Past Events
Fall 2022
December 7, 2022
Speakers: Brahim El Guabli (Williams College) and Samia Henni (Cornell University)
11:00AM-12:15PM
Zoom
November 30, 2022
2:30-3:30PM
Merrick Theater, Spingold Theater Center
Free and open to the public.
November 29, 2022
Speaker: William Maxwell (Washington University)
10:30AM-12:00PM, EST
Zoom
November 17, 2022
Speaker: Professor Slava Greenberg
2:20-3:40PM
Zoom
November 1, 2022
Speaker: Kareem Khubchandani, associate professor of theater, dance, and performance studies at Tufts University.
5:30-7PM
MCH G03
October 28, 2022
Speaker: Kareem Khubchandani, associate professor of theater, dance, and performance studies at Tufts University.
5:00-6:30PM
Laurie Theater, Spingold Theater Center
October 27, 2022
5:30-6:30PM
Merrick Theater, Spingold Theater Center
Join us for food and drinks following the Dragademia performances.
October 27, 2022
Kareem Khubchandani is an associate professor of theater, dance, and performance studies at Tufts University whose research and creative work centers on queer, feminist, and trans aesthetics, namely in South Asia and its diasporas. Performing under the name LaWhore Vagistan, Kareem utilizes drag performance as a pedagogical tool. He is the author of Ishtyle: Accenting Gay Indian Nightlife (University of Michigan Press, 2020), which won the 2021 Association for Theatre in Higher Education Outstanding Book award, 2021 Dance Studies Association de la Torre Bueno book award, and the 2019 CLAGS: Center for LGBTQ Studies Fellowship. He is also co-editor of Queer Nightlife (University of Michigan Press, 2021) and curator of criticalauntystudies.com.
Featuring: Jacob Bird (Dinah Lux), Ryan Persadie (Tifa Wine), Enzo Toral (Penelope Sumac), and Uzma Zafar (Sher)
4:00-5:30PM
Laurie Theater, Spingold Theater Center
October 25, 2022
Speaker: Patricia Akhimie (Rutgers University)
9:30-11:00AM, EST
Zoom
October 14, 2022
11:00AM-5:00PM
September 30, 2022
Speaker: Lindsey Stewart (University of Memphis)
2:00-3:30PM, EST
Zoom
September 28, 2022
PhD dissertations in the humanities and social sciences have traditionally been scholarly proto-monographs. However, increasing numbers of PhD students are exploring alternative formats for communicating their research -- formats such as a series of articles, graphic novels, films, public facing blogs, apps and podcasts. Graduate departments are increasingly supporting these new forms, as are the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and the Mellon Foundation. In this seminar, current Brandeis PhD students Nai Kim (English) and Yi He (English) will join Anna Williams (Assistant Lecturer and Co-Director of the Writing Center, Birmingham-Southern College) and Iván González-Soto (PhD Candidate, UC Merced) to discuss the benefits and challenges of non-traditional dissertations.
5:30-6:45PM, EST
Zoom
September 16, 2022
Speaker: Matthew Vernon (UC Davis)
2:00-3:30PM, EST
Zoom
September 8, 2022
4:30-5:30PM
Faculty presentations begin at 4:45PM.
MCH Atrium
Please join us for our fall welcome reception and celebration of new faculty publications.
Drinks and hors d'oeuvres will be served.
August 2, 2022
12:00-1:30PM
Professor Steven Osuna researches and teaches about race and racism, Latinx migration studies, capitalism, and criminology at CSU Long Beach. In this talk and Q&A session, he will discuss the links between racism, property, and policing in our current economic system. He will also discuss alternative visions for policing that involve humane measures and community control. Osuna's research critiques institutional racism and theorizes self-determination for communities of color, and his work is of special relevance now, particularly in the years of Black Lives Matter activism and a more outward-facing white supremacist presence in the U.S.
Zoom
Spring 2022
April 13, 2022
12:00-12:45PM
MCH Atrium
Open to the public.
April 7, 2022
The Brandeis 3MT competition is a university-sponsored speaking competition designed to showcase graduate student research in three-minute talks to a general audience. This is an opportunity for graduate students engaged in original research to develop communication and presentation skills while sharing their work with faculty, staff, and students across Brandeis University.
