Events Calendar Fall 2024
All events at the Mandel Center for the Humanities are subject to health standards, precautions and protocols as determined by Brandeis University and the State of Massachusetts.
Read below to find the ten MCH events being offered this fall. Check back for updates.
Fall Welcome + Faculty New Books Reception
Thursday, September 12, 2024 4:00-5:30 PM
Mandel Atrium
Join us in celebration of the start of the fall semester and recent faculty publications!
Open to the public. Raffle at event. Drinks and hors d’oeuvres will be served. Faculty presentations begin 4:15 PM.
Memory & Violence: The Special Role of Grandchildren in Preserving Cultural Patrimony
Wednesday, September 18, 2024
12:30 - 1:30 PM
Mandel 303
The preservation of cultural patrimony has an inherently intergenerational component, with current generations responsible for preserving stories, objects and traditions for the generations of the future. In this Mandel graduate panel, we look at the special role that grandchildren play in shaping and preserving memories of violence experienced by their grandparents. Tamar Aizenberg's research examines how the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors and of Nazis co-exist in modern Vienna. Meanwhile Savita Maharaj's work looks at legacies of resistance amongst women in postcolonial Caribbean literatures.
This is the first installment of Mandel’s Humanities for Global Affairs Program. The Humanities for Global Affairs program area aims to bring the humanities and humanistic enquiry to bear on questions in Global Affairs. The three talks this fall offer the Brandeis Community an opportunity to discuss how our scholarship and activism can encourage global literacy and international friendship.
Featuring: Savita Maharaj (English) and Tamar Aizenberg (NEJS). Chaired by Professor Janet McIntosh (Anthropology)
A discussion of Shakespeare’s Sisters
Monday, September 30, 2024
1:20-2:40 PM
Mandel Atrium
Shakespeare’s Sisters by Ramie Targoff introduces us to the lives and writings of four Elizabethan women from vastly different backgrounds, who insisted on leading literary lives long before Woolf published ‘A Room of One’s Own.’ This event is the first of a three-part series this fall of interdisciplinary conversations about women’s writing, and the spaces in which such writing is nurtured.
Featuring: Ramie Targoff (English), Catherine Bloomer (Italian), Caitlin Gillespie (Classics), Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso (AAAS)
Straddling Borders: How Immigration and Diaspora Influence Artistic Production
Thursday, October 10, 2024
12:00 - 1:15 PM
Mandel 303
This event will be the second part of MCH's Global Affairs & Humanities Series. How does immigration influence artistic practices and cultural production? How does it affect how creatives see the social role and the full possibilities of their creation? During this lunchtime talk, the Mandel Center will convene artists, writers and creatives who will discuss how immigration has influenced their work, and then open the discussion to how the Mandel Center and other centers at Brandeis can facilitate more global engagement.
Featuring: Marjan Kamali (novelist), Misha Chowdhury (actor and director), Professor Bulbul Chakravarthy (Physics)
Get Curious: Neoliberalism
Wednesday, October 16, 2024
12:00 - 1:00 PM
Mandel 303
This event is the first in the "Get Curious" series.
Featuring: Professor Patricia Alvarez Astacio (Anthropology) and Professor Gowri Vijayakumar (Sociology)
Humanities Faculty Book Club with Martha C. Nussbaum
Monday, October 21, 2024
11:30 AM - 1 PM
Mandel 303
Every semester, Brandeis’s departmental chairs in the humanities host a Faculty Book Club to facilitate interdepartmental dialogue about the role of a humanities education in our changing society. In this highly charged election year, we look forward to turning our political gaze towards the potential of sympathetic imagination and Socratic dialogue in fostering citizenship and global friendship. The departmental chairs have therefore chosen Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities as their interdepartmental book club pick.
The event will consist of a Zoom Q&A session with Professor Nussbaum, and time to discuss further questions with colleagues. Lunch will be available. Please RSVP to Esha Senchaudhuri (esenchaudhuri@brandeis.edu) by October 7 if you are interested in participating.
Women’s Writing in a Global Frame
Tuesday, October 29, 2024
12:30-1:45 PM
Mandel 303
The second installment of the Shakespeare's Sisters series.
Featuring: Matthew Fraleigh (GRALL), Harleen Singh (WGS and SAS), Ilana Szobel (NEJS)
Art & Antiquities: Colonialism, War, Provenance and Restitution
Monday, November 4, 2024
12:00 - 1:30 PM
Mandel 303
The third installment of the Humanities for Global Affairs program. Co-hosted with the Samuels Center for Global Engagement.
Featuring: Victoria Wood (Museum of Fine Arts), Ashley Thompson (History of Art and Archaeology, SOAS), Esha Senchaudhuri (Mandel Center for the Humanities), and Toni Phim-Shapiro (Creativity & Social Transformation, Samuels Center for Global Engagement COMPACT)
Get Curious: Rethinking the Refugee Crisis
Thursday, November 14, 2024
12:00 - 1:00 PM
Mandel 303
This event is the second in the "Get Curious" series.
Featuring: Dr. Nihal Kayali, Professor Howie Tam (English)
Publishing Beyond the Academy
Thursday, November 21, 2024
2:30-3:45 PM
Mandel 303
The third installment of the Shakespeare's Sisters series.
Featuring: Stephen McCauley (Creative Writing), Ramie Targoff (English), Michael Willrich (History)