Lecture and Workshop Series

2024-2025

  • Bruno Carvalho, Harvard University, "The Invention of the Future: Cities of Tomorrow Then and Now"
  • Lucas Hilderbrand, University of California, Irvine, "The Bars Are Ours and the Visual Culture of Gay Bars in America, 1960 and After"
  • Caroline Levine, Cornell University, "Studying the Humanities in the Climate Crisis, or a Tale of Three Pipelines"
  • Winnie Wong, University of California, Berkeley

For more information on this year's lecture series, click here.

Past speakers include:

2023-2024 

  • Joshua Rashaad McFadden, Rochester Institute of Technology: "Trials Dark on Every Hand: Perpetual Black Grief and Injustice"
  • Sianne Ngai, University of Chicago: Inhabiting Error: From “Last Christmas” to “Senior’s Last Hour”
  • Cailin O'Connor, University of Califoria, Irvine: "Curation and Misinformation"
  • Dmitry Bykov, Russian writer & scholar in exile: "The ideology, myths and rituals of Russian Deep State"
  • Juliet Hooker, Brown University: "Why Erica Garner Also Couldn't Breathe: Maternal Grief and Black Politics"

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Artwork by Adam Maida

2022-2023 

  • Nasser Rabbat, MIT, “A Shared Heritage of Knowledge: Postclassical Architecture and Transculturalism”
  • Lesley Nicole Braun, University of Basel, "Rhythms of Trade and Siren Songs: Importation Practices in the Democratic Republic of Congo"
  • Johana Londoño, University at Albany, SUNY, “Abstraction as an Ideal Future: The aesthetic politics of Latinx Urbanism”
  • Tara Zahra, University of Chicago, “Against the World: Anti-Globalization Movements in Interwar Europe and America”

 

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Artwork by Adam Maida

2019-2020 "Communities" 

  • Bryan Lee, Jr., designer and design justice advocate
  • Masha Gessen, journalist, author, translator and activist
  • Valeria Luiselli, author
  • Jared Farmer, Professor of History, Stony Brook University

2018-2019 "Expertise and Evidence": 

  • Nick Lemann, Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Pulitzer Moore Professor of Journalism; Dean Emeritus, Columbia University
  • Peter Kramer, Clinical Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Brown University
  • Jennifer Lackey, Wayne and Elizabeth Jones Professor of Philosophy, Northwestern University
  • Jennifer Mnookin, Dean, David G. Price and Dallas P. Price Professor of Law, UCLA Law

2017-2018 "Memory and Forgetting":

  • Douglas Crimp (Fanny Knapp Allen Professor of Art History and Professor of Visual and Cultural Studies, University of Rochester)
  • Walid Raad '93MA '96PhD (contemporary media artist)
  • Orhan Pamuk (novelist, screenwriter, academic and recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature)
  • Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (300th Anniversary University Professor of History, Harvard University)
  • Daniela Schiller (Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Associate Professor of Neuroscience, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai)
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2016-2017 "Environments":

  • Andrea Wulf (acclaimed writer and historian)
  • Andrew Light (University Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy, and Director of the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at George Mason University)
  • Carol Dougherty (Margaret E. Deffenbaugh and LeRoy T. Carlson Professor in Comparative Literature; Professor of Classical Studies, Wellesley College)
  • Gregg Mitman (Vilas Research and William Coleman Professor of History of Science, Medical History, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin) 

Inaugural Lecture Series featuring Center directors

  • Gerald Early (Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters, Professor of English and of African and Afro-American Studies, Washington University in St. Louis), Read more>
  • Caroline Winterer (Anthony P. Meier Family Professor in the Humanities, Professor of History and, by courtesy, of Classics, Director, Humanities Center, Stanford University) 
  • Deborah Jenson (Professor of Romance Studies and Global Health, Director, Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke University)
  • David Shumway (Professor of English and Literary and Cultural Studies, Director, The Humanities Center, Carnegie Mellon University)

For details about the speakers’ visits, see listings under Events.