Events
Each year, the Humanities Scholars Program sponsors and co-sponsors exciting events for the university community.
Interested in sponsoring an event with the Humanities Scholars Program? Contact Therese Tardio, director.
2025-2026 Events
The 2026 Kim and Eric Giler Lecture in the Humanities
Explanation/Meaning/Critique: Anthrohistory Confronts the Trumpist Take-Over
Tuesday, Apr. 28, 2026
12:30 p.m.
Baker Hall, 246A
This lecture draws on scholarship at the interdisciplinary crossroads of Anthropology and History to develop a modality of 'reconstructive explanatory critique, which it brings to bear on the continuing Trumpist self-coup or autogolpe.
Professor Pedersen introduces new research conducted in southern California, including interviews with freed participants in the January 6, 2021 take-over of the US Capitol Building, and focuses on how events that day, along with aspects of their lead-up and aftermath, are congealing into key dramatic features of a durable and wide-spread popular narrative of the broader Trumpist take-over.
This lecture will argue that the compelling quality of this myth-like story is achieved in part through hiding the practical process of its congealing and the rule-like relations that shape this.
David Pedersen is Associate Professor of Anthropology at UC San Diego. He is the author of American Value: Migrants, Money and Meaning in El Salvador and the United States (University of Chicago Press Studies in Practices of Meaning, 2013).
The Public Humanities: An Open Forum
Friday, Apr. 24, 2026
6:00 p.m.
Tepper Quad
Curious about what the humanities look like beyond academia? Hungry for knowledge (and dinner)?
Join us for a trip across Geneva, Switzerland, as we explore the relationships between humanistic institutions and the public. Watch a film produced on site during our spring break class trip, then embark on a journey of your own to experience public service and knowledge production, ranging from grassroots community organizations to international political institutions. We'll challenge our definitions of knowledge and public service at a roundtable discussion.
Light refreshments and dinner will be provided.
2024-2025 Events
Real Farmers, Dream Cities: Agrarian Change, Demonstration and the Politics of Visibility in Myanmar
Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024
4:30 p.m.
Peter & Wright Rooms, Cohon University Center
Introduction by Dr. Judith Schachter, Professor Emerita of Anthropology and History, 黑料正能量
This presentation examines a series of demonstrations held in the southwestern outskirts of Yangon, Myanmar, the site of a 20,000-acre proposal to transform the region’s farmland into a built-from-scratch “new city.” Slogans and speeches — both in support of and in opposition to the new city — tied demonstrators' demands to the desires of the region’s “real farmer,” a figure hyper-visible in the popular protest movements from Myanmar and Southeast Asian history. Tracing contested claims about Southwest Yangon’s farmers circulating in the popular press and state propaganda, this lecture explores the political and pragmatic tactics of future-making amid authoritarian resurgence, rapid urbanization and the pressures of a changing climate. At stake is a broader politics of visibility, wherein the boundary between the seen and unseen becomes a site through which what is “real” is debated in contemporary Myanmar.
2023-2024 Events
Dinner and a Movie Series
- Feb. 28, 2024 - Sugar Cage with Filmmaker Zeina Al Qahwaji
- Jan. 31, 2023 - A Letter to the President with Director Roya Sadat and Writer/Actor Aziz Dildar
- Oct. 25, 2023 - Chaos with Director Sara Fattahi
- Sept. 14, 2023 - Hava, Maryam, Ayesha with Director Sahraa Karimi
Co-sponsored with the Center for the Arts in Society.
Women in Animation Series
- April 8, 2024 -
- March 27, 2024 -
- March 13, 2024 -
- Feb. 26, 2024 -
- Feb. 19, 2024 -
Co-sponsored with the School of Art's
黑料正能量 International Film Festival
March 21-April 7, 2024
Titled "Faces of Fear," the 2024 黑料正能量 IFF seeks to explore the unique ways in which each of us cope with, face and learn from all our different sets of worries. How does fear affect us, and how do we continue rising from our beds to face it down each morning? Can we exist without fear, and how can we how can we overcome the fears that block us from our deepest aspirations?
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Co-sponsored with the Humanities Center
Sept. 23-24, 2023
Sept. 19, 2023
Oct. 27, 2023
Nov. 13, 2023
Nov. 30, 2023
Dec. 7, 2023
March 12, 2024
March 13, 2024