Mandel Center for the Humanities

Lecture 1 - “Afro Paris: City of Lights and Darkness”

The aim is to explore the complex and often contradictory experience of being Afro-descendant in Paris. While the city is celebrated globally as a symbol of enlightenment, culture, and opportunity, and a place of refuge, it also embodies systemic inequities, colonial legacies, and racial discrimination that cast a shadow over its bright reputation.
Through this lens, the theme examines Paris as a space of duality—where Afro-descendant communities contribute vibrantly to its identity but also face exclusion, stereotypes, and socio-economic challenges. It reflects on how the city’s history, policies, and culture intersect with race and power, and rethinks Paris as both a beacon of light and a site of struggle for equity and recognition.

Lecture 2 - “Universalism Reimagined: Framing a Grounded Universality”

This lecture challenges the dominant narrative of universalism grounded in the Enlightenment philosophy and, often heralded as a foundation of equality and justice, by interrogating its history and applications. While universalism claims to transcend differences and promote equality, it has frequently been weaponized to impose a singular, Eurocentric perspective that erases cultural diversity and reinforces systemic racism.
It is a proposal for a vision of “grounded universality,” one that respects pluralism, centers historically excluded voices, and reimagines universalism as a framework rooted in equity, inclusion, and shared humanity rather than domination.

Lecture 3 - “Surveillance and Assimilation: Policing Bodies Under Universal Pretense”

This conference addresses how universalist ideals are weaponized to control and assimilate non-white bodies, particularly those of Muslim and non-white women. Framed as upholding neutrality and equality, these policies and social norms often serve to enforce conformity to white standards while marginalizing diverse identities.
The discussion delves into examples such as bans on the hijab, which claim to liberate women while denying them agency, and the imposition of beauty norms, that devalue cultural expressions. These practices are examined as tools of surveillance and assimilation, where bodies are policed to fit a narrow definition of “acceptable” citizenship under the guise of universalism.

Jackie Wang is a scholar, multimedia artist, Assistant Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, and an American Democracy Fellow at Harvard’s Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History. She is the author of the critical essay collection Carceral Capitalism (Semiotext(e), 2018), the poetry collection The Sunflower Cast a Spell to Save Us from the Void (2021), which was a finalist for the National Book Award; and the essay collection Alien Daughters Walk into the Sun (Semiotext(e), 2023). Her research is on racial capitalism, surveillance technology, and the political economy of prisons and police.

Lecture 1 - The Deep Sea as the New Frontier of Accumulation

Lecture 2 - Poetry and Tidalectics

Lecture 3 - Oceanic Feeling and the Politics of Mysticism

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.

Lecture 1 - Dragademia — Dressing Up the University

Lecture 2 - Lessons in Drag with LaWhore Vagistan

Lecture 3 - Divas, Drag Queens, Aunties and Other Academic Personas

Colm Tóibín, Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities

Columbia University

• Lecture 1: "Between Heaven and Harlem: James Baldwin's Beginnings"
  
• Lecture 2: "Stranger in Each Village: James Baldwin in the World"
  

"We the People": Protest Music in America and the Black Freedom Struggle

Daphne A. Brooks, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of African American Studies, Music, American Studies, and Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies
Yale University

• Lecture 1: "Invisible Music: The Sonic Idea of Black Revolution From Captivity to Reconstruction"
• Lecture 2: "Solidarity in Sound: Grassroots Arrangements & Civil Rights Transformation"
• Lecture 3: "'Scratching the Celluloid': Sonic Plotting & Planning While Facing the 21st Century Catastrophe"

Environmental Humanities and the New Mobilities of the Anthropocene: Climate Change and Animal Migrations in the North

Nancy Langston, Distinguished Professor of Environmental History, Member of the Great Lakes Research Center
Michigan Technological University

• Lecture 1: “Ghost Species: The Uncertain Future of Woodland Caribou in the Anthropocene”

• Lecture 2: “Welcoming Back Namao: Indigenous Communities and Restoration of the Great Lakes Sturgeon”

• Lecture 3: “Climate Grief: Toxics, Global Warming, and Loons in the Boreal North”

The Alien, The Ghost, The Post-human: Why Fiction Matters in Contemporary China

David Der-Wei Wang, Edward C. Henderson Professor of Chinese Literature
Harvard University

Resulting Book Publication: “Why Fiction Matters in Contemporary China” (forthcoming October 2020)

Provincializing Europe in a Warming World: On the Relevance and Limits of Postcolonial Criticism

Dipesh Chakrabarty, Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor of History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations, and the College
University of Chicago

Memoirs of a Jewish Girlhood

Wendy Doniger, Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of the History of Religions
University of Chicago Divinity School
also in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, the Committee on Social Thought, and the College

Resulting Book Publication: “The Donigers of Great Neck: A Mythologized Memoir” (2019)

Divine Spark of Syracuse

Ingrid Rowland, Professor of Classical and Renaissance Architecture
University of Notre Dame

Resulting Book Publication: “The Divine Spark of Syracuse” (2018)

Letters to a Young Writer

James Wood
Professor of the Practice of Literary Criticism
Harvard University

Resulting Book Publication: “The Nearest Thing to Life” (2015)

Judaizing Aesthetics: Painting, Poetry, Politics

David Nirenberg, Deborah R. and Edgar D. Jannotta Distinguished Service Professor of Social Thought, Medieval History, Fundamentals, Middle East Studies, Romance Languages and Literatures, and the College
University of Chicago

Resulting Book Publication: “Aesthetic Theology and its Enemies: Judaism in Christian Painting, Poetry, and Politics” (2015)