Cinema Theatre Seminar

Friday, December 4, 2-4 PM At The Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities Sunny Xiang (English, Yale University) Conspiratorial Thinking; Or, Breathing Together Abstract: My talk uses two seemingly disparate material cultural objects that have long preoccupied me—gas masks and bras—to build toward a theory of conspiracy based on the… Read More

Friday, November 6th, 2 – 4 PM, Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities Pedagogy Workshop with Rebecca K. VanDiver (History of Art and Architecture, Vanderbilt University), Yucong Hao (Asian Studies, Vanderbilt University), and Isaac West (Communication Studies, Vanderbilt University). Abstract:Please… Read More

Friday, September 25, 2 – 4 PM, Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities Debashree Mukherjee (Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, Columbia University) “Contract and Conjuring: Indian Film Exhibition in Colonial Fiji” Abstract: In 1933, three Indian gentlemen sued the owners of Lilac Theatre,… Read More

“The Missing Things People” Friday, April 10, 2026 10 a.m. – 12 p.m. Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities In this era of climate disturbance, how do we decipher genres produced by increasing displacement and unhousing? How do we understand documents of loss? In this talk, I… Read More

“Better Living in Eichlerville: California Modernism’s Influence on Apple” Friday, February 27th, 2026 10 a.m. – 12 p.m. Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities This talk studies a set of Californian suburban tract housing developments built by Joseph Eichler during the 1950s-1970s. Working with architects… Read More

“Horace Pippin and the Historical Medium of Wood” Susan Scott Parrish (University of Michigan) Friday, February 13, 2026 10 a.m.12 p.m. Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities In this talk, Parrish will focus upon Horace Pippin (1888-1946), a self-taught modernist painter and “pyrographer” who… Read More

“The Sincerity Threshold and the Media Theory of Muhammad Ali” Jennifer Fay (Department of English and Cinema & Media Arts, Vanderbilt University)  Friday, December 5, 2026 2 – 4 p.m. Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities  From the mid 1960s through the mid 1970s,… Read More