Past Events - Fall '23
October 1, 2023
A family with children inspects the fragments of downed missiles, which the Russian army fires at Ukraine, Kyiv (July 4, 2023). Photo credit: Maxym Marusenko/NurPhoto via AP.
Time: 2:00 pm
Location: Spingold Theater; Register here.
A play that shares the words and experiences of Ukrainian youth as they navigate the chaos and catastrophe following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Through heartbreak, fear, and compassion for one another, we learn of separation and loss, of violence and cruelty, and of kindness and dreams. The Clear Blue Skies was created by Oleksandra Oliinyk, of Kyiv, and Scott Illingworth, of New York. Scott writes:
On February 25th, 2022, one day into the war in Ukraine, I began collaborating with my colleague, Oleksandra (Alex) Oliinyk from Kyiv. She teaches Ukrainian children between the ages of 11 and 18. As she fled the country herself and tried to keep track of her students’ safety, we began recording interviews with them and having each student record audio diaries. These diaries have become a remarkable chronicle of the experiences of a group of young people plunged into war and crisis. Some became refugees across Europe. Others stayed in Ukraine or have returned. Still others couldn’t escape and have lived under Russian occupation - recording their experiences from behind enemy lines. The recordings offer an intimate view of how they cope with the trauma of war and displacement - from deep commitments to building a new life of humanitarianism to a simple wish to be reunited with pets or favorite toys. The play is constructed of excerpts from these 80+ hours of gripping audio punctuated with Ukrainian poetry (delivered by a native speaker), ensuring the language of their homeland is elevated and preserved even as they work to communicate to an English-speaking audience.
Please join us as we welcome an ensemble of New York-based actors playing the young Ukrainians. (A writers’ fee goes to the young chroniclers’ families.) Following the performance, we’ll host a discussion with the directors and actors, and members of our local Ukrainian community.
Hosted by COMPACT and CAST; contact Professor Toni-Shapiro-Phim with queries.
Cosponsored by English and others.
Click here for event registration, teaching resources, cosponsors, and more.
October 3, 2023
Time: 5:30 - 6:30 pm
Location: Sherman Function Hall
A Critical Conversation with Professors Yuri Doolan (History) and Howie Tam.
October 11, 2023
Time: 11:00 am - 3:00 pm
Location: Gender and Sexuality Center, Usdan G-069
Featuring a teach-in from Brandeis' faculty members: David Sherman, Gowri Vijayakumar and Thomas King. Read more about each session.
Ha Jin
October 13, 2023
Part of the 75th Anniversary of Brandeis - Register here
Time: 10:30 - 11:45 am
Location: TBA - Check back at the 75th Reunion Page
Panelists:
- Elizabeth Bradfield
- Stephen McCauley
- Ha Jin, MA '89, PhD '93, H'05, Professor of English, BU
- Moderated by John Plotz
October 17, 2023
Time: 5:30
Location: Rapaporte Treasure Hall, Goldfarb Library
Eileen Myles, "one of the savviest and most restless intellects in contemporary literature" (Dennis Cooper) and "That rare creature, a rock star of poetry" (Boston Globe), is a poet, novelist, performance artist, and art journalist. Running a pro-queer and anti-Bush campaign, they ran for president as a write-in candidate in 1992. Author of Chelsea Girls, Cool for You, The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art, Afterglow, and, most recently, A "Working Life," Myles also takes pictures, which they’ve shown in New York and in Provincetown. Their super-8 road film “The Trip” is easily seen on YouTube. Myles's poetic education mainly took place at St. Mark’s Poetry Project from 1975 to 1977, where they attended almost every single reading, participated in workshops, and then directed the programming from 1984 - 1986. They’ve toured nationally in a van with the gender-bending cabaret group, Sister Spit. Most of their books are on audible, read by them, and it’s their favorite way of being received (next to live). Eileen Myles has received a Guggenheim, a Warhol/Creative Capital Arts Writers grant, three Lambda Book Awards, a “Pioneer” lifetime achievement award from the Publishing Triangle, the Shelley Prize from the Poetry Society of America, and an award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. In 2022 Eileen was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Letters. They live in New York City and Marfa, TX with a pit bull named Honey.
This event is part of the Creative Writing Reading Series and is made possibly by the Grossbardt Memorial Fund. It is cosponsored by the Brandeis library, The Rose, and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies.
