About
On leave Winter 2023
Daniel Herwitz is Frederick G. L. Huetwell Professor of Comp Lit, Hist of Art, Philosophy and Art & Design. He received the PhD in Philosophy from University of Chicago in 1984, and has been teaching at the University of Michigan since 2002. He is the author of The Star as Icon Columbia Press, October, 2008, Key Concepts in Aesthetics, Continuum Press, 2008, Race and Reconciliation, University of Minnesota Press, 2003, Making Theory/Constructing Art: On the Authority of the Avant-Garde, University of Chicago Press, 1993, and Husain, Tata Press in India, 1987. He has also published Midnight’s Diaspora: Critical Encounters with Salman Rushdie, a book of essays co-edited with Ashutosh Varshney of the University of Michigan for UM Press, November 2008, Action, Art, History: Critical Engagements with Arthur Danto, Columbia University Press, March 2007, edited with Michael Kelly, and The Don Giovanni Moment, Columbia University Press, edited with Lydia Goehr, Columbia University Press, 2006. Additional publications include articles on a wide range of topics in philosophy, film studies, visual studies, avant-garde music, literature and architecture. Herwitz won a National Book Award in India for Husain. He was Mellon Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center (1991-2) also courtesy of the ACLS, and Andrew Mellon Visitor Scholar at the University of Cape Town (2010). He has been invited to be a Fellow at the Australian National University during 2012. His forthcoming book, Heritage, Culture and Politics in the Postcolony explores the role of heritage formation in South Africa, India and the United States, treating that particular rewriting of the past as a window into moral, artistic, social and political urgencies (Columbia Press, August 2012). Teaching interests in Comparative Literature include graduate seminars on Literature and the Other Arts, Literature, Memory and Trauma, and Literature and Philosophical Aesthetics.
Fields of Writing: Aesthetics of Film and Media including new technologies, Visual Art, Architecture, Music, study of contemporary culture and politics, interest in the project of the essay
Languages: Reading knowledge of German and French
Awards and Fellowships:
“Joel and Ethan Coen”, in Jacques Picard, Jacques Revel, Michael P. Steinberg, Idith Zertal ed., Makers of Jewish Modernity, Princeton University Press, August 2016. This book has won the National Jewish Book Award in the category of anthologies and collections, 2016.
Visiting Fellow, WISER (University of Witwatersrand Institute of Social and Economic Research), September 5-October 6, 2015.
Visiting Fellowship, Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, August 2013, giving two seminars.
Visiting Fellowship, HUMA (Centre for the Humanities in Africa), University of Cape Town, April 2013, giving six seminars.
Books
Aesthetics, Arts and Politics in a Global World, Bloomsbury Press, London 2017.
Book Chapters
“Nature that Lives in the Past: Xu Bing’s Background Story”, in Timothy Murray and Xu Bing, eds., Critical Essays on Xu Bing's Background Stories and his Oeuvre, Beijing: Life Bookstore Publishing Co, 2016.
“Modernist Visual Art”, 7000 word essay for the Cambridge History of Modernism, Cambridge University Press, 2016.
“Heritage and Legacy in the South African State and University”, for The Politics of Heritage, edited Derek Petersen et al, Cambridge University Press, 2015.
“The Curator’s Hand and the Creator’s Imprint”, in Uncertain Curature: In and Out of the Archive, Carolyn Hamilton and Pippa Skotnes, editors, Jacana Press, Cape Town, 2014.
Catalogue/Art Book Essays, Reviews
“Enchanted Mott”, catalogue essay for Jim Cogswell’s bicentennial catalogue Cosmogonic Tattoos, University of Michigan, 2017.
David Lurie’s Cradle of Mankind,” Sulger-Buel Lovell Gallery, London and Cape Town, 2016.
“David Lurie’s Photographic Ethics”, Sulger-Buel Lovell Gallery, London and Cape Town, 2016.Reprinted in The Undercity, Hatje Cantz, 2017.
“Through the Eyes of Husain”, Aicon Gallery Publication, New York City. Essay written for the hundredth anniversary of modern Indian painter M.F. Husain, about his experimental film, “Through the Eyes of a Painter”, 2016.
“There’s Nothing Abstract About…” Aicon Gallery Publication, New York City, Essay written for a series of figurative exhibitions of contemporary Indian art about the importance of figurative traditions for that art, 2016.
“When the Past Becomes Personal: Husain’s Late Biography”, in Voyage of Discovery, Tamarind Art, 2016.
“Introduction”, to Danto on Scully, 1500 intro to book of essays by Arthur Danto on paintings by Sean Scully, Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2015.
Review Essay of The Philosophy of Arthur C. Danto, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 2015.
Short Fiction
In the Tropic of, Michigan Quarterly Review, Spring 2016.
Public Writing
“Art and the Giving of Offense”, PoliticsWeb, August 2017.
“On the Forced Removals of Art at UCT”, PoliticsWeb, July 2017.
“The Conflicting Demands of Transformation,” Opinion Piece in PoliticsWeb, April, 2017.
“The Consumerist Revolutionaries of Fallism,” Opinion Piece in PoliticsWeb, April 2017.
“Lessons From an Intimate Enemy,” Opinion Piece in The Hindu, November 2016.
“Reassess the Culture of Knowledge,” Opinion Piece in The Mail and Guardian, January 2016.
