Events: Kritika Kultura Lecture Series presents Mark Rice
Kritika Kultura, the international refereed journal of language, literary, and cultural studies of the Department of English, Ateneo de Manila University will host a lecture by Mark Rice titled “American Photography in the Philippines Before 1898: Dean Worcester and the Menage Expedition of 1890-1893” on Nov. 25, 2016, from 5:00 to 6:30 p.m., at SEC B 201A, Ateneo de Manila University. This event is co-organized by the Ateneo de Manila University Press and the Fine Arts Department (AdMU). The lecture is open to the public. Rice’s abstract reads: “While most histories of American photography in the Philippines begin in 1898, there is an important ‘pre-history’ of American photography in the Philippines that has not yet been well studied. From 1890 to 1893, two young Americans scientists, Dean Worcester and Frank Bourns, along their Filipino friend and companion, Mateo Francisco, travelled extensively through the central and southern Philippines collecting zoological specimens under the sponsorship of the Minnesota Academy of Science. In addition to the thousands of bird and mammal specimens that they sent back to the United States, the men also took a great many photographs, more than 150 of which still exist. These photographs range from town views of Jolo, to images of Bourns and Worcester at work, to portraits of individuals and groups on Palawan, Mindoro, Negros, and elsewhere. Included in this archive are flash photographs from as early as 1890, perhaps the earliest flash photographs taken in the Philippines. This talk, which emerges from my research into the Menage Expedition, will be an effort to provide a context for understanding these photographs within the overall history of photography in the Philippines. The talk will also discuss how these photographs helped pave the way for Worcester’s later use of photographs when he served as the Secretary of the Interior in the Philippines.” Dr. Mark Rice is professor and chair of American studies at St. John Fisher College, in Rochester, New York. His research interests include the political history of American photography. His first book, Through the Lens of the City: NEA Photography Surveys of the 1970s was published in 2005. His second book, Dean Worcester's Fantasy Islands: Photography, Film, and the Colonial Philippines, was published in the United States by the University of Michigan Press and in the Philippines by the Ateneo de Manila University Press. It was awarded the 2016 Gintong Aklat Award in Social Sciences and is finalist for the Philippine National Book Award in History. From 1988 to 1990, Rice was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines, where he met his wife, the writer, Anne Panning. They have two children, Hudson (15) and Lily (12). Kritika Kultura is acknowledged by a host of Asian and Asian American Studies libraries and scholarly networks, and indexed in the MLA International Bibliography, Thomson Reuters (ISI), Scopus, EBSCO, and the Directory of Open Access Journals. For inquiries about submission guidelines and future events, visit http://journals.ateneo.edu/ojs/kk/ or email kk.soh@ateneo.edu |
