Lectures & Campus Events
Professor Jason Josephson Storm
"Religious Studies as a Vocation"
Tuesday, November 17th, 4-5 p.m.
What does it mean to be a scholar of religion in the contemporary academy? What is the value of the study of religion? And what place should values and value-neutrality have in Religious Studies? The German sociologist of religion—Max Weber—revolutionized the field of sociology at the dawn of the twentieth century in part by turning the techniques of sociology inward to examine itself. By examining how academic vocations served as the preconditions for the production of their forms of knowledge, Weber was able to show how academic professionalization produced perverse incentives and alienating forms of hyper-specialization. Although he put it differently, Weber effectively suggested the importance of producing a sociology of sociologists. This talk will begin to extend this insight to Religious Studies by reckoning with ways in which the unspoken norms and systems of power behind the academic study of religion – in a range of disciplinary formations – have produced various disciplinary blind-spots and dead-ends. We will look at the discipline’s messy, magical, post-colonialist, transnational history, see how the discipline’s main players have long been engaged with various forms of occultism, theosophy, and spiritualism, and we will think about the contemporary relationship between objectivity and value-laden research, taking inspiration from Weber’s famous lecture, “Science as a Vocation.”
Register in advance for this meeting HERE.
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
We hope that you will join us.
Professor Samira Mehta
“The Diaphragm Debates: Protestants, Jews, Catholics, and A Changing Culture of Contraception”
Tuesday, November 10th, 4-5 p.m.
Description: On the eve of the 1960 FDA approval of the birth control pill, debates about how American should understand contraception raged. Using fictional depictions of unmarried women seeking diaphragms and a debate about whether diaphragms should be available in public hospitals, Professor Mehta explains how society understood contraception in the late 1950s. Taken together, these depictions allow us to delve into a network of complicated issues including religious freedom; interfaith approaches to contraception; the surveillance of women, their bodies, and the sexuality; and the implications of that surveillance for women’s access to and feelings about contraception.
Register in advance for this meeting HERE.
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
We hope that you will join us.
"Religion and the 2020 Election: Reflecting Back and Looking Forward"
What role do Muslim Americans play in public discourse? Why do white evangelicals overwhelmingly support Donald Trump and Black Protestants support Joe Biden? What is QAnon, and what does it tell us about religion and politics in 2020? How and why does religion matter in the 2020 U.S. presidential election?
JOIN US FOR AN ONLINE ROUNDTABLE of leading scholars on religion and politics in the United States.Engage with our specialists in a discussion of religion as it intersects with important themes in the 2020 election, including immigration, race, gender, sexuality, and nationalism.
Click HERE to register.
Panel participants:
Natalie Avalos (The University of Colorado Boulder)
Sophie Bjork-James (Vanderbilt University)
Alison Collis Greene (Emory University)
Edward E. Curtis IV (The Indiana University School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI)
Lerone Martin (John C. Danforth Center at Washington University in St. Louis)
Moderated by Adeana McNicholl (Vanderbilt University)
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"Translating the Qur'an in the 21st Century"
Guest Speaker Joseph Lumbard
26 February 2020
Buttrick Halll 202, 12:10-1:25pm
"Parody and Persuasion: Narrative Strategies of Bengali Sufi Fictions"
Tony K. Stewart
20 February 2020
Vanderbilt University Divinity Schoool - The Space
Over the last five centuries and peaking in the nineteenth century, large numbers of Bengali fictional tales purported to be Muslim, specifically Sufi, in their inspiration and orientation. Because of their amusingly spectacular plots and the fact that they delivered frank perspectives on contemporary society in simple and even crude language, they have since slipped into the gaping maw of intellectual irrelevance. Today it seems strange that these fictional fabulations have been lumped together with a genre of overtly religious, mainly Sunni, moralizing instructional manuals called Nasihat Namas. The joining seems to be the result of their production, because both of these seemingly disparate genres were printed in chapbook form, on cheap paper, by all the same presses, and cost little. Using theorist Wolfgang Iser’s work on the reality of fiction as a springboard, I would like to argue that the conjunction is not accidental, that one is the flipside of the other, complementary elements of a single genre. The one was hortatory, overtly sermonizing on ethical and religious issues, while the other used entertaining narratives to prepare audiences to be receptive to those religious lessons. Those zany fictions did not just entertain; they laid subtle foundations to reconfigure the traditional order of Bengali Hindu culture so that Islamic perspectives seemed perfectly natural and foundational, a move that demonstrates a different mode of conversion than normally imagined.
"Everything Old is New Again: Living in a Multireligious Environment"
Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of its Founding, The Vanderbilt University Department of Religious Studies Presents:
Michael Joseph Brown
12 February 2020
Vanderbilt University - Divinity School G33
Rev. Michael Joseph Brown, Ph.D., President, at Payne Theological School in Wilberforce, Ohio is an internationally recognized biblical scholar, minister, and public intellectual. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Vanderbilt University, a Master of Divinity degree and Doctor of Philosophy degree from University of Chicago. Prior to joining Payne, Dr. Brown served as Associate Dean of Wabash College, and was the Director of the Malcolm X Institute on Black Studies (2011-2013). Dr. Brown has authored four books, What They Don't Tell You: A Survivor's Guide to Academic Biblical Studies, Blackening of the Bible: The Aims of African American Biblical Scholarship, The Lord's Prayer through North African Eyes: A Window into Early Christianity and The Lord's Prayer and God's Vision for the World: Finding Your Purpose through Prayer. In addition, he was a leading contributor to the New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible.
"How to Talk about Race, Gender, and Islam in America"
Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of its Founding The Vanderbilt University Department of Religious Studies Presents:
Sylvia Chan-Malik
22 January 2020
Vanderbilt University - Buttrick 101
What does it mean to “racialize” Islam and Muslims in the United States? Why are Muslim women constant sources of fascination and subjects of scorn in American culture? How do race and gender shape how Americans talk about Islam and Muslims in politics, the media, and culture, and what effects do these discourses have on U.S. Muslims themselves? In this lecture Professor Sylvia Chan-Malik addresses these questions through a consideration of how Islam and Muslims have historically been framed through U.S. logics of race, gender, citizenship, and nation. Through an exploration of how these categories have shaped U.S. Muslim history, Chan-Malik proposes new ways of talking about Islam and Muslims in academia and the public sphere that reflect Islam’s longstanding presence as both cultural trope and lived religion in the U.S. She argues that this type of “talk”—one that situates and contextualizes Islam through histories of race and gender—is urgently needed to produce vital narratives of racial and religious belonging for 21st-century America.
"Juan Elia and the Strangeness of (Be)longing: The Afterlife of a Pakistani Poet in Delhi"
Anand Vivek Taneja
17 January 2020
Vanderbilt University Warren Center
The current popularity of the Urdu poet Jaun Elia in Delhi confronts us with a set of seeming paradoxes. Jaun, who died in 2002, was relatively obscure even in his native Pakistan until a few years ago. The rise in his popularity coincides with a worsening of the always fraught relations between India and Pakistan and the rise of Hindu nationalism in the public culture of India.
Given the context, how do we understand the popularity of a Shia Muslim Urdu poet from small-town India who migrated to Pakistan among young people in the major metropolises of India today? And what might that tell us about the role of Urdu poetry in popular political theology?
Anand is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and a 2019-20 Warren Center Faculty Fellow. A reception will follow the talk.
"The Japanese Enthronement Ceremonies of 2019 in Historical Perspective"
Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of its Founding The Vanderbilt University Department of Religious Studies Presents:
Helen Hardacre
6, September 2019
Vanderbilt University - Kissam 216C
Co-sponsored by the Program in Asian Studies and the Department of History
The Emperor, The Minister, and the Executioner: Capital Punishment in the (Late) Habsburg Monarchy
Vanderbilt History Seminar 2018-2019
18 February 2019 - 3:10pm
Vanderbilt University, Divinity School 124
Presented by Alison Frank Johnson, Professor of History (Harvard University).
Discussion will be based on a pre-circulated paper available in the Department of History, Benson 227.
Comment by Joel Harrington (Vanderbilt University).
Roots, Influences, and Beyond: Christian Hebraism and Bible Translation
Divinity Library
On View Through 12 May 2019
Vanderbilt University, Divinity Library
The publication of Johannes Reuchlin's Hebrew grammar, De rudimentis hebraecis in 1506, democratized the learning of Hebrew for Christians. As a result, the firs professor of Hebrew was appointed in 1512 and all the leading universities of Europe began to establish chairs to promote Hebrew scholarship. For over a thousand years, Christians relied solely on Jerome's translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew, completed around 405. Now many clamored for new translations. Within a century, translations were produced in all the major European languages, beginning with the Lutherbibel in 1534. In the Anglophone world, the efforts culminated in the King James Bible of 1611. All these would not have been possible without the Christian Hebraists of the sixteenth century.
This Divinity Library exhibit is curated by Professor Choon-leong Seow, Almond Sin and Charlotte Lew.
The exhibit is on view through 12 May 2019.
Co-sponsored by the Divinity School and the Jean & Alexander Heard Libraries.
The Hate U Give: Finding Your Activism, and Turning the Political into the Personal
Office for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion
13 February 2019 - 6:30pm
Vanderbilt University, Langford Auditorium
Tickets are required and may be obtained in person at Sarratt Box Office or online at vanderbi.lt/angiethomas. Free and open to the public - tickets available on January 18, for the general public.
Angie Thomas' The Hate U Give, widely known as the first Black Lives Matter-inspired YA novel, has been a #1 New York Times bestseller for 70 weeks and was described as "the best - and most important - book of the year" by Entertainment Weekly. The film adaption opened worldwide last fall. Thomas' hotly anticipated follow-up On the Come Up is also generating buz.
Campus partners: Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center; Division of Communications; Margaret Cunniggim Women's Center; Multicultural Leadership Council; Office of Immersion Resources; Provost's Office for Inclusive Excellence; Residential Colleges; Talent & Compensation, Human Resources; Vanderbilt University Public Safety.