7:00-9:00PM
Zoom
April 7, 2022
Akkai Padmashali is a transgender activist based in Bangalore, India, and the founder of Ondede, an organization working toward gender justice across social movements in India. A longtime grassroots activist, Akkai was one of the co-petitioners who challenged Section 377, a colonial-era law that criminalized sodomy, in the Supreme Court of India in 2018. Her autobiography, Akkai, was written in collaboration with Prof. Gowri Vijayakumar and Prof. Dominic Davidappa, and published in Kannada in the summer of 2021. The English version, A Small Step in a Long Journey, will be published this year. Akkai has won regional and national awards for her work as an activist and educator, and has traveled around the world to advocate and build coalitions around gender justice.
She will be in conversation with Professor Gowri Vijayakumar and Brandeis undergraduate students Inaara Gilani and Sanjitha Subramaniam.
10:00-11:30AM
Zoom
March 31, 2022
Colm Tóibín is a renowned Irish novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, playwright, professor, and literary critic. Author of ten novels, including his 2021 publication The Magician, and Brooklyn, adapted to the BAFTA award-winning film of the same name in 2015, Tóibín's work explores religion, gender, sexuality, family, and Irish identity. His work has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times and received an LA Times Novel of the year award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, among many others. In addition to his fiction, he is a prolific literary critic and journalist, publishing in venues such as the New York Review of Books, the New Yorker, and The London Review of Books. Tóibín is currently the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and Chancellor of the University of Liverpool. His first poetry collection, Vinegar Hill, is set to be published in April of 2022. Revisiting Brandeis after a decade, Professor Tóibín will be discussing the life and career of James Baldwin.
5:00-6:30PM
Schwartz 112
Open to the public.
March 31, 2022
12:00-1:00PM
MCH 303, Mandel Reading Room
This event will center on a discussion of Colm Tóibín's piece "Alone in Venice."
Open to the public.
March 30, 2022
5:30-6:30PM
MCH Atrium
Open to the public. Drinks and sushi will be served.
March 30, 2022
Colm Tóibín is a renowned Irish novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, playwright, professor, and literary critic. Author of ten novels, including his 2021 publication The Magician, and Brooklyn, adapted to the BAFTA award-winning film of the same name in 2015, Tóibín's work explores religion, gender, sexuality, family, and Irish identity. His work has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times and received an LA Times Novel of the year award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, among many others. In addition to his fiction, he is a prolific literary critic and journalist, publishing in venues such as the New York Review of Books, the New Yorker, and The London Review of Books. Tóibín is currently the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and Chancellor of the University of Liverpool. His first poetry collection, Vinegar Hill, is set to be published in April of 2022. Revisiting Brandeis after a decade, Professor Tóibín will be discussing the life and career of James Baldwin.
4:00-5:30PM
MCH G03
Open to the public.
March 18, 2022
On Friday, March 18, the First Annual Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Colloquium was held in the Mandel Reading Room. This event, which was created and organized by a group of graduate students from different disciplines and funded by the Mandel Center for the Humanities, was envisioned as a way for graduate students to build community across departments, build skills in talking about their research outside of their disciplines and create conversations across fields. The IGSC was a roundtable event in which graduate students took turns presenting on their research and then heard prepared remarks from respondents from a different discipline on how they perceived their research and suggestions on possible directions they could take going forward.
The organizers of the event—Shirah Malka Cohen (NEJS), Miranda Peery (English), Monica Keel (WGS), Kerry Jo Greene (History), Sarah Beth Gable (History) and James Heazlewood-Dale (Musicology)—wanted this to be an opportunity for graduate students to practice speaking about their research in an approachable way as well as to look for the connections they have across disciplines. The structure was seven research presentations spread across two panels with a unique respondent for each from a total of six different disciplines, and then an open discussion period at the end, including questions from the audience. The event was very successful, with many participants commenting that it was one of the more fun and satisfying events they had attended, and the organizers are already looking forward to expanding and improving the event for next year.
March 17, 2022
12:00-1:00PM
MCH 303, Mandel Reading Room
Speaker: Dorothy Kim (English & Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies)
Open to the public.
March 16, 2022
12:00-12:45PM
MCH Atrium
Open to the public. Lunch will be served.
March 14, 2022
Poet, professor, and translator Rajiv Mohabir is the author of two books of poetry, four chapbooks, and a memoir. Mohabir's genre-bending work explores queerness, Indo-Caribbean identity, and anti-colonialism, among other things. In his 2021 memoir, Antiman, Mohabir powerfully and poignantly melds poetry and prose as he grapples with, at times fraught, family relationships as well as personal and cultural identity. His work has received numerous awards including a Ghostbook Press inaugural chapbook prize for Acoustic Trauma, the 2014 Intro Prize in Poetry by Four Way books for The Taxidermist's Cut, a Voices of Our Nation's Artists Foundation Fellowship, and the New Immigrant Writing Award from Restless Books for Antiman. He is currently a professor for the BFA/MFA program in the Writing, Literature, and Publishing department at Emerson University and the Translations Editor at Waxwing Journal.
