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March 2023
2023 Schoff Memorial Lecture Series, II
Hidden Hybridities II: The Afrogenesis Hypothesis of Creole Language Origins Much of my academic work addresses the results in language of contact between groups. My main interests are in revealing hybridities hitherto unsuspected, and in refining our conception of hybridities more obvious. My goal, addressing a wide range of languages and also extending to music, is to wean us from preconceptions due to superficial appearances, distracting gulfs between the present and the past, and concerns more local to our moment…
Find out more »April 2023
2023 Schoff Memorial Lecture Series, III
Hidden Hybridities III: The Black American Roots of the Broadway Musical Sound Much of my academic work addresses the results in language of contact between groups. My main interests are in revealing hybridities hitherto unsuspected, and in refining our conception of hybridities more obvious. My goal, addressing a wide range of languages and also extending to music, is to wean us from preconceptions due to superficial appearances, distracting gulfs between the present and the past, and concerns more local to…
Find out more »October 2023
Memory Studies: New Directions
Please join us to discuss two recent collections in Memory Studies and to take stock of new directions in the field. Irene Kacandes, editor of On Being Adjacent to Historical Violence (De Gruyter, 2022), and Brett Kaplan, editor of Critical Memory Studies (Routledge, 2023), will each introduce their volumes and reflect on how the pandemic lock-down inflected the books' contributions. Contributors Claudia Breger, Leo Spitzer, Marita Sturken, Sonali Thakkar, and James Young will offer brief accounts of key memory studies concepts emerging from their essays.…
Find out more »Crooked Plow: Translating Social Justice in Brazil
Crooked Plow: Translating Social Justice in Brazil Join us for a discussion of Brazilian author Itamar Vieira Junior’s best-selling novel Crooked Plow, now available in English. Our speakers will explore translation, literary writing, social justice work, and the long shadow that slavery casts. Co-Sponsored by the University Seminar on Public Humanities: Expanding Scholarship and Pedagogy; Columbia University Department of History; The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities; Columbia Global Centers, Rio De Janeiro; Institute of Latin American…
Find out more »November 2023
Fall 2023 Schoff Memorial Lecture Series | Lecture I
The Abundant In Between Time I: People in Me: Mapping Maya’s Circle, Following Abbey's Road Monday, November 13, 2023, 8 pm Farah Jasmine Griffin The William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative Literature and African American and African Diaspora Studies, Columbia University Drawing upon Maya Angelou’s memoirs, The Heart of a Woman (1981) and All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), these lectures identify a few of her friends, singer, composer, Abbey Lincoln, novelist, Paule Marshall and art historian, ethnographer, Sylvia Ardyn…
Find out more »Fall 2023 Schoff Memorial Lecture Series | II
The Abundant In Between Time II: A Timeless Tale: Paule Marshall’s Underappreciated Great Work, “The Chosen Place, The Timeless People” Monday, November 20, 2023, 8 pm Farah Jasmine Griffin The William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative Literature and African American and African Diaspora Studies, Columbia University Drawing upon Maya Angelou’s memoirs, The Heart of a Woman (1981) and All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), these lectures identify a few of her friends, singer, composer, Abbey Lincoln, novelist, Paule Marshall and…
Find out more »January 2024
Making Connections for the Study of the Hebrew Bible
The conference is intended to encourage regional HB scholars and PhD students to make or strengthen personal connections with one another. At the same time, we hope to highlight interdisciplinary, intercultural, and intertextual connections that many of us are making in our scholarship on the Hebrew Bible The day will be prepared for by gathering responses from planned participants (both attendees and presenters) with 1-2 sentences giving a brief pointer to how they have found an interdisciplinary connection useful for their research…
Find out more »March 2024
Reception in Memory of Francesco Pellizzi
The University Seminar for the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas will be hosting a reception to celebrate the life and achievements of Dr. Francesco Pellizzi, who joined the ancestors in August 2023. Francesco served generously as chair or co-chair of the seminar for 18 years (2005-23), which, under his guidance, made a huge contribution to the life of the department and the university. Thanks to Francesco’s international stature as an anthropologist, art critic, and the Founder and Editor…
Find out more »April 2024
Criminalized Again: Culture(s) of LGBTQI+ In Search for Freedom
Please join the Harriman Institute, the University Seminar on Slavic History and Culture, the Department of Slavic Languages, and the Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender of Columbia University and Leeds University UK for the conference “Criminalized Again: Culture(s) of LGBTQI+ in Search for Freedom.” Organized by Mark Lipovetsky (Columbia University) and Vlad Strukov (Leeds University, UK). REGISTRATION LINK
Find out more »77th Annual Dinner
The University Seminars invites you to join us for the Annual Dinner on April 17, 2024. Each spring, The University Seminars community gathers for a celebratory meal, to hear the Tannenbaum Lecture delivered by a distinguished speaker, and to witness the presentation of the Tannenbaum-Warner Award to an outstanding and long-serving member of The Seminars’ community. This year, the Tannenbaum-Warner awardee is Alice Newton, who retired in 2023 after a long career at The University Seminars. The Tannenbaum Lecture, “’What…
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