ASL and CART services will be provided. If you have additional questions about accessibility or accommodations, please call the Office for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at 615-343-2644 at least two business days (48 hours) in advance of the program.
For more information, please contact Ella Butler, Chief of Staff, at ella.butler@vanderbilt.edu or visit vanderbilt.edu/diversity.
Digitizing Down to the Roots of Racist Policing: 19th-Century Advertisements for 'Runaway Slaves' Self-Liberating People
Mellon Digital Humanities Colloquium
6 February 2019 - 4:10pm
Fisk University, John Hope and Aurelia E. Franklin Library
While giving a sneak peek at the project Freedom On the Move, which will have its first public launch on 2/14, Professor Edward E. Baptist of Cornell University will discuss some early findings from the process of building this digitized, crowdsourced database and teaching tool. Freedomonthemove.org is a collaborative effort to collect, transcribe, and analyze all existing advertisements placed by North American enslavers who were attempting to coerce and capture self-liberating African and African-American people.
This event is free and open to the public. Offered with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Mellon Partners in Humanities Education consortium, Vanderbilt University College of Arts and Science, the Vanderbilt Center for Digital Humanities, and Fisk University. For more information see www.vanderbilt.edu/digitalhumanities.
James and His Striped Velvet Pantaloons: Textiles, Commerce, and Law in the New Republic
Vanderbilt Legal history Colloquium
4 February 2019 - 12:15pm
Vanderbilt University, Buttrick 123
Presented by Laura Edwards of Duke University.
Discussion will be based on a pre-circulated paper, which can be downloaded from the LHC website: https://as.vanderbilt.edu/history/lhc.
Lunch will be served at 12:00pm.
Sponsored by the College of Arts and Science.
Cultures in Clay Lectures
Vanderbilt Graduate Department of Religion
30 January 2019 - 4:10pm (Divinity Library Reference Room): The Cuneiform Tablets in the Vanderbilt Divinity Library Collection.
6 February 2019 - 4:10pm (Cohen Memorial Hall Room 203): Before Noah: Gilgamesh and the Flood.
Both lectures presented by Dr. Andrea Seri, Professor of Ancient History at the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina.
Sponsors: Divinity School, Classical and Mediterranean Studies, Divinity Library, Jean & Alexander Heard Libraries.
Rethinking Jewish-Arab Relations in Palestine and Israel: Lessons from the Archives and the Streets
Program in Jewish Studies 2018-2019 Lecture Series
17 January 2019 - 12:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Buttrick 123
Presented by Michelle Campos, Associate Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of Florida.
Lunch will be provided. Co-sponsored by the Department of History and the Department of Classics and Mediterranean Studies.
Abolition as Primitive Accumulation: A Decolonial Perspective
Vanderbilt History Seminar 2018-2019
14 January 2019- 3:10pm
Vanderbilt University, Divinity School 125
Presented by Indrani Chatterjee, University of Texas at Austin. Discussion will be based on a pre-circulated paper available in the Department of History, Benson 227.
It Is Going to Rain Blood: Gender, Violence, and Rural Freedom in the Nineteenth-Century Dominican Borderlands
Vanderbilt History Seminar 2018-2019
3 December 2018 - 3:10pm
Vanderbilt University, Divinity School 124
Presented by Anne Eller, Associate Professor of History at Yale University. Comments by Paul Kramer, Vanderbilt University.
Discussion will be based on a pre-circulated paper available in the Department of History, Benson 227.
The Possibility of Ruins: A Pompeii Archive
Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery
14 November 2018 - 4:10pm
Vanderbilt University, 203 Cohen Memorial Hall
Presented by William Wylie, Professor of Art and Director of the Studio Art Department at the University of Virginia.
William's Wylie's lecture is presented in conjunction with Pompeii Archive: Recent Photographs by William Wylie at the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery, on view through 06 December 2018, and is made possible by the Program in Classical and Mediterranean Studies.
Pompeii Archive: Recent Photographs by William Wylie has been created and organized by the Gregory Allicar Museum of Art at Colorado State University. The exhibition is brought to the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery in part through the generous support of the Program in Classical and Mediterranean Studies, with additional support provided by the Department of History of Art and the Department of Art.
Antisemitism in Contemporary American Politics
Program in Jewish Studies 2018-2019 Lecture Series
8 November 2018 - 7:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Central Library Community Room
A roundtable discussion with Pamela Nadell (American University), Barry Trachtenberg (Wake Forest University), and Jonathan Judaken (Rhodes College).
Co-sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Nashville and Middle Tennessee, E. Bronson Ingram College, the Department of Political Science, and the Program in American Studies.
The United States and the Holocaust: Race, Refuge, and Remembrance
Program in Jewish Studies 2018-2019 Lecture Series
8 November 2018 - 12:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Buttrick 123
Presented by Barry Trachtenberg, Michael R. and Deborah K. Rubin Presidential Chair of Jewish History at Wake Forest University.
Lunch included.
Co-sponsored by the Department of History and the Program in American Studies.
Freedom in the United States Since the 1960s
Vanderbilt History Seminar 2018-2019
5 November 2018 - 3:10pm
Vanderbilt University, Divinity School 124
Presented by Beth Bailey (University of Arkansas) and Russell Rickford (Cornell University), with comments by Rhonda Williams (Vanderbilt University).
Discussion will be based on a pre-circulated paper available in the Department of History, Benson 227.
Resistance + Faith + Art: Race and Sexuality Summit
The Kelly Miller Smith Institue and the Carpenter Program in Religion, Gender, and Sexuality
27 October 2018 - 8:00am to 4:30pm
Fisk University, Park-Johnson Hall
Register at divinity.vanderbilt.edu/resistancefaithart.php.
Join us for a daylong teach-in as we address issues of human sexuality, black faith, and emerging models of activism and organizing. The event is free and open to the public. This daylong convening will:
- Equip participants with new language to engage in healthy conversations about sexuality, gender, race, and faith.
- Support participants in developing practices to address racial and sexual injustices in our private lives and the public sphere.
- Grow community leaders who are able to articulate the inextricably linked connections between faith, sexuality, and race.
Summit Schedule
8:00am to 8:45am - Breakfast and Registration
9:00am to 9:45am - Welcome and Framing the Day
10:00am to 11:00am - Workshop I
11:15 am to Noon - Special Performance
Noon to 1:15pm - Lunch
1:30pm to 2:30pm - Workshop II
2:45pm to 3:45pm - Workshop III
4:00pm to 4:30pm - Workshop Report Back and Generative Closing.
Digital Futures, Archaeological Pasts
Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery
25 October - 5 December 2018
25 October: Opening Reception, 5:00pm to 7:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Fine Arts Gallery
Digital Futures, Archaeological Pasts is the fifth student-durated exhibition to result from a partnership between the Department of History of Art and the Fine Arts Gallery, this time led by Veronica Ikeshoji-Orlati, CLIR Post-doctoral Fellow for Data Curation. The exhibition is curated by Aleah Davis '21, Joseph Eilbert '19, Brant Frick '18, Lindsay Fraser '19, Kinsley Ray '21, Gabrielle Rodriguez '21, Heaven Russell '21, Kalen Scott '21, and Sarah Taylor '18, and is supported, in part, by the Department of History of Art.
Willful Behavior, Inherent Value, and Moral Imagination: The Making of Black Queer Ethic
44th Annual Antoinette Brown Lecture
25 October 2018 - 7:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Benton Chapel
To be delivered by Thelathia "Nikki" Young, Ph.D. (Assistant Professor of Women's and Gender Studies and Religion at Bucknell University).
Border Elegies: Refugees, Migrants, and Contemporary Art and Literature
25-26 October 2018
Vanderbilt University, E. Bronson Ingram Studio Arts Center - Department of Art, Room 220
October 25
5:00pm - Guillermo Galindo Performance @Public Square, Downtown Nashville
October 26
1:00pm - Welcome and Introduction by Lutz Koepnick (Vanderbilt University)
1:30pm to 2:15pm - "Beyond an image: Strategies for Representing the Migration Crisis" by Nora M. Alter (Temple University)
2:15pm to 3:00pm - "Amidst the Ruins of Personhood: Border Deaths and the Challenges of Representation in Law and Art" by Ayten Gundogdu (Barnard College)
3:00pm to 3:15pm - Coffee Break
3:14pm to 4:00pm - "Lost at Sea: Cuban Migrant Poetics of the 21st Century" by Candice Amich (Vanderbilt University)
4:00pm to 4:15pm - Coffee Break
4:15pm to 5:00pm - Roundtable Discussion with moderator Lutz Koepnick and participants Robert Barsky, Jonathan Hiskey, and Paul Kramer (all Vanderbilt University)
6:00pm - Guillermo Galindo Solo Performance @Blair School of Music
Our twenty-first century has witnessed a tremendous rise in refugees and migrants. Whether they escape war, violence, and persecution, poverty and economic exploitation, or the precarious effects of climate change - more than 68 million people around the world today have been forced to leave precarious homes and search for safer havens. Half of them are under the age of 18, more than 10 million are considered stateless and have no access to basic rights of education, healthcare, employment, and freedom of movement. While many efforts have been made to address and accommodate the plight of today's migrants and reggaes, we at the same time observe widespread desires to erect metaphysical and physical walls to keep unwanted bodies at bay and protect he presumed integrity of sovereign nations and ethic identities. Almost thirty years after the fall of the Berlin wall, the call for new walls, divisions, and fortifications has become the order of the day.
Organized in honor of Guillermo Galindo's month-long residence at Vanderbilt University in October 2018, this symposium explores different artistic responses to the flow of refugees and today's politics of enclosure. Following the lead of Galindo's work as a composer and installation artist on European refugee camps and the US-Mexican border wall, the speakers will review different aesthetic strategies to represent the current migration crisis; discuss how contemporary artists address the human rights implications of recent border control policies; and explore how poetic texts reflected on the migration of Cubans via sea to the US since the 1990s.