Following his poetry reading, Mohabir was in conversation with Brandeis University's Professor Faith Smith (AAAS and English).
3:00-4:30PM
MCH 303, Reading Room
March 9, 2022
12:00-12:45PM
MCH Atrium
Open to the public.
March 4, 2022
10:00 - 10:50 am EST - Zheng Bo (Hong Kong based video and installation artist) in conversation with Glyn Davis
11:00 - 11:50 am - Carl Phillips (Prof of English, Washington University, St. Louis) in conversation with Chris Barrett
12:00 - 12:50 pm - Eleanor Kaufman (Prof of Comparative Literature, UCLA) in conversation with Jonathan Flatley
2:00 - 3:00 pm - Manifesto Workshop coordinated by Caren Irr (Professor of English, Brandeis) and Laura Harris (Professor of Cinema Studies, NY)
Zoom
February 9, 2022
12:00-1:00PM
MCH 303, Mandel Reading Room
Speaker: Shoniqua Roach (African and African American Studies & Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies)
Open to the public.
January 27, 2022
12:00-1:00PM
Zoom
Speaker: Émilie Diouf (African and African American Studies, English, and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies)
Open to the public.
Fall 2021
December 1, 2021
12:00-12:45PM
MCH Atrium
Open to the public.
November 19, 2021
In this exciting event sponsored by Mandel Center for the Humanities, FTIM, and the English/ Creative Writing Departments, please join us for a screening of the brand new, highly anticipated 2021 film Candyman. The screening will be followed by a critical conversation led by Brandeis English professor, Dr. Brandon Callender. The discussion will center on the ongoing reimagination of how Blackness is represented within the horror genre.
Join the UDRs and faculty from the English, AAAS, and Film departments for the screening at 6pm, followed by a critical discussion at 7:30pm on November 19, 2021 in Wasserman Cinematheque.
November 9, 2021
Join author Nancy Langston and Brian Donahue, associate professor for Environmental Studies at Brandeis, for a book discussion about climate change and human impact on three species in the U.S. Great Lakes region.
In her book “Climate Ghosts,” environmental historian Langston researches the three so-called “ghost species” in the Great Lakes watershed—woodland caribou, common loons, and lake sturgeon. Ghost species are those that have not gone completely extinct, although they may be extirpated from a particular area. Their traces are still present, whether in DNA, in small fragmented populations, in lone individuals roaming a desolate landscape in search of mates. Learn how climate change and human impact affected these now ghost species, and what it will take to restore them.
This program is part of the Brandeis University Press Author Series 2021 (BUP).
7:00-8:00PM
Zoom
November 3, 2021
This roundtable discussion, part of the MCH's new Humanists at Work series, is meant to initiate a discussion on our campus about the nature of public scholarship and to think more broadly about what research output might look like beyond the typical scholarly monograph. The invited speakers are all located in the academy but take an innovative approach to research, scholarship and publication.
Speakers:
David Sterling Brown—a Shakespeare and premodern critical race studies scholar—is Assistant Professor of English at Binghamton University and he is a current ACLS/Mellon Scholars and Society Fellow in residence with The Racial Imaginary Institute, founded by Claudia Rankine. Brown’s antiracist scholarship is published or forthcoming in Radical Teacher, Shakespeare Bulletin, Shakespeare Studies, White People in Shakespeare, Hamlet: The State of Play, Los Angeles Review of Books and other venues. His forthcoming book projects examine race and whiteness in Shakespearean drama.
Maria Sachiko Cecire is an Associate Professor of Literature at Bard College, where she founded the academic program and Center for Experimental Humanities. She is the author of Re-Enchanted: The Rise of Children’s Fantasy Literature in the Twentieth Century (2019) and is now working on an interdisciplinary project about the intellectual lives of so-called “at-risk” youth and their responses to young adult literature. She is currently on leave from Bard to serve as a program officer in the Higher Learning program at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Marissa López is Professor of English and Chicana/o and Central American Studies at UCLA, researching Chicanx literature from the 19th century to the present. She is the author of Chicano Nations (NYU 2011) and Racial Immanence (NYU 2019), and in 2020 served as a Scholar in Residence at the Los Angeles Public Library with whom she is collaborating to develop a mobile app, “Picturing Mexican America,” that uses geodata to display images of Mexican California to users.
