Past Events
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Apr 6Come to Your Senses! – Sensiotics and Understandings of Art, Culture, and History
Conrad A. Elvehjem Building, Room L140
Focus on the Humanities Distinguished Faculty Lecture: Henry Drewal Senior Fellow (2010-2014) Art History and Afro-American Studies, UW–Madison In this talk, Drewal explores the vital role of the senses with an approach he calls sensiotics. While Drewal focuses on the Yoruba peoples of West Africa and their cultural sensorium, he argues that sensing is …
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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 31Le Président: Africa for the Future
Conrad A. Elvehjem Building, Room L160
2016 Germaine Brée Lecture: Jean-Pierre Bekolo Filmmaker and Activist Jean-Pierre Bekolo (1966, Yaounde) is an avant-garde filmmaker and socio-cultural activist whose imaginative work overturns stereotypes of Africa and African cinema. His entertaining films operate on multiple layers, engaging viewers with thrilling stories, biting humor and dramatic aesthetics. An advocate of artistic freedom, Bekolo is …
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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 11Race, Property, and Debt
Fluno Center for Executive Education
Co-Sponsored Conference: In the six years since the nadir of the Great Recession, debt has attracted scholarly attention across the humanities. Debt names not only student loans, underwater mortgages, and consumer credit but also, more significantly, a form of life molded by debt: the everyday practices, desires, virtues, and vices of the indebted. In other …
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Mar 9STEMming the Tide: Balzac and Statistical Humanity
Conrad A. Elvehjem Building, Room L140
2016 Focus on the Humanities Distinguished Faculty Lecture: Richard Goodkin French, UW–Madison The recent trend toward favoring the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) disciplines over the humanities is a manifestation of a centuries-long struggle between quantitative fields of inquiry like physics and mathematics and qualitative fields like art and literature. In his monumental …
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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 …
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Feb 24Publishing in the Humanities: Projects, Proposals, Pragmatics
University Club, Banquet Hall (lower level)
Join us for a discussion of the state of academic publishing in the humanities and the process of working with a university press–from project to proposal to publication. The workshop will include brief presentations from Eric Zinner (NYU Press) and UW–Madison faculty members Ron Radano and Pernille Ipsen. Moderated by Susan Stanford Friedman. Refreshments available by 2:45 pm. Space is …