Campus Humanities Calendar

Join us for a hybrid CEAPS Brown Bag talk titled “Tales of Asian Boys’ Love: Translanguaging and Transmediality of Romance in Selected Japanese, Thai, and Filipino Series” with Cheeno Marlo M. Sayuno (Postdoctoral Research Associate in the School of Information Sciences and Associate Professor at University of the Philippines Los Baños).

Join us for a screening of Kahlil Joseph's feature debut—a mix of archival footage, narrative, and Black intellectual thought spanning voices like W. E. B. Du Bois, Saidiya Hartman, Fred Moten, and artistic luminaries like Arthur Jafa and Garrett Bradley.

A lecture in the Forum on Human Flourishing in a Digital Age series featuring Brett Robinson(University of Notre Dame). Drawing on thinkers such as Wendell Berry, Paul Kingsnorth, and James Carey—as well as emerging experiments in digital fasting and community-building.

Attend a screening of the newly-released documentary film, Against the Current at Spurlock Museum on Wednesday, February 11, 2026 from 5:30-7:30 p.m. In the film Kyla, a high school senior and community organizer in Chicago, journeys across the state of Illinois in search of ways that Black people have resisted oppression across time.

Join the Center for Children's Books for an engaging discussion on book challenges in Illinois schools. Leah Gregory (Illinois Heartland Library System) and Vicki Pietrus (Niles West High School) will discuss how Illinois school libraries have been impacted by the rise of book challenges and bans, including the climate in the state.

The OVCRI – Humanities, Arts, and Related Fields is hosting this session on the National Endowment for the Humanities and its programs, including the Fellowship (anticipated deadline is April 8, 2026). We will provide guidance for navigating recent changes at the agency and have time for conversation and Q& A. Please RSVP to Kelley Frazier (kdfrazie@illinois.edu) for the Z

Join the WRC on Friday, February 13 at 12 noon at the University YMCA for the annual Verdell Frazier Young Symposium Distinguished Speaker event in conjunction with the Friday Forum/Conversation Cafe series, featuring reproductive justice activist, abortion storyteller, and writer, Renee Bracey Sherman. For more information: go.illinois.edu/reneebraceysherman

How does recognizing the fundamental entanglements of humans and the more-than-human world impact notions of "justice"? Drawing on perceptions from diverse communities, disciplines, and social, political, and historical contexts, this symposium will provide a space for us to grapple with the question: What might a more just world or worlds look like in the 21st century?

Northwestern University philosopher Sandford Goldberg explores how we might modify or expand Stalnaker’s Common Ground framework to capture the normative dimension of inquiry and conversation. Goldberg suggests that we should make room for normative expectations both within common ground and about common ground, with far-reaching implications for epistemology.

Join in the fun as Urbana’s newest period instrument ensemble, directed by internationally renowned harpsichordist Charlotte Mattax Moersch explores the musical puzzles in Bach’s great masterpiece, The Musical Offering, along other gems of the Baroque.

Join in the fun as Urbana's newest period instrument ensemble, directed by internationally renowned harpsichordist Charlotte Mattax Moersch explores the musical puzzles in Bach's great masterpiece, The Musical Offering, along other gems of the Baroque.

Wagner's talk, “'As Usual You Have Produced Yet Another Installment Worthy of Archiving': The Persistence of Obsolescence in Queer Information & Media Technologies," uses archival object case studies to call attention to how data exists within the objects of queer history...

Happy Black History Month, Campus Community! As we observe 100 years of formal celebrations of Black history, the Department of African American Studies is hosting its Spring 2026 Colloquium Series. The series starts on Wednesday, February 18, 2026, from 12pm to 1:30pm, with a talk by Dr. Alisa Hardy (Dept. of Communication). All talks are in-person only.

STUDENTS: Connect with industry professionals and current interns in the arts and culture! Learn about the career possibilities connected with arts and culture. Talk to working professionals in museums, cultural outreach, performing arts, arts administration, public media, and related fields.