November 3, 2021, 4:00-5:30PM EST
Zoom
Open to the public.
November 3, 2021
12:00-12:45PM
MCH Atrium
Open to the public.
November 3, 2021
Speaker: Paraska Tolan-Szkilnik (Assistant Professor of African and Middle East History, Suffolk University)
11:00AM-12:15PM
Zoom
October 28, 2021
Speaker: Dr. Yang Liu (Chair of Asian Art and Curator of Chinese Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art)10:00-11:30AM on Zoom
This lecture deals with the remarkable relationship between Daoist organization and the Tang court, and the significance of imperial patronage in the development of Tang Daoist art. Tang Daoist sculpture made for the temple is shown to possess a unique quality and iconography, revealing a mixture of religious devotion and political expediency, in which the Tang rulers promoted themselves to be the holy object equal to the god. It was under the strong influence of the imperial court, bound up with political expression and a realistic treatment, that the new methods of approaching the sacred images contributed widely to establish a new repertoire of Daoist imagery, and eventually allowed it to stand apart from its predecessors and its counterpart Buddhist iconography.
October 22, 2021
Graham Greene's The Quiet American
10:00AM-6:00PM
Open to the public.
October 20, 2021
12:00-1:00PM
MCH 303, Mandel Reading Room
Speaker: Patricia Alvarez Astacio (Anthropology)
Open to the public.
October 20, 2021
12:00-12:45PM
MCH Atrium
Open to the public.
September 30, 2021
1:00-2:00PM
MCH 303, Mandel Reading Room
Speaker: Clémentine Fauré-Bellaïche (French and Francophone Studies)
Open to the public.
September 23, 2021
5:00-6:00PM
MCH Atrium
Open to the public. Food and drinks will be served.
September 23, 2021
3:30-5:00PM
MCH 303, Reading Room
On Thursday, September 23, Dr. Leonard Cassuto, professor of English at Fordham University and the author of The New PhD: How to Build a Better Graduate Education who also writes the graduate advisor column for The Chronicle of Higher Education, gave the opening lecture for this year’s programming at the MCH. His talk, “Rethinking the Humanities in Trying Times,” argued that graduate education was already in trouble even before the recent pandemic. Making the case for a more student-centered approach to graduate education, Dr. Cassuto highlighted the fact that humanities graduate education focuses on training students for only one type of job—tenure-track professor at a research institution—even though only a very small minority of students will get that job. Dr. Cassuto put forth concrete suggestions for revitalizing the humanities PhD, such as encouraging public scholarship, focusing on professional skills that transfer to more than one type of job, and reducing the time it takes students to earn a degree in order to make graduate education more relevant and helpful to students who enter a diverse job market. His talk helped the audience reevaluate how they see humanities work in their own departments and to imagine new ways that humanistic thinking can be used in the world.
Spring 2021
May 11, 2021
1:00–2:00 p.m.
Zoom
A celebration of the new year and faculty monographs published in 2019-2020 and 2020-2021.
Free and open to the public.
May 4-7
April 15, 2021
1–2 p.m.
Zoom
Open to the public.
This event will involve a discussion of two texts selected by Professor Brooks: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from a Birmingham Jail and Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience.
Speaker: Daphne A. Brooks, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of African American Studies, Music, American Studies, and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies
Yale University
April 14, 2021
Noon–12:45 p.m.Zoom
Free and open to the public.
April 8, 2021
4:30–6 p.m.
Zoom
Open to the public.
Speaker: Daphne A. Brooks, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of African American Studies, Music, American Studies, and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies
Yale University
April 7, 2021
4:30–6 p.m.
Zoom
Open to the public.
Speaker: Daphne A. Brooks, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of African American Studies, Music, American Studies, and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies
Yale University
March 18, 2021
12–1 p.m.
Zoom
Only open to members of the faculty and invited guests.
Speaker: Faith Smith (English & AAAS)
March 10, 2021
Noon–12:45 p.m.Zoom
Free and open to the public.
February 24, 2021
12-12:45 p.m.Zoom
Free and open to the public.
February 10, 2021
Noon–1 p.m.
Zoom
Only open to members of the faculty and invited guests.