This event is made possible with the generous support of the Center for Latin American Studies, the Department of art, the Blair School of Music, and the Program in Comparative Media Analysis and Practice (CMAP), all at Vanderbilt University. For questions, please contact: lutz.koepnick@vanderbilt.edu.
The Devil's Justice: Process, Pedagogy, and the Rule of Law in the Middle Ages
Vanderbilt Legal History Colloquium 2018-2019
22 October 2018 - 12:15pm
Vanderbilt University, Buttrick 123
Presented by Karl Shoemaker (University of Wisconsin-Madison).
Discussion will be based on a pre-circulated paper. Lunch will be served at 12:00pm. Please RSP to Kayleigh Whitman at kayleigh.m.whitman@vanderbilt.edu.
Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History
The Program in Jewish Studies 2018-2019 Lecture Series
11 October 2018 - 12:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Central Library Poetry Room (612A)
Presented by Steven J. Zipperstein, Stanford University.
Lunch provided.
Co-sponsored by the Department of History, the Department of German, Russian and East European Studies, and the Jean and Alexander Heard Library.
Roots, Influences, and Beyond: Sebastian Münster (1488-1552), The Most Prolific Hebraist of the Sixteenth Century
Divinity School
10 October 2018 - 3:00pm to 5:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Divinity Library
For fifteen hundred years, only a few Christians were able to read the Hebrew Bible in its original language. All that changed in the sixteenth century, when the first Hebrew grammars and lexicons were written by Christians. The leading Christian Hebraist of that period was Sebastian Münster, who authored and edited nearly 70 works in Hebrew and Aramaic, a few of which are presented in the exhibit.
The exhibit is curated by Professor Choon-leong Seow, Almond Sin, and Charlotte Lew.
Surveillance, Witnessing, and the Craft of History: Romani Holocaust Testimony and the Perils of Digital Scholarship
Vanderbilt History Seminar 2018-2019
8 October 2018 - 3:10pm
Vanderbilt University, Divinity 124
Presented by Ari Joskowicz. Copies of the papers are available for pick up in the Department of History, Benson 227. The author will make opening remarks to contextualize and situate the paper. Comments will be offered by Helmut Walser Smith and the room will be open for discussion. Reception to follow.
The 2018 Cole Lecture Series
Vanderbilt University Divinity School
Lecture 1: 4 October 2018 - 7:00pm
Lecture 2: 5 October 2018 - 11:00am
Vanderbilt University, Benton Chapel
The 2018 Cole Lecture Series will be delivered by Gary Dorrien, Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary. Philanthropist Edmunc W. Cole, president of Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad and treasurer of the Vanderbilt University Board of Trust, endowed the annual Cole Lecture Series in 1892 "for the defense and advocacy of the Christian religion." Cole's gift provided for the first sustained lectureship in the history of Vanderbilt University.
Two lectures will be held:
- Stubborn Ethical Radicalism: Christian Socialism as Political Theology and Economic Democracy (Thursday, 4 October 2018 in Benton Chapel at 7:00pm)
- The New Abolition and the American Nightmare: DuBois, King, Christian Socialism, and the Black Social Gospel (Friday, 5 October 2018 in Benton Chapel at 11:00am)
Gary Dorrien was previously the Parfet Distinguished Professor at Kalamazoo College where he taught for 18 years and also served as dean of Stetson Chapel and director of the Liberal Arts Colloquium. Professor Dorrien is the author of nineteen books and more than 300 articles that range across the fields of social ethics, philosophy, theology, political economics, social and political theory, religious history, cultural criticism, and intellectual history. In 2017, Dorrien won the Grawemeyer Award for his book The New Abolition: W.E.B. DuBois and the Black Social Gospel. In 2013, Dorrien won the Association of American Publisher's PROSE Award for his book Kantian Reason and Hegelian Spirit: The Idealistic Logic of Modern Theology. In 2010, Dorrien won the Choice Award for his book Social Ethics in the Making.
Dorrien has focused on economic democracy and social justice politics, post-Kantian philosophy, an modern theology throughout his career. His early books on theses subjects include Reconstructing the Common Good (1990), The Neoconservative Mind: Politics, Culture, and the War of Ideology (1992), Soul in Society: The Making and Renewal of Social Christianity (1995), The Word as True Myth (1997), and The Barthian Revolt in Modern Theology (2000).
His most recent books are Breaking White Supremacy: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Black Social Gospel and Imagining Democratic Socialism: Political Theology, Marxism, and Social Democracy, both published by Yale University Press in 2018. Imagining Democratic Socialism, to be published in November 2018, examines the intertwined history os social democracy, Marxism, and Christian socialism in Britain and Germany, making an argument for decentralized economic democracy.
Dorrien has taught in recent years as the Horace De Y. Lentz Visiting Professor at Harvard Divinity School and the Paul E. Raiether Distinguished Scholar at Trinity College. He lectures frequently in Germany, England, and Canada, and write for Cross Currents, American Journal of Theology and Philosophy, Tikkun, Christian Century, Telos, Commonweal, and other journals.
The Cole Lecture Series are free and open to the public.
John Gerrard
Department of Art and Studio VU Lecture Series 2018-2019
4 October 2018 - 6:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Central Library Community Room
The Studio VU Lecture Seriesand the Department of Art at Vanderbilt, in collaboration with the Memorizing the Future: Collecting in the 21st Century Conference and co-sponsored with the Jean & Alexander Heard Libraries, present acclaimed artist, John Gerrard on October 4, 2018 with a lecture beginning at 6:00pm in the Central Library Community Room on the Vanderbilt campus. The lecture will be followed by a discussion/interview moderated by Lutz Koepnick, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of German, Cinema and Media Arts; Chair, Department of German, Russian and East European Studies.
John Gerrard (1974) is best known for his commitment to large-scale works that take the form of real-time computer simulations, created in painstaking detail over the course of many months or years. Often exploring geographically isolated location, the works frequently refer to structures of power and networks of energy that have made possible the expansion of human endeavor in the past century.
2018 will see Gerrard's work included in EV+A, Limerick, Ireland, Manifesta 12, Palermo, Sicily, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), LA, USA, CCS Bard. Bard Hessel Museum, Annandale–on–Hudson, NY and the Mardin Biennial, Mardin, Turkey.
Recent solo presentations of Gerrard’s work include: Western Flag, commissioned by Channel4, UK (2017); X.Laevis (Spacelab), commissioned by Wellcome Collection, London (2017); Power.Play,UCCA, Beijing, China (2016); Solar Reserve, Lincoln Centre in association with the Public Art Fund, NYC. USA (2014); Sow Farm, Rathole Gallery, Tokyo, Japan (2014); Exercise , Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, Turkey (2014); Pulp Press (Kistefos) 2013, a permanent install for Kistefos Museet, Norway; Exercise (Djibouti) 2012, for Modern Art Oxford, Oxford, UK; and Infinite Freedom Exercise, Manchester International Festival, Manchester, UK (2011)
His works can be found in the collections of the Foundation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland; Irish Arts Council Collection, Dublin, Ireland; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, LA, USA; Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA; Tate, London, UK; Pinakotek der Moderne, Munich; Germany, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, USA; Inhotim Collection, Brumadinho, Brazil.
John Gerrard lives and works in Dublin, Ireland and Vienna, Austria. He is represented by Thomas Dane Gallery, London, and Simon Preston Gallery, New York. For further information about John’s work visit johngerrard.net.
Making Borders in Modern East Asia: The Demarcation of the China-Korea Tumen River, 1881-1919
Department of History
24 September 2018 - 4:10pm
Vanderbilt University, Buttrick 123
Lecture by Dr. Nianshen Song (University of Maryland, Baltimore County). Dr. Song is Assistant Professor of History and an affiliated faculty in the Asian Studies Program at UMBC. His research and teaching focus on late imperial and modern China, with special interest in China's ethnic frontiers, East Asian trans-regional networks, and international relations. He is the author of Making Borders in Modern East Asia: The Tumen River Demarcation, 1881–1919 (Cambridge University Press, 2018), which explores the making of the China-Korea boundary and the Korean diaspora in Northeast China.
His articles have appeared in the Journal of Asian Studies, the Asia-Pacific Journal, Chinese Journal of International Politics, and Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes, among others.
His next book project, The West Pagoda: Three and Half Centuries of a Chinese Neighborhood, aims to examine the rise and fall of Northeast China from the nearly 400 years' evolution of a small urban space. Dr. Song has also published many academic articles in Chinese. His Chinese monograph, Faxian dongya (Discovering East Asia) (Beijing: New Star Press, 2018), rethinks East Asia's intricate relations with global modernity from the 16th century onward.
On Being Gandhi: The art and Politics of Seeing
20 September 2018 - 4:10pm
Vanderbilt University, Buttrick 206
Named one of India's top 15 rising artists, photographer B.S. Shivaraju (a.k.a. Cop Shiva) documents the complexity of rural and urban India through portraiture. He is fascinated with the idea of masquerade and the roles people play in public and private.
The talk takes place in conjunction with the exhibition On Being Gandhi: The Art and Politics of Seeing at the Leu Art Gallery at Belmont University (opening September 28). One of Cop Shiva's most critically acclaimed projects, the exhibition features photographs of Bagadehalli Basvaraju, a village schoolteacher who routinely impersonates Mahatma Gandhi.
Cop Shiva's visit is generously sponsored by the Departments of History, History of Art, Art, Religious Studies, and the Asia Studies Program. All are welcome.
Bill Fick & Carlos Hernandez: Lecture and Workshop
Department of Art and the Studio VU Lecture Series 2018-2019
Lecture: 19 September 2018 - 6:00pm, E. Bronson Ingram Studio Arts Center Room 220
Workshop: 21 September 2018 - 1:00pm to 4:00pm, E. Bronson Ingram Studio Arts Center Rooms 314/320
Vanderbilt Unversity
The Department of Art and the Studio VU Lecture Series 2018-2019 are pleased to announce the visiting lecture and Print-O-Rama workshop with printmakers Bill Frick and Carlos Hernandez.