October 20, 2023
Time: 1:00 - 6:00 pm
Location: Mandel Center for the Humanities Room 303
Check out the novel we'll discuss: Erasure, by Percival Everett.
Find more information on the Brandeis Novel Symposium webpage.
October 23, 2023
Time: 9:30 - 11:30 am
Location: Mandel Reading Room
2nd year English PhD students present their work.
October 23, 2023
Time: 1:20 - 2:40 pm
Location: Rosenstiel 118
Please join the students of "ENG 113b: Performing Climate Justice" in conversation with Leigh Meunier, Project Coordinator for Communities Responding to Extreme Weather (CREW) and Senior Community Builder, Neighborways Design.
Meunier will discuss how community engaged artists support social change, community organizing, and movement building.
Sponsored by the School of Arts and Sciences and co-sponsored by the minor in Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation (CAST).
Enter Rosenstiel from the entrance off of the loop road. Room 118 will be straight ahead.
October 25, 2023
Time: 6:30 - 9:00 pm
Location: Wasserman Theater
Dr. Kinitra Brooks introduces the film The Skeleton Key and Dr. Brandon Callender leads discussion after the viewing. The film will also be a launching pad for tomorrow's lecture by Dr. Kinitra Brooks. (see below). Hosted by the Mandel Center for the Humanities.
October 26, 2023
Time: 12:00 - 1:00 pm
Location: Mandel Center for the Humanities 313
Please RSVP by October 12, 2023 using this form. Students who RSVP by October 12, 2023 will be entered to win one of three copies of Professor Brooks' book, Sycorax's Daughters (2017).
Lunch & Chat with Professor Kinitra Brooks - see other events with Brooks above and below.
This event is open to undergraduate and graduate students from all disciplines.
This event is sponsored by the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies in partnership with the Department of English and African and African-American Studies.
October 26, 2023
Time: 1:20 - 2:10 pm
Location: Shiffman 219
Please join the students of "ENG 113b: Performing Climate Justice" in conversation with Evan Bell, Director of Organizing, 350 Mass.
Bell will present on theories of social change informing climate justice activism.
Sponsored by the School of Arts and Sciences and co-sponsored by the minor in Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation (CAST).
October 26, 2023
Time: 2:20 - 3:40 pm
Location: GL 14 in the Shapiro Science Center (note room change from Mandel 303)
Using the film The Skeleton Key, Professor Kinitra Brooks discusses religions of the Black Atlantic and their portrayal in the gothic/horror genre. Hosted by the Mandel Center for the Humanities and cosponsored by English.
Following the previous night’s film screening, Kinitra Brooks will offer a lecture on the film, which will include a larger conversation around phobias about Black Atlantic religions. During the discussion, Brooks will be bringing in and passing around certain items related to roots work and the conjure tradition that she will be discussing, focusing upon the fearful cultural stigmas around them and their misrepresentations within horror films.
November 2, 2023
Time: 4:00
Location: Mandel Center for the Humanities Reading Room (303)
Interested in world-building and screenwriting? Join this mini workshop with author and screenwriter David Anthony Durham (see below). Learn to create fatasy worlds and write for the screen from the author who has worked as a consultant on several shows in development at HBO and is currently writing the film adaption of George R.R. Martin's story, "The Ice Dragon," for Warner Bros Animation.
All are welcome.
November 2, 2023
Time: 5:30
Location: Mandel Center for the Humanities Atrium
David Anthony Durham is author of a trilogy of fantasy novels set in Acacia: The Sacred Band, The Other Lands, and The War With The Mein, as well as the historical novels The Risen, Pride of Carthage, Walk Through Darkness, and Gabriel’s Story. Durham's middle grade solarpunk fantasy novel, The Shadow Prince, is the first in a series from Tu Books. A sequel, The Longest Night in Egypt, is forthcoming in 2023.
Durham's stories have appeared in four of George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards novels: Fort Freak, Lowball, High Stakes, Texas Hold ‘Em, and another is forthcoming in Pairing Up.
Durham has worked as a consultant on several shows in development at HBO and is currently writing the film adaption of George R.R. Martin's story, "The Ice Dragon," for Warner Bros Animation.
This event is part of the Creative Writing Reading Series and is made possible by the Dafna Zamarripa-Gesundheit Endowment. It is cosponsored by the Mandel Center for the Humanities.
