Current Visitors
Visiting Fellows:
Bengt Sandin is a Swedish historian in the Department of Child Studies, University of Linköping, Sweden. He is a world-recognized authority on the history of children, social welfare, state building, and education in Sweden and in Western Europe. While at the Institute as a Visiting Fellow for a week in the fall semester (October 21-27), he will collaborate with his primary sponsor, Michael Grossberg, Department of History, on their project, “Comparing Children’s Rights Regimes: Sweden and the United States in the Twentieth Century and into the Twenty-First” and will meet with faculty and students.
Branigin Lecturers:
David Chidester is Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Institute for Comparative Religion in Southern Africa (ICRSA) at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Author or editor of over twenty books in North American studies, South African studies, and comparative religion, his major publications include Salvation and Suicide: Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple, and Jonestown (Indiana University Press, 1988; revised edition 2003); Authentic Fakes: Religion and American Popular Culture (University of California Press, 2005); Savage Systems: Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern Africa (University of Virginia Press, 1996); and Wild Religion: Tracking the Sacred in South Africa (University of California Press, 2012). Professor Chidester will present a Branigin Lecture and meet with students and faculty. He will visit March 30- April 5.
Herman Gray is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a renowned scholar in the fields of black visual cultures, music and cultural identity, and media representation and cultural politics. His works are ground-breaking analyses of race, identity, and the politics of representation. He is the author of Watching Race: Television and the Struggle for Blackness (1997) and Cultural Moves: African Americans and the Politics of Representation (2005). He will visit the Institute April 13-16, 2013, to give a Branigin Lecture, participate in the conference on the Gendered Politics of Reality Television organized by Professor Brenda Weber (Gender Studies), and meet with faculty and students.
Saad Eddin Ibrahim is an Egyptian-American sociologist and one of Egypt’s leading human rights and democracy activists, currently at the Ibn Khaldun Center for Democratic Studies in Cairo. Ibrahim came to the Institute as a Visiting Fellow in 2009 and will return in February 28-March 2 to give a Branigin Lecture and participate in the Institute-sponsored workshop on Ready for Democracy organized by Professor Padraic Kenney, History.
Tiya Miles is the Elsa Barkley Brown Collegiate Professor of African American Women’s History at the University of Michigan. Her visit to the Institute in October 14-16 is co-sponsored by African American & African Diaspora Studies. Her work explores the complex interrelationships between African and Cherokee people living and working in colonial America. She is the author of two award winning books: The House on Diamond Hill: A Cherokee Plantation Story (2010) and Ties that Bind: the Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom (2005). While in Bloomington, she will give a Branigin Lecture and will meet informally with students and faculty.
Alice Rivlin is a Visiting Professor at the Public Policy Institute of Georgetown University and a Senior Fellow in the Economic Studies program at the Brookings Institution. She served as Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve Board from 1996 to 1999, was Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget from 1994 to1996, and its Deputy Director (1993-94). Rivlin was the founding Director of the Congressional Budget Office (1975-1983) and also served at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare as Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (1968-69). She has been awarded a MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship; has taught at Harvard, George Mason, and New School Universities; has served on the boards of directors of several corporations, and has been President of the American Economic Association. She is a frequent contributor to newspapers, television, and radio and has written numerous books. Her visit in the spring semester is supported by the School of Public and Environmental Affairs.
A.B. Yehoshua is professor at Haifa University and one of Israel’s premiere novelists and literary figures. He is the author of ten novels, numerous short stories, essays, and plays and has won several prestigious awards, among them the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction, the Israel Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction. His visit in March 2013 is co-sponsored by Jewish Studies and the Center for the Study of the Middle East. In addition to giving a Branigin Lecture, he will meet with faculty and students and attend classes.
Professor Yehoshua's visit has been cancelled.
Residential Scholars:
Sumie Jones is Professor Emerita of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Comparative Literature, and Communication & Culture, IUB. She is continuing her work on a three-volume anthology of Early Modern Japanese Poetry: Research and Translation.