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.
Mending Project
Anne Wilcox
September 21-Novemer 6, 2024
The Mending Project is an inquiry into tradition, expansion, experimentation, and community building. The Program of Dance and Movement invites Philadelphia/New York – based multi–disciplinary artist, Mike Durkin, for a six-week residency to conduct the Mending Project for the university and Rochester community. The project is supported with funds from the University of Rochester Office of Equity and Inclusion, University Committee for Inter-disciplinary Studies, Program of Dance and Movement , Art and Art History Department, the Center for Community Engagement, and the Humanities Project. In addition, the MP connects with community partners, Sew Green, the Brighton Public Library, and Art and Art History Professor Emerita, Janet Berlo.
A central component of the project is to create a communal quilt, stitched by hand, inspired by the story-sharing sewing circles of the women in Gee’s Bend, Alabama. The quilt represents our stories in a communally crafted work and serves as a metaphor for the time and effort taken to listen and be present with one another. Rochester community members and University of Rochester students, faculty, and staff create the quilt during the residency through open quilting sessions on campus and in the community.
Quilt patterns will also serve as improvisational exploration for UR choreographers to develop work for dance performances in 2024-2025 academic year. Durkin will also work directly with faculty from dance and other disciplines including theater, art, photography, sustainability, history, Eastman School of Music, and public health to create workshops that foster deeper discussion and engagement with the concept of mending.
MP will also bring the university together with Rochester community organizations through creative engagement, storytelling, panel discussions, and celebration. Two community panels will be offered on the mending-related topics. The First of these is a screening of A Bullet Pulling Thread, documentary by Ian Daffern on mental health/police response/ and art as politics centered around quilting expert, Marilyn Farquhar, and her tragic killing of her brother during a mental health crisis call. Joining Daffern for the post- screening discussion will be Marilyn Farquhar, Anthony Villani of the Rochester Psychiatric Center, and Mike Durkin.
The second mending community discussion will focus on mending our relationship with the earth. Mending Musts and How to Start, is a panel discussion that will take place at the Brighton Public Library with guest panelists, Sue Hughes Smith, Lauren Caruso, Trish Corcoran, Karen Berger, and Mike Durkin.
SAGE Art center on the River campus, will exhibit student and faculty artwork centered on the theme of mending. The art opening is scheduled for November 5, 2024. A final gathering dinner on the UR campus on November 6, will celebrate the completion of the quilt and enable all participants to share and reflect on their contributions to this communally inspired work.
The George Washington Corner Society for the History of Medicine 2024-2025 Lecture Series
Christine Slobogin
September 25, October 23, November 20, February 26, March 19, April 16
This lecture program, available both in person at the Rochester Academy of Medicine and via Zoom, brings diverse topics in the history of medicine to the Rochester community and beyond. Aimed at students, professionals, and academics in the humanities and in medicine, the six speakers for the 2024-2025 program will be sharing with this audience their expertise on topics ranging from child safety around the home, to community health in 1980s Los Angeles, to the erotics of early medical photography.
Conversations Art & Cinema
Pirooz Kalayeh
October 10-December 5, 2024
Lewis Henry Morgan Manuscript Workshop
Llerena Searle
October 17, 2024
This workshop is held as part of the Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures. Inaugurated in 1963, the Lectures are the longest running anthropological lecture series in North America and have produced some of the discipline’s most influential works of the past century. Every year, the lecture series brings a prominent anthropologist to the University of Rochester for three days in the fall semester. The invitee delivers a public lecture on a significant work-in-progress and participates in a workshop in which outside faculty discuss the book manuscript based on the lecture, alongside University of Rochester faculty. This year’s lecturer is Biao Xiang, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. Our three discussants are Yingyi Ma (Syracuse), Sara Friedman (Indiana), and Clara Han (Johns Hopkins).
41st Northeast Conference on Andean and Amazonian Archaeology and Ethnohistory (NCAAE)
Stefanie Bautista
October 26-27, 2024
The 41st Northeast Conference on Andean and Amazonian Archaeology and Ethnohistory (NCAAE) will be hosted by the University of Rochester, in Rochester NY, on October 26-27, 2024, at the Memorial Art Gallery (MAG). A complete program of papers and events scheduled for October 26 and 27 can be viewed here.
