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DESERT HARVEST—Fall 2002
Vol. 10, No. 2
• The view through the round window, Professor Susan C. Karant-Nunn
• Campaign launch: The Heiko A. Oberman
Chair in Late Medieval and Reformation History
• At the feet of visiting scholars
Professor Merry E.
Wiesner-Hanks
• Research and the pursuit of happiness,
Professor Alan E. Bernstein
• New associated faculty: Renaissance art
historian, Professor Pia F. Cuneo, Professor Susan C. Karant-Nunn
The view through
the round window
by Professor Susan C. Karant-Nunn
The challenge has been made to us:
raise $600,000 in donations, pledges, and planned gifts by the end of
this fiscal year, June 30, 2003. We have accepted it. The Division
Fund-Raising Committee is chaired by Richard Duffield, and the members
are Toetie Oberman, Luise
Betterton, Sandy Hatfield, Ginny Healy (Development Director, College
of Social and Behavioral Sciences), and I. We are hard at work.
Fundraising for schools is not a new activity.
In the late Middle Ages, schoolmasters processed with their pupils
through towns and villages on Saint Gregory's Day in September and
Three Kings' Day in January, asking for donations. Martin Luther wrote
a letter of thanks to a well-to-do woman who had made an indispensable,
large gift of 500 Gulden to the University of Wittenberg—a
sum large enough to support several artisan families for a year, or to
buy a substantial house. "Honorable, very virtuous lady!" he wrote in
1534. "I hereby inform you that your charitable gift, praise God, has
been very well invested and has helped and continues to help many poor people
[students]. I cannot doubt that the God who assigned you this task will
openly show his pleasure in this thank-offering . . ." We, in asking for
your gifts, and you in giving them for the benefit of University and students,
continue a venerable tradition.
As at the October 13 grand launching of
our fund-drive, I invite your assistance in achieving this mid-way
goal on the path to full funding of the Heiko A. Oberman Chair in Late
Medieval and Reformation History. When we friends and admirers of Heiko
and of the era in which he was most expert—when we have accomplished
this, his incomparable research library will pass entire to the UA Library.
Enrich us, too, with your ideas, especially individuals and foundations
who may share your interest in this watershed period in the European past
and in assisting with endowed chairs. Look around on the web for
us, for we might have overlooked a particular line of inquiry. Do remember
the option of making a donation that will in no way lower your standard
of living: a planned gift. This can take a number of creative forms, and
we can refer you to an expert on these options.
I personally remain convinced of the value
to the University and the Tucson community of a chair in Heiko's name
and of the transmittal of his personal library. With your sustenance
of all types, we shall succeed.
Campaign launch:
The Heiko A. Oberman Chair in Late Medieval and Reformation History
Sunday,
October 13, 2002, marked the campaign launch to fund the endowment for
the Heiko A. Oberman Chair in Late Medieval
and Reformation History and the acquisition of the Oberman Research
Library. The monetary goal of the fund-drive is $2 million.
Once the chair is funded, the Oberman library,
appraised at $1.2 million in 1998 and comprised of over ten thousand
volumes from recent books to early sixteenth-century "rariora" will
go to the University of Arizona libraries.
Professor Susan C. Karant-Nunn, Director
of the Division, opened the afternoon event at UA Special Collections
with reminiscences of Heiko Oberman's originality. She described his
careful wrapping and carrying of the oldest, rarest books in his library
to the Netherlands every summer in the hope that they would be rehumidified
after the dryness of the Sonoran Desert.
Dean Ed Donnerstein, former occupant of
the Rupe Chair in the Social Effects of Mass Communication at the
University of California, Santa Barbara, expressed his support for
the Division's mission and his fullest enthusiasm for the endowment
of the Oberman Chair. In the coming years, he stated, the university's
excellence can only be sustained by generous private gifts.
Dean of Libraries Carla Stoffle said that
the acquisition of the Oberman research collection would be her signal
achievement as dean.
