Memorial Mania: Commemoration and Affect in Contemporary America

Erika Doss is the author of numerous publications includingBenton, Pollock, and the Politics of Modernism: From Regionalism to Abstract Expressionism (1991), Spirit Poles and Flying Pigs: Public Art and Cultural Democracy in American Communities (1995), Elvis Culture: Fans, Faith, and Image (1999),Looking at Life Magazine (editor, 2001), Twentieth-Century American Art (2002), andMemorial Mania; Public Feeling in America (2010).  In addition to teaching courses in American, modern, …

African Worlds: Lectures on Africa and the Humanities

Ana Catarina Teixeira will be lecturing on “The Missing Protagonists: Revisiting the Role of Cubans in Angola’s PostIndependence Literature.” Ms. Teixeira began teaching literature, culture, and cinema courses related to the Portuguese-speaking world at  MIT in 2011 after a year teaching for the foreign languages  and the Africana studies programs at the University of  North Carolina—Asheville. …

Humanities Center Fall Lecture

The grand launch of the Center will be on Friday, October 12th, 4:00-6:00, in B002 JFSB. Our speaker will be Geoffrey Galt Harpham, Director of the National Humanities Center. Professor Harpham literally wrote the book about the humanities; fittingly, his talk is entitled “Finding Ourselves: The Humanities as a Discipline.” Anybody who has read anything from Professor …

Thomas Pavel Lecture

Thomas Pavel, Gordon J. Laing Distinguished Service Professor in Romance Languages and Literature, Comparative Literature, the Committee on Social Thought, Fundamentals, and Creative Writing at the University of Chicago will present a lecture entitled “Idealism in the Novel.” Professor Pavel is one of the most insightful critics in all the humanities on the dynamics and …

Honored Alumni Lecture

Our speaker will be Aaron H. Sherinia, Vice President of Communications of Public Relations at the United Nations Foundation. Aaron is a dynamic individual, as his job title would suggest, and he obviously knows some interesting people. His talk is entitled “The World’s ‘Renaissance 2.0’ Moment,” and it should be fascinating. It’s especially meaningful tos …

Nan Osmond Grass Lecture

Anne Lake Prescott, Emerita Helen Goodheart Altschul Professor of English at Barnard College, will deliver this year’s Nan Osmond Grass lecture at 11:00 in JFSB B192 (the Education in Zion theater). The title fo her talk is “Letting the Boar Have a Say: Some MOre Contexts for SHakespeare’sVenus and Adonis.”