The public lecture will take place on September 19 at 6:00pm in Room 220 of the E. Bronson Ingram Studio Arts Center. The Print-O-Rama Workshop will be held on September 21 from 1:00pm to 4:00pm in the E. Bronson Ingram Studio Arts Center, Rooms 314/320. There is a limited workshop capacity, so please contact mark.hosford@vanderbilt.edu for more information.
Bill Fick is a printmaker who lives and works in Durham, North Carolina. He is currently a Lecturing Fellow at Duke University in the Department of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies. Over the past 25 years, he has exhibited his prints nationally and internationally and has taught at many institutions across the United States including the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill and Greensboro), Pratt Institute and Rutgers University. Fick’s work can be found in the collections of the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, The New York Public Library, and the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University. In 1993, Fick was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Visual Artist Fellowship and in 1995, a North Carolina Arts Council Artist Fellowship. Along with Beth Grabowski, Fick co-authored the book, Printmaking: A Complete Guide to Materials and Processes. The book was published by Laurence King and is currently in its 2nd edition.
Carlos Hernandez is a founding partner of Burning Bone Press, a full-service printmaking studio located in the Houston Heights, and has served as an instructor of Screen Printing at Rice University, Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts. His work has been featured in the 2011 Communication Arts Typography annual, the 2011 & 2012 Communication Arts Illustration annual and was also recently published in the 2012 book, Mexican Graphics by Korero Books-UK. He has designed and printed gig posters for such artists as The Kills, Arcade Fire, Kings of Leon, Santana, and More. Corporate work has included Miller Brewing Company and more. He has recieved awards from American Advertising Federation, “Judges Favorite” from the Art Directors Club Houston, and “Best in Show” from the American Marketing Association.
Reclaiming Our Time: A 21st Century Response to Banks' "Afro-American Scholars in the University"
Department of Leadership, Policy, and Organizations
19 September 2018 - 2:30pm to 4:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Kennedy Center Building Room 241
Reception to follow.
Presented by Richard J. Reddick, Ed.D - Associate Professor and Coordinator, Program in Higher Education Leadership, College of Education, University of Texas at Austin.
William Banks' 1984 article "Afro-American Scholars in the University" situated Black faculty at predominantly White institutions in a milieu noting the uses and misuses of Black scholars, constituencies in conflict, the range of responses from Black scholars, and the standards and realities for their advancement in academia. Banks further discussed the stigma of affirmative action and the burden of symbolism for Black faculty. This discussion, during the #BlackLivesMatter and Trump era, engages with the same questions that Banks raised 34 years prior. This response is centered through an analysis of community engagement experiences, the burdens of cultural taxation, and the impact of affirmative action in a post-Fisher political context for scholars in educational leadership. Incorporating events both inside and outside of academia, Reddick considers the centrality of creating spaces of resistance and leveraging the gains for Black academics over the past three decades to alter the standards of the academy to support Black scholars and their allies.
Overseas Conversations: On Translating Jenny Erpenbeck
Department of German, Russian, and East European Studies
Public Lecture: 17 September 2018 - 6:00pm, Buttrick Hall 102
Workshop: 18 September 2018 - 9:30am to 12:00pm, Curb Center Yamada Room (1801 Edgehill Avenue)
Vanderbilt University
Translator Susan Bernofsky presents to work of Jenny Erpenbeck (in particular her novels The End of Days and Go, Went, Gone) from the translator's-eye-perspective, analyzing the resistance these works offer translation even as they thematize translation in both literal and figurative senses.
Susan Bernofsky is the director for Literary Translation at Columbia in the Columbia University School of the Arts writing program. Her translations include works by Robert Walter, Franz Kafka, Hermann Hesse, Jenny Erpenbeck, and Yoko Tawada. Her translation of Erpenbeck's novel, The End of Days, won the 2015 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the Schlegel-Tieck Translation Prize, the Ungar Award for Literary Translation, and the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. Her translation of Tawada's novel, Memoirs of a Polar Bear (2016), won the inaugural Warwick Prize for Women in Translation. She is currently writing a biography of Walser and blogs about translation at www.translationista.com.
The public lecture will be held at 6:00pm on 17 September 2018, in Buttrick Hall 102.
On September 18, Bernofsky will host a workshop in literary translation in the Curb Center's Yamada Room (1801 Edgehill Avenue) from 9:30am to 12:00pm. Lunch will be provided at the workshop. Seats are limited, so please contact sylvia.bosma@vanderbilt.edu to reserve a spot by Wednesday, September 12. The introductory session will familiarize attendees with the basic tools needed to approach literary translation and provide insights into key issues for more experience practitioners.
Co-sponsored by the Program in Jewish Studies; the Department of English; the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise & Public Policy; the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities; and the Max Kade Center for European and German Studies.
Set the World on Fire: A Conversation with Dr. Keisha N. Blaine
Conversations @NPL
15 September 2018 - 1:00pm to 3:00pm
Nashville Public Library - Main Library (615 Church Street)
"How have black women shaped national and global politics?" Join us for a conversation with Dr. Keisha N. Blain, one of the most innovative intellectuals and influential young historians of her generation, as she discusses her new book, Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom. Dr. Blain will also discuss how her approach to historical scholarship mirrors contemporary activist efforts.
Dr. Blain will be joined by Dr. Brandon Byrd, Assistant Professor of History at Vanderbilt and an intellectual historian.
For questions, contact Special Collections at (615) 862-5782.
When, How, and Why did Jews Become a "Minority"? Remapping Difference in Central Europe, 1815-1919
Max Kade Center for European and German Studies
14 September 2018 - 3:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Buttrick Hall 212
A talk by Till van Rahden, Canada Research Chair in German and European Studies at the Université de Montréal.
Co-sponsored y the Program in Jewish Studies.
I AM: Contemporary Middle Eastern Women Artists and the Quest to Build Peace
Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery
Opening Reception: 30 August 2018 - 5:00pm to 7:00pm
Gallery Exhibition: 30 August - 10 October 2018
Panel Discussion: 12 September 2018 - 6:00pm to 7:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Fine Arts Gallery (1220 21st Avenue South)
I AM features the work of thirty-one premier Middle Eastern women artists from twelve countries and is organized by CARAVAN and curated by Janet Rady. It is brought to the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery by the Office of the Chancellor.
An opening reception will be held on August 30. Special guests will include Nicholas S. Zeppos (Chancellor, Vanderbilt University), Rev. Canon Paul-Gordon Chandler (Founding President, CARAVAN), and Sheika Lulwa Al Khalifa (Featured Artist). A featured panel discussion will also take place on September 12.
The Fine Arts Gallery is open 11:00am to 4:00pm Monday through Friday, and 1:00pm to 5:00pm on Saturdays and Sundays.
For more information please visit vanderbilt.edu/gallery.
More Than Local, Less Than Global: The Connected Histories of Vernacular (India) Photography
Department of English
11 September 2018 - 4:10pm
Vanderbilt University, C210 Kissam Center
Talk presented by Christopher Pinney, Professor of Anthropology and Visual Culture at the University College London.
Sponsored by the Departments of English, History, History of Art, and Religious Studies.
The Deep Grammar of Cultural Transformation: Coptic Law and Muslim Courts in Medieval Egypt
Vanderbilt Legal History Colloquium 2018-2019
10 September 2018 - 12:15pm to 1:45pm
Vanderbilt University, Buttrick 123
Talk presented by Tam el-Leithy (Johns Hopkins). Lunch will be served at noon. Discussion will be based on a pre-circulated paper. To reserve lunch and request a copy of the paper, contact Kayleigh Whitman at kayleigh.m.whitman@vanderbilt.edu.
The Vanderbilt Legal History Colloquium series is sponsored by the Vanderbilt College of Arts and Science and directed by Professor Ari Bryen.
Ghada Amer
Studio VU: The Department of Art Lecture Series 2018-2019
10 September 2018 - 3:00pm
Vanderbilt University, E. Bronson Ingram Studio Arts Center Room 220 (1204 25th Avenue South)
Ghada Amer was born in Cairo (Egypt) in 1963. In 1974, her parents relocated to France where she began her artistic training ten years later at Villa Arson, Nice, France. She currently lives and works between New York and Paris, and has exhibited among others at the Venice Biennale, the Sydney Biennale, the Whitney Biennale, and the Brooklyn Museum.
"I believe that all women should like their bodies and use them as tools of seduction," Amer stated; and in her well-known erotic embroideries, she at once rejects oppressive laws set in place to govern women's attitudes towards their bodies and repudiates first-wave feminist theory that the body must be denied to prevent victimization. By depicting explicit sexual acts with the delicacy of needle and thread, their significance assumes a tenderness that simple objectification ignores.
Ghada Amer continuously allows herself to explore the dichotomies of an uneasy world and confronts the language of hostility and finality with unsettled narratives of longing and love.
Ghada Amer's work addresses first and foremost the ambiguous, transitory nature of the paradox that arises when searching for concrete definitions of east and west, feminine and masculine, art and craft. Through her paintings, sculptures and public garden projects, Amer takes traditional notions of cultural identity, abstraction, and religious fundamentalism and turns them on their heads.
Co-sponsored with The Frist Art Museum. For more information contact 615-343-7241 or find the Department of Art online at vanderbilt.edu/arts.
Jewish Scholarship and Religious Commitment: The Example of Leo Baeck
Program in Jewish Studies Lecture Series 2018-2019
6 September 2018 - 12:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Central Library Poetry Room (612A)
Talk presented by Michael A. Meyers (Hebrew Union College). A kosher lunch will be provided.
Rabbi Leo Baeck is known as the heroic leader of German Jewry during the Nazi years. Less well known is how he balanced a twofold commitment to Jewish faith and to modern historical scholarship. The lecture will present Back as a significant voice in creating a form of Judaism that allowed for the critical evaluation of Jewish sources, even as it reached for the mystery of a transcendent, morally demanding God.
This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies, the Max Kade Center for European and German Studies, and the Jean and Alexander Heard Library.