November 6, 2023
Time: 1:20 - 2:40 pm
Location: Rosenstiel 118
Please join the students of "ENG 113b: Performing Climate Justice" in conversation with Jean-Luc Pierite, President, Board of Directors, North American Indian Center of Boston.
Pierite will present on designing embodied land acknowledgements.
Sponsored by the minor in Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation (CAST) and co-sponsored by English, Environmental Studies, and Theater Arts.
Enter Rosenstiel from the entrance off of the loop road. Room 118 will be straight ahead.
November 7, 2023
Time: 1:00-2:15 pm EST
Location: Zoom; Click Here to Register
Dr. Annette Joseph-Gabriel, John Spencer Bassett Associate Professor of Romance Studies and Associate Professor of Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies at Duke University will discuss research from her new project, Enslaved Childhoods: Survival and Storytelling in the Atlantic World. This event is the first offering in a new series that will continue into the Spring semester, and consists of a presentation, followed by a further conversation.
Sponsored by a grant from Mandel Center for the Humanities. Part of the Challenging Racial Knowledge in the University series.
More info at brandeis.edu/imperiledbodies
Organized by Brandeis professor Brandon Callender, this session will host speakers Ashlee Blackwell (Wellenreiter), co-writer and producer of Horror Noire: a History of Black Horror and founder of Graveyard Shift Sisters, and Justin Phillip Reed, poet and author of the forthcoming hybrid collection With Bloom Upon Them And Also With Blood: A Horror Miscellany. Engaging artists and scholars working at the intersections of black feminist and black queer horror, it will discuss how the horror film genre can thematize, trigger, and inspire complex engagements with sexual violence. Followed by a reception with light refreshments. All welcome.
Events in the year-long Mellon Sawyer seminar series, “Imperiled Bodies: Slavery, Colonialism, Citizenship and the Logics of Gender-Based Violence” are sponsored by a prestigious John E. Sawyer Seminar grant from the Mellon Foundation that is led by PI Anita Hill (Heller School for Social Policy and Management), co-PI Harleen Singh (Senior Associate Provost for Faculty & Global Affairs, Director of the Women’s Studies Research Center, and Associate Professor of Literature and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies), and ChaeRan Freeze (Frances and Max Elkon Chair in Modern Jewish History).
Brandeis sponsors and resources include the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the Women’s Studies Research Center, the Mandel Center for the Humanities, the Hadassah Brandeis Institute, the Feminist Sexual Ethics Project, the Rose Art Museum, the Kniznick Art Gallery, the Gender and Sexuality Center, and the Prevention, Advocacy, and Resource Center.
#ImperiledBodies
Questions? Contact Carmel Ohman at carmelohman@brandeis.edu.
November 16, 2023
Spring 2024
Location: Rabb Steps
Join the UDRs in a book exchange while learning about the English and Creative Writing majors and enjoying freshly-baked cookies! Bring a book to exchange, or grab a new favorite from the table.
Information on Spring 2024 Humanities courses will be available.
November 16, 2023
Time: 1:20 - 2:40 pm
Location: Zoom (Please register in advance and for more information about joining)
Please join the students of ENG 113b, Performing Climate Justice, in an open session with Chantal Bilodeau, Founding Artistic Director of Arts & Climate Initiative and founder of Climate Change Theatre Action. Chantal Bilodeau will be in conversation with Alicia Hyland, Assistant Dean for Faculty Affairs, Dean of Arts and Sciences Office, Brandeis University.
Students in the course are participating in the fall 2023 installation of Climate Change Theatre Action (CCTA), a global festival of short plays, commissioned from playwrights around the world, on topics of climate change and transformative climate justice.
Working in teams, student creators are producing CCTA scripts as radio plays, for broadcasting on Brandeis’s student-led, independent FM radio station, WBRS. Radio plays will be accompanied by podcast episodes discussing issues of transformative climate justice and ending with a PSA-style announcement of an action listeners can take here at Brandeis to support a just transition from fossil fuel capitalism.
CCTA founder Chantal Bilodeau will join us in a conversation about CCTA and the role of theatre and performance in responding to the climate emergency.
Sponsored by the minor in Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation and co-sponsored by English, Environmental Studies, and Theater Arts.
December 1, 2023
Miles Parks Grier, Associate Professor of English, City University of New York
Time: 2:00-3:20 pm
Location: Zoom
Register at the Challenging Racial Knowledge in the University series webpage.