Speakers

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)

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.

Prof. 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.

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.

A new history of slavery and the slave trade in the medieval Middle East based on the Cairo Geniza archive, with attention to such crucial topics as the slave trade in state diplomacy, the entanglements of gender and household slavery, and the lives of the enslaved.

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

In this session, presenters will make an argument for teaching students about the limitations of GenAI tools rather than simply telling them not to use it. They will provide examples of how to integrate critical AI literacy into a variety of classes, including training on AI course policies, reflecting on ethical quandaries, and exercises using large language models.

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...

Shannon Mattern, Director of Creative Research at the Metropolitan New York Library Council, will present on the cross-disciplinary design practice through which the new Library Field project is coming into fruition. We’ll examine how myriad design fields—from traffic and water engineering, to landscape and interface design, to wayfinding and media curation—converge...

Please join the HRI Sport Studies Research Cluster for a guest talk by Dr. Anna Baeth, senior research manager for Athlete Ally. Her talk will center on the science of trans athletes. What does bench science empirically prove about transgender athletes and their place in sport?

This talk will highlight the Kinsey Institute’s founding and multi-disciplinary history, continued cultural impact, current research program, and reflect on the ways in which today’s social and political climate presents new challenges for multi-disciplinary sex research.

Prize-winning filmmaker Simon Bright will present on the challenges of preserving cinematic records of the liberation struggles of Southern Africa.

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 panelists will talk about building AI Literacy for language teachers, both by sharing tools that can support educators and by recognizing the ways AI poses new challenges for teachers. They will also share examples for approaching AI Literacy for learners, including helping students better understand how AI use can impact their language learning, for better or worse.

Professor Buff (Univ. of Wisconsin) traces the rise of private consultancies from 20th-century managerial capitalism and the military-industrial complex to their entry into higher education during neoliberal reforms of the 1980s, expanding further through disaster capitalism after the 2008 Great Recession and the Covid-19 pandemic.

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”

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.

Join us for a lecture with Jennifer Chuong, an assistant professor in the Department of Art History at the U of I. This lecture examines the invention of carborundum mezzotint by the African American artist Dox Thrash (1893-1965), arguing that the technique's significance lies not only in its aesthetic effects but in the labor surrounding its discovery and production.

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.

The Center for Writing Studies invites you to our lecture on Thursday, October 16, featuring Dr. Toby Beauchamp, an Associate Professor of Gender and Women's Studies and affiliate faculty in the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

The Center for Writing Studies will be hosting Dr. Bobby J. Smith II for a brownbag talk! Dr. Smith will be giving a lecture titled "Writing the Forgotten Black Past: Brief Notes on Recovery." Please join us on Thursday, March 12!

Journalist Helmuth (Slate, Scientific American, Washington Post) will argue that as universities, public health bodies, science agencies, and publishers face growing political attacks, scholars must build public support for academic freedom, long-term research, honest history, and life-saving health policy by engaging journalists and mass media directly.

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.

Merle Bowen, CAS Associate 2024-25 (African American Studies), presents her recent work that sheds light on the hitherto untold stories of Black rural life in Atlantic Canada, analyzing the diverse experiences of people of African descent and by situating them as speakers and agents of their own lives.

Dr. Anastasios Antonaras (Museum of Byzantine Culture, Thessaloniki,) places Byzantine glass in context to a wider Mediterranean tradition where it emerges as a powerful medium of splendor, authority, and sacred presence.

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.

An informative roundtable conversation about the use of Gen AI in students' educational journeys, personal lives, and career preparations. Several students from the Bruce D. Nesbitt African American Cultural Center (BNAACC) will share how they use Gen AI as learning tool, remain aware of AI's cultural impacts in society, and build AI skills for career preparations.

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.

The Leopard in the Garden: Animal and Human Lives in Paris at the First Public Zoo of the Modern Era presents the inner workings of the menagerie at the Paris Museum of Natural History and how visions for the zoo collided with the interests of humans and animals alike.

This talk introduces medieval Sicily in its Muslim period, focusing on how this history was experienced, archived, imagined, and remembered by its native poets and writers, as well as the travelers who visited the island, during its political and cultural apogee, and the later years under the domination of the Norman kings.

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...

In this talk, we will report on our effort to test this hypothesis: is it possible to "excel" in a course without absolutely any knowledge? We show that, while there is variability across courses and assignment types, large language models are indeed often able to achieve a strong grade in a course without any meaningful help from human users or course material.

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!

Join us for a lecture by Andrea Scarantino, a professor of Neuroscience and Philosophy at Georgia State University.

For this event, Dr. Holloway (President and CEO, Henry Luce Foundation, and former President of Rutgers University) will join Chancellor Charles L. Isbell, Jr. and Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor John Coleman for a moderated conversation about their experiences and observations on the role of risk management in leadership for higher education today

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)...

Join us for a lecture in the Illinois Forum on Human Flourishing in a Digital Age Speaker Series with Alva Noë.

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.

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.

In this talk, Professor Soto-Crespo discusses Enrique Laguerre’s literary works The Blaze (1935) and Montoya’s Plantation (1941), as key roots of ecological thought in Puerto Rico. Laguerre’s ecological viewpoint offers a way to understand the connection between humans and non-human entities within a landscape of harsh exploitation.

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

How does Greek tragedy respond to and reflect the concerns of modern communities? Drawing on his experiences staging and reimagining Greek literature in theatres, online and within community settings, Paul O’Mahony explores the issues and opportunities these ancient texts present.

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.

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.

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.

Join the Frank Center for a Q&A with Amie Parnes and Jonathan Allen, who have co-authored best-selling books on recent presidential campaigns.

Drawing on scholarship about the value of suspending economic incentives in everyday life, Dr. Newfield will argue that public universities must replace a financial model that harms education and erodes solvency. His presentation will also examine and challenge the belief that “learning equals earning” amid deep dependence on debt, asset inflation, and risk management.

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 lecture by Heather Demarest, an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of California, Boulder.