Campus Humanities Calendar
Thursday, November 12, 2026
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The Center for Children's Books invites you to a Zoom Panel featuring Gregory M. Pfitzer, PhD; Ivy Linton Stabell PhD; and Kate Quealy-Gainer, MIS. Theyl will discuss how founder biographies have impacted how the nation's founding have been told to youth.
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Emblematica (Illinois) and Compositor (U. of Birmingham) are databases that use digital technologies to explore the early modern text-image interface. Join Dr. Hazel Wilkinson (Birmingham) to learn how historical readers used “emblem-literacy” to engage with ornamented books in ways previously unaccounted for in scholarship.
Sunday, November 15, 2026
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Professor Olha Khometa and MFA Candidate Malina Infante will be leading a joint lecture on Ukrainian Modernists Pavlo Tychyna, Lesya Ukraïnka, and Olha Kobylianska. Malina will finish the lecture with a reading of her poetry inspired by the Ukrainian modernist movement. A reception will follow after the event.
Monday, November 16, 2026
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"Elizabeth Vartkessian works with criminal defense teams as a mitigation specialist. She isn't part of the Innocence Project; her clients are often legally guilty, and often of terrible crimes. Rather, her job is to spend hundreds of hours per case talking to the parents, siblings, teachers, and neighbors of a defendant, situating their crimes in context.
Tuesday, November 17, 2026
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Drawing on more than a decade of Truth Hounds' Work in Ukraine, Dr. Dmytro Koval of Kyiv Mohyla Academy will examine how documentation can be transformed into investigations, legal analysis, case-building, and engagement with national and international justice mechanisms.
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Please join the Unit for Criticism for a Modern Critical Theory lecture by Thomas Davis (English, Ohio State) on Environmental Humanities.
Thursday, November 19, 2026
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This Faculty-Graduate seminar, hosted by Prof. Melamed, will explore the idea that to truly and effectively call capital into question, we need approaches outside the liberal epistemologies that dominate Western and scholarly modes of understanding and analysis. Register now (required) to gain access to the texts.
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The 2026 Stewart Young Humanitarian Speaker Series features esteemed guest is Luis Jaimes-Illanes, co-founder of Conecta Mentora, a program that brings together youth from urban, rural, and Indigenous communities with world-class mentors and institutions, and a Senior Network Engineer at Altaeros. In his fireside chat, he will share how his involvement on campus helped pre
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Please join us for a talk by Prof. Melamed. The talk will argue that the repressive strategies used by Marc Rowan and others against Palestine on the UPenn campus serve to institute pro-power pedagogies at U.S. universities and beyond.
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Join the Department of Philosophy for a lecture in the Illinois Forum on Human Flourishing in a Digital Age Speaker Series with Agnes Callard. Her talk, titled "Welcome to the Unicontext" explores how we increasingly expect one set of norms to govern all situations and all people.
Thursday, December 3, 2026
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Please join us for talks by recent CAS Associates. At 11am Kimberly Mack (English) draws from her critical memoir Brown Sugar Blues to consider the reasons and costs of Black women's erasure from rock, and at noon, Laura Hetrick (Art + Design) asks: What happens when neurodivergent people become the authors of their own stories?
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Join us for our December Town Hall with special Guest Speaker Shad Bradbury, Animator with Pixar Animations Studios. Shad Bradbury has worked in animation for over 20 years at studios like Pixar, Sony, Tippet, and Rhythm and Hues. His credits include, "Elio", "Coco", "Finding Dory", "Inside Out", "Hotel Transylvania", and "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2".
Tuesday, December 8, 2026
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For the final Food For Thought presentation of the semester, we're pleased to offer an English double-header! At 11am, Tess McNulty considers the cultural history of viral content from an aesthetic perspective, and at noon, Alex Shakar reads from and discusses his forthcoming novel, Play the Void.
Thursday, February 11, 2027
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Justice in the Balance: Democracy, Rule of Law, and the European Court of Human Rights
Tuesday, February 16, 2027
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At the February Town Hall we will speak with VFX Artist Lisa Starc, Principal VFX Artist, at Monumental. Lisa Starc is a highly technical real time VFX artist with 20+ years of experience in the video game industry. She has worked as a VFX artist at Netflix Games, Boss Fight Entertainment, Amazon Games, and High Voltage Software.
Wednesday, March 3, 2027
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More information is coming.
Thursday, March 4, 2027
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Patricia Owens Book Talk: Erased: A History of International Thought Without Men.
Wednesday, March 10, 2027
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Please join us for a presentation and discussion with Mitch Cronin, Senior Tech Producer, Santa Monica Studio. Mitch Cronin is a Senior Producer and Release Manager with nearly 19 years of game development experience. He's worked on the development side as well as publishing. Over his long career he has worked on many AAA titles as well as indie titles.
Thursday, April 1, 2027
Thursday, April 15, 2027
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More info is coming.
Monday, April 26, 2027
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“Once Upon a Time in the Jazira: Archaeology and the Mass Graves of the Armenian Genocide”. Professor Lori Khatchadourian, Departments of Near Eastern Studies & Anthropology, Cornell University. Director, Cornell Institute of Archaeology & Material Studies.