A reading by Callie Siskel made possible by the Robert J. and Katherin Carr visiting author series. Callie Siskel is the author of Two Minds, forthcoming from W. W. Norton, and Arctic Revival, selected by Elizabeth Alexander for a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship.

Carlos Alberto Torres, Distinguished Professor at UCLA and former director of UCLA's Latin American Center, will give a lecture celebrating the extraordinary humanitarian career of Paulo Freire, author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, in which he analyzed the analogous relationship of colonizer and colonized to that of teacher and student.

Carlos Alberto Torres, Distinguished Professor at UCLA and former director of UCLA's Latin American Center, will give a lecture celebrating the extraordinary humanitarian career of Paulo Freire, author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, in which he analyzed the analogous relationship of colonizer and colonized to that of teacher and student.

On February 19, Carlos Alberto Torres, Distinguished Professor at UCLA and former director of UCLA's Latin American Center, will give a lecture celebrating the extraordinary humanitarian career of Paulo Freire, author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, in which he analyzed the analogous relationship of colonizer and colonized to that of teacher and student.

This presentation examines the entangled histories of Indigenous land dispossession, the founding of the land-grant university system, and epistemicide in settler colonial institutions. This talk draws a direct line between the violent expropriation of Indigenous territories to the erasure of Indigenous peoples on campuses and in American institutions at large.

While the second law of thermodynamics states that entropy increases over time, in some systems entropy decreases in parts of the system while increasing in others. A zebra resists or exploits the second law by shunting extra entropy into its environment. Philosopher Heather Demarest (University of Colorado, Boulder)

Deep dive into the digitized Domestic Science/Home Economics archival collections. In this edit-a-thon, we'll be transcribing documents, identifying people, and translating information into Wikidata. Each session will have an introduction before working with the documents, and we'll be circulating guides ahead of the session.

Around the turn of the twentieth century, a group of Yiddish-speaking educators, authors, and cultural leaders undertook a bold project: creating a corpus of nearly one thousand books and several periodicals, which flourished in conjunction with the secular Yiddish school systems that spanned the globe in the 1920s and 30s.

Dr. Elias Petrou will explore the evolution and transmission of the Greek book from East to West, beginning with an overview of the Byzantine educational system, the preservation and transmission of classical Greek knowledge through manuscripts, and how this inherited book culture was transformed through the new technology of print.

Erin Brock Carlson’s research centers the relationships between place, technology, and power, focusing on how communities work together to address complex public problems through communication and community organizing. She uses community-based and participatory approaches in her research.

Chicago-based artist Oscar Joyo will discuss his vivid and colorful public murals, underscoring the purpose of art and understanding the power of art to create narratives and tell stories about the history of place, the significance of the present, and the hopes for the future. He will also share details of his local engagement with students from Stratton Elementary School

Join us for our HYBRID Brown Bag talk titled “Zhou Zuoren at Tiger Bridge” with Professor Jingling Chen from the East Asian Languages & Cultures Department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Join us for talks from our recent Associates and Fellows. At 11am Yi-Cheng Wang (Food Science & Human Nutrition) discusses the development of self-powered light-based sanitizers to enhance food safety and at noon...

Dr. Justin R. Garcia is an evolutionary biologist and sex researcher. He is executive director and senior scientist at the Kinsey Institute, Ruth N. Halls Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences, and adjunct professor of medicine at Indiana University, Bloomington.

The Center for the Study of Global Gender Equity and the Humanities Research Institute host the annual campus celebration of International Women's Day with “12 Women Who Changed the World: Untold Stories.”

The 24th annual Women’s and Gender History Symposium at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will take place March 5-7, 2026. This year’s theme is Gender and Labor. This year's conference will feature graduate research and keynote speakers Dr. Arunima Datta and Dr. Eric McDuffie.