Dartmoor Prison and the Pre-History of Carceral Segregation, 1813-1815
Vanderbilt History Seminar 2018-2019
3 September 2018 - 3:10pm
Vanderbilt University, Divinity School Room 124
Presented by Nicholas, Guyana (University of Cambridge).
Discussion will be based on a pre-circulated paper available in the Department of History, Benson 227. Comments provided by Brandon Byrd (Vanderbilt University).
VHS Directors: Jefferson Cowie & Moses Ochonu.
For more information visit: https://as.vanderbilt.edu/history/vhs/.
Summer Institute
The Public Theology and Racial Justice Collaborative
4-8 June 2018
Topic - Reclaiming Our Time: Public Theology, Racial Justice, and the Fight for Democracy
America is in a kairos moment. It is a time of immense reflection, equipping, and mobilization. The Public Theology and Racial Justice Collaborative's Summer Institute is designed to be the gathering place for those who discern the time. We are calling all scholars, students, clergy, community activists, community organizers, politicians, concerned citizens, artists, and strategists in Nashville, Tennessee, for the convening of the first cohort of what we envision to be a think tank of leaders invested in the soul of our democracy.
Our aim this year is to equip participants to engage a wide public on the issues presented to racial minorities in the mid-term elections.
Register today at publictheologyracialjustice.org/summerinstitute.
An Evening with Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry (Maya Angelou Presidential Chair, Wake Forest University)
The Public Theology and Racial Justice Collaborative
6 June 2018 - 5:45pm
Vanderbilt University, Langford Auditorium (2209 Garland Avenue, Nashville, TN 37232)
Interviewed by Professor Tracey Meares, JD (Yale Law School).
A Book Talk with Dr. Emilie M. Townes (Dean, Vanderbilt Divinity School)
The Public Theology and Racial Justice Collaborative
5 June 2018 - 5:45pm
Vanderbilt University, Divinity School Reading Room (411 21st Avenue S, Nashville, TN 37240)
Celebrating 25 years since the publication of her seminal work, Womanist Justice, Womanist Hope.
The Goodwin Prize for Excellence in Theological Writing
Theological Horizons
1 June 2018
In recognition of essays that demonstrate creative theological thinking and excellence in scholarship. 1st Place: $2,500. 2nd Place: $1,000. 3rd Place: $500.
$500 prize goes to the professor of the winning student.
Eligibility requirements: the writer must be a masters or doctoral student; the submission must be an original, unpublished essay; submissions must be postmarked by June 1st.
For more information please visit our website: www.theologicalhorizons.org/writing.
Fort Negley Descendents Project: Nashville's Black Legacies of the Civil War
Friends of Fort Negley and the Vanderbilt Center for Digital Humanities
28 April 2018 - 2:00pm to 4:00pm
Fort Negley (1100 Fort Negley Blvd., Nashville, TN 37203)
Join us for the unveiling of the Fort Negley Descendants Project.
Meet us at the Fort for the premiere of two interviews from our new oral history archive that honors descendants of the African-American laborers and soldiers who built and defended the fort in the 1860's. Join us for refreshments and to share your Fort Negley stories!
This event is co-sponsored by the Friends of Fort Negley and the Vanderbilt Center for Digital Humanities.
Questions? Write to us at fortnegleydescendants@gmail.com.
Families of Blood & Faith: Religion, Race, and Community in the Sephardic Atlantic
The Program in Jewish Studies 2017-2018 Lecture Series
26 April 2018 - 12:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Buttrick 123
Presented by Ronnie Perelis (Yeshiva University).
Lunch provided.
Co-sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies, the Department of Religious Studies, and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese.
Water, Infrastructure, and American Politics: A State of the Field Discussion
Vanderbilt History Seminar 2017-2018: WATER
16 April 2018 - 3:10pm
Vanderbilt University, Sarratt 216/220
Presented by Andrew Needham (New York University) and Jason Scott Smith (University of New Mexico).
Discussion will be based on pre-circulated papers available in the Department of History, Benson 227. The VHS Directors are Jefferson Cowie and Ruth Rogaski.
The Canopy and the Byzantine Church
Divinity School Program in Religion in the Arts and Contemporary Culture
14 April 2018 - 3:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Divinity G-23
Professor Jelena Bogdanovic (Iowa State University) will give a lecture on medieval Serbian Orthodox Iconography. The lecture will be followed by a gallery showing for the Vanderbilt Art Gallery exhibit, "Eikon: A Triple Encounter," presented by Julia Liden (Divinity School Master's student) and featuring medieval Byzantine and Slavic icon reproductions. The exhibit will be open from March 27 through May 10.
Sponsored by the Divinity School's Program in Religion in the Arts and Contemporary Culture. Additional sponsorship provided by the Department of Religious Studies, the Department of History of Art, the Department of Classical and Mediterranean Studies, and the Department of History.
The Literary Imagination of Ritual in Early Japan
Robert Penn Warren Humanities Center
13 April 2018 - 12:00pm to 2:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities
Presented by Torquil Duthie, Asian Languages and Cultures (UCLA).
Lunch will be provided.
This event is sponsored by The Group for Pre-Modern Cultural Studies at the Warren Center, the Asian Studies Program, and the Department of Religious Studies.
I Think You Changed the World: The Poetics of Experiment in the Works of Pat Parker and Audre Lorde
Department of Religious Studies
12 April 2018, 1:10pm
Vanderbilt University, Wilson 112
Talk to be given by Mecca Sullivan, Assistant Professor of English (Bryn Mawr College).
Sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies, Women's and Gender Studies, and the Carpenter Program in Religion, Gender and Sexuality.
The Politics of Beauty in South Africa: Art and Education Under Apartheid
The "Africa at a Crossroads" Trans-Institutional Program
11 April 2018 - 3:10pm to 5:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Black Cultural Center Auditorium
Presentation by Dan Magaziner, Associate Professor of History (Yale University).
Co-sponsored by the Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center.
Authority & Urban Space
Vanderbilt History Seminar 2018 Workshop
11 April 2018 - 9:00am to 5:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Alumni Hall 202 / Joe C Davis Memorial Hall
With presentations by: Professor Eric Hanne (Florida Atlantic University), Professor Jennifer DeSilva (Ball State University), Professor John J. Janusek (Vanderbilt University).
Panels chaired by: Professor David J. Wasserstein (Vanderbilt University), Professor William Caferro (Vanderbilt University), Professor Tasha Rijke-Epstein (Vanderbilt University).
To submit abstracts or for more information, please email vhsw2018@gmail.com by 7 March 2018. All disciplines welcome to apply
Sponsored by the Vanderbilt History Department, Graduate History Association, Department of Religious Studies, and Islamic Studies.
The Reconstruction Constitution in the Age of Empire
Vanderbilt Legal History Colloquium 2017-2018
9 April 2018 - 12:15pm to 1:45pm
Vanderbilt University, Buttrick 123
Presented by Sam Erman, Gould School of Law (University of Southern California).
Discussion will be based on a pre-circulated paper. To reserve lunch and request a copy of the paper, contact Heidi Welch at heidi.welch@vanderbilt.edu.
The Vanderbilt Legal History Colloquium is sponsored by the Vanderbilt College of Arts and Science and directed by Professor Sarah Igo.
Climate and Empire: Habsburg History for the Anthropocene
The Max Kade Center Spring 2018 Lecture Series
6 April 2018 - 3:10pm
Vanderbilt University, Buttrick 101
Presentation by Deborah Cohen, Professor of History at Yale University.
Co-sponsored by the Vanderbilt Department of History.
Embattled Earth: Commodities, Conflict and Climate Change in the Indian Ocean
Celebrating 50 Years of Asian Studies at Vanderbilt
4 April 2018 - 5:30pm
Vanderbilt University, Jean and Alexander Heard Library (Central Library) Community Room
Presented by Amitav Ghosh, author of the Ibis Trilogy and The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable.
Free and open to the public. Reception and book signing to follow.
Sponsored by the Asian Studies Program, Creative Writing Program, Department of English, Department of History, Department of Political Science, Department of Religious Studies, Jean and Alexander Heard Library, Jewish Studies Program, Office of the Chancellor, Office of the Dean of Arts & Science, Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities.
Groundwater, State Power, and Environmental Conservation in a Southern Spanish Wetland, 1950-1995
Vanderbilt History Seminar 2017-2018: WATER
26 March 2018 - 3:10pm
Vanderbilt University, Sarratt 216/220
To be presented by Sarah Hamilton (Auburn University). Commented on by Tasha Rijke-Epstein (Vanderbilt University).
Discussion will be based on pre-circulated papers available in the Department of History, Benson 227.
VHS Directors are Jefferson Cowie and Ruth Rogaski.
Limitation of Recoverable Losses: From Damages Circa Rem to Foreseeability of Damages - Some Aspects of an Evolution
Vanderbilt Legal History Colloquium 2017/2018
19 March 2018 - 12:15pm to 1:45pm
Vanderbilt University, Buttrick 123
To be presented by Pascal Pichonnaz (Université de Fribourg).
Lunch served at noon.
Discussion will be based on a pre-circulated paper. To reserve lunch and request a copy of the paper, contact Heidi Welch at heidi.welch@vanderbilt.edu.
The Vanderbilt Legal History Colloquium is sponsored by the Vanderbilt College of Arts and Science and directed by Professor Sarah Igo.
Dhvanya - The Transformation of the Flute: Indian Classical Dance in the Bharatnetyam Form
Asian Studies Program
17 March 2018 - 6:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Choral Hall (Blair School of Music)
Performed by Chitra Chandrasekhar Dasarathy.
Free and open to the public.
Sponsored by the Program in Asian Studies & Department of History, Vanderbilt University Sri Ganesha Temple Cultural Programs, and Kala Nivedanam.
Making Grief: How a Soviet Photographer Made a Photograph of Holocaust Liberation into an Icon of War's Human Tragedy
The Department of German, Russia & East European Studies
16 March 2018 - 12:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Garland Hall 101
Talk to be given by David Schneer ( Associate Professor of History and Director of Jewish Studies, University of Colorado). Lunch will be provided
The event is co-sponsored by the Program in Jewish Studies and the Max Kade Center for European and German Studies.
