Events

The Interdisciplinary Studies Institute is very excited to announce that Jonathan M. Square from Harvard University will give a talk entitled The Myth of the Tignon and the Invention of New Orleans. The talk will be on October 31st from 4:00-5:30pm in ILC S140. Jonathan M. Square is a writer, historian, and curator of Afro-Diasporic fashion and visual culture. He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Fashion Institute of Technology, Parsons School of Design, and currently at Harvard University. He also runs the website Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom, which explores the intersection of fashion and slavery.  

The Interdisciplinary Studies Institute is very excited to announce that Ora Szekely from Clark University will give a talk entitled Violence, Identity and the Politics of Belonging in the Syrian Civil War. The talk will be on October 21st from 4:00-5:30pm in ILC S131. Ora Szekely is Associate Professor of Political Science at Clark University. Her research focuses on armed groups in the Middle East, and is based on fieldwork conducted across the region. She is the author of two books (The Politics of Militant Group Survival in the Middle East and the co-authored Insurgent Women) as well as a number of articles on the subject. She is currently working on a book on the civil war in Syria.

The Interdisciplinary Studies Institute is very excited to announce that the first ISI lecturer this year will be Malcolm Purkey, a major figure in the history of theatre in South Africa. He will give a talk entitled The Market Theatre in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Belonging and Not Belonging. The talk will be on September 26th from 4:00-5:30pm in ILC S140. Beginning as a student playwright and director, he was a key figure in the Junction Avenue Theatre Company, was Artistic Director of South Africa's iconic Market Theatre, was a Professor at Witwatersrand University, and served as Dean (now Dean Emeritus) at the AFDA (Africa Film Drama Art) School for the Creative Economy in Johannesburg.  For more information, see https://esat.sun.ac.za/index.php/Malcolm_Purkey.

The Interdisciplinary Studies Institute is very pleased to invite you to an interdisciplinary soiree at the Old Chapel, Monday, September 23, 2019, 4:30-6:30 PM. Please join us for canapes and drinks and interdisciplinary conversation.

Besides enjoying the company and the food and drink, the purpose of the soiree is to provide an informal occasion for you to make connections with others outside your discipline who share your research interests and to initiate the formation of interdisciplinary working groups with a shared focus. If you plan to attend and you already participate in such an interdisciplinary working group, could you let us know what that group's focus is, whether it welcomes new participants, and whether you would be willing to speak briefly about it at the soiree?

If you have a colleague who already participates in an interdisciplinary working group or who is interested in doing so, but who did not get this invitation, please pass it on to them and encourage them to attend.

Please let us know whether you will be attending, so that we can plan the catering. Thank you to everyone who has already sent an RSVP. It has been received and we look forward to seeing you at the event.

Thank you very much. We look forward to seeing you on the 23rd!

The Interdisciplinary Studies Institute invites fellowship applications for 2019-2020 on the theme of “belonging.” The Oxford English Dictionary defines belonging as “an affinity for a place or situation.” Affinities may confer the benefits of closeness, common feeling and understanding, unity, solidarity, and identity, but they may also impose the drawbacks of distance, lack of empathy and ignorance, disunity, alienation, and exclusion. All sorts of affinities make both these benefits and drawbacks possible and thereby challenge how we know our worlds and imagine better ones. Through the lens of belonging we can explore how ways of knowing produce affinities, and how affinities may also be understood as affective investments, whose values need to be inspected and measured. By wrangling with belonging, we can bring into clearer focus how the valuation of these investments animates and motivates different social, economic, intellectual, artistic, political, and ethical imaginaries.

For next year’s faculty and graduate student seminars, the ISI encourages you to think broadly about the topic of belonging. What does it mean to belong? Not to belong? How does personal choice determine belonging? How does power shape and become renegotiated within the economies of belonging in which we find ourselves at home, at work, in the streets, and on local, national, and international political stages? We invite meditations on and treatments of belonging that address citizenship and immigration politics, love, nationalist and neo-fascist movements, efforts to organize on the left, material and imagined communities of resistance, schools of thought, artistic periods, communities, movements, the family and kinship, species and other scientific taxonomies, intimate and state violence, networks of solidarity and resource sharing, friendship, identity, and the university.

The Interdisciplinary Studies Institute provides a forum for discussion and engagement across the disciplines. Each year the focal point of our activity is a seminar organized around a specific topic. No matter your field, period, cultural focus, discipline, or perspective, we call on colleagues from the humanities, arts, social and natural sciences to bring your own inspiration to our theme and tell us how you would like to approach it. We invite you to submit a proposal setting out your particular interests. Participating faculty fellows will receive a $2000 research allowance, and participating graduate student fellows will receive a $1000 research allowance. 

The proposal should describe in 1-2 pages the nature of your project and how you would present it to the seminar. The proposal should be accompanied by your c.v. Graduate student applicants should also have their principal advisor send a brief endorsement of their proposed project, which confirms that it contributes toward their progress toward their degree. The 8-10 faculty fellows selected and the 8-10 graduate student fellows selected will meet at regular intervals during the academic year to discuss presentations from each seminar member in turn (each fellow presents once). Among the obligations of the group are regular attendance at the meetings of the seminar. Meetings are for a two-hour interval at lunch, so you must be free at that time. Proposals should be sent by email to isi@umass.edu by April 12, 2019. Applicants to the graduate student seminar should also have their advisor’s endorsement sent to that address by the deadline. Please identify yourself as a faculty member or graduate student in the subject line of your message.

For more information on the seminar or ISI, please contact the Director, John Kingston and the graduate assistant, James Heilman, at isi@umass.edu. Major funding for ISI comes from the Provost, and the Deans of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts and the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. 

The ISI is very pleased to pass on the news from Loretta Yarlow, of the University Museum of Contemporary Art that an event which ISI co-sponsored, “Hairdressers Are My Heroes,” a performance by Sonya Clark, was a great success. 

The performance involved an ancient African hairstyle from a sculpture in the exhibition Five Takes on African Art / 42 Paintings by Fred Wilson, re‐created by the hands of stylist Kamala Bhagat on the head of artist Sonya Clark. Clark’s work often features hair and combs to speak meaningfully about cultural heritage, gender, beauty standards, race, and identity, and this performance celebrated artists across time — from the original hairdresser who created the style, to the sculptor who created the piece, to the contemporary hair stylist, to Sonya Clark herself.

A video of the event can be seen here, and pictures of the event taken by Ed Cohen of MassLive are displayed below, with more pictures available here. 

On Wednesday, February 22, the University Museum of Contemporary Art will host the twenty-third annual DuBois Lecture. This year, the lecture will take the form of an interactive panel, titled "Viewing the Past Through the Eyes of the Present: A Dialogue Around the Work of Kara Walker." The panel will feature Barbara Krauthamer (Dean of the Graduate School, Professor of History, and 2013-2014 "Emancipation" Fellow), Traci Parker (Asst. Professor of Afro-American Studies), and Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor (Asst. Professor of History, Smith College). The conversation will be moderated by Whitney Battle-Baptiste (Director of the W.E.B. DuBois Center, Professor of Anthropology, and former ISHA and ISI Fellow).

The DuBois Lecture will take place from 4-6 p.m. in the Commonwealth Honors College Events Hall (Room 160), and will be free and open to the public.

The ISI is cosponsoring Sonya Clark's performance of "Hairdressers are my Heroes", hosted by the UMCA. The performance was originally scheduled for February 7, but was cancelled due to a snow storm. The UMCA hopes to reschedule this event, and we will keep you informed. 

On November 1, ISI cosponsored the screening of uKukhumbula uNokutela / Remembering Nokutela at UMass’ Augusta Savage Gallery, organized by the Five College African Studies Council. The filmmaker, Professor Chérif Keita, was on hand to discuss the film, which tells the story of Nokutela Mdima Dube, wife of John Dube, founding President of the African National Congress in South Africa.

On Wednesday, October 25, at 4pm at Amherst Books, current ISI fellow and assistant professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Laura Furlan, will be celebrating the launch of her book. In Indigenous Cities: Urban Indian Fiction and the Histories of Relocation Furlan takes a critical look at Indigenous fiction from the last three decades to present a new way of looking at urban experiences that explains mobility and relocation as a form of resistance.

ISI is supporting the symposium, “Digital Africas: Texts, Publics, Genre” that will take place at Amherst College from October 12-14. The symposium addresses how 21st century sub-Saharan writers use and respond to digital technologies when they publish traditional print texts, experiment with online platforms, or interact with local and international audiences through social media. The symposium will commence with a keynote address on October 12 at 5:00 p.m. by Ato Quayson, in the Center for Humanistic Inquiry (CHI) in the Frost Library on the Amherst College campus. ISI’s former director Stephen Clingman will be facilitating a panel discussion on Friday, October 13. The symposium is free and open to the public. Further details about the program, including affiliations of the participants, can be found on the Amherst College website.

On October 11, ISI is cosponsoring a visit by Fred Wilson to the UMass Museum of Contemporary Art. Wilson, an acclaimed artist who has created a diverse range of work challenging assumptions of history, culture, and race, will be giving a talk titled, “The Silent Message of the Museum, and Other New Works.” The talk will take place in room 151 of the Integrative Learning Center from 5:30-7:30 p.m, and is free and open to the public.

On September 13, the ISI celebrated its seventeenth year of existence, originally as the Interdisciplinary Seminar in Humanities and Fine Arts, and since 2012 as the ISI. This was also a fitting occasion to pay tribute to our founding director, Stephen Clingman. The tribute consisted of remarks from Julie Hayes, Dean of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, from former ISHA/ISI fellows Milliann Kang and Jenny Adams, from past residents, including Daniel Kanstroom of Boston College, ISI's most recent resident, and finally, words of appreciation and a reading by Caryl Phillips, the Institute's first resident. The ISI wants to thank Stephen for his tireless efforts in creating the Institute, developing it into what it has become today, and championing interdisciplinarity in and outside of the academy. 

On Friday, April 28, the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies is hosting Linda Sarsour, award-winning racial justice and civil rights activist and national co-chair of the Women’s March on Washington for a lecture. Sarsour will speak at 3:30 p.m. in the Mahar Auditorium on the UMass campus. ISI is among the many cosponsors of the event, which will be free and open to the public.

The ISI is a cosponsor of this year's African Cinema Symposium and festival, held from April 5-8 across the 5 College campuses. The event brings together leading filmmakers, festival programmers and scholars from Africa, Europe, and the United States. The schedule includes feature film screenings, question and answer sessions with African filmmakers, and scholarly panels. More information about the schedule can be found on the five college website.

On March 23 from 4:00-5:30 p.m. in ILC N400 the Interdisciplinary Studies Institute will sponsor a workshop for faculty and graduate students led by this year’s ISI resident, Professor Daniel Kanstroom. The workshop is open to all scholars and graduate students with an interest in incorporating collaboration with community-based groups into their scholarship and teaching on immigration policy issues. 

Daniel Kanstroom is Professor of Law and Thomas F. Carney Distinguished Scholar at Boston College, and also Associate Director of the Boston College Center for Human Rights and International Justice. He has been deeply involved with deportation defense advocacy, both nationally and in the Boston area, for more than 25 years and was the founder of the Boston College Immigration and Asylum Clinic  Together with his students, he has organized public presentations in schools, churches, community centers, courts and prisons, and has advised many community groups. He was a co-founder of the Immigration Spring Break Trips, where students work on immigration law cases during their Spring Break. Professor Kanstroom’s newest initiative, the Post-Deportation Human Rights Project, seeks to conceptualize and develop a new field of law while representing US deportees abroad and undertaking empirical study of the effects of deportation on families and communities.

Professor Kanstroom’s most recent books include Aftermath: Deportation Law and the New American Diaspora, (Oxford University Press 2012); and Deportation Nation: Outsiders in American History (Harvard University Press 2007). He is also a co-editor of The New Deportations Delirium (NYU Press, 2015) and Constructing “Illegality”: Immigrant Experiences, Critiques, and Resistance (editor, with Cecilia Menjívar) (Cambridge University Press 2013).

Please write directly to isi@umass.edu to register your attendance. Any readings associated with the workshop will be circulated in advance.

On February 15, Professor Alessandra Di Maio will give a lecture at 4:30 p.m. in Herter 601. Her talk, "AfroItalia: Voices and Images Across the Mediterranean," is related to her most recently edited poetry collection, Migrazioni/Migrations, and addresses the migrations, connections, and--in connection with this year's ISI theme--trespassings that have marked the relationship between Italy and the African continent. The recent arrival in Italy of migrants from Africa, while sparking controversy and igniting a heated debate on immigration to the EU, has urged Italians to reconsider their historical connections with the African continent and assess new cultural relationships. Among the first communities who crossed the Mediterranean and found a new home in Italy are Nigerians. In Migrazioni/Migrations, renowned Italian and Nigerian poets, headed by Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, join their voices in telling the choral story of how Africa and Italy have always been united by a common sea and a shared experience of migration.

The ISI is excited to cosponsor a workshop, open to UMass graduate students and faculty, led by Stewart Motha on February 13. The interdisciplinary workshop with Professor Motha will explore how memory and belonging can be studied from the perspectives of post-colonial studies and critical legal studies. A pre-circulated text drawn from Professor Motha’s book Archiving Sovereignty (forthcoming with University of Michigan Press) will form the basis for discussion. Reworking the notion of the ‘archive’, Motha explores the memorial and ‘as if’ function of modern law as it is elaborated through juridical case studies, and literary and other artistic works drawn from Australia, South Africa, and the Indian Ocean region. The workshop will be of interest to doctoral students and faculty studying topics that touch on sovereign violence, history, interpretation and language. The seminar is capped at twenty; if you are interested in attending, please write to isi@umass.edu to reserve a spot.

In addition to this workshop, Professor Motha will give a public lecture at Amherst College at 4:30pm on Tues, Feb. 14 titled “Redundant Refugees.”

The Interdisciplinary Studies Institute (ISI) was delighted to welcome Daniel Kanstroom as our distinguished Resident for 2016-17. He visited the UMass Amherst campus from March 21-24 as part of the ISI’s 2016-17 theme, ‘Trespassing.’ On March 22, Professor Kanstroom delivered a public lecture entitled ‘Global Deportation: The Rise of a Dangerous New Phenomenon’ (Old Chapel Great Hall, 4.30 pm), and during the week he also engaged with faculty, graduate students, and the local community, including the Pioneer Valley Worker's Center. 

Daniel Kanstroom is Professor of Law and Thomas F. Carney Distinguished Scholar at Boston College, and also Associate Director of the Boston College Center for Human Rights and International Justice. He teaches Immigration and Refugee Law, International Human Rights Law, Constitutional Law, Administrative Law, and the International Human Rights Semester in Practice. Professor Kanstroom was the founder of the Boston College Immigration and Asylum clinic in which students represent indigent noncitizens and asylum-seekers. Together with his students, he has won many high-profile immigration and asylum cases and has provided counsel for hundreds of clients over more than a decade. He and his students have also written amicus briefs for the U.S. Supreme Court, organized innumerable public presentations in schools, churches, community centers, courts and prisons, and have advised many community groups. He was a co-founder of the Immigration Spring Break Trips, where students work on immigration law cases during their Spring Break. Professor Kanstroom’s newest initiative, the Post-Deportation Human Rights Project, seeks to conceptualize and develop a new field of law while representing US deportees abroad and undertaking empirical study of the effects of deportation on families and communities. His most recent books include Aftermath: Deportation Law and the New American Diaspora, (Oxford University Press 2012); and Deportation Nation: Outsiders in American History (Harvard University Press 2007). He is also a co-editor of The New Deportations Delirium (NYU Press, 2015) and Constructing “Illegality”: Immigrant Experiences, Critiques, and Resistance (editor, with Cecilia Menjívar) (Cambridge University Press 2013).

Professor Kanstroom’s public lecture took place in collaboration with the College of Behavioral Science series, ‘Social Science Matters: Perspectives on Migration.' Additionally, he met with this year's ISI fellows, facilitated a graduate student/faculty seminar, and met with undergraduate students in class visits. 

ISI cosponsored a day of events with Steven Feld, distinguished professor emeritus of Anthropology and Music at the University of New Mexico. In the afternoon, Feld gave a talk, "Hearing Heat: An Anthropocence Acoustemology" in the Integrative Learning Center. In the evening, Feld's film "J.C. Abbey: Ghana's Puppeteer" was screened and he participated in a discussion of the film afterward. The event was cosponsored with the Departments of Communication, History, and Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, and with the Amherst College Film and Media Studies Program, and Hampshire College's Music Program. 

ISI cosponsored the 47th annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society, held on campus from October 14-16, 2016. The invited speakers included Klaus Abels, Cleo Condoravdi, Gaja Jarosz, and Roumyana Pancheva. The complete program can be found here. 

On September 19, the first evening of the Task of Witnessing: A Symposium in Honor of James W. Foley, Jim's parents Diane and John attended the film's screening and answered students' questions about Jim and journalism in conflict areas around the world. Diane and John Foley were joined by Heather MacDonald, who helped produce the film and was Jim's friend as well. A video clip of the event, produced by the University of Massachusetts's Office of News and Relations, can be found here. 

Ahead of 'The Task of Witnessing: A Symposium in honor of James Foley,' ISI Director Stephen Clingman was interviewed on WAMC: Northeast Public Radio about James Foley and symposium's vision. 

The symposium commences on September 19, at 7 p.m. with a screening of Jim: The James Foley Story documentary in S215 in the Integrative Learning Center. We are excited to spread the word that the documentary was awarded 'Exception Merit in Documentary Filmmaking' at the 2016 Emmy Awards. 

You can listen to Professor Clingman's interview with Northeast Public Radio here.

The Interdisciplinary Studies Institute hosted a symposium titled “The Task of Witnessing: A Symposium in Honor of James W. Foley” in collaboration with the Journalism Department and the MFA Program for Poets and Writers, University of Massachusetts on September 19-20, 2016.

James W. Foley was a student at the University of Massachusetts from 1999 to 2003, in the MFA Program for Poets and Writers in the English Department. Both while he was on our campus, and afterwards when he worked for Teach for America in Arizona and Chicago, he was dedicated to working in and with marginalized communities, helping students to widen their educational range and find their own voices. At UMass he volunteered at a local care center for unwed mothers, helping them earn their GEDs; both as teacher and journalist he was active in mentoring others. He worked on development projects in Iraq, and became an embedded journalist with the Indiana National Guard, and then with the US Army in Afghanistan and Iraq, before becoming a freelance journalist working on the front lines in both Libya (where he was abducted and released) and in Syria. There he was kidnapped and ultimately executed in the most horrific and public way by the so-called Islamic State in August 2014. This campus, along with many others, mourned his loss deeply.

Our symposium was offered in memory of James Foley, to pay tribute to him by considering a range of issues that not only affected his life but have also impacted the lives of many around the world. Since 2001, if not before, we have been caught up in various forms of undeclared and undefined war. Both in the US and around the world we face a baffling array of developments which are hard to contain in any coherent form of understanding. We live in a context of shifting boundaries, large-scale movements of people, strange mixtures of enmity and belief, the unnerving event and its instant reproduction. What, in these circumstances, are the complex tasks of witnessing, of giving voice, of attempting to tell the truth? How do we see, how do we write, how do we report? How and where do we operate in the borderlands—both lived and conceptual—of encounter? What are the obligations of witnessing—and what are the dangers? How do we give voice to the otherwise unreported, to the unknown, to those whose voices would otherwise go unheard? How do we, as readers and viewers, witness atrocity? What, in short, are the tasks and perils of witnessing in our current world?

Funding for The Task of Witnessing came from the Chancellor, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; the Provost, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; College of Humanities and Fine Arts; College of Social and Behavioral Sciences; Interdisciplinary Studies Institute; Department of Journalism; Department of English; Department of History; Department of Communication; Commonwealth Honors College; Nexus, Mt Holyoke College; and the Creative Writing Center, Amherst College.

Please click "Symposia" in the menu bar above for the full schedule and biographies of panelists.

The Interdisciplinary Studies Institute (ISI) is delighted to welcome Professor Danielle Citron, Lois K. Macht Research Professor and Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, who will visit UMass from April 4-8 as part of the 2016 ISI Residency. Professor Citron will present a public lecture entitled “Hate Crimes in Cyberspace” on Tuesday, April 5 at 4:30 pm in Room 904-908 of the UMass Campus Center. In addition, Professor Citron will join current ISI Fellows Jennifer Fronc (History), TreaAndrea Russworm (English), and Jenny Vogel (Art) for a panel discussion on Wednesday, April 6 at 12:30 pm in Room 174-176 of the UMass Campus Center. The panel is titled “Identity CTRL: Trolls, Bullies, and Power in the Digital Age.” Professor Citron will also interact with students and faculty across the disciplines during seminars, classroom visits, and a meeting with this year’s ISI Faculty Fellows, who have been considering the topic of “Secrecy, Publicity, Privacy, Security” from various perspectives throughout the year.

ISI is proud to sponsor the upcoming 'Methods' symposium, an interdisciplinary one-day symposium devoted to the question of method hosted by graduate students from the English Department at UMass, Amherst. The symposium will include three workshops designated as queer studies, postcolonial studies, or black studies, to which interested students can apply.  The symposium invites graduate students from across the humanities and social sciences whose work makes methodological interventions in queer, postcolonial, and/or black studies to participate in workshops and a panel discussion that ask the question, "What methods; why now?" The workshops will be facilitated by Heather Love (UPenn), Lisa Lowe (Tufts), and Christina Sharpe (Tufts), all of whom will also participate in a public roundtable. There is no cost to apply or participate in the workshops, and refreshments and a reception will be included. 

750-word proposals are due January 29, 2016 to methods@umass.edu. More information, including the full call for papers and description of the event, can be found on the Methods Symposium website. 

In collaboration with the MFA Visiting Writers Series, the Interdisciplinary Studies Institute hosted a reading by the South African writer Ivan Vladislavić, winner of the 2015 Windham Campbell Prize for fiction.

Vladislavić is a superb and original voice, whose first novel, The Folly, is being republished in the US this year by Archipelago Books. His other works include The Restless Supermarket, The Exploded View, Double Negative, 101 Detectives, The Loss Library, and Flashback Hotel. In 2006, he published the acclaimed Portrait with Keys: The City of Johannesburg Unlocked. Vladislavić's other awards include the Sunday Times Fiction Prize, the Alan Paton Award, and the University of Johannesburg Prize.

A reception in Goodell Hall followed the reading in Memorial Hall, which was was well-attended and including an opportunity for attendees to ask Vladislavić questions. 

FORTY YEARS AFTER
CHINUA ACHEBE AND AFRICA IN THE GLOBAL IMAGINATION

University of Massachusetts, Amherst

14-15 October 2015
Bernie Dallas Room, Goodell Hall

On 18 February 1975, the great African writer Chinua Achebe presented a Chancellor’s Lecture at the University of Massachusetts, entitled ‘An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.’ The lecture was subsequently published in the Massachusetts Review, and since that time it has become celebrated and iconic: a remarkable moment both in literary criticism, and in a broader cultural assessment of how Africa has been perceived and represented in the Western world. In making his case, Achebe challenged the entire framework in which works of art would be judged, and in which the discussion of Africa would be sustained.

To mark the fortieth anniversary of this epic moment, as well as the fortieth anniversary of the Distinguished Faculty Lecture Series at the University of Massachusetts, the Interdisciplinary Studies Institute will host a symposium devoted to the impact of Achebe’s lecture and its continuing legacy. In this, our aim is twofold: first, to commemorate the event itself, and its significance; and second, to bring the discussion into the present by reconsidering both Achebe’s importance, and the shape of things today in terms of the issues he raised.

Panelists and speakers include NoViolet Bulawayo, Jules, Chametzky, Johnnetta Cole, Achille Mbembe, Maaza Mengiste, Okey Ndibe, Caryl Phillips, Michael Thelwell, Esther Terry, and Chika Unigwe, among others. 

Full details of the program will be forthcoming. If you plan on attending the symposium from out of town, we urge you to make hotel accommodations as soon as possible. The UMass Visitor's Guide includes a comprehensive list of area hotels and accommodations, and can be access here. 

From April 12 to April 15, Professor Viviana Zelizer visited the UMass campus and the ISI community as the 2015 ISI Resident. Her visit was lively and ebullient, engaging, and successful. Over the course of her residency, students, faculty, as well as community members had a variety of opportunities to interact with Professor Zelizer. From meeting undergraduate students in a sociology class, to engaging in a lively discussion with graduate students from all over campus, and from sitting down with an interdisciplinary seminar on childhood to delivering an inspiring and thought-provoking public lecture, Professor Zelizer’s kind generosity and ability to connect a variety of audiences was emblematic of the kind of interdisciplinary experiences the ISI wants to foster. We would like to extend a special thanks to Professor Zelizer and the many others in the ISI community who made the 2015 Residency such a resounding success.

Professor Viviana Zelizer’s scholarship is motivated by a particular interest in how economic activities affect the meaning of interpersonal relations. A constant in her work is the belief that economic activity plays a key role in the way individuals conceive the value of those who are near and dear to them. Her books include Morals and Markets; Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children; and The Purchase of Intimacy. Reviewers have praised her work for its theoretical contributions, and for providing readers with a completely new perspective on markets and intimacy.

Widely recognized for her innovative scholarly contributions, Professor Zelizer has been elected to the American Academy for Arts & Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and received the first Distinguished Career Service Award for the Section on Children and Youth from the American Sociological Association. Viviana Zelizer is Professor of Sociology at Princeton University.

ISI is delighted to invite you to a panel and conversation on ‘Value in the University,’ April 22nd at 3 pm in Campus Center 904-08. We are especially happy to welcome Provost Katherine Newman, who will be leading off our discussion.

The event is the culmination of a year-long consideration by the members of the 2014-15 ISI faculty seminar on ‘Value.’ Our fellows come from disciplines ranging from Management and Resource Economics, to English, Chinese Literature, Architecture, Afro-American Studies, Public Health, and Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies. During this year their conversations have covered questions on the social and collective construction of values; how value is measured; how and under what conditions values shift; and many other topics besides. Now the aim is to bring things closer to home by considering value in the university—our university, and the institution of the university in general. We are hoping for an invigorating and lively conversation.

The format.  The event will feature Provost Katherine Newman, who will begin by reflecting on questions of value at UMass as an institution, and in the institution of the university more broadly considered. What have university values been historically? How are they shifting in our current era? What should we preserve and what should we change? How do we measure the value of these shifts? Following that, a number of fellows in our seminar will speak briefly on key themes that have emerged during the year, deriving from the projects of the group. And then we want to turn the discussion over to the audience. Help us focus on questions of value by drawing on your own experience and perspectives. Given our transitional times, given planning under way on campus, this should be an event that has everyone involved.

Seminar Fellows. The 2014-2015 ISI fellows are Jenny Adams (English), David Buchanan (Public Health), Angela de Oliveira, (Resource Economics), Aline Gubrium (Public Health), Miliann Kang (Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies), Rebecca Lorimer Leonard (English), Max Page (Architecture), Britt Rusert (Afro-American Studies), Anurag Sharma (ISOM), and Enhua Zhang (Asian Languages and Literatures). In addition, at the roundtable we will introduce our ISI fellows for 2014-15.

Reception. Following (and even during!) the event, refreshments will be served to celebrate the end of a productive and stimulating year.

As always, ISI is happy to cosponsor events in collaboration with other organizations on campus. This month, our cosponsored events include a number of interesting lectures and symposia:

• A visit to UMass of Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika (Clemson University) on April 8, who will speak on diversity in public radio;
• A public lecture by Dr. Victor Burgin, renowned conceptual artist and theorist, on April 9;
• "Neurodiversity University," a symposium on neurodiversity and autism, with events on April 16 and April 24;
• The "Five College Multicultural Theater Conference," taking place on April 17.

• The ISI is cosponsoring a visit to UMass of Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika, Professor of Communication Studies at Clemson University in South Carolina. Professor Kumanyika's scholarship focuses on social movements, popular culture, and digital literacy and activism. On April 8, from 5:30-6:45 PM, Professor Kumanyika will give a keynote address entitled "All Voices Matter: Real Talk about Diversity in Public Radio." The lecture is free and open to the public, and will be held in room N151 of the UMass Integrative Learning Center.
• On April 9, the Department of History of Art and Architecture at UMass is hosting artist and scholar Victor Burgin, Professor Emeritus of History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz. Professor Burgin, an influential conceptual artist and theorist, will give a public lecture titled "Specificity in Practice," on Thursday, April 9 at 5:30 PM in the UMass Integrative Learning Center, room S211. All are invited, and the event is free and open to the public. While on campus, Professor Burgin will also lead a Five College Faculty and Student Seminar at Amherst College.
• Under the moniker "Neurodiversity University" Associate Professor of Communication and former ISI Fellow Anne Ciecko is organizing a series of events this month aimed at fostering an inclusive, interdisciplinary dialogue about autism and neurodiversity within academia and beyond. The events include an interdisciplinary Five College faculty roundtable on autism and a special advance-release screening of the movie "CinemAbility", both on Thursday, April 16, to a keynote talk entitled "Voices from the Spectrum: Autism, Neurodiversity and Representation" by guest scholar Marsha Kinder on Friday, April 24 at 5:00 PM. For more information about attending these events, email Anne Ciecko.
• With financial assistance of ISI, the Five College Multicultural Theater Committee is organizing a conference on the state of multicultural theater today. The "Five College Multicultural Theater Conference" will take place on Friday, April 17 in the Stirn Auditorium on the Amherst College campus. The conference will feature a keynote by Roberta Uno (Director, Arts in a Changing American, Cal Arts; Founder of New WORLD Theater), as well as a variety of roundtable discussions, and performances.

The Interdisciplinary Studies Institute (ISI) is delighted to welcome prominent economic sociologist Viviana A. Zelizer, who will visit UMass from April 12-15 as part of the 2015 ISI Residency. Professor Zelizer will present a public lecture entitled “Valuing Intimacy: Does Money Corrupt?” on Tuesday, April 14 at 4:00 pm in Room 904-908 of the UMass Campus Center. In addition, during her stay at UMass, Professor Zelizer will interact with students and faculty across the disciplines. Events will include graduate seminars, classroom visits, and a meeting with this year’s ISI Faculty Fellows, who have been considering the topic of “Value” from various perspectives throughout the year.

Professor Zelizer’s scholarship is motivated by a particular interest in how economic activities affect the meaning of interpersonal relations. A constant in her work is the belief that economic activity plays a key role in the way individuals conceive the value of those who are near and dear to them. Her books include Morals and Markets; Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children; and The Purchase of Intimacy. Reviewers have praised her work for its theoretical contributions, and for providing readers with a completely new perspective on markets and intimacy.

Widely recognized for her innovative scholarly contributions, Professor Zelizer has been elected to the American Academy for Arts & Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and received the first Distinguished Career Service Award for the Section on Children and Youth from the American Sociological Association. Viviana Zelizer is Professor of Sociology at Princeton University.

For more information, see our Residency page.

ISI is a proud cosponsor of The Art of Conflict Transformation Event Series, whose two-day event "Conflict Transformation and Literature: Exploring Transformations of Conflict Across Boundaries of Language, Nation states, Time and Memory" will take place from November 12-13. The event is organized by former ISHA/ISI fellow Leah Wing, and features Dr. Marjorie Agosin in three different engagements.

The first, on Wednesday November 12 at 12:30 pm in Herter 601, is an interdisciplinary graduate student conversation titled "The Aesthetics of Social Justice Activism through Literature." The second is a reading and conversation titled "Weaving the Memories of OThers" in the Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies at November 12 at 4:30 pm. Dr. Agosin's UMass visit will conclude with "Human Rights and the Arts," a student conversation on November 13 in the Honors College, Elm 230, at 10:00 a.m. <!--break-->

Dr. Agosín is the Luella LaMer Slaner Professor in Latin American Studies and Professor of Spanish at Wellesley College.  A poet, human rights activist, and literary critic her teaching and writing focus on themes of migration, identity, and ethnicity in Jewish literature, the literature of human rights and women writers of Latin America.  Her creative work is inspired by the pursuit of social justice and the remembrance and the memorialization of traumatic historical events both in the Americas and in Europe.  Among other awards, she recently received The Fritz Reidlich Award on Human Rights from the Harvard Program on Refuge Trauma (2013), as well as the Letras de Oro prize for poetry, and the Latino Literature Prize for Poetry, awarded by the Latin American Writers Institute for her book, Toward the Splendid City.  Her most recent publication is I lived in Butterfly Hill (2014).

Called "arguably the world's most famous judge" in The Guardian, the famed South African judge Albie Sachs will give a lecture on September 10 at Umass at 4 p.m. in the new Integrative Learning Center, room south 331. Sachs's lecture will be on "The Value of Values: Lessons from the South African Transformation" and will inaugurate this year's ISI theme, "Value."

Sachs served for many years in the anti-apartheid movement as a leading member of the ANC; he was seriously injured in a car bomb in Mozambique. But far from following the politics of vengeance, he was also a leading figure in the quest for peace and reconciliation. After 1994 he served for a number of years as Justice on the Constitutional Court of South Africa, and he has now been awarded the Tang Prize for his services to human rights and the rule of law. Sachs will accept the honor at the awards reception on September 15, a week after his UMass visit. The award announcement can be found here.

ISI presented a roundtable discussion featuring fellows of the 2013-14 ISI faculty seminar on Emancipation. The seminar was inspired by the the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, and during the year the fellows addressed the general topic from a wide range of approaches across the disciplines. The roundtable aimed to return some of their insights and interactions to a wider audience, as well as to encourage audience participation at the close of another successful and busy year.

The event was held on Thursday, April 24 at 4PM in Bartlett 316, free and open to the public, and all faculty and students were encouraged to attend. 

Seven members of the seminar gave brief presentations on their projects and their own discoveries and questions during the year. Discussion then followed among all the fellows and audience. Topics under review included the following: political and legal institutions; pedagogy; cultural activism; culture and representation; creativity and emancipation; and emancipation and its constraints. The audience members were encouraged to bring their own insights, concerns, issues and questions.

The event Madiba's Gifts: Nelson Mandela's Life and Legacies - A Tribute will take place on Friday, April 4 as part of Five College Africa Day 2014. The event will take place at 4PM in Bowker Auditorium, Stockbridge Hall and feature keynote speaker Garrey M. Dennie, former speech writer for Nelson Mandela and Professor of History at St. Mary's College of Maryland.

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The Interdisciplinary Studies Institute (ISI) is delighted to host Professor Barbara Fields, who will visit UMass from February 18-20 for the ISI 2014 Residency. Professor Fields will present a public lecture entitled “Was Emancipation a War Crime?” on Wednesday, February 19th in Campus Center 165-169 at 5 p.m. In addition, through the course of her stay she will visit classes in an array of departments and take part in several graduate seminars, as well as engage with this year’s ISI fellows, who are discussing the theme of “Emancipation” through the year. 

A leading scholar in American history, Professor Fields specializes in southern history and 19th-century social history. Her many books include Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland during the Nineteenth Century (1985) as well as the co-authored volumes The Destruction of Slavery (1985), Slaves No More: Three Essays on Emancipation and the Civil War (1992), and Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War (1992). Her most recent book, co-authored with Karen Fields, is Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life (2012). Called urgent, compelling, demanding and impressive, Racecraft locates the failure of achieving a post-racial America in the limited and inadequate vocabulary, language, and concepts presently used to discuss race and inequality.

Professor Fields is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including a 1992 MacArthur Fellowship, the John H. Dunning Prize of the American Historical Association, the Founders Prize of the Confederate Memorial Literary Society, and the Thomas Jefferson Prize for the Society of the History of the Federal Government. Professor Fields is Professor of History at Columbia University. 

For a complete schedule of events, see our Residency page

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The Interdisciplinary Studies Institute (ISI) is pleased to co-sponsor the event 'Black Queer Born Frees in South Africa' at Smith College on February 4, 2014. Photographer and visual activist Zanele Muholi will show photographs and a video produced in Durban as part of a presentation exploring Black Frees (the generation born in post-apartheid South Africa and known as Mandela's great-grandchildren) and how each person expresses him/herself queerly in a time of troubling hate crimes in South Africa. The young adults she depicts are those born in 1990-1994, and openly gay/lesbian/trans with/in South African borders. This event will take place in the Browsing Room of Neilson Library on the Smith College campus on Tuesday, February 4 from 5-7pm.

Muholi's work will be on display at the Williams College Museum of Art from February 1, 2014 - April 27, 2014.

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The ISI is a proud cosponsor of the upcoming Theaster Gates visit to UMass. Gates will give a public lecture on November 4 titled "Du Bois: The Early Social Practitioner," at 5:00 PM Thompson 104 at UMass Amherst. His talk is part of the programming for the exhibition "Du Bois In Our Time" at the University Museum of Contemporary Art at UMass Amherst.

The artist Theaster Gates has developed an expanded practice that includes space development, object making, performance and critical engagement with many publics. Founder of the non-profit Rebuild Foundation, Gates is currently Director of Arts and Public Life at the University of Chicago.

Gates’s training as an urban planner and sculptor, and subsequent time spent studying clay, has given him keen awareness of the poetics of production and systems of organizing. Playing with these poetic and systematic interests, Gates has assembled gospel choirs, formed temporary unions, and used systems of mass production as a way of underscoring the need that industry has for the body.

In 2012, Gates was awarded the inaugural Vera List Center Prize for Art and Politics, the Wall Street Journal’s Arts Innovator of the Year, a Creative Time Global Residency Fellowship, and became a United States Artists Kippy Fellow. Gates has also received awards and grants from Creative Capital, the Joyce Foundation, Graham Foundation, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, and Artadia. He is represented by Kavi Gupta Gallery in Chicago and White Cube in London.

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The Interdisciplinary Studies Institute (ISI) is a proud sponsor of the upcoming "Du Bois in Our Time" Symposium and Exhibition at the University Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Displaying artwork from internationally acclaimed artists from around the world, the exhibition aims to stimulate conversation about the legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois for modern times. The exhibition opens on September 10, 2013 and a series of education events will continue into the fall semester, free and open to the public. 

The interdisciplinary symposium on September 28, 2013 brings together diverse panelists to discuss Du Bois in the twenty-first century and to put in artists and scholars in conversation with students and the community. This event is also free and open to the public, but registration is required. 

For more information on the exhibition and symposium, visit the UMCA's website.

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The ISI is a proud sponsor of the "Why Guantanamo?" public memory project, whose exhibition opens on September 11 at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst campus. UMass is the first stop for this national touring exhibition, which depicts the history and continuing debate around the Guantanamo Bay prison and military base. The exhibition can be viewed in the Herter Art Gallery from 11:00-4:00, September 11- October 9. 

On September 11 at 4:00 p.m., Jameel Jaffer, the director of the Center for Democracy at the American Civil Liberties Union, and Akhil Reed Amar, from Yale University Law school, will participate on a panel titled "The Clash of National Security and Civil Liberties" in the Bernie Dallas Room in Goodell. The panel series continues with a discussion once each week that the exhibition is on campus, and a full schedule of the panels and participants can be found here.

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On Wednesday, April 24th at 4 pm, the Interdisciplinary Studies Institute will host a panel discussion on 'The Challenges of Public Scholarship' featuring fellows from our current seminar, in Campus Center room 904-08. The event will highlight the work of our fellows, and allow the campus community to join in the conversation on a timely and significant topic. In many ways, we are all being challenged to consider our wider relevance to the communities and society around us, yet definitions of 'engagement' and 'relevance' may vary widely, not least across the disciplines as well as for those working in interdisciplinary environments. At the same time, those who wish to undertake public scholarship confront a variety of challenges, whether obtaining research funding, finding appropriate publication venues, or meeting tenure and promotion criteria. Our panelists will get the discussion going, but this will be an opportunity to have a wide-ranging, collaborative conversation. Following the Capstone Event, join us at the Faculty Club at 6 pm for drinks and appetizers as we celebrate the first year anniversary of ISI!

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The Interdisciplinary Studies Institute (ISI) will cosponsor an international conference hosted by The University of Massachusetts Amherst Center for Heritage and Society. ‘The Past for Sale? New Perspectives on the Economic Entanglements of Cultural Heritage’ will take place on the UMass Amherst Campus on May 15-17, 2013. The goal of the conference is to bring together a wide range of academics, economists, heritage professionals, development experts, government officials, and community leaders to examine the economic impact of cultural heritage. Rather than seeing tourism, urban redevelopment, and antiquities looting as distinct economic problems—as case-by-case profits and/or losses—the conferences hopes to encourage a multi-disciplinary discussion of the economic entanglements of cultural heritage.

For more information and the preliminary program, see the conference website.

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On Thursday, April 18th, the World Studies Interdisciplinary Project (WSIP) brings Professor Michael Gomez to campus for a talk entitled 'Malian Malestrom: Mayhem and Meaning in the Muslim World' in Herter 601 at 4:00. The lecture will center on Islam in Africa and current political troubles in Mali. The Interdisciplinary Studies Institute was a major sponsor of the original WSIP symposium and is proud to cosponsor this exciting event, which is part of a two-day visit by Professor Gomez. For full details and schedule of events, see the WSIP website.

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Renowned Israeli translator, poet, linguist, and literary critic Rami Saari visited Smith College from April 2-15, 2013 as part of the College’s Visiting Scholars Program. During his stay, Saari offered a talk entitled ‘When Poets Translate Poets: Going Far and Getting Closer’ and met with interested students and faculty from across the Five Colleges. ISI was pleased to contribute to the event. For more information see the College website.

On February 28th, the Interdisciplinary Studies Institute (ISI) was pleased to host a stimulating lecture with Professor Martha Biondi, Associate Professor of African American Studies and History at Northwestern University. Professor Biondi holds the position of Graduate Director in one of the first African American departments to grant a Ph.D. in the discipline, where her research examines the intersection of 20th Century African American History with social movements, politics, labor, gender, cities, and international affairs. Her critically acclaimed To Stand and Fight: the Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City received two prestigious awards: the Meyers Outstanding Book Award (2004) and the Thomas J. Wilson Prize (2003). Recent publications include articles in several journals and edited collections and, in 2012, The Black Revolution on Campus, from which her talk was drawn. 

The incorporation of Black Studies in American higher education was a major goal of the black student movement, but the promise to implement it was typically followed by another period of struggle. Whether it was due to hostility, clashing visions, budget cuts, indifference, or other challenges, the effort to institutionalize Black Studies was long and difficult. To the extent that there was a “black revolution on campus,” it was followed, in many instances, by a “counterrevolution,” a determined effort to contain or trim the sails of the more ambitious desires of students and intellectuals. Biondi’s talk examined the tensions and conflicts surrounding the meaning and mission of Black Studies, a movement controversial among many both inside and outside academe for its intellectual ideas, shaped as they were by the swirling ideological currents of Black Nationalism.

ISI contributed to a week-long residency hosted by the Theater department, which brought four artists from Magnet Theatre, based in Cape Town, South Africa, to the University of Massachusetts Amherst campus. The artists—director and scholar Mark Fleishman, performers Jennie Reznek and Faniswa Yisa, and composer Neo Muyanga—performed their award-winning piece about the effects of forced migration, xenophobia, and the triumph of the human imagination Every Year, Every Day, I Am Wallking in The Curtain Theater. Their residency also included movement and devised theatre-making workshops (Reznek and Yisa), a public lecture on South African theatre and politics (Fleishman), and a musical lecture demonstration (Muyanga).

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Earl Lovelace, the writer of Caribbean classics The Wine of Astonishment and Salt, will read from his new novel, Is Just a Movie.

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‘With Courage, For Justice’: Overcoming Apartheid in South Africa

Monday, October 3rd, 2011
4:30pm
Herter Hall 301, UMass

ISHA is delighted to host Eddie Daniels, noted South African anti-apartheid activist and former political prisoner. Please join us to hear his compelling and inspiring story, as well as his particular perspectives on the struggle for justice in South Africa. Mr Daniels will be introduced by Dr Marcellette Williams, Senior Vice-President of the University of Massachusetts.

Eddie Daniels grew up in Cape Town in the ‘coloured’ area of District 6, later bulldozed by the apartheid government of South Africa. He worked as a whaler, a miner, and photographer, and then, because of his growing sense of the injustices around him, joined the Liberal Party, at that stage the only legal nonracial political party in South Africa. As repressive conditions in South Africa intensified, he became a member of the African Resistance Movement, which initiated a campaign of sabotage against government utilities shortly before the African National Congress did the same. Arrested in 1964, he served a fifteen-year sentence on Robben Island, alongside other notable political prisoners such as Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, and Ahmed Kathrada. Later, Mandela remarked of him, ‘We recall his loyalty and courage; his sense of humour and justice as well as total commitment to the struggle of the prisoners for the eradication of injustice and for the betterment of their conditions.’ Daniels’s story is also very much a personal one. Having married his wife Eleanor in defiance of the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act which barred interracial unions, they married again for a second time in 1990 when the law was repealed. On 11 February of that year, Eddie and Eleanor were among the 100,000 others who celebrated Mandela’s release on the Grand Parade in Cape Town.

Eddie Daniels is also the author of a memoir, There & Back: Robben Island 1964-1979, and copies will be available at the talk.

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The ISI is a proud co-sponsor of “Intersections Intersected: The Photography of David Goldblatt” at the University Museum of Contemporary Art. David Goldblatt (b. South Africa, 1930) is one of the great photographers of our time. As both citizen and photographer, he was witness to apartheid’s infiltration into every aspect of South African life. The exhibition of over 100 photographs, taken by Goldblatt during the past 50 years, focuses on South Africa’s human landscape in the apartheid and post-apartheid eras. Visit the Museum website to learn more.

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‘The Evolution Wars: Why Do They Matter? Why Do They Continue?’ 
Kenneth Miller (Brown University)
31 March 2011

Eighty years after the notorious Scopes Monkey Trial, the powerful Intelligent Design movement continues to claim that evolution is ‘only a theory.’ The ensuing debates go to the heart of what counts as rational and scientific in the public arena. Professor Kenneth Miller was the lead witness in the historic Dover Trial, where his testimony proved instrumental in the judge’s ruling that the local school board had no right to require teachers to offer Intelligent Design as an alternative to evolution. Professor Miller is a bestselling author and repeat guest on The Colbert Report; his books include Only A Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul. The topic of the Annual Lecture coincides with the ISHA theme for the year, on ‘(Ir)rationality and Public Discourse.’ 

2008-09: ‘The Art of Conflict Transformation in the North of Ireland/Northern Ireland.’ 
An international symposium with Belfast muralists Danny Devenny and Mark Ervine. Hosted in collaboration with UMass Amherst Graduate School. April 30 2009. Seminar: Public Thought, Public Art, Public Effect. For more information see http://mural.umasslegal.org/.

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‘Students, Faculty, and Mental Health.’
A panel discussion in the wake of the Virginia Tech Shootings featuring Dr. Harry Rockland-Miller (University Health Service), Barbara O’Connor (Campus Police), Deborah Carlin (Department of English). In collaboration with the College of Humanities and Fine Arts. 3 October 2007.

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Feminist Philosophy Conference on the Occasion of the Retirement of Ann Ferguson. 11-12 May 2007.

‘What if There Were No Humanities or Arts? Thinking Counterfactually.’ A panel featuring Susan Jahoda (Department of Art, Architecture and Art History), Patrick Mensah (Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures), Alice Nash (Department of History), Max Page (Department of Art, Architecture and Art History), Manisha Sinha (W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies), and James Young (Judaic Studies and Near Eastern Studies Department). In collaboration with the College of Humanities and Fine Arts. 12 April 2007.

‘A Manifesto for the Humanities and Arts.’ A panel featuring Barton Byg (German and Scandinavian Studies), Stephen Clingman (Department of English), Lisa Green (Department of Linguistics), Joseph Krupczynski (Department of Art, Architecture and Art History), Laura Lovett (Department of History), and Pricilla Page (Department of Theater). In collaboration with the College of Humanities and Fine Arts. 15 March 2007.

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‘Dateline Britain 2005: The Racial State of the Everyday.’  Jacqueline Nassy Brown (Hunter College). Annual Distinguished Lecture:  New Directions in the Anthropology of Europe. February 2006.

Five College African Film Festival. An international Film Festival featuring African filmmakers based in Africa and Europe. 29 March-2 April 2006.

‘Remapping Black Germany: New Perspectives on Afro-German History, Politics, and Culture.’  An international conference in collaboration with German and Scandinavian Studies, 6-27 April 2006. 

‘Thieves of Baghdad: The Journey to Recover the World’s Greatest Treasure.’

Lecture by Matthew Bogdanos (Assistant D.A. of Manhattan). In collaboration with Art History and fifteen other departments and programs. 18 April 2006.

New Faculty Lecture Series Organization of Graduate Students in Comparative Literature (OGSCL). A series of seven lectures by new faculty in the humanities. Fall 2005.

‘What You Do Matters: Creating Communities to Solve Global Problems.’ 

Jody Williams (International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, 1997). 29 September 2005. 

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‘The Contribution of African Historians to African Historiography.’
A roundtable symposium, part of the Five College African Studies Project, ‘Listening Again For the African Past.’ 23 October 2003.

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Vandana Shiva (Research Foundation on Science, Technology, and Ecology). 21 November 2002.

‘Diagrams and Unruly Complexity, Ecology and Reflective Practitioners.’  Peter Taylor (University of Massachusetts, Boston). A colloquium for undergraduate students, in collaboration with Commonwealth College. 1 November 2002.

‘South Africa Now: What the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Left Out.’ Sindiwe Magona (United Nations). 10 April 2002.

Seminar: Sustainability and Stewardship. Dominick LaCapra (Cornell University). 6 May 2001. Seminar: Reproduction.

‘The Junction Avenue Theatre Company and the Anti-Apartheid Movement in Johannesburg.’ Malcolm Purkey. Five College Artist Residency, in collaboration with Mount Holyoke College. 2 April 2001.

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