Lawrence Lessig receives two Harvard appointments

By Emily T. SimonFAS CommunicationsWhen Yvonne Rainer and her fellow dancerstook to the stage in the early 1960s, their performanceswere like nothing American audiences hadever seen. First, there were no costumes. Performerswore T-shirts, casual pants, and sneakers.In place of elaborate leaps and twirls, the dancersengaged in everyday movements like running,climbing, and even falling.And there was little to noemotional drama. The focus was on the body: unadorned,physical, and pure. Rainer — choreographer,dancer, and visionary — had sparked a revolution.To date, much of the scholarship on Rainer hasaddressed the ways in which she transformed theperforming body and democratized dance. Alongwith her fellow choreographers at New York’s JudsonDance Theatre, she has been celebrated for replacingthe body’s “star status” with the delightsof the quotidian.Carrie Lambert-Beatty, assistant professor ofDecember 18, 2008-February 4, 2009 Harvard University Gazette/ 15Scholar asks: ‘How can we know the spectator from the dance?’humanitieshistory of art and architecture and of visual and environmentalstudies, offers a new theory on Rainer’scontributions to modern art. Her most dramaticinfluence, Lambert-Beatty argues, was notin the body of the performer but in the eye of theviewer.“Rainer worked to alter the relationship betweenthe viewer and the performer,” Lambert-Beatty says. “She was a sculptor of spectatorshipwho grappled with and problematized the notionof the body as a thing to be viewed.”Lambert explores Rainer’s work with spectatorshipand the perception of dancing bodies in herrecent book, titled “Being Watched: Yvonne Rainerand the 1960s” (MIT Press). Central to Lambert-Beatty’sargument is the notion of what shecalls “seeing difficulties,” or the challenges ofwatching. In dance, the primary challenge is producedby the simple fact of performance’sephemeral nature. Lambert-Beatty borrowed theterm from Rainer herself, who famously proclaimed,“Dance is hard to see.”According to Lambert-Beatty, choreographerscan play with the “seeing difficulty” to make it eitherharder, or easier, to see the dance. Rainer activelyworked through and around the practices ofspectatorship, Lambert-Beatty says.In Rainer’s early works, says Lambert-Beatty,(See Rainer, next page)Carrie Lambert-Beatty is assistantprofessor ofhistory of art andarchitecture.Jon Chase/Harvard News OfficeReligion in thevernacularNicholas Watson traces the decline ofthe clergy and the rise of the laityBy Corydon IrelandHarvard News OfficeIn 1215, Pope Innocent III convened theFourth Council of the Lateran, a religious convocationthat laid out to hundreds of bishops,abbots, priors, and Christian patriarchs 70new decrees. One enjoined the clergy to stopfrequenting taverns, engaging in trials bycombat, hunting, and practicing what mightbe called noncelibate habits.But to Harvard English professor NicholasWatson, this medieval religious council wasalso the occasion for the church’s first debateover teaching theology.Should the church embrace its longstandingmonastic ideal, and keep the learning oftheology the province of a few men versed inLatin? Or should it teach every Christian atleast a little, and in English or other vernaculartongues?To Watson, a Radcliffe Fellow this year, the1215 church council marks the start of a captivatingperiod of English literary history. Atthe other end of the temporal frame is theEnglish Reformation, which followed a finalbreak with the Roman church.He sees it as an age in which English emerged as amajor language and universities began and flourished,and an age in which vernacular religious texts abounded.Today, he added, those texts are a scholarly key tounderstanding secularized England.In a nation where early medieval Christianity was“an elite, small-group religion” with an emphasis oncontemplation and theory, said Watson, came the ascendancyof what he called “spiritual mediocrity,”where religious instruction took place in the vernacular.In turn, said Watson, “the Christianity of westernEurope reinvented itself” into a place where monasticismhad been “swept away” in favor of instructing thelaity.Watson’s talk was drawn from thoughts on a bookhe has under way and will continue at Radcliffe, “Balaam’sAss: Vernacular Theology and the Secularizationof England, 1050 to 1550.”Rose Lincoln/Harvard News OfficeFor much of the MiddleAges, salvationwas presented, saysNicholas Watson, asthe sole right of theelite. Vernacular theologytried to‘squeeze through’into paradise thosewithout learning.Balaam’s ass, he said, is not just a biblical prophet’sstubborn talking donkey (though one who can see angels),it is a “figure” for the vernacular. It represents theplain, direct, concrete language of ordinary people,which contains what Watson called “the prophetic resourcesof the inarticulate.”In the end, the Christian church decided, in effect,to admit a donkey into the stable of its theological horses.What emerged was “vernacular theology,” a transformativeblend of Christian teachings and the commontongue. Watson revived the phrase (first used inthe 16th century) in a landmark 1995 study on culturalchange in late-Medieval England.When combined, the two words “vernacular” and“theology” contain liberating connotations of accessibility,free expression, and even democracy.But in the 13th century, translating theology into thevernacular presented a pedagogical problem. How doyou teach an English-speaking, largely illiterate populationeven the rudiments of Christian teachings,which had been for centuries couchedonly in Latin?Well, “rhythmic English semi-prose,” forone, which underlay the pedagogical trick ofrote learning, said Watson. He read from oneexample, the “six thinges” from “The LayFolks’ Catechism,” based on a 1281 syllabus.The 12 articles of faith, the Ten Commandments,and other prescriptive lists were allsummarized in catchy verse. Priests read the“six thinges” to their congregations four timesa year, an exercise that took 25 minutes. Laypeople were also required to memorize them,or be punished for sinning.“Repetition and counting” were the keyshere, said Watson. He read in musical MiddleEnglish the section on the Third Commandment,which requires both the “lered andlewed” (“learned and unlearned”) to keep theSabbath.“Six thinges” had a theological underpinningtoo, he said, showing that eternal salvationis based on knowledge and reason, andnot behavior.To gain that “bliss that nevermore ends,”said Watson, quoting from “six thinges” intranslation, “knowledge and reason” — qualitieslost in the Garden of Eden — could onlybe regained by study.For much of the Middle Ages, salvation had beenpresented in “small-group terms,” he said, as the soleright of the educated elite. Vernacular theology was anattempt to “squeeze through” into paradise those withoutlearning.The concept of purgatory was another way for theunlearned to squeeze into paradise, Watson pointed outlater. The ignorant could simply bide time in the afterlifein a sort of waiting room to heaven.“Six thinges” was “practical and comprehensive” in1281, said Watson, but by 1510 was the stuff of parody.That was the year of the anonymously authored “Howthe Ploughman Learned His Pater Noster,” a satire onlearning by rote.Watson told the story of a ploughman (farmer) anda priest. The ploughman knows a lot about practicalmatters, but cannot recite the Lord’s Prayer, and refusesto memorize it. But he agrees to memorize the names(See Watson, next page)