Fall 2011 | Issue 21

News from the Hans Arnhold Center | Life & Letters | N11
• Life & Letters •
Profiles in Scholarship
Presenting the fall 2011 fellows and distinguished visitors
Fellows
JENNIFER CULBERT
Hannah Arendt is not widely
recognized to have written on
law, but Siemens Fellow Jennifer
Culbert is eager to revise that
misperception with her Academy
project and book-in-progress, The
Jurisprudence of Hannah Arendt.
Culbert will focus on Arendt’s
discussion of the power of making
(poesis), a power that Arendt
not only describes but also exercises
in her reflections on fables,
foundations, and the constitution
of political spaces, thereby
reopening the question of law
and law’s relationship to justice.
In Arendt’s analysis, some of history’s
worst injustices stemmed
from customary thinking. By
contrast, the audacity of Arendt’s
readings and criticisms of law,
Culbert suggests, represent a
transgressive act of imagination.
Jennifer Culbert is an associate
professor and the graduate
director of political science at
Johns Hopkins University, where
she teaches political theory
and legal philosophy. She is the
author of Dead Certainty: The
Death Penalty and the Problem of
Judgment (Stanford University
Press, 2008). Drawing on
Friedrich Nietzsche’s critique of
metaphysics, the book analyzes
the unfolding of capital punishment
law in the United States.
LELAND DE LA DURANTAYE
Holtzbrinck Fellow Leland de
la Durantaye, in a manner that
any method actor would admire,
will spend his time in Germany
examining Samuel Beckett’s
own affinity with the German
culture and language, within de
la Durantaye’s larger Academy
project, Wörterstürmerei im
Namen der Schönheit, or World
and Work in Samuel Beckett. More
broadly, the project will examine
Beckett’s art through the lens of
the Irish writer’s own poetics, as
enunciated most recently in the
newly published Letters. A single
missive particularly interests
de la Durantaye: one written in
German in 1937, never sent, with
content amounting to a literary
manifesto and composed with a
directness and frankness that the
author only allowed himself auf
Deutsch.
De la Durantaye is the Gardner
Cowles Associate Professor of
English at Harvard University
and has written numerous works
on the subject of nineteenth- and
twentieth-century literature and
aesthetics in a variety of publications,
including two books,
Giorgio Agamben: A Critical
Introduction (Stanford University
Press, 2009) and Style is Matter:
The Moral Art of Vladimir Nabokov
(Cornell University Press, 2007).
His awards, fellowships, and
special recognitions include
several fellowships from Cornell
University, where he received
his master and doctoral degrees,
as well as fellowships from
the Woodrow Wilson Center,
Harvard University’s Department
of Comparative Literature,
the Deutscher Akademischer
Austauschdienst, the American
Academy in Rome, and the
Fulbright Program.
JAMES DER DERIAN
In his sequel semester at the
American Academy, Bosch
Public Policy Fellow James Der
Derian will pursue a project
that began as an innocent question
the previous spring, and
resulted in Der Derian “riding
in the back of a white, unmarked
van with a camera crew from
Deutsche Welle.” The question
at hand: What are we to make of
the controversy surrounding the
proposed Ronald Reagan Platz in
front of the Brandenburger Tor? –
raises a still larger set of queries
for Der Derian, which involve
“quantum democracy” (a term
coined by George Shultz, Ronald
Reagan’s secretary of state),
German-American relations, and
the “psycho-geography of Berlin.”
These three themes serve as the
starting point for Der Derian’s
Academy project.
Der Derian is a leading
scholar of international relations,
and researches the impact
of technology, media, and terrorism
on global security. His
most recent books are Critical
Practices in International Theory
(Routledge, 2009) and Virtuous
War: Mapping the Military-
Industrial-Media-Entertainment
Network (Routledge, 2009).
Combining his interest in
media and international politics,
Der Derian has produced and
directed several documentaries.
His latest film, Human Terrain,
won the Audience Award at the
November 2009 Festival dei
Popoli in Florence and has been
an official selection at several
other leading film festivals. Der
Derian was a Rhodes Scholar at
Oxford University and has been
a professor at the University
of Massachusetts at Amherst,
a member of the Institute for
Advanced Study at Princeton,
a visiting scholar at Harvard
University, as well as a Senior
Associate Member of Saint
Antony’s College, Oxford.
ALICE EAGLY
Do people discriminate against
women as leaders? If so, what
are the origins of such a bias?
Do women lead differently than
men? Might they be even better
leaders? These urgent questions
underpin Metro Berlin Prize
Fellow Alice Eagly’s Academy
project. She hopes to sift through
what she describes as a “torrent of
research” to draw conclusions on
a subject – women and gender in
leadership studies – that has only
come into focus in the last few
decades in social psychology.
Eagly is a professor of psychology,
the James Padilla Chair of
Arts and Sciences, a professor
of management and organizations,
and a faculty fellow at the
Institute for Policy Research,
all at Northwestern University.
She received her PhD in social
psychology from the University
of Michigan and has also held
faculty positions at Michigan
State University, University of
Massachusetts in Amherst, and
Purdue University. She is the
author or editor of several books,
including The Psychology of
Gender (Guilford Press, 2004),
The Social Psychology of Group
Identity and Social Conflict:
Theory, Application, and Practice
(apa Books, 2004), and The
Psychology of Attitudes (Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich College
Publishers, 1993), as well as
numerous journal articles and
chapters in edited books. Her