"The Humanities as Power: Law, Poetry, Jazz and Civic Engagement"

Patricia J. Williams is James L. Dohr Professor of Law at Columbia University. A graduate of Wellesley College and Harvard Law School, she has served on faculties of the University of Wisconsin School of Law, Harvard University's Women's Studies Program, and the City University of New York Law School at Queen's College. She is the recipient of the Alumnae Achievement Award from Wellesley, the Graduate Society Medal from Harvard, and the MacArthur foundation “genius” grant.

What Makes Us Human? Visual Thinking and Different Kinds of Minds

Temple Grandin, one of Time Magazine’s 2010 list of 100 Most Influential People, is an animal behavioral scientist, a bestselling author and a Professor in the Department of Animal Science at Colorado State University. Grandin was diagnosed with autism as a toddler in 1950, learning to speak at age three-and-a-half with the aid of speech therapy and early intervention. She first spoke in public about autism and her own experiences in the mid-1980s.

“Migration Interrupted: Rights, Freedom, Opportunism, and the Controversy over U.S. Immigration Policy”

Coco Fusco, an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and the Director of Intermedia Initiatives at Parsons The New School for Design, spoke on the other side of immigration—those who don’t make it to the U.S. because of interference by the U.S. government or their home government.

Multispecies Cosmopolitics: Staying with the Trouble

As the IHR’s 2013 Distinguished Lecturer, Donna Haraway, Distinguished Professor Emerita of the History of Consciousness Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz and author of "Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: the Reinvention of Nature," called upon her audience to work, play and think in terms of multispecies cosmopolitics, a new approach to recuperating the Terrapolis on which we live.

'Tell My Story': The Human Compulsion to Narrate

To watch the video of the 2014 IHR Annual Distinguished Lecturer, Stephen Greenblatt

This video is password protected and limited to the larger ASU community. Please contact the IHR at [email protected] or 480.965.3000 to obtain the password.

"At the Crossroads of Science and the Humanities"

Does science ever intersect with art, language, and literature? Physicist, novelist, essayist, and author of the bestseller Einstein’s Dreams, Alan Lightman, explored this question and investigated the relationship between the sciences and the humanities in the 2015 IHR Distinguished Lecture in February of 2015.

The IHR is proud to announce that it is partnering with the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing to host award winning author Zadie Smith as the 2016 IHR Distinguished Lecturer/Piper Center Distinguished Visiting Writer. Smith, a tenured professor of creative writing at New York University, has been recognized for her vibrant insights into contemporary multicultural life from the start. She received numerous awards for her first novel, White Teeth(2000) including the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Whitbread First Novel Award, and the Guardian’s First Book Award.

"On Being in Life Without Wanting the World (Living with Ellipsis)"

The Institute for Humanities Research is honored to host Lauren Berlant as the 2017 IHR Distinguished Lecturer.

"Reconciliation Projects: The Racial Politics of Genetic Ancestry Testing"

Alondra Nelson is the President of the Social Science Research Council, an award-winning author, Professor of Sociology, and Dean of Social Science at Columbia University, where she has served as Director of the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Nelson is celebrated for her work exploring the intersections of science, technology, medicine, and inequality.

"Public Universities, Democracy and the Citizen Professional"

Harry C. Boyte is the founder of the international youth civic education initiative Public Achievement and co-founder with Marie Ström of the Public Work Academy. He also founded the Center for Democracy and Citizenship at the University of Minnesota, now merged into the Sabo Center for Democracy and Citizenship at Augsburg University where he is Senior Scholar in Public Work Philosophy.