About David Schneer: Called a "pathbreaking" scholar by the Frankenfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Schneer's research focuses on 20th century European, Russian and Jewish history and culture. His newest book, Through Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War, and the Holocaust (Rugters University Press, 2011), finalist for the National Jewish Book Award and winner of the 2013 Aossication for Jewish Studies Jordan Schnitzer Prize, looks at the lives and works of two dozen Soviet Jewish World War II military photographers to examine what kinds of photography they took when they encountered evidence of Nazi genocide on the Eastern Front.
About the talk: In 1942, Dmitrii Baltermants took some of the first images from the liberator perspective of photographs that document the Holocaust on the outskirts of the Russian city of Kerch. Twenty years later, he went back to his archive of Kerch photographs and produced Grief, what would go on to become one of his most widely published, exhibited, and purchased photographs. This talk examines why this photograph came to serve as a Holocaust photograph and how it functioned as a projection of the peace-loving Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Saint Louis du Senegal: The Making of an Indigenous City in the Atlantic World, from the French Revolution to WWI
The 2018 Bryn Lecture
15 March 2018 - 4:10pm
Vanderbilt University, Featheringill Hall 134
Lecture to be given by Mamadou Diouf, Leitner Family Professor of African Studies at Columbia University. Presented by the Vanderbilt Department of History.
Open to the public. Reception to follow.
Intimate Interventions in Global Health: Family Planning and HIV Prevention in Sub-Saharan Africa
The "Africa at a Crossroads" Trans-Institutional Program
14 March 2018 - 3:10pm to 5:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Black Cultural Center Auditorium
To be presented by Rachel Sullivan Robinson, Associate Professor, School of International Service (American University).
Co-sponsored by the Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center.
Joe Hill Road Show
Vanderbilt Department of Sociology
14 March 2018 - 4:10pm to 5:45pm
Vanderbilt University, Divinity 124 (Reading Room)
Learn the story of labor activist and songwriter Joe Hill and the early U.S. labor movement through music, spoken word, and historical images.
Joe Hill's songs fanned the flames of discontent in the early 20th century, becoming anthems of the Industrial Workers of the World labor union. Hill was executed in 1915 for a murder he probably did not commit, but his music has lived on to influence generations of social and political protest music.
Featuring the Shelby Bottom Duo and a Q&A with faculty from the Divinity School and Departments of History and Sociology.
Light refreshments will be served. The event is free and open to the public. Closest parking is Wesley Place Garage.
Co-sponsored by Vanderbilt Department of Sociology, Divinity School, Department of History, Program in American Studies, and Blair School of Music's Department of Musicology and Ethnomusicology. Special thanks to the Tennessee Arts Commission.
A Common Struggle: Making Mental Health Essential Health
Chancellor's Lecture Series 2017-2018
13 March 2018 - 6:30pm to 8:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Langford Auditorium
Presented by the Honorable Patrick J. Kennedy, Congressman (Rhode Island 1995-2011) and Founder of The Kennedy Forum on Community Mental Health.
Tickets will not be distributed for this lecture. Admission is free and available on a first-come basis.
Questions for the Q+A sessions may be submitted before the event by utilizing #VUCLS on Twitter.
Fighting the Deportation Machine: Immigration Activism in the Streets and in the Courts, 1970-1985
Vanderbilt Legal History Colloquium 2017/2018
12 March 2018 - 12:45pm to 1:45pm
Vanderbilt University, Buttrick 123
Discussion will be based on a pre-circulated paper. To reserve lunch and a copy of the paper, contact Heidi Welch at heidi.welch@vanderbilt.edu.
The Vanderbilt Legal History Colloquium series is sponsored by the Vanderbilt College of Arts and Science and directed by Professor Sarah Igo.
Sin Big: Why Mary Daly's Insights (and Her Limitations) Are Valuable to Us Now
Department of Religious Studies
1 March 2018 - 1:10pm
Vanderbilt University, Wilson 112
Talk to be given by Professor Jennifer Rycenga, Professor of Comparative Religious Studies at San José State University. Dr. Rycenga is the co-editor of The Mary Daly Reader with Linda Barufaldi.
Sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies, Women's and Gender Studies, and the Carpenter Program in Religion, Gender, and Sexuality.
Unsettling Resettlement: Forced Concentration of the Native Population in the Colonial Andes
National Museum of Ethnology, Japan (International Symposium)
23-24 February 2018
Vanderbilt University, Community Room (Jean and Alexander Heard Library)
For more information visit http://www.r.minpaku.ac.jp/andes/events06.html
Yiddish Glory: Lost and Found Songs of Soviet Jews During WWII
The Program in Jewish Studies Lecture Series 2017-2018
21 February 2018 - 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Vanderbilt University, Sarratt Cinema
Singer-songwriter Psoy Korolenko and historian Anna Shternshis bring to life "lost" Yiddish songs of the World War II era in this all-new concert and lecture program. These previously unknown Yiddish songs were confiscated and hidden by the Soviets government in 1949, and have only recently come to light. Refreshments provided.
For more information, email jewishstudies@vanderbilt.edu.
Co-sponsored by The Max Kade Center for European and German Studies.
Unexpected Consequences: Women and Power in Post-Conflict Africa
The "Africa at a Crossroads" Trans-Institutional Program
21 February 2018 - 3:10pm to 5:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Black Cultural Center Auditorium
Talk to be given by Aili Tripp, University of Madison, Wisconsin.
Co-sponsored by the Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center.
Bhutan: Development with Values
Asian Studies Program
21 February 2018 - 4:10pm to 5:30pm
Vanderbilt University, 203 Cohen Memorial Hall
Presentation and Q&A with the Bhutan Foundation.
Sponsored by the Bhutan Foundation.
Desert Dreams of Drinking the Sea: Technopolitical Flows of Desalination and Energy from the Pacific to the Persian Gulf
Vanderbilt History Seminar 2017-2018: Water
19 February 2018 - 3:10pm
Vanderbilt University, Sarratt 216/220
Talk to be given by Michael Christopher Low, Iowa State University. Comments given by Mary Bridges, Vanderbilt University.
Discussion will be based on pre-circulated papers available in the Department of History, Benson 227.
Languages of the People: A Romanian-Jewish Philologist on Yiddish, Romanian and French
The Program in Jewish Studies 2017-2018 Lecture Series
14 February 2018 - 4:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Divinity School 124 (Reading Room)
Talk to be given by Natalie Zemon Davis, University of Toronto.
Co-sponsored by the Department of History, the Max Kade Center for European and German Studies, and the Department of German, Russian & East European Studies.
Guns, Communities, and Civic Life
Vanderbilt Center for Medicine, Health, and Society
13 February 2018 - 7:00pm
Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center
Screening of the documentary Whose Streets?, followed by a panel discussion.
14 February 2018 - 12:00pm to 1:30pm
Light Hall 208 (Vanderbilt Medical School)
Panelists:
Jonathan Metzl (Director, Center for Medicine, Health, and Society): Introduction
Stephan Heckers (Chair, VUMC Psychiatry): Firearms and Mental Health
Beth Roth (Director, Safe Tennessee): Community Activism in Red States
Lee Harris (TN State Senator, 29th District): The State of Legislation
Molly Pahn (Boston University, Public Health): Firearm Violence Research
Purnima Unni (VUMC Pediatric Surgery): Trauma and Injury Prevention
Framing Questions: Ken MacLeish (Medicine, Health, and Society)
Brief presentations followed by respectful public conversation. Open to one and all.
Sponsored by the Vanderbilt Center for Medicine, Health, and Society.
Co-sponsored by the Program in American Studies and the Deans' Offices of Arts and Science and Medicine.
Protestant Veiling and Politics in Early Modern Europe
Vanderbilt Legal History Colloquium 2017-2018
12 February 2018 - 12:15pm to 1:45pm (Lunch served at Noon)
Vanderbilt University, Buttrick Hall 123
Talk to be given by Susanna Burghartz (Department of History, University of Basel). Discussion will be based on a pre-circulated paper. To reserve lunch and request a copy of the paper, contact Heidi Welch at heidi.welch@vanderbilt.edu.
The Vanderbilt Legal History Colloquium is sponsored by the Vanderbilt College of Arts and Science and directed by Professor Sarah Igo.
Edutainment: A Roundtable Discussion
The "Africa at a Crossroads" Trans-Institutional Program
2 February 2018 - 3:10pm to 5:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Black Cultural Center Auditorium
Music, entertainment, and political violence in Africa: a roundtable on the role of arts and entertainment in conflict transformation.
Commentators include: Rezarta Bilai (New York University), Gregory Melchor-Barz (Vanderbilt University), and Kristin Micheltich (Vanderbilt University).
Co-sponsored by the Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center.
A Clash of Islams: Sufism and Salafism in the Caucasus
Department of Religious Studies
1 February 2018 - 4:10pm to 5:30pm
Vanderbilt University - Center for Second Language Studies Room 003 (Furman Hall)
Presented by Dr. Alexander Knysh, University of Michigan. Dr. Knysh's talk will explore the vicissitudes of Sufism's recent history in the Muslim republics of Russia's Northern Caucasus, and shows how Sufism's status as a "mainstay of the international social order" (per Marshall Hodgson) has come under critical scrutiny as well as verbal and physical attacks from a variety of quarters. Somewhat paradoxically, anti-Sufi discourses have been motivated by its former and recent social, political, and cultural prominence in Muslim societies. The most potent challenge to Sufism's doctrinal and devotional dominance has come from various Salafi ("fundamentalist") movements. Does this "clash of Islams" represent a re-enactment, in Muslim communities worldwide, of the Protestant Reformation?
Co-sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies, the Department of Classical and Mediterranean Studies, the Department of History, the Program in Jewish Studies, the Max Kade Center for European and German Studies, the Department of German, Russian & East European Studies, and the Center for Second Language Studies.
The talk is free and open to the public.
