Past Event Category: 2015-2016
-
Jan 25The Secret Animation of Black Music
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Ronald Radano Senior Fellow (2013-2017) African Languages and Literature and Music, UW–Madison For more than 150 years, US black music has stood at the center of the American entertainment industry, frequently proclaimed to be the driving force in popular expression. Why has this been so? Why do so many people think black …
-
Dec 14Royal Genealogy, Racial Myths, and National Discourse in Early Modern Britain
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Sara Trevisan Solmsen Fellow (2015-2016) Arts and Humanities, Brunel University London What was the function of royal genealogy in the early modern period? How did royal genealogy engage with debates on the ethnic and political identity of national communities? In Britain, more than in any other early modern European country, royal genealogies …
-
Dec 7Magic Lantern Shows and the Early Cinematic Modernity in Colonial Taiwan
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Laura Jo-Han Wen Dana-Allen Dissertation Fellow (2015-2016) East Asian Languages & Literature, UW–Madison What is cinema and where was cinema? How might the ontological inquiries of the cinema be unpacked in a colonial context? Inspired by transmedia archaeology, this talk explores early cinematic modernity through the magic lantern activities in colonial Taiwan. …
-
Nov 30Iranian Armenians and Ottoman Catholics in Venice: Extraterritoriality and Diplomacy along the 17th-century Silk Routes
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Ali Humayun Akhtar Kingdon Fellow (2015-2016) History/Middle Eastern Studies, New York University; Religious Studies/Classical and Medieval Studies, Bates College How did pre-modern empires negotiate imperial boundaries while facilitating inter-imperial trade? What was the political place of transimperial diplomat and merchant communities in this trade? This talk highlights the Iranian Armenian community of Esfahan …
-
Nov 23Ujamaa Urbanists: Street Archives and City Life in Socialist Tanzania
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Emily Callaci Resident Fellow (2015-2016) History, UW–Madison Between the late 1960s and the early 1980s, after the initial euphoria of African national independence and before the era of market liberalization, hundreds of thousands of young East Africans left their rural homes and became the first generation in their families to make lives …
-
Nov 16A Tale of Two Fears: Lucretius, Hobbes, and the Political Psychology of Anxiety
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Daniel Kapust Political Science, UW–Madison Resident Fellow (2015-2016) Fear is one of the most salient political emotions. The philosophers Hobbes and Lucretius each considered fear in their writings on civil war. Lucretius argued that the fear of death led to civil war. Although Lucretius deeply influenced Hobbes, Hobbes promoted a fear …
-
Nov 9Gendered Self in the Digital Era: Digital Photography and Auto/biographic Representation
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Xin Huang UW System Fellow (2015-2016) Women’s and Gender Studies, UW-Milwaukee What new things can personal digital photography tell us about gendered lives? Does digital photography provide a wider range of gendered activities and gendered images? What can we learn about women’s lives and senses of self as “photographers”? How to process …
-
Nov 5The Work of Sex in the Age of Digital Reproduction: Gerard & Kelly’s Kisses
Helen C. White Hall, Room 6191
2015 Gender Studies and the Humanities Lecture: Elizabeth Freeman English, University of California, Davis The lecture analyzes how Tino Sehgal’s museum installation “Kiss” establishes the normative temporal scheme of contemporary heterosexual sex, and how a series of performances by Brennan Gerard & Ryan Kelly (who work as Gerard & Kelly) comment upon and transform …
-
Nov 2Christ on a Donkey: Palm Sunday, Triumphal Entries, Wooden Donkeys, and Blasphemous Pageants
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Max Harris Solmsen Fellow (2015-2016) Independent Scholar How did Charlemagne confuse Palm Sunday processions and triumphal entries? Why was the early Quaker leader James Nayler charged with blasphemy for riding a horse into Bristol? Was he imitating Christ or mocking Oliver Cromwell? Why were life-size processional images of Jesus on a donkey …
-
Oct 26On Being Able to Sleep: Bio-politics in Counterinsurgent Wars
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Helen M. Kinsella Resident Fellow (2015-2016) Political Science, UW–Madison How does war affect every day life for those involved? I analyze the role of sleep in the United States-led counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan and Pakistan from 2001, which was part of the larger U.S.-led overseas contingency operations. Nowhere more than in the …