SPEAK stands for Song, Poetry, Art, and Knowledge. It is an open-mic public performance space at Krannert Art Museum curated by local artist, Shaya Robinson, featuring guest performers and welcoming all to the mic. *Parking nearby is free after 5 pm and on weekends.*

Professor Bharat Mehra, University of Alabama, on "From Trauma, Anxieties, and Dislocation at Intersecting Margins in a South Asian Experience and Beyond to Social Justice: “If Life Gives You Bananas Make Mango Shake”

This informal group aims to bring together graduate students from across campus to share their enthusiasm for the thought-provoking scholarship that animates them as people. Light refreshments will be provided. This edition of Scholarship Out Loud will be part of the 2026 Women’s and Gender History Symposium.

Please join us for the launch of Black, Jewish, and Beautiful: Contemporary Blewish Voices (Syracuse University Press, 2026). This anthology, co-edited by Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell, Sara Feldman, and Brett Ashley Kaplan, brings together impactful perspectives from diverse Blewish/Black Jewish landscapes in the U.S. and globally.

Please join us for the launch of Black, Jewish, and Beautiful: Contemporary Blewish Voices (Syracuse University Press, 2026). This anthology, co-edited by Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell, Sara Feldman, and Brett Ashley Kaplan, brings together impactful perspectives from diverse Blewish/Black Jewish landscapes in the U.S. and globally.

Ingrid Sinclair’s feature-length film Flame (1986) tells the story of two young African women who join the liberation struggle for Zimbabwe in the 1970s. The film follows Flame and Liberty as they are faced with sexual harassment by male freedom fighters and later, by the patriarchy of the newly liberated Zimbabwe.

We are delighted to showcase the work of some of our most productive and creative faculty in this informal series of intellectually and spiritually invigorating presentations. You are invited to drop in when you can to learn about the exciting projects undertaken by our faculty.

CAS Associate 2024-25 Merle Bowen (African American Studies) discusses her research that brings to light untold stories of African-descended communities in Atlantic Canada. With support from the Center for African Studies and the Department of African American Studies.

From its invention in the Bronze Age, glass was conceived as “molten stone” and continuously used to emulate gems, gold, and rare marbles. Drawing on archaeological finds, representations in art works, and written sources, Dr. Anastasios Antonaras (Museum of Byzantine Culture, Thessaloniki,)

HGMS annual conference, 9a-5pm. Location TBD.

Please join us for the seventh annual symposium in Holocaust, Genocide, Memory Studies. The past annual symposia were wonderful, and we hope that this conference will continue to showcase diverse and brilliant work within memory studies (broadly conceived) of graduate students. The keynote will be at 11am by Solomon Brager, author of Heavyweight.

This informal group aims to bring together graduate students from across campus to share their enthusiasm for the thought-provoking scholarship that animates them as people. Bring your lunch and stop by to listen and chat!

Story & Place event series: Anke Pinkert Book Talk 4pm

Join us to celebrate the book launch of Richard (Chip) Burkhardt's The Leopard in the Garden: Animal and Human Lives in Paris at the First Public Zoo of the Modern Era (U of C Press, April 2026). Professor Burkhardt will share some highlights of the book, then participate in a panel discussion with local and visiting scholars.

A reading by alumni of the creative writing program, Jessica Tanck and Matthew Gavin Frank. This event is made possible by the Robert J. and Katherin Carr visiting author series.

2026 Pakistan Studies Lecture by Professor Saad Gulzar, University of Notre Dame on "Politics, Bureaucracy, and the Promise of Better Governance in Pakistan" NO REGISTRATION required.

Jesse Oak Taylor (U Washington), Jonathan Howard (Yale U), Sarah Dimick (Northwestern U), and Min Hyoung Song (Boston College) join UI faculty in a series of talks and a concluding roundtable, which together will take up the question of how the study of literary history can contribute to our understanding of both the causes of and potential solutions...

