IHUM supports interdisciplinary student and faculty conferences, lectures, and colloquiums throughout the academic year. This years co-sponsored events are listed below.
7th Annual Graduate Conference, April 14, 2023, 010 East Pyne
Princeton University Department of French and Italian
What is taboo? This question shapes our relationship to language, in turn shaping the boundaries of communities, cultures, and literary canons. A term borrowed from Tongan, a Polynesian language. a "taboo" is primarily a religious imperative. A taboo might be a person, animal, or object that cannot be approached or touched because it is sacred. At the same time, a taboo also functions as a prohibition-as a rule that cannot be transgressed.
This Ancient Graeco-Roman Medicine and Biology Workshop is for graduate and early-career researchers, which will take place at Princeton the weekend of March 4th-5th. The poster for the event is attached, and you can see the event posting (with further details) here, as well as the complete schedule here.
Please write to either of us ([email protected] or [email protected]) with any questions you might have and/or to RSVP and receive access to the pre-circulated materials! (Except for the Sunday dinner, all meals will be open to anyone, but we do need to know in advance that you plan to attend). It promises to be a delightful & wide-ranging weekend!
Tuesday, February 28, 4:30 pm at 209 Scheide Caldwell House
Der Entschluß zu philosophieren wirft sich rein in Denken… wie in einen uferlosen Ozean.(Hegel)
So viele Berichte. So viele Fragen. (Brecht)
Ruda and Yeung present in philosophical-poetic counterpoint a series of meditations on the wager of thought and of the speculative possibility of thought‘s own impossible objectification (in language as a given position or mode). In so doing they address as concepts or potentialities a suite of ideas that allow the exposure of a given symptom of speculation – capital, the stuck, foreignness, the absolute, the break – . Can the poet, can the philosopher speak to this (to each other)? This question, the site of experiment. The counterpoint’s possibility, the wager.
Jane O. Newman and Ron Sadan,UC Irvine and Princeton University:February 24, 2023, Friday 9:30 – 11:45 am East Pyne 011 & 012
Public Lecture with Sara Nadal-Melsió, Thursday, February 23rd, at 4:30 pm – 6:00 pm, 300 Wallace Hall, followed by a Seminar with Eduardo Cadava, February 24, 12:00 pm, 105 Chancellor Green. Click on the event title for details.
Universality has a bad reputation. Today’s default position seems to be a critique of its immanent exclusions if not the outright claim of its impossibility. However, universal aspirations also appear to be inseparably linked to projects of political emancipation, scientific validity, and artistic quality.
This year’s lecture series invites speakers from a variety of fields, ranging from literature studies to philosophy, psychoanalysis, media studies, and critical theory.
Sping Semester: Feb 27 Frank Ruda, Mar 22 Yuk Hui Apr 19 Nadia Bou-Ali
Professor Drew Daniel (Johns Hopkins University) will give the first lecture of the series on entitled “Imoinda’s Smile,” Professor Daniel’s talk will focus on the harrowing scene in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko when its eponymous figure “mutilates” Imoinda’s face. Daniel will consider the ethics of this aestheticized violence, situating it in relation to the discourses of race and slavery that permeate the work.
The Ancient Medicine and Biology Workshop for graduate students and ECRs will take place at Princeton University this spring (March 4-5, 2023).
The workshop will feature keynotes by established scholars, interspersed with workshop sessions on pre-circulated papers of 15-30 pages, chosen by open call [see below]. Workshop sessions will open with comments by a discussant, followed by a brief response by the author of the paper, and then general discussion.
Abstracts (due January 1, 2023) should be 500 words or fewer, not including bibliography and should be submitted blind. Please separately attach a cover page with your name, contact information, and a brief biography describing your research. If you would be interested in serving as a discussant for another paper, please do indicate that willingness in your submission email; note that we will endeavor to pair you according to the research interests outlined in your brief biography. These materials, as well as any questions or concerns, should be sent to [email protected] and [email protected].
February 15: Kimberly Bain will be giving a talk via Zoom at 4:30 pm
March 28: Anna Tsing will be leading a discussion from 12:00-1:30 pm. The event will take place in the Hinds Library (Room B14) in McCosh Hall. Details to follow.
Wolfgang Schaeffner, Director of the Hermann von Helmholtz Center for Cultural Techniques and Professor of the Cultural History of Knowledge in the Department of the History and Theory of Culture at the Humboldt University in Berlin and Profesor Titular Invitado Permanente and Director of the Walter Gropius Program in the Faculdad de Arquitectura Diseño y Urbanismo at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, will deliver a lecture drawn from the current projects of the Gropius Program and the UBA and the Image Knowledge Gestaltung Excellence Cluster that he co-directs with art historian Horst Bredekamp and biomedical engineer Peter Fratzl at the HU.
Sponsored by Program in Media+Modernity and the Departments of Art & Archaeology and German and IHUM
This year’s annual Princeton South Asia Graduate Conference questions the scholarly paradigm of postcoloniality for representing South Asia. After a hiatus due to the pandemic, this conference will take place October 6-8,2022. Keynotes: Priyamvada Gopal (Faculty of English, Cambridge University), Natasha Ginwala (Associate Curator, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin), and photojournalist-activist Shahidul Alam.