In My Lifetime: An African American Perspective
1-28 February 2018
Vanderbilt University, Divinity School G-20 (Ground Floor)
Painting and mixed media by Omari Booker.
For Gallery Hours: religionandarts.com
Opening Reception: 1 February, 3:00pm to 7:00pm
Gallery Talk: 8 February, 12:00pm to 1:00pm
Omari Booker and Paul Polycarpou (Nashville Arts Magazine)
Spiritual Meditation: 28 February, 10:00am
Michael Brandon McCormack, Ph.D. (University of Louisville)
All events to be held in room G-20.
All events are open to the public.
Sponsored by: Religions in the Arts and Contemporary Culture and the Kelly Miller Smith Insitute on Black Church Studies.
The Third Reich as Supernatural Project: The Role of Folklore Occultism, and Border Science in Nazi Empire-Building
The Max Kade Center for European and German Studies Spring 2018 Lecture Series
1 February 2018 - 4:10pm to 5:40pm
Vanderbilt University, Buttrick 102
Talk to be given by Erik Kurlander (Stetson University).
Co-sponsored by the Program in Jewish Studies.
Post-Holocaust Visions of War and Decolonization in France, 1958-1963
Program in Jewish Studies 2017-2018 Lecture Series
31 January 2018 - 12:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities
Talk to be given by Sandrine Sanos (Texas A&M University). Lunch will be provided for attendees.
Co-sponsored by the Department of History of Art, Women's and Gender Studies, and the Department of French and Italian.
Building an Empire of Supreme Courts
Vanderbilt Legal History Colloquium 2017/2018
29 January 2018 - 12:15pm to 1:45pm
Vanderbilt University, Buttrick 123
Talk to be given by Paul Halliday (University of Virginia). Discussion will be based on a pre-circulated paper. Lunch will be served at noon. To reserve lunch and request a copy go the paper, contact Heidi Welch at heidi.welch@vanderbilt.edu.
The Vanderbilt Legal History Colloquium series is sponsored by the Vanderbilt College of Arts and Science and directed by Professor Sarah Igo.
Theology, Class, and Intersectionality
Vanderbilt Divinity School
27 January 2018 - 10:00am to 12:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Divinity School G23
Join us for a special session of the Theology, Economic, and Labor course taught by Rosemarie Henkel-Rieger and Dr. Joerg Rieger. Panel participants will include Dr. Stacey Floyd-Thomas (E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Chair in Ethics and Society, Associate Professor of Ethics and Society, Vanderbilt University), Dr. Jeremy Posadas (Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Austin College), and Dr. Santiago Slabodsky (Florence and Robert Kaufman Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies, Associate Professor of Religion, Hofstra University).
The discussion is free and open to the public.
To RSVP please email Dr. Rieger at j.rieger@vanderbilt.edu.
2018 Spring Signature Workshop Schedule
Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
Vanderbilt University, Kissam Center C210 Multi-Purpose Room
Inclusive Excellence 101: Unconscious Bias - A New Look at an Old Dynamic!
- 24 January 2018 - 3:00pm
- 4 April 2018 - 11:00am
- 16 May 2018 - 11:00am
Inclusive Excellence 201: Everyday Bias
- 21 February 2018 - 11:00am
Inclusive Excellence 401: Mindful Communication across Diverse Groups
- 14 March 2018 - 1:00pm to 3:00pm
To register, visit www.vanderbilt.edu/equity-diversity-inclusion.
Walk in U.S., Talk on Japan
Asian Studies Program
23 January 2018 - 4:10pm to 5:30pm
Vanderbilt University, Kissam Center C216
Please join us as a delegation of the "Walk in U.S., Talk on Japan," headed by Former Japanese Ambassador to the U.S. Fujisaki, visit Middle Tennessee to share their stories of Japan today through grassroots exchange. Delegation members will take part in exchanges with local communities, discuss important factors of the future of the U.S.-Japan relationship, and talk about recent positive development in Japan. Since the program's launch in 2014, 19 delegations have visited 34 states and 66 cities throughout the U.S.
For further details, please visit the official website or Facebook.
Delegation members include: Ichiro FUJISAKI (Delegation Leader), Liu XIAOYAN, Hayato SAWA, and Asako KATO.
For information on the Consulate-General of Japan in Nashville, please email info@nv.mofa.go.jp or call 615-340-4300.
This is a free, public event.
Maymester Information Fair
23 January 2018 - 11:00am to 1:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Sarratt Student Center Promenade
For more information regarding the information fair and available May and Summer Session courses, visit https://www.vanderbilt.edu/summer/.
A VHS State of the Field Discussion with Gregory T. Cushman (University of Kansas)
Vanderbilt History Seminar 2017-2018: WATER
22 January 2018 - 3:10pm
Vanderbilt University, Sarratt 216/220
Join VHS for a discussion of Cushman's book, Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World: A Global Ecological History. A short paper accompanies the talk and is available in Benson 227. Vanderbilt University's Paul Kramer will serve as commentator. The 2017-2018 VHS Series directors are Jefferson Cowie and Ruth Rogaski.
Global/Asia: Celebrating 50 Years of Asian Studies at Vanderbilt
Asian Studies Spring 2018 Event Schedule
10-19 January 2018
Lecture Series: "New Directions in Korean Studies"
23 January 2018
"Walk in US, Talk on Japan" presentation, Q&A, and networking delegation headed by Ichiro Fujisaki, former Japanese Ambassador to the United States and President of the America-Japan Society.
4:10pm to 5:30pm, Kissam C216
8 February 2018
"Imagination and Interpretation in Early China" lecture given by Michael Puett, Walter C. Klein Professor of Chinese History and Anthropology (Harvard University).
4:10pm to 5:30pm, Cohen Memorial Hall 203
21 February 2018
"Bhutan: Development with Values" presentation and Q&A with representatives from the Bhutan Foundation.
4:10pm to 5:30pm, Wilson Hall 127
23 February 2018
Asian Studies Lunar Potluck Luncheon
12:00pm to 1:30pm, Buttrick Hall 230
15 March 2018
"From 'Literacy' to 'Civil' Culture: Redefining Literature in the Biographies of New Tang History" lecture given by Anna Shields, Professor of East Asian Studies (Princeton University).
4:10pm to 5:30pm, Buttrick Hall 123
4 April 2018
An Evening with Amitav Ghosh, author of The Ibis Trilogy and The Great Derangement.
Lecture from 5:30pm to 6:30pm, Reception and Book Signing from 6:30pm to 7:30pm
Jean and Alexander Heard Library (Central Library) Community Reading Room.
7 April 2018
Middle Tennessee Area Japanese Speech Contest
8:00am to 5:00pm, Wilson Hall
13 April 2018
"The Literary Imagination of Ritual in Early Japan" seminar by Torquil Duthie, Associate Professor in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures (UCLA).
12:00pm to 1:30pm, Robert Penn Warren Center
Archaeological Perspectives on the 19th Century "Illegal" Slave Trade Along the Rio Pongo, Guinea
Presented by the 'Africa at a Crossroads' Trans-Institutional Program
6 December 2017 - 3:10pm to 5:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center Auditorium
Talk to be given by Kenneth Kelly, Professor (Department of Anthropology, University of South Carolina). Reception to follow.
Co-sponsored by the Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center.
Cultures in Clay: The Shaping of Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations
Divinity Library Opening Reception
6 December 2017 - 3:00pm to 5:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Divinity Library
The exhibit is curated by Dr. Annalisa Azzoni, Dr. Doug Knight, Serena Jarvis, Jonathan Redding, Michael Sekuras and Charlotte Lew.
Asian Hydro-Histories in the Longue Durée
Vanderbilt History Seminar 2017-2018: Water
4 December 2017 - 3:10pm
Vanderbilt University, Sarratt 216/220
Talks to be given by Benjamin Cohen (Historian of South Asia, University of Utah) and Ruth Mostern (Historian of China, University of Pittsburgh). Commentators will be Professors Ruth Rogaski and Samira Sheikh of the Vanderbilt University Department of History.
Discussion will be based on pre-ciculated papers available in the Department of History, Benson 227. The Vanderbilt History Seminar 2017-2018 Directors are Jefferson Cowie and Ruth Rogaski.
"A Principle of Incompleteness" with Fred Moten & Stefano Harney, authors of The Undercommons
Lecture: 29 November 2017 - 4:30pm, Wilson 103
Open Seminar: 28 November 2017 - 4:00pm, Buttrick 123
Vanderbilt University
Pre-circulated readings available in the Benson 4th Floor lounge, or by email at aprincipleofcompleteness@gmail.com.
Made possible with generous support from the Department of English and African American and Diaspora Studies; the Office of Inclusive Excellence; the Owen School of Management; Jefferson Cowie, James G. Stahlman Professor of History; Colin Dayan, Robert Penn Warren Professor in the Humanities; Vera Kutzinski, Martha Rivers Ingram Professor of English; Hortense Spillers, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor; and Cecelia Tichi, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English.
Student Research Workshop
13 November 2017 - 5:00pm to 7:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Commons Center Room 349
Sponsored by the "Africa At A Crossroads" Trans-Institutional Program
The Evolution of the Legal Subject in Classical Hindu Law
Vanderbilt Legal History Colloquium 2017/2018
13 November 2017 - 12:15pm to 1:45pm (Lunch served at noon)
Vanderbilt University, Buttrick 123
Talk to be given by Donald Davis of the University of Texas at Austin.
Discussion will be based on a pre-circulated paper. To reserve lunch and request a copy of the paper, contact Christen Harper at c.harper@vanderbilt.edu.
The Vanderbilt Legal History Colloquium series is sponsored by the Vanderbilt College of Arts and Science and directed by Professor Sarah Igo.
Nostalgia for the Future: A Documentary Film on Indian Modernity, the Making of the Citizen, and the Architecture of the Home (2017 - 54 Minutes)
9 November 2017 - 4:10pm
Vanderbilt University, Cohen Memorial Hall 203
The screening will be followed by a panel session with directors Avijit Mukul Kishore and Rohan Shivkumar, with responses by Professor Heeryoon Shin (History of Art) and Professor Akshya Sazena (English).
