Conferences Archive (1989-1990)

National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar for College Teachers

American Indian Literatures: Oral and Written

June 19-August 11, 1989

Directed by A. LaVonne Brown Ruoff, Department of English

Sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, this seminar will focus on American Indian oral and written narratives. The group will study the following topics: 1) The structures and cultural contexts of oral literatures, including such myths types as creation, earth diver, culture hero/trickster/transformer, Orpheus, star and animal husbands. 2) Autobiographies as examples of the transition from oral to written literature in English. 3) Incorporation of oral traditions into twentieth century fiction. Authors to be covered include William Apes, George Copway, Sarah Winnemucca, George Eastman, John Matthews, D’Arcy McNickle, N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Silko, and James Welch.

Guest speakers:
Gerald Vizenor (Ojibwa)
Roberta Whiteman (Oneida)

1989 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar for School Teachers

Jane Austen: Divided Society, Divided Self

June 26-July 28, 1989

Directed by Gene W. Ruoff, Department of English, and Director, Institute for the Humanities at the University of Illinois at Chicago

Sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, this seminar will explore three novels of Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility (1811) and Pride and Prejudice (1913) and Emma (1815), using the first as a focus-text to crystallize aesthetic and social issues in Austen’s fiction. We will explore such topics as language, characterization, narrative method, and the thematization of personal and social ethics, with an eye toward assessing the magnitude of Austen’s contribution to the development of the novel in English. Special attention will be paid to Austen’s parodic use of narrative form, the problems she faced in representing women’s experience fictionally, and the relationship of her fiction to contemporaneous social and political controversy.

Jane Addams’ Hull-House: Humanities Programs for the Centennial
1989-1990

The year-long project was developed to contribute to the campus celebration of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the world-renowned settlement house. The establishment of the Hull-House initiated an impressive variety of activities which affected the development of American as well as Chicago history in the areas of social work, urban investigation, education, politics, public health, the status of women, industrial reform, labor relations, international affairs and the arts.

The Jane Addams’ Hull-House, located on the eastern edge of the UIC campus, was founded in 1889 and is comprised of two buildings: the Hull Mansion, built in 1856 and the Residence Dining Hall built in 1905. The buildings were restored by the university in the 1960’s and the complex was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1967 and a Chicago Landmark in 1974.

These programs made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

CONFERENCE: JANE ADDAMS’ HULL-HOUSE IN CONTEXT

JANE ADDAMS’ HULL-HOUSE IN CONTEXT:
A CENTENNIAL EXPLORATION

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 7, 1989
Illinois Room, Chicago Circle Center, 750 South Halsted

1 p.m.
Gertrude Himmelfarb, Professor Emeritus of History,
City University of New York
“The English Background of the Settlement Movement: The Founding of Toynbee Hall”

2 p.m.
Martin Marty, Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor,
University of Chicago
“Hull-House and American Religion”

3 p.m.
Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Professor of History and Psychiatry,
University of Pennsylvania
“Engendering the Political: Women in the Public Sphere”

7:30 p.m.
Steven J. Diner, Professor of History,
George Mason University
“Hull-House, the Professors, and the City”

8:30 p.m.
Nathan Glazer, Professor of Education,
Harvard University
“Hull-House and American Pluralism”

CONFERENCE: UNDERSTANDING THE HULL-HOUSE LEGACY: BIOGRAPHY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Understanding the Hull-House Legacy: Biography and Autobiography
A Symposium at Rockford College
October 20-22, 1989

This symposium brings together major interpreters of the life, works, and careers of Jane Addams and her distinguished colleagues, the first residents of Hull-House.

Rockford College occupies a special place in the history of women reformers in the Progressive Era. Among the women attending the college, during the 1880’s were Jane Addams, Ellen Gates Starr, Julia Lathrop, and Catherine Waugh McCulloch. Rockford College, then known as Rockford Female Seminary, brought this unique group of talented women into contact with one another, and fostered a special relationship among them.

The leadership style practiced by Jane Addams brought forth leadership in others. She believed power was not a quality to be jealously guarded, but one that grew as it was shared. Her leadership at Hull-House inspired her colleagues and neighbors, many of whom adopted her style and spread it far beyond the walls of the settlement house. Jane Addams claimed that she had learned this style of leadership at Rockford College.