Speakers: John Plotz (English) and John Wardle (Astrophysics)
Fall 2020
November 19, 2020
Noon–1 p.m.Zoom
Only open to members of the faculty and invited guests.
Speakers: Erin Gee (Music)
November 12, 2020
Noon–1:30 p.m.
Zoom
Free and open to the public.
Speakers: Isaiah Wooden (Theater Arts) and Elizabeth Bradfield (Creative Writing)
November 11, 2020
Noon–12:45 p.m.Zoom
Free and open to the public.
November 6, 2020
11 a.m.–5 p.m.
Zoom
Open to the public.
October 22, 2020
3:30-5 p.m.
Zoom
Free and open to the public
Speakers: Muna Guvenc (Fine Arts) and Sheida Soleimani (Fine Arts)
October 21, 2020
12-12:45 p.m.Zoom
Free and open to the public.
October 7, 2020
1-2 p.m.
Zoom
Only open to members of the faculty and invited guests
Speaker: Aida Yuen Wong (Fine Arts & East Asian Studies)
Spring 2020
March 5, 2020
Noon–1 p.m.
MCH 303, Mandel Reading Room
Only open to members of the faculty and invited guests
Speakers: Leslie Griffith (Neuroscience) and Mary Baine Campbell (English)
March 4, 2020
Noon–12:45 p.m.
MCH Atrium
Free and open to the public
These concerts include a light lunch following the 45-60 minute performance.
February 27, 2020
1–2 p.m.
MCH 303, Mandel Reading Room
Only open to members of the faculty and invited guests
Speaker: Gowri Vijaykumar (Sociology)
February 12, 2020
MCH Atrium
Free and open to the public
These concerts include a light lunch following the 45-60 minute performance.
January 30, 2020
Noon–1 p.m.
MCH 303, Mandel Reading Room
Only open to members of the faculty and invited guests
Speakers: Angela Gutchess (Psychology) and Arthur Wingfield (Neuroscience)
January 23, 2020
Noon–1 p.m.
MCH 303, Mandel Reading Room
Only open to members of the faculty and invited guests
Speaker: Alexander Kaye (Near Eastern and Judaic Studies)
Fall 2019
November 21, 2019
Noon–1 p.m.
MCH 303, Mandel Reading Room
Only open to members of the faculty and invited guests
Speakers: Stephen Van Hooser (Biology) and Shantanu Jadhav (Psychology)
November 20, 2019
3:30–5:00 p.m.
Rose Art Museum
Free and open to the public
Speakers: Faith Smith (English) and Raysa Mederos (Romance Studies)
November 13, 2019
Noon–12:45 p.m.
MCH Atrium
Free and open to the public
These concerts include a light lunch following the 45-60 minute performance.
October 31, 2019
1–2 p.m.
MCH 303, Mandel Reading Room
Only open to members of the faculty and invited guests
Speakers: Jim Haber (Biology) and Erin Gee (Music)
October 23, 2019
Noon–12:45 p.m.
MCH Atrium
Free and open to the public
These concerts include a light lunch following the 45-60 minute performance.
October 17, 2019
Noon–1 p.m.
MCH 303, Mandel Reading Room
Speaker: Dorothy Kim (English)
October 2, 2019
2–3:30 p.m.
Rapaporte Treasure Hall
Speakers: Laura Quinney (English) and Govind Sreenivasan (History)
September 20, 2019
9:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.MCH 303 Reading Room
September 18, 2019
Noon–12:45 p.m.
MCH Atrium
Free and open to the public
These concerts include a light lunch following the 45-60 minute performance.
September 11, 2019
1–2 p.m.
MCH 303, Mandel Reading Room
Only open to members of the faculty and invited guests
September 5, 2019
4:30–6:30 p.m.
MCH Atrium
Spring 2019
April 10, 2019
April 4, 2019
Hannah Weiss Muller (History)
March 27, 2019
March 21, 2019
Laura Jockusch (Near Eastern and Judaic Studies)
March 14, 2019
Nancy Langston (Michigan Technological University)
March 13, 2019
Nancy Langston, (Michigan Technological University)
March 13, 2019
Nancy Langston (Michigan Technological University)
March 11, 2019
Nancy Langston (Michigan Technological University)
February 28, 2019
James E. Haber (Biology) and James R. Morris (Biology)
February 27, 2019
Chad Williams (African and African American Studies)
February 13, 2019
February 7, 2019
James Pustejovsky (Computer Science)
February 6, 2019
John F.C. Wardle (Astrophysics)