Murray

Timothy Murray, the Taylor Family Director of the Society for the Humanities at Cornell, will present “In the Name of the Hero: From Portraiture to Video Event and Archival Data,” Nov. 8 at the 2015 Beijing Forum in China.

During the panel “The Diversity of Art History,” Murray will discuss transformations in how art historians theorize “the hero” – from the single central male figure crucial to traditional portraiture and historical painting in Western art, to contemporary forms including video capturing performance art and artistic reshaping of archival and digital data.

Murray also is a professor of comparative literature and English at Cornell and curator of the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art. The invitation to Beijing, he said, stemmed from preliminary discussions with colleagues at the Peking University School of Arts on the establishment of a Beijing Film and Digital Media Initiative. The project, co-directed by Murray and Amy Villarejo of the Department of Performing and Media Arts, received a grant this year from the Jeffrey S. Lehman Fund for Scholarly Exchange with China.

The Beijing Forum hosts scholars and prominent world and academic leaders each year. Participants from Cornell have included Presidents Hunter R. Rawlings in 2005 and David J. Skorton in 2009; John Hopcroft, the IBM Professor of Engineering and Applied Mathematics in Computer Science, in 2005 and 2008; Peter Katzenstein, professor of government and the Walter S. Carpenter Jr. Professor of International Studies, in 2011; and former professor of history Fredrik Logevall in 2013, then vice provost for international relations and director of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

Initiated in 2004 by the Chinese Ministry of Education, the Beijing Forum promotes the study of the humanities and social sciences internationally as part of its mission to further academic work and social progress, and to contribute to the development and prosperity of humankind.

The theme for the 2015 Beijing Forum, Nov. 6-8, is “Different Paths with Common Responsibilities.” Panels also include “Social Innovation in Times of Change,” “Constructing a Road for Peace” and “New Urbanization: Global Experience and China’s Way.” A student conference on conservation science, “Towards the Future We Want,” will address biodiversity and conservation policy in China.

Co-sponsors of the forum are the Beijing Municipal Commission of Education, the Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies and Peking University, a partner institution of the China and Asia-Pacific Studies (CAPS) Program in Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences.