Past Events

Patricia Williams is the James L. Dohr Professor of Law at Columbia University. A scholar of race, gender, and law, she is a prolific writer across a variety of genres. Her books include The Alchemy of Race and Rights and Open House: Of Family, Food, Piano Lessons, and the Search for a Room of My Own. She is a columnist for the Nation.

Exploring the idea of "intimations" - social interactions that approach outright communication but do not quite reach it - G. R. F. (John) Ferrari offers a new framework for understanding different ways in which we communicate with each other.

In his study of the coevolution of radio and the novel in Argentina, Cuba, and the United States, McEnaney explores how novelists in the radio age transformed realism as they struggled to channel and shape popular power.

Today we do not expect poems to carry scientifically valid information — but this was not always the case. Sweet Science explores how Romantic poetry served as an important tool for scientific inquiry.

In the first book-length study of Jan Brueghel, Pieter’s son, Professor of History of Art Elizabeth Honig reveals how the artist’s tiny detail-filled paintings questioned conceptions of distance, dimension, and style.

A preview screening of Koerner's documentary film The Burning Child followed by Q+A with the director.

A panel of scholars join Harvard art historian Joseph Leo Koerner to discuss the role of art in a society in which freedom is radically curtailed.

Joseph Koerner examines Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Delights — approaching the painting as a representation of a world without history and without law.

Robert Hass reveals the role of instinct and imagination within poetic form, demonstrating his formidable gifts as both a poet and a critic.

Joseph Blankholm is an assistant professor of religious studies at UC Santa Cruz. A scholar of atheism and secularism, he earned his PhD at Columbia University.