Join us for a hybrid CEAPS Speaker talk "Finding An Audience: Japan’s First Women Architects and the NHK Ladies' Classroom" with Dr. Michelle L. Hauk (Washington University in St. Louis). Register here!

Award-winning Palestinian artist and filmmaker Basma al-Sharif will present early and recent film works, Morgenkreis/Morning Circle (2025, 20:31minutes), which follows a father and son in their intimate rituals as they prepare to start the day and head to kindergarten; Capital (2023, 19 minutes)...

A reading by Stephen Markley, made possible by the Robert J. and Katherin Carr visiting author series. Stephen Markley is the author of The Deluge, hailed by The New York Times Book Review as an Editor's choice. His previous books include the critically acclaimed bestseller Ohio, as well as Publish this Book and Tales of Iceland.

Join us to help celebrate Political Science professor & CEAPS Advisory Board member Yujeong Yang on her new book! Refreshments will be served. Please register here!

2026 Indian Languages and Cultures Lecture by Professor Andrew Ollett, University of Chicago, on "Context, from 7th century India to today". NO REGISTRATION required.

Undergraduates of any major are invited to this informal lunch talk with Rita Dove. Dove served as US Poet Laureate from 1993–1995. She was a winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in poetry and the 2023 honorary National Book Award.

Join us for a free public reading by award-winning poet Rita Dove. Dove served as US Poet Laureate from 1993 to 1995, and was a winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in poetry and the 2023 honorary National Book Award.

Join us for presentations by our recent CAS Associates. At 11am Ramón Soto-Crespo (English) discusses the origin of Puerto Rico's ecological literature and at noon, Alison Bell (Evolution, Ecology, & Behavior) presents the evolution of family life in a small fish.

Join us for a discussion with GAM Visiting Artist Paul O'Mahony, Founder and Director, Out of Chaos Theatre (London, UK).

2026 Screening and Discussion: Zinda Bhaag (2013), will be an event of film screening and introduction followed by Q/A with Professor Iftikhar Dadi, Cornell University. A reception will follow. NO REGISTRATION required.

This public event will begin with a lecture by Dr. Warren C. Brown (California Institute of Technology discussing medieval textuality and materiality. A reception and open house will follow where visitors may view our recently acquired Merovingian manuscript and Greek papyrus. All are welcome, and refreshments will be served.

Book launch of Ethan Madarieta's Land's Language: On Mapuche Memory, Translation, and the Territorial Aporia.

Please join us for the launch of Ethan Madarieta’s first book, Land's Language: On Mapuche Memory, Translation, and the Territorial Aporia.

Grad students from all disciplines are invited to the 16th Gesa E. Kirsch Graduate Student Symposium, April 23–24, 2026—an interdisciplinary, student-led event featuring diverse presentations, workshops, and a keynote by Kaia Simon (UW Eau Claire). Proposals on writing, rhetoric, media, education, and more are welcome in traditional or experimental formats.

In honor of the annual commemoration of the Armenian Genocide, Helen Makhdoumian will give a talk entitled "On Beginnings, or the Roots and Routes of the Nested Memory Concept.”

Annual Armenian Genocide Event, featuring Helen Makhdoumian (Postdoc, Vanderbilt University)

Join us for a hybrid CEAPS Speaker/Political Science Workshop titled “From Correction to Connection: Relational Approaches to Countering Misinformation” with Cesi Cruz (University of Michigan). Register here!

The PhD Program in Architecture and Landscape Architecture hosts a keynote lecture by Hi'ilei Julia Hobart (Native and Indigenous Studies, Yale) as part of the symposium "Creativity in Modern Heritage." Hobart is author of Cooling the Tropics: Ice, Indigeneity, and Hawaiian Refreshment (Duke University Press, 2022).

Celebrate the semester’s end with RBML! We are diving into the trendy book decoration world — bring your own books and paint the edges with our supplies, then view various historical fore-edge paintings from the collection in our Reading Room. All are welcome to attend, and refreshments will be served.

Prizes for Research Ceremony and Reception