We bring one scholar to campus to host our Seminar, a five-day intensive event featuring advanced readings or film screenings and revolving a particular topic of wide interest that cuts across departments and disciplines. As space permits, graduate students and faculty members from other local institutions may also participate.
Past Seminars
Spring 2022: Sharon Marcus, Orlando Harriman Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, "My Year of Rest and Relaxation"
Spring 2019: Eitan Wilf, Professor of Anthropology at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, "Creativities: Unpacking the Varieties of a Key Normative Ideal"
Spring 2018: Robin Bernstein, Professor of American History at Harvard University, "The Tragedy of William Freeman: A Story of Prison Labor, Mass Murder, and Slavery in the North"
Spring 2017: John Durham Peters, Professor of English and of Film & Media Studies at Yale University, "Atmospheres and Inscriptions"
Spring 2016: Lydia Goehr, Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, “Emancipation Narratives in the Arts”
Spring 2015: Michael Wood, Professor Emeritus of English at Princeton University, led the seminar "Crime and Crime Again"
Spring 2014: Lauren Berlant, George M. Pullman Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of English at the University of Chicago, led the seminar "Affects of the Commons"
Spring 2013: Priscilla Wald, Professor of English and Women's Studies at Duke University, led the seminar "Science, Culture, and the Human After World War II"
Spring 2012: Wai Chee Dimock, William Lampson Professor of English and American Studies at Yale, led the seminar "American Literature in the World"
Spring 2011: George Lipsitz, Professor in the Department of Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, led the seminar "Music, Race, and Place"
Spring 2010: Bruce Robbins, Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, led the seminar "Rethinking Cosmopolitanism"