Friday, October 20

9:30 am Check-in
Burpee Center Lobby

10:00 am Session I
Welcome
Gretchen Kreuter, president of Rockford College
Moderator: Joan Surrey, Public Services Librarian and Archivist, Rockford College

“The Snare of Preparation”
Victoria Brown, Grinnell College

“The Radicalism of Ellen Gates Starr”
Eileen Boris, Howard University

“Julia Lathrop, First Head of the Federal Children’s Bureau”
Molly Ladd-Taylor, Northwestern University

12:30 pm Bus trip to Cedarville, Illinois and reception in Jane Addams’ childhood home

6:30 pm Cocktails (cash bar)
Regents Hall, Burpee Center

7:30 pm Dinner
Evening Program
Moderator: Mary Ellen Schmider, Dean of Graduate Students, Moorhead State University

“The Women of Hull-House”
Slide presentation by Mary Ann Johnson, Jane Addams’ Hull-House Museum

Keynote Address
“Empowerment: The Legacy of Hull-House”
Clarke Chambers, University of Minnesota

Response: “A Jane Addams Legacy”
Mary Lynn McCree Bryan, Editor, The Jane Addams Papers

Saturday, October 21

8:30 am Check-in
Burpee Center Lobby

9:00 am Session II
Moderator: Dorothy Delman, Professor and Chair, Department of Anthropology/Sociology, Rockford College

“Florence Kelley and the Protection of Working Women and Children”
Kathryn Kish Sklar, State University of New York at Binghamton

10:30 am Session III
Moderator: Gordon Ross, Professor and Chair, Department of History, Rockford College

“Hull-House, Place and Idea: The Experience of Alice Hamilton”
Barbara Sicherman, Trinity College

“Jane Addams’ Concept of American Nationalism and Culture”
Rivka Lissak, Author, Pluralism and Progressives: Hull-House and New Immigrants, 1890-1919

12:30 pm Lunch
Regents Hall, Burpee Center

1:45 pm Session IV
Moderator: David Sytsma, Associate Professor of History, Rockford College

“The Hull-House Model of Social Work and the Emerging Profession”
Donald Brieland, Jane Addams College of Social Work, University of Illinois at Chicago

“Hull-House as Incubator for Female Professions”
Robyn Muncy, LeMoyne College

3:30 pm Session
Moderator: Donald Martin, Professor of Language and Literature, Rockford College

“Jane Addams and the Chicago Social Justice Movement, 1889-1912”
Rosemarie Scherman, City University of New York Graduate Center

“Extending the Legacy”
Nancy McCullar, Jane Addams Center, Hull-House Association

6:30 pm Cocktails
Clark Arts Center
Music by Suzuki violin students of the Rockford College
Music Academy, Eleanor Stanlis, Director

8:00 pm Banquet
Forrest Cool Lounge, Burpee Center

Sunday, October 22

9:30 am Chapel Service
Fisher Chapel

10:30 am Brunch
Forrest Cool Lounge, Burpee Center

CONFERENCE: HULL-HOUSE AND THE PEOPLE’S HEALTH

Jane Addams’ Hull-House Centennial 1889-1989
Hull-House and the People’s Health: A Public Humanities Symposium

Saturday, April 7, 1990
Chicago Illinois Union, 828 South Wolcott
The University of Illinois at Chicago

1:00 pm
Mary Ann Johnson
Director, Jane Addams’ Hull-House Museum
Hull-House and Its Neighborhoods: The Setting

2:00 pm
Barbara Sicherman
Keenan Professor of American Institutions and Values, Trinity College
Hull-House and Workers’ Health: The Career of Alice Hamilton

3:30pm
Audrey B. Davis
Curator of Medical Sciences, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
The Settlement House: Incubator of Visiting Nursing

4:30 pm
Patricia Spain Ward
Campus Historian, University of Illinois at Chicago
At the Eye of the Storm: Hull-House and the Chicago Birth Control Debate

5:30 pm Reception

6:00 pm Dinner (Reservations Required)

7:30 pm
Dr. Julius Richmond
John D. MacArthur Professor of Health Policy, Harvard University
The Hull-House Years: Vintage Years for Children

This symposium, which is made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a federal agency, is open to the public free of charge.

EXHIBITION: HULL-HOUSE: THE URBAN CONSCIENCE
September 19-December 31, 1989
Library of the Health Sciences, 1750 West Polk
Guest speaker:  Mary Lynn McCree Byan,
Editor, The Jane Addams Papers
Click here for the Exhibition Catalog in pdf (13.4 MB)

PUBLICATION: OPENING NEW WORLDS: JANE ADDAMS’ HULL-HOUSE
Click here for the Publication in pdf (36.7 MB)

These programs were made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a federal agency.