Making a Mark: Graphs Beyond Language

4–5 November 2016

Talks addressed the techniques and systems employed in such mark-making, the media and modes of representation, and the uses and limitations of symbols and graphemes.

Hidden Writing

Organized by John Bodel and Stephen Houston

Monday, April 11, 2016

This full-day workshop explores "hidden writing" -- scripts intended by form or placement to challenge, puzzle, and present difficulties of access, yet, with effort and skill, meant eventually to be legible by human and, at times, supernatural "readers."

Animal Magnetism

A Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar
Organized by Susan Alcock, John Bodel, and Stephen Houston

This Sawyer Seminar was motivated by two fundamental contentions. First, animal studies have tended to remain, by and large, within disciplinary bounds. Second was the fact that—while humans and animals have cohabited for millennia—controlled comparisons and assessments of these relationships, across epochs ranging from ancient to modern times, have not been undertaken. “The Emotional Ecology of Animals and Humans,” a two-year series of events, aimed to bridge these gaps, offering support for comparative research on the historical and cultural sources of contemporary developments.