Columbia University
Robert Sapolsky, Stanford University
Raymond Tallis, University of Manchester
Holden Thorp, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Mark Turner, Case Western Reserve University

» Register for the "ASC: The Human & the Humanities" conference.

"Seeing Is Not Enough", 24" x 18"

James Williams always has been interested in the artistic delineation of human behavior, and in "Signs of Life" his compelling images depict individuals confronted by the existential challenge of living beyond merely existing, who have chosen not to be aware of "something more." Moreover, Williams attempts to realize the power of human facial expressions and convey the endless variety of feelings and psychological states by his expressive use of color and the juxtaposition of imaginary animal and insect forms and in-animate forms with human features. Williams works primarily in pastels, and also in pen & ink, colored pencil, watercolor, graphite, and charcoal, and is past president of the Pastel Society of North Carolina. His work has been exhibited in solo and group shows in galleries around the country and is represented in private collections in various parts of the United States, Mexico, and France. Samples of his art are available on his Web site, www.artofjameswilliams.com.

Lectures and exhibits at the National Humanities Center are free and open to the public. They are supported by the North Carolina GlaxoSmithKline Educational and Cultural Outreach Endowment Fund.

For more information, please contact Martha Johnson by phone (919) 549-0661, ext. 110 or e-mail mjohnson@nationalhumanitiescenter.org.

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