Current Humanities Projects
Learn more about the projects that were selected this year and the exciting line-up of speakers, films, symposia, courses, conferences, panels and exhibitions.
SHARP 2025: Communities and Values of the Book
Kate Mariner & Anna Siebach-Larsen
July 7-11, 2025
The Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing will hold its annual conference at the University of Rochester and Rochester Institute of Technology from July 7 – 11. Scholars, creators, and practitioners from around the world will present their work and discuss the current state of bibliographic research and community. The theme of the 2025 conference is “Communities and Values of the Book”; the goal is to interrogate and build our communities in the Rochester area and across the world, exploring the intersections of value and communities and the ways in which these two forces shape each other across time and texts. The conference will include a day of optional visits to Rochester-area arts organizations and historical sites.
Trans Futurity Exhibition
Rachel Haidu
August 1, 2025 to September 12, 2025; opening August 1, 3-5 PM
Trans Futurity brings together regional artists exploring trans potentialities through visual art and media. Curated in collaboration with the Susan B. Anthony Institute and coincident with the 2025 Science Fiction Research Association Conference, the exhibition takes the conference’s inciting claim, “Trans people are (in) the future,” as its point of departure. The exhibition presents artworks from five artists who all address the stakes of trans futurity, from queer/trans ecologies to performativity, and across the mediums of video art, sculpture, painting, mushrooms, bioreactors, hormones, and more.
Global Black Aesthetics and Culture
Jordache Ellapen & Matthew Omelsky
October 9-11, 2025
In his book, Frottage: Frictions of Intimacy Across the Black Diaspora, Keguro Macharia provocatively declares that “Blackness is still to be thought.” The Fall 2025 Black Studies symposium at the University of Rochester takes up this charge as a call to think and unthink, imagine and reimagine, Blackness globally. What would it mean to situate this statement—Blackness is still to be thought—as an experiment in form and genre? As an exploratory method that centers Black aesthetics, culture, and the practice of the everyday, drawing renewed attention to the global trajectories of Black life? This symposium will consist of a keynote lecture delivered by Dr. Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, Associate Professor of Theory in the Literature Program at Duke University, as well as themed panels, film screenings, and engagement with artists. The symposium will pose important questions concerning place and race and will locate Rochester as a Black city with deep international connections.
The Songbook Project
Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon
October 16-20, 2025
In the fall of 2025, the residency of the Zohn Collective at Eastman will include the following academic events:
Thursday, October 16, 3:30 PM, ESM 404, as part of the weekly Composition Symposium, a panel discussion about the project and the general topic of text setting in music that will include the four composers, soprano Leah Brzyski, Professor Tim Weiss, who is the conductor of Zohn Collective, and other University of Rochester faculty. This discussion will be scheduled at a session of the Composition Symposium. This is a weekly gathering of the entire composition department students and faculty, which in this case will be advertised widely, and made open to the larger Eastman and University of Rochester community, and the public. The event will be video recorded and uploaded to Eastman online channels.
Friday, October 17 (or Saturday, October 18), Time and location TBD Composition masterclass led by Ania Vu and John Liberatore to selected composition department students.
Monday, October 20, 10:30 AM, Hatch Recital Hall, A presentation by members of the Zohn Collective at the First-Years' Colloquium at Eastman. This is a weekly gathering of the entire First-year class, in Hatch Hall. The purpose of this colloquium is to invite guest presenters who have developed enriching careers in music to speak about their artistic and professional journeys, giving the students the opportunity to learn first-hand about the multiple paths of a career in music. The members of the Zohn Collective, many of whom are Eastman graduates, will speak about the mission and artistic vision of the group, how it functions, and how the work in the ensemble aligns with their other musical endeavors.
Monday, October 20, brief pre-concert talk, presented by the composers and participating U of R and Eastman faculty to the concert audience (see concert time and location below)
Monday, October 20, 7:30 PM, Hatch Recital Hall, Concert by soprano Leah Brzyski and Zohn Collective of works by Ania Vu, John Liberatore, Daniel Pesca, and Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon
*Date and time TBD: the composers and members of the Zohn Collective will hold office hours in the Institute for Music Leadership, offering one-on-one consultations to Eastman students about professional development in the world of contemporary chamber music.
Visual Studies Workshop - Discussion on Archival Holdings
Rachel Haidu
October 23, 2025
Two curators from Visual Studies Workshop who have intimate knowledge of their collection holdings, Tara Nelson and Hernease Davis, will present their collection archives for students who hope to learn more about visual studies archival research. This event is a two-hour workshop with Nelson and Davis, who will bring accessioned items from their collections to present to students, with a focus on areas of the collection that have yet to be researched.
Curating Material Indigenous Culture: A Conversation With Dr. Jolene Rickard and Michael Galban
Rachel Haidu
March 11, 2026
Curator Dr. Jolene Rickard (Cornell) and Michael Galban, Director of the Seneca Art & Culture Center at Ganondagan, will deliver a lecture on curatorial strategies for Indigenous material culture in Western New York. Rickard has curated Deskaheh in Geneva, 1923-2023: Defending Haudenosaunee Sovereignty among many other projects, and works with regional institutions, such as the Niagara Falls State Park and the Royal Ontario Museum. This lecture is an opportunity to hear from Indigenous scholars working at the crossroads of academic and curatorial work.
The 25th Annual Vagantes Conference on Medieval Studies
Tom Devaney
April 9-11, 2026
The Vagantes Conference on Medieval Studies is a three-day graduate student-led conference established by a group of scholars from Harvard University and University of Toronto in 2002. The foremost purpose of Vagantes is to provide up-and-coming medievalists with the opportunity to present their research in a national, scholarly venue that is not limited to one institution. The Vagantes Conference on Medieval Studies attracts between 40-60 graduate students each year from disciplines including but not limited to Anthropology, Art and Architectural History, Classics, History, Languages and Literatures, Medical Humanities, Manuscript Studies, Musicology, Philosophy, and Religious Studies. The conference will include an opening and closing keynote lecture, several skills-building workshops, paper presentations and excursions for conference attendees. The conference proceedings are free and open to the University of Rochester community.