Event category: Center for Humanities
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Books at the Brewery
Join us at Eastern Divide Brewing Company for a celebration of recently published humanities-related books by Virginia Tech faculty. Enjoy light refreshments and connect with the authors as they share insights into their work, answer your questions, and engage in conversation about their research. If you are an individual with a disability and desire an […]
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Justin Horn, “Ethics Bowl: A ‘Gamified’ Approach to Ethics Education”
Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl is a co-curricular activity centered on thoughtful and civil debate about contemporary moral issues. Students involved in Ethics Bowl do background research, analyze and critique ethical arguments, collaboratively seek consensus, and hone their public speaking skills in a competitive setting. This talk presents an overview of how Ethics Bowl works and surveys […]
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Rachel Stauffer, “A Few Good (White) Men: American Russian Studies, 1945 – 1965”
This talk will critically describe ideologies and identities involved in the formation of education about Russia in the US between the end of World War II in 1945 and the Higher Education Act of 1965. Using critical race theory, Rachel Stauffer will specifically discuss observable white interest convergence with anticommunism, and lack thereof with race […]
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Andrew Wadoski, “Shylock’s Paul”
This talk will examine Shakespeare’s Shylock as a reader of Paul. It focuses on this character’s strategic inhabitation of the image of the Jew, and of the dialectical relationship between Judaism and Christianity, imagined in Paul’s epistle to the Romans. It might consider the relationship between typology, credit, and theft; perhaps, as well, that pound […]
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Rachel Midura, “Spying on the Early Modern Embassy: Digital Approaches to the History of Espionage”
This talk examines the preliminary use of network, text, and spatial analysis to enrich the reports of a seventeenth-century spy. Discussion will focus on the value and limitations of new technologies for a deepened history of espionage, surveillance, and conspiracy. Rachel Midura is an assistant professor of early modern European and digital history. Midura approaches […]
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Monamie Haines, “Citizen Bureaucraft: An Ecology of Social Justice Activism in Singapore”
Not all nonliberal spaces are alike. This presentation conceptualises “citizen bureaucraft” in contrast to “citizen science” in how social justice-oriented activists engage with the state around technoscientific matters in Singapore. Monamie Bhadra Haines is an assistant professor in the field of science and technology studies, and works on the politics of power and expertise around […]
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Sean Sidky, “‘Between nightmare and insanity’: Arn Zeitlin’s Holocaust Ghosts”
This paper examines the place and irreducible presence of ghosts, specters, demons in poetry of the Holocaust – particularly poetry written by Yididsh poets who were in the US during WWII. Sean Sidky is Visiting Assistant Professor in Judaic Studies in the Department of Religion and Culture. His research focuses on American Judaism, Jewish literatures […]
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Humanities Colloquium Series with P.S. Polanah
This week the Humanities Colloquium Series features P.S. Polanah (Sociology) speaking on “Ex-Orbit-ant Claims:” Researching Ufology, cryptozoology, Remote Viewing, and other Western uncanonized knowledges.” The Humanities Colloquium Series meets every two weeks and features brief presentations by the Faculty Associates of the Center for Humanities. Feel free to bring your own lunch.
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“Local Memories, National Narratives” Workshop (Vjeran Pavlakovic, University of Rijeka)
In this in-class workshop, we will be exploring the local, national, and international implications of local memory sites. However, you have a little homework in order to participate: explore and take pictures of a local memory site. You can focus on one in Blacksburg, the place you call home, and/or anywhere you are travelling in […]
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The Muralization of War: A Comparitive Approach to Graffiti, Murals, and Memory Politics (Vjeran Pavlakovic, University of Rijeka)
Dr. Pavlakovic will explore how murals fit into the larger mosaic of mnemonic (i.e. collective memory) production in Croatia and the other Yugoslav successor states: who finances them, who creates them, what is the legal framework for political murals in public space, and what are the cultural policies that determine their content? Furthermore, what is […]