Past Events

Matthew Specter offers a revisionist interpretation of the "realist" worldview, which shaped US foreign policy, public discourse, and international relations theory after World War II and throughout the Cold War.

Niklaus Largier explores the ways in which devotional practices have informed experimental engagements in literature and art from the 17th to the 20th centuries.

Exploring cheerfulness as a theme and structuring element in the work of major artists, Timothy Hampton (Comparative Literature and French) casts new light on literary history, the intersections of culture and psychology, and the history of emotions.

What might behaviorism, that debunked school of psychology, tell us about literature? Joshua Gang argues for its enormous critical value for thinking about why language is so good at creating illusions of mental life.

What happens when we talk? Michael Lucey offers a linguistic anthropological analysis of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time.

The humanities, underfunded and popularly devalued, seem to be in a perpetual state of crisis. Paul Reitter and Chad Wellmon show how the modern humanistic disciplines made crisis a core part of their project.

Li Wai-yee and Siep Stuurman explore the Eastern and Western roots of the notion that all the world’s inhabitants — regardless of ethnic origin, native place, or status — constitute a single human community.

Scholars and intellectuals share their perspectives on the trajectory of Ukrainian culture over the longer arc of history and in the contemporary post-Soviet era.

How do new and emerging forms of media shape perceptions of China’s complex contemporary reality? Panelists explore how various media platforms affect public opinion about China, both within and outside the Sinosphere.

Asking how essential democratic values can be adapted and deployed within a Chinese context, panelists respond to the groundbreaking work of Ci Jiwei, author of the 2019 book Democracy in China: The Coming Crisis.