Founded in 1982 at Cornell University by Dan Sandweiss, the NCAAE was intended to provide a more accessible venue for sharing current research and works-in-progress, at a time when Andeanist meetings were located mainly on the West Coast and Midwest. Since then, the NCAAE has grown into a vibrant intellectual community encompassing multiple research institutions and independent scholars in the Northeast, and beyond. The intimate scale of the conference provides ample opportunity for building professional connections and makes for a welcoming environment for junior scholars and graduate students to present and receive feedback on their work.
On Film Presents: Lizzie Borden and Sex/Labor
Anna Rosensweig & Jason Middleton
November 20 & 21, 2024
On Film, a student-run film programming organization founded in 2009, continues its mission to bring forward-thinking speakers and filmmakers to the Rochester campus, and to program rarely seen and important films for theatrical viewing. This Fall 2024, On Film is welcoming filmmaker Lizzie Borden—collaborating with a variety of other organizations and venues to screen three of her films and open multimedia gallery exhibition Sex/Labor in conversation with her work.
On November 20th, On Film is collaborating with The Little Theatre to co-host a double feature of Lizzie Borden’s Regrouping (1976) and Born in Flames (1983). This event is part of The Little’s High Falls Women in Film series. The screenings will be followed by a Q&A with Borden.
On November 21st, On Film and Framed: Curatorial Collective will screen Borden’s third film, Working Girls (1986), in the Gowen Room, Wilson Commons. Following the film screening is the opening reception of Sex/Labor at the Hartnett Gallery, an art exhibition that places Working Girls into conversation with contemporary art about sex work. The reception will include a paneled discussion with Borden and two artists whose work is part of Sex/Labor: Barbara Nitke and Antonia Crane.
Further information can be found here: https://onfilmrochester.org/2024/10/02/lizzie-borden-and-sex-labor/
Silhouettes: Reproductive Justice Through Art and Activism
Jordan Ealey
November 22, 2024
Join us for a timely discussion around the struggle for reproductive justice and bodily autonomy. This event will include a panel discussion with local scholars, activists, and artists fighting locally and nationally for reproductive rights. We will then follow the discussion with Silhouettes, a new musical by Jordan Ealey (Assistant Professor of Black Studies) and Ari Afsar, which stages the encounter between two women seeking out abortion care in the wake of turbulent historical moments.
Face Value: Approaches to Portraiture
Nigel Maister & Rachel Haidu
January 21 to February 22nd, 2025
Since the earliest days of its invention, photography has sought to depict, categorize, enhance, romanticize, expose, elevate, and explore identity through the form of the portrait. The medium's innate capabilities have allowed it to be used for a multitude of purposes ranging from the artistic to the administrative, the sublime to the mundane. In a groundbreaking three-part exhibition, drawn from the private collection of Nigel Maister, Director of the UR International Theater Program, Face Value: Approaches to Portraiture
explores some of the many ways portraiture has developed and redefined itself over its 180 year history, and argues for an expansive view of, and approach to the genre that incorporates on an equal level both the functional (or vernacular) and the self-consciously artistic. In three locations from Spring 2025 through 2026: Part I on view at the Hartnett Gallery (January 21-February 22nd 2025, opening January 23rd from 4-6 PM), and Part II on view at Frontispace (Art & Music Library, Rush Rhees; January 21 to February 16th, 2025) Part II: TBA. As part of this project, courses are invited to engage the exhibition space as a pedagogical tool, as well as participate in a series of talks and conversations open to the public. Curated by Emily Broad and Nigel Maister.
Scent of Spring: A Celebration of Persian New Year/Nowruz (نوروز)
Missy Pfohl-Smith
March 23, 2025
Experience an array of artifacts, delicious food, and educational materials that showcase the customs and beauty of Persian culture. The program features performances and presentations from poets, artists, musicians, lecturers, and members of the Iranian, Turkish, and Afghan communities. This free event is open to all students, faculty, staff, and community members. Come share in an afternoon of celebration, learning, and connection!