Ginny Healy, Director of Development for
the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, told the gathering
that she first knew that the Division was an important unit to be
preserved and enhanced when she saw its record for winning Fulbright
scholarships. Fully 80 percent of Division doctoral students have been
able to pursue their dissertation topics through the attainment of a
Fulbright award. She then referred to the creative ways in which the
UA Foundation could assist people in contributing to this cause—without
lowering their standard of living.
Sandy Hatfield, member of the Division's
Fund-Raising Committee, read a strongly supportive statement from
Richard Duffield, chair of the committee, who could not be present.
Joel Van Amberg, the Division's senior
doctoral student, described his own experiences among historians in
his field: "Scholars I speak to in Europe and America are watching the
events in Tucson closely. The successful endowment of this chair will
send a clear message to the international community, that the preservation
of Heiko Oberman's legacy, his methods and his standards, has been achieved,
not in Cambridge, Massachusetts, not in Tübingen, Germany, but right
here in southern Arizona."
Toetie Oberman, widow of Heiko, concluded
the program with the principle, adhered to by her husband throughout
his life, that there is no substitute for the mastery of foreign languages
and the reading of books in order to gain a better understanding of the
past and a clearer grasp of the present. She urged the audience to assist
in the acquisition of the extraordinary books that her late husband wished
to confer upon the University of Arizona.
"What makes
you tick as an historian?"
Professor Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, University of Wisconsin,
Milwaukee
Last April Professor Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
graced the Division seminar with her presence for only a few hours. The
seminar convened at an unaccustomed time in order to accommodate her primary
engagement, at the meetings of the Renaissance Society of American taking
place in Scottsdale. Wiesner-Hanks is this country's leading expert on
early modern German women's history and European women's history in general.
Her principal authored works are Working Women in Renaissance Germany
(1986), Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (1st ed. 1993),
and Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World: Regulating
Desire, Reforming Practice (2000). She has written, translated, and
edited numerous other works, including, with Susan Karant-Nunn, the forthcoming
Luther on Women: A Sourcebook . She spoke to the seminar on the
subject introduced by Heiko A. Oberman, "What makes me tick as a historian?"
She provided many anecdotes on the struggles that women scholars in this
country still faced as recently as 20 years ago.
Research and the
pursuit of happiness
by Professor Alan E. Bernstein, Professor of History
In 2001-2002, I was a member at the Institute for Advanced
Study in Princeton. How does it provide the best possible environment
for research? The most important single quality is freedom: freedom to
ask whatever question arises and freedom to proclaim whatever answers
the evidence indicates. Freedom also has another dimension: good
research requires free time. This obvious ideal comes at a high price.
For a researcher in history, freedom implies tremendous resources in
books, computers, databases, software, travel funds, staff support, and
other "incidentals" like Xerox machines and microform readers. The
freedom also demands a price of the researcher. Ideally research should
not be conducted in isolation, but rather in the midst of fellow workers
in related areas drawn from a variety of disciplines. At the Institute,
members were invited in the fields of Mathematics, Physics, Social
Science, and History. The U.S. contributed many members, but so did
Great Britain, Germany, Russia, Japan, Taiwan, Israel, and Uzbekistan,
among others. Lunch conversations and tea time, when members from the
different schools could mix, taxed us all for our recall of things we
hadn't studied in decades or our ability to understand friendly but
sometimes arcane explanations of string theory, theoretical biology,
literary criticism, or canon law. Further, with this worldwide
attendance, one had the opportunity to speak any language one ever knew.
With crucial exceptions, the library did not buy translations into
English, so works composed in German, French, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew
had to be consulted in the original.
