Past Event Category: Seminar
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Sep 26History, Time, and Mass Atrocity in Cambodia
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Anne Hansen Resident Fellow (2016-2017) History, UW–Madison Buddhist prophesies about the end of our time and the dawning of a new era tied to the enlightenment of the fifth buddha in our kalpa or “epoch” have circulated widely across the Buddhist world for nearly two millennia. In Cambodia, these millenarian prophesies have …
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Sep 19The Trial Nobody Expected: A Tale of Torture, Music, and Human Rights in the Americas
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Steve Stern Senior Fellow (2015-2017) History, UW–Madison This is an extraordinary true-life story. It’s a tale of murder, human rights, and social justice in the Americas. It’s about the power of music in tumultuous times – and also, the power of historical knowledge and the humanities in the wake of atrocity. This …
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Apr 25The Novelistic Individual in the Age of Microeconomics (1871-2008)
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Annie McClanahan UW System Fellow (2015-2016) English, UW-Milwaukee What does microeconomics—the study of small-scale consumer decisions—have to do with the modern novel? Microeconomics seems to have more to do with mathematical formalism than with literary form, and yet its emphasis on the desires and pleasures of the individual shares much with the …
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Apr 18The Translation of Foreign Religion in Herodotus
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Andreas Schwab Solmsen Fellow (2015-2016) Classics, Ruprecht-Karls-University of Heidelberg In his famous second book on Egypt, Herodotus (ca. 484-425 BCE), the so-called “father of history” and ethnographic writer from Halicarnassus (present-day Bodrum in southwestern Turkey), emphasizes that of all peoples, the Egyptians are “the most exceedingly religious/pious.” Yet what did the concept …
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Apr 11Part for the Whole or Whole for the Parts: Body Parts in Twentieth-Century Women’s Writing
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Devaleena Das Honorary Fellow (2016-2017) University of Wisconsin at Whitewater, Department of Women’s and Gender Studies As Margaret Atwood writes, the female body has always seen as a “hot topic” in cultures across the globe. Thus regions throughout the world have employed standardized systems of mapping and dissecting the female body, and …
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Apr 4Forgotten Women in Forgotten Places: The Joan Little Rape-Murder Case and Prison Organizing in the 1970s
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Christina Greene Resident Fellow (2015-2016) Afro-American Studies, UW–Madison In 1974, Joan Little, a young, impoverished, African American woman killed her white guard in a Southern jail after he sexually assaulted her. Indicted for first degree murder and facing a death sentence if convicted, her case quickly became a national and international cause …
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Mar 28Angels and Archaeopteryx: Victorian Paleontology and the Moral Hierarchy of Deep Time
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar Caitlin Silberman Dana-Allen Dissertation Fellow (2015-2016) Art History, UW–Madison Narratives in which leather-winged demons or dragons face off against bird-winged angels and heroes have millennia of history behind them. In the nineteenth century, however, discoveries of fossil pterosaurs (flying reptiles) and Jurassic birds invited new interpretations of old tales. How did British …
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Mar 14Building Place and People in the 13th Century AD: Architecture, Cosmology, and Multi-Ethnic Community Formation at Jonathan Creek, Kentucky
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar Sissel Schroeder Race, Ethnicity, and Indigeneity Fellow (2015-2016) Anthropology, UW–Madison How can we begin to understand multi-ethnic community formation in contexts where there are no written records and only the faintest material traces of ancient lives have survived? What kinds of material practices, and the social, political, and ritual behaviors implicated by …
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Mar 7Conflicted: Tracing Industry Influence in Federal Pharmaceuticals Policy
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: S. Scott Graham UW System Fellow (2015-2016) English, UW-Milwaukee The Food and Drug Administration’s number one job is to protect public health by ensuring the safety and efficacy of consumable products. And yet, pervasive financial relationships with industry often raise questions as to just how effectively the FDA safeguards the public. Accordingly, …
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Feb 29Toward a Natural History of the Book: Poetry on Plants in Renaissance England
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Joshua Calhoun Resident Fellow (2015-2016) English, UW–Madison Eating, we know, is both necessary for our survival and ecologically consequential: agriculture has profoundly altered our planet. Writing and reading, too, have human advantages and ecological consequences—and on a scale that we have not yet honestly admitted in our stories about the history of …