Faculty Lightning Talks
HFA Faculty Lightning Talks on Thursday, April 11, and Friday, April 12, from 11-1 p.m. in the Bromery Center for the Arts Lobby, will invite HFA faculty to present on their ongoing research and creative projects during a "lightning" discussion of 10 minutes each.
Thursday, April 11
11:00-11:15: Welcome
11:15-11:20: Opening Remarks
11:20-11:30: "Traces of Turkish Migration in West Berlin"
Ela Gezen, Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
"My research and teaching focus on 20th and 21st century German literature and culture, with emphases on literatures of migration, minority discourses, historical and theoretical accounts of transnationalism, and literary and cultural theory. Currently I am working on my second book, Cultures in Migration: Turkish Artistic Practices and Cultural-Political Interventions in West-Berlin, which investigates cultural practices by Turkish artists, academics, and intellectuals during the late 1970s and early 1980s."
11:30-11:40: "Music, Noise, and Movement at the Boston Marathon"
Catrina Kim, Department of Music and Dance
"I currently research how music and sound convey messages about meritocracy in spaces where runners train and race. This is the topic of my first book, in progress, which explores how these messages form idealized narratives about how a “marathoner” looks and behaves. I have previously written about fragments and form in the music of composer Fanny Hensel as well as issues that emerge at the intersection of music theory pedagogy, academic service and labor, and DEI."
11:40-11:50: "Pleasure, Play, and Politics: A History of Humor in U.S. Feminism"
Kirsten Leng, Department of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies
"My research interests concern the history of feminism, the history of science and medicine, the history of gender and sexuality, and the history of reproductive health, politics, and experience. I will be speaking about my recently completed book, which examines the roles humor played in feminist activism and culture in the U.S. during the later 20th Century."
11:50-12:00: "The Continuum of Black American Artistry: Building Infrastructure for Success"
Duane Holland, Department of Music and Dance
"My research illuminates the sophisticated and innovative interdisciplinary nature of the Continuum of Black American Artistry. I will be discussing how utilizing the concepts of: context, content and citation can manifest efficaciuos programming, training, and crafting."
12:00-12:10: "DIY Climate Change Adaptation"
Carey Clouse, Department of Architecture
"My research highlights the everyday actions of individuals and community groups, and the creative design responses that emerge when they are confronted with difficult environmental scenarios. In unearthing these stories, and then evaluating new modes of coping through design thinking, I help to illustrate the creative abilities, approaches and interests of non-experts in climate-adaptive design. This research builds up new stories about how design thinking can be leveraged to address major environmental challenges, and the unconventional approaches that then seed new disciplinary knowledge."
12:10-12:20: "Language in Minds and Machines: Comparing AI language models to human readers"
Brian Dillon, Department of Linguistics
"Research into human language understanding has revealed that we are active listeners: We subconsciously and spontaneously predict in great detail what our conversation partners are about to say, and use these predictions to facilitate fluid language understanding. Many modern AI language models are based on a very similar principle, and are often trained on a simple next-word prediction task. But does this mean that AI models and humans process language in a similar way? My current research addresses this question and has revealed a nuanced relationship between the behavior of next-word prediction models and human language understanding in context."
12:20-12:30: "Another Journey to the West"
Christine Ho, History of Art and Architecture
"What is an image of Jim Crow doing in a Chinese comic from the 1940s? Starting from an example of a well-known comic, I will discuss how my research engages the complexities of the history of modernism, art and revolution, and world imagination in twentieth-century China."
12:30-1:00: Mingle and wrap up
Friday, April 12
11:00-11:15: Opening Remarks
11:15-11:20: "Are Dreaming Animals Playing without a Body?"
David Toomey, Department of English
"My writing may be categorized as science journalism. My most recent book is Kingdom of Play: What Ball-Bouncing Octopuses, Belly-Flopping Monkeys, and Mud-Sliding Elephants Reveal about Life Itself."
11:20-11:30: "The Strange Career of the Artisanal Penitentiary"
Anne Kerth, W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies
"My research interests include nineteenth-century African American history, the history of slavery and emancipation, and labor history. This talk, which looks at a little-known attempt by state officials in Reconstruction-Era South Carolina to turn the state penitentiary into a vocational training site for the artisan trades, draws on research from my current book project, The Exploitation of Skill: Race, Mobility, and Artisan Labor in Nineteenth-Century South Carolina."
11:30-11:40: "The Humanities are Better than the Natural Sciences"
Asheesh Siddique, Department of History
"My research examines the history of knowledge from the early modern period until today, with particular reference to Western Europe and the U.S."
11:40-11:50: "Palace Intrigue: Digital Reconstruction and VR at the Palace of Nestor"
Shannon Hogue, Department of Classics
"My research is situated within the field of Greek archaeology. This paper presents a story of destruction, excavation archives, and the power of digital media to illustrate new reconstructions of the Palace of Nestor at Pylos in Messenia, southwestern Greece, one of the most renowned monuments of Mycenaean culture in the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1600-1200 BCE). The broader intent for these reconstructions is that they will function: 1) as experiential learning tools to inspire and educate students; and 2) an immersive experience for public outreach."
11:50-12:00: "The Hatmaker's Wife"
Gina Kaufmann, Department of Theater
"My talk will discuss my experience collaborating with both graduate and undergraduate students on a 2023 production of Lauren Yee's The Hatmaker's Wife."
12:00-12:10: "Awakening, Revitalizing, and Maintaining Endangered Languages"
Luiz Amaral, Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
"The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues estimates that 40% of the roughly 6700 languages spoken worldwide are in danger of disappearing. This is a tremendous loss in linguistic diversity. What is being done to revitalize, maintain, or even "awaken" some of the most endangered languages in the world? In this talk, I will show some work done in Latin America in language revitalization projects and briefly discuss the roles that linguists can play in language planning, including corpus planning, transmission planning, and status planning."
12:10-12:20: "Power of Collaboration"
Mahwish Chishty, Department of Art
"My artistic research combines my interest in Pakistani traditional folk art/culture and contemporary politics, particularly focusing on the U.S./Pakistan relationship. Since 2011, I have been drawn to border-related topics, stemming from my personal experience of not belonging to one country or place. I merge new media and conceptual work with materials and techniques from South Asian art and craft traditions, exploring the interplay and tension between concept and imagery. While the concept takes precedence, the choice of media and technique serves as integral parts of communicating the ideas. I look forward to sharing my collaborative projects during this talk."
12:20-12:30: "Two Anonymous Letters about Slavery from 1788"
Julia Jorati, Department of Philosophy
"My research explores the philosophical dimensions of debates about slavery in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I focus on texts from Europe and North America."