Another boon was the presence of a permanent
faculty of outstanding scholars in various fields whose eminence put
them above competition with the visiting members and whose variety of
specialities and research methods made them both resources and models. The
atmosphere of fostering as opposed to competition created an environment
of support and challenge. Simultaneously, the eminence of the permanent faculty
and the talents of the members created a level of collegial criticism that
prized the highest empirical standards together with the encouragement of
speculation and innovation. The intellectual atmosphere, however congenial,
nonetheless runs into a dead end without free time and the further freedom
conferred by money, library and other resources, a stimulating intellectual
atmosphere, emulation without conformity, challenge without competition,
and the human interaction that encourages all participants to function as
close as possible to their highest intellectual potential.
My own experience bears out the way this
system can work. I went to the Institute to complete the sequel to
my 1993 book, The Formation of Hell. As I got to
know the permanent faculty, I arranged to speak to their seminars in
October, December, February, and March. These deadlines kept me on schedule.
Meanwhile at lunch and at tea and in the
hallways and over pizza in the evening, I picked the brains of other
members from around the world. It wasn't always scholarship either.
My stay in Princeton was in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. Similarly,
in the spring of 2002, I commenced my study of the Qur'an while the Israeli
Defense Forces were in Jenin and Ramalla. My colleagues were coaching me
in Islamic studies one moment and arguing Arab/Israeli politics the
next. Disagreement sometimes emerged, but more often we reflected on the
links between scholarship, ethics, politics, and religion. The trick is
to keep them separate! The joy last year was to let them run experimentally
together under the watchful eye of friends.
One huge boon at the Institute is the welcome
participation of members' spouses. My wife JoAnne, a Professor of Renaissance
Art History, shared research with a specialist in medieval warfare and
completed a research project on the history of armor. One of my favorite
disputants was the husband of a colleague, an economist, with a keen
wit, a sharp tongue, and a biting sense of humor. From the permanent faculty,
hosts of the seminars, to the members and their spouses, to the faculty
of nearby Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary, and
even "townspeople" like my newly discovered friend, the retired Presbyterian
minister, the people made the year. Conversation cemented the bonds. No
environment can guarantee a successful personal chemistry for so diverse
a group, but the atmosphere the Institute fosters should inspire other research
centers to strive in that direction, if they have the means.
New
associated faculty
Renaissance art historian, Professor Pia F.
Cuneo
by Professor Susan C. Karant-Nunn
Last year I had the pleasure of announcing that colleagues
in the Department of History, Alan E. Bernstein and Helen Nader, had
accepted my invitation to be associated with the Division. Although they
both already taught numerous Division students, they agreed to teach in
turn the so-called Division seminar that is offered each semester. Helen
Nader is presently presiding over a large, lively seminar on charity in
early modern Spain, and students who previously had had no exposure to
Iberia or to Spanish are expanding their minds apace. Next year, Alan
Bernstein will offer the Division seminar on a subject of his choosing
within a range of topics that would be useful to specialists in late
medieval and Reformation-era history.
This autumn I am delighted to tell you that
Professor Pia Cuneo from the Art History area of the Art Department
has also accepted associated status. She took the M.A. and the Ph.D.
degrees in art history at Northwestern University. Her revised dissertation,
on the artist Jörg Breu the Elder (ca. 1475-1536) and the relations
between art and civic power in Augsburg, was published by Brill in 1998.
Her edited volume, Artful Armies, Beautiful Battles:
Art and Warfare in Early Modern Europe , appeared last year. A number
of her essays have appeared in prominent journals or as chapters in books.
Professor Cuneo presently refers to herself as a "hippologist," for she
is carrying out research on the image of the horse in early modern Europe.
She has informed and entertained those of us who have read or heard her
recent papers on the ways in which women were identified with horses and
on early modern books about bits ("bit books") as a source of information
about larger cultural patterns in the Renaissance.
Heiko Oberman regarded Cuneo as an outstanding
scholar and treasured colleague. Cuneo has served on two History Department
search committees.
During the academic year 2004-2005, Cuneo
will teach the Division seminar. Its subject will be art and the Reformation.
In an outspokenly interdisciplinary employment market, exposure to the
methods and evidence of art historians will greatly enhance history students'
approaches to the past.
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