"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.

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.

Broglio posited, “We live on the same earth as animals but inhabit different worlds. How can we meet across the divide of worlds?” In his book he answers this question using phenomenology and contemporary art as tools to better understand the encounters that exist between our world and the world of animals. This exploration enhances our ability as humans to recognize animals as beings.

In the days before Google and the blogosphere, Americans still valued interaction with media and preserving historical events that mattered to them, despite their lack of virtual tools to deal with the nascent age of information. So with the tenacity and ingenuity so typical of 19th century American spirit, a new method of recording and interacting with media came to the fore: scrap booking. This woefully neglected trend in American popular culture touched the lives of everyone from Abraham Lincoln to Susan B. Anthony, from emancipated slaves to confederate soldiers.