Going Back to the Drawing Board: A Workshopon the Anthropology of Design
Richard Fadok
April 4, 2025
“Design” has become a keyword of the 21st century. Once reserved for the outer shape of things, it now refers not just to the inner nature of physical objects but also to ever-greater swaths of our social lives. Today we are told that everything under the sun can, and should, be designed, from our genes and bodies to our technologies, our institutions, and even the planet itself. “Design thinking,” it is promised, will save the world.
During this day-long workshop, invited anthropologists from around the country will draw on ethnographic fieldwork with architects, industrial designers, and other practitioners to interrogate current discourses of design. Through discussions of pre-circulated papers, participants will situate design in its multiple historical and cultural contexts, grounding popular rhetorics of design within designers’ everyday practices of form-giving. By going back to the drawing board, this event will gesture toward a more dynamic anthropology of design.
Remixing the Storied City: A Multimodal Installation
Joella Bitter
April 6-12, 2025
Remixing the Storied City culminates a week-long artist residency hosting Ugandan music producer, Doctor Kaunda. Come experience this pop-up multimedia installation at the University of Rochester’s Frontispace Gallery featuring Doctor Kaunda's sound expertise in collaboration with Prof. Joella Bitter (Eastman School of Music) and students enrolled in the spring 2025 “Listening to African Cityscapes” course. The exhibit features city sounds of Gulu, Uganda, mixed with Afrodance beats remastered in surround sound in order to explore the affordances of immersive listening for ethnographic thinking about place. The pop-up invites the UR and wider Rochester community to listen with us.
Korea in East Asia: What China, Japan, and America Have Misunderstood about Korea
Myounghee Cho
April 9, 2025
This is the inaugural public lecture for the Korean program. In this lecture, Dr. Mark A. Peterson, Professor Emeritus of Korean Studies at Brigham Young University and a scholar with 34 years of dedication to Korean Studies, will critically examine prevalent historical narratives of Korea’s past within the East Asian context. Drawing upon both conventional Korean historiography and his own research-based reinterpretations, Dr. Peterson will interrogate narratives that portray Korea as a perennial victim of exploitation by neighboring powers such as China and Japan. By challenging the assumptions underlying these narratives, he will shed light on historical experiences that diverge from this conventional portrayal, including those significantly influenced by colonial impositions during the 20th century.
Maryse Condé: What Is Africa to Me?
Cilas Kemedjio
April 10, 2025
On April 2, 2024, Guadeloupean Writer Maryse Condé (1934-2024) transitioned away from this earth. Condé, one of the most celebrated voices of Francophone literature, emerged during her prolific writing career as the unchallenged ambassador of the global black imagination. In her “practice of the diaspora,” Condé’s engagement with Africa has been consistent, if sometimes fraught with controversies, misunderstandings, but ultimately compassion and passion. “Maryse Condé: What Is Africa to Me?” pays a critical tribute to this great writer, critic, and activist. The workshop brings together this community of scholars in preparation of the Special Issue of Research in African Literatures on Maryse Condé.
New Directions in Modern German History
Jonathon Catlin
April 25-26, 2025
This two-day conference will bring together historians of modern Germany from the greater New York region to present and discuss new research in the field. The two keynote lectures will highlight particularly innovative methodologies and topics: Anne Berg (UPenn) will present her new material history of trash and recycling in the Nazi Empire, while Samuel Huneke (George Mason) will present his forthcoming book on the history of queer women’s experiences in the Third Reich. Other sessions will workshop research in progress on topics including intellectual history, German-Jewish thought, and Holocaust studies, among other topics.
Bird Collisions in the Anthropocene
Richard Fadok
May 5, 2025
Two public art workshops run in tandem by artists Holly Greenberg and Mizin Shin invite students, faculty, and staff from the University of Rochester, along with members of the broader community, to learn about the threat glass buildings pose to animals through sculpture and printmaking. Held after the workshops, a conversation between Greenberg and Shin and a Q&A session moderated by anthropologist Richard Fadok explore the roles that the humanities and arts can play in understanding and responding to biodiversity loss and other ongoing crises of the Anthropocene. Together, the events aim to build a coalition of support for the protection of birds at a pivotal moment in the university’s history as the administration begins to adopt bird-safe design measures.