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.
The Institute for Humanities Research is honored to host Lauren Berlant as the 2017 IHR Distinguished Lecturer.
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.
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.
Prasad Boradkar, Associate Professor and Program Director of Industrial Design at Arizona State University, was awarded the 2011 IHR Transdisciplinary Humanities Book Award for "Designing Things: A Critical Introduction to the Culture of Objects."
Sadowski-Smith, Assistant Professor of English at Arizona State University and the editor of "Globalization on the Line: Culture, Capital, and Citizenship at U.S. Borders," is the recipient of the 2009 IHR Transdisciplinary Humanities Book Award for "Border Fictions: Globalization, Empire, and Writing at the Boundaries of the United States" (The University of Virginia Press, 2008).
Marita Sturken, Professor of Media, Culture and Communication, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, New York University, is the recipient of the IHR's first Transdisciplinary Book Award for "Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch and Consumerism from Oklahoma to Ground Zero" (Duke University Press, 2007).
Silvia Spitta, Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at Dartmouth College, is the recipient of the 2010 IHR Book Award for "Misplaced Objects: Migrating Collections and Recollections in Europe and the Americas" (The University of Texas Press, 2009).
The violence wrought by climate change, toxic drift, deforestation, oil spills, and the environmental aftermath of war takes place gradually and often invisibly. Using the innovative concept of “slow violence” to describe these threats, Rob Nixon focuses on the inattention we have paid to the attritional lethality of many environmental crises, in contrast with the sensational, spectacle-driven messaging that impels public activism today.