Sponsored by History of Art, Cinema and Media Arts, Asian Studies, Political Science, and History.
Circles of Jewish Life: Changing Family Formation and Jewish Connectedness among America's Younger Jews
Jewish Studies Lecture Series
9 November 2017 - 12:00pm to 1:30pm
Vanderbilt University, Buttrick 123
Talk to be given by Sylvia Barack Fishman, Brandeis University. Lunch provided.
Co-sponsored by the Department of Sociology and the Department of Religious Studies.
On Writing: Imagining the Very Small and the Long Ago
Presented by The Writing Studio
9 November 2017 - 4:15pm
Vanderbilt University, Alumni Hall Lounge Room 100
What is the role of the imagination in academic writing? Whether researching nanoparticles, Chinese military history, or Japanese Buddhist practices, scholars use creative thinking in their work. Join us for a conversation with Assistant Professor of Chemistry Janet MacDonald, Assistant Professor of History and Asian Studies Peter Lorge, and Assistant Professor of Religious Studies Bryan Lowe as they discuss their creative processes in relations to their recent writing projects.
On Writing is free and open to the public.
Music, Migration and the New African Diasporas
The "Africa at a Crossroads" Trans-Institutional Program
8 November 2017 - 3:10pm to 5:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center Auditorium
Talk to be given by Patricia Tang, Associate Professor of Music in the Department of Music and Theater at MIT.
Reception to follow.
Cosponsored by the Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center.
Never in this World a Victim Like Me: What Disabled Veterans Can Teach Us About the History (and Future) of American War
MHS Hot Topic Lecture Series
7 November 2017 - 1:00pm to 2:30pm
Vanderbilt University, Sarratt 216/220
Talk to be given by John M. Kinder, Associate Professor of American Studies within the Department of History at Oklahoma State University.
Co-sponsored by the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities.
The Complex Sex: Intersexuality in Pre-Modern Islamic Legal Texts
Vanderbilt Legal History Colloquium 2017/2018
6 November 2017 - 12:15pm to 1:45pm (Lunch served at noon)
Vanderbilt University, Buttrick 123
Talk to be given by Indira Gesink, Baldwin Wallace University. Discussion will be based on a pre-circulated paper. To reserve lunch and request a copy of the paper, contact Christen Harper at c.harper@vanderbilt.edu.
The Series is sponsored by the Vanderbilt College of Arts and Science and is directed by Professor Sarah Igo.
The Restless Resource: Medieval Europeans and Water
Vanderbilt History Seminar 2017-2018: Water
6 November 2017 - 3:10pm
Vanderbilt University, Sarratt 216/220
Talk to be given by Paolo Squatriti, University of Michigan, with comments by William Caferro of Vanderbilt University. Discussion will be based on pre-circulated papers available in the Department of History, Benson 227.
VHS Directors: Jefferson Cowie & Ruth Rogaski
Click here for further information.
Teaching from and for the Margins in These Troubled Times: A Conference on Radial Love Politics and Critical Pedagogy
3rd Biennial Conference of the Society of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion (SRER)
27-29 October 2017
Vanderbilt University, Divinity School
Conference Plenary Speakers: Emilie M. Townes, Stacey Floyd-Thomas, Laura S. Levitt, David Kyuman Kim.
Click here for further information.
Of Marginal Identities and Heterotopic Saints: Lived Religion in the Borderlands
2017 Cole Lecture Series
26 October 2017 - 7:00pm
27 October 2017 - 10:00am
Vanderbilt University, Benton Chapel
To be delivered by Daisy L. Machado, Professor of American Religious History at the Union Theological Seminary.
Sponsored by the Divinity School.
Against Continental Disunity: Writers on a Constitution for Europe
26 October 2017 - 5:10pm
Vanderbilt University, Buttrick 123
A talk given by Paul Michael Lützeler, Rosa May distinguished Professor in the Humanities and Director of the Max Kade Center at Washington University in St. Louis.
Additional Workshop offered by Dr. Lützeler - Transforming Humanities: A Conversation the Future of German Studies (27 October 2017 - 11:30am, Furman 123).
Contested Origins: Brazilian Pentecostalism Among Nikkei "Return" Migrants in Japan
Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities
26 October 2017 - 12:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Robert Penn Warren Center Seminar Room
A talk by Dr. Suma Ikeuchi, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama.
The event is presented by the Brazilian Reading Group. Lunch and refreshments will be provided.
Gesture and Power: Religion, Nationalism, and Everyday Performance in the Congo
23 October 2017 - 3:10pm to 5:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center Auditorium
A talk given by Yolanda Covington-Ward (University of Pittsburgh), with reception to follow.
Sponsored by the "Africa at a Crossroads" Trans-Institutional Program. Co-sponsored by the Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center.
Don Quixote in a Day
21 October 2017 - 9:30am to 4:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Wilson 126
Vanderbilt Speakers: Edward Friedman (Spanish and Portuguese/Comparative Literature) and Kristen Mendoza (English). Guest Speaker: Cory Duclos (Colgate University).
Prior reading of Don Quixote is not required. Lunch will be provided to those who register by email to rpw.center@vanderbilt.edu by October 18.
Sponsored by the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities.
ReLACS 2017
Program in Classical and Mediterranean Studies & the Divinity School
19-20 October 2017
Keynote Address: 19 October, 4:10pm in 203 Cohen Memorial Hall, Vanderbilt University
By Stephen J. Davis, Professor of Religious Studies and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Yale University: "The Archaeology of Early Christian Monasticism: Evidentiary Problems and Criteria."
Participation is open to all scholars and students interested in Late Antiquity broadly defined. Those planning to attend should use the following link to register: https://divinity.vanderbilt.edu/news/relacs2017.php. The full event schedule, including the Professional Seminar, "Introduction to the Cairo Geniza," and the Works in Progress Workshop can be found at the link as well. Please contact David Michelson with any questions. There is no cost to attend and lunch will be provided for all those who register. The event is additionally co-sponsired by the Department of Anthropology, the Department of Religious Studies, the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, the Department of History, the Department of History of Art, and the Program in Jewish Studies.
Crying like a Protestant: Dublin Jail, 1640
19 October 2017 - 3:10pm
Vanderbilt University, Sarratt 216/220
Talk to be given by Peter Lake (Department of History, Vanderbilt University). Discussion will be based on pre-circulated papers available in the Department of History, Benson 227.
Meanings and Implications of the Holocaust
Relevant Religion 2017: A Wednesday Evening lecture Series on West End with Jay Geller, Associate Professor of Modern Jewish Culture, Vanderbilt University
18 October 2017 - Sherith Israel
25 October 2017 - Blakemore UMC
1 November 2017 - West End Church of Christ
8 November 2017 - Sherith Israel
All events start with dinner at 5:30pm. $10 for the entire series (dinners included).
Dinner at the Center of the Earth: A Reading and Discussion
New York Times Best-selling Author Nathan Englander
5 October 2017 - 11:30am to 2:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Buttrick 123
Co-sponsored by the Program in Jewish Studies, the Program in Creative Writing, and the Department of History.
Beyond the Horizon: 21st Century Global Security and Risk
Chancellor's Lecture Series 2017-2018
3 October 2017
Reception - 5:30pm to 6:30pm, Ingram Hall Lobby (Blair School of Music)
Lecture - 6:30pm to 7:30, Ingram Hall (Blair School of Music)
Tickets are required for the lecture. They are free and available on a first-come basis. There is a limit of 4 tickets per person, and they must be picked up at the Sarratt Student Center Box Office. For hours of operation, please call (615) 343-3361.
The Foreign Language Edge: Vanderbilt and Beyond
3 October 2017
Information Fair 11:00am to 1:00pm, The Commons Center Rooms 235-237
Panel Discussion - 7:00pm to 8:00pm, Furman 114
Sponsored by the Center for Second Language Studies, the College of Arts and Science, Vanderbilt Language Departments, Global Education Office, English Language Center, Career Center, McTyeire International House, the Martha Ingram Commons.
The Travels of Rosey E. Pool Through the Deep South, 1959-60
Program in Jewish Studies
3 October 2017 - 12:00pm to 1:30pm
Vanderbilt University, Black Cultural Center Auditorium
Presented by Lonneke Geerlings, Free University of Amsterdam.
Lunch provided.
Co-sponsored by African American and Diaspora Studies, Women's and Gender Studies, and the Fisk University School of Humanities and Behavioral Sciences.
The Prophet Unmanned: The Male Prophetic Body in Ezekiel and Daniel Paul Schreber
Robert Penn Warren Center Group for Premodern Cultural Studies Seminar
2 October 2017 - 12:00pm to 2:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Warren Center Seminar Room
Presented by Rhiannon Graybill, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Program Director of Gender and Sexuality Studies, Rhodes College
Lunch will be served before the talk, with time for questions and discussion afterwards.
Encountering Evil: Vanderbilt Faculty Discuss Suffering
Veritas Forum
18 February 2015
Vanderbilt University, Langford Auditorium
Moderator: Paul Lim
Panelists: Scott Aikin, Sandra Barnes, Nancy Lin, Keith Meadow, David Weintraub
For more info information, click here.
Cancelled due to inclement weather; may be rescheduled for a later date.
Nancy L. Clark
Nelson Mandela Memorial Lecture
3 February 2015
Vanderbilt University, Community Room - Jean & Alexander Heard Library
Sponsored by the Vanderbilt University Office of the Provost.
For more information, click here.
Seeing the World From Delhi: A Discussion on Writing from the Post-Western World
Curb Center
26 March 2014 - 12:10pm
Vanderbilt University, Sarratt 189
Presented by Rana Dasgupta.
Sponsored by the Curb Center, the Asian Studies Program, the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, the Department of English, and the Department of Religious Studies.
Global Folktales - Tokyo, Bulgaria, Delhi: A Literary Conversation with Ben Tran, Assistant Professor of Asian Studies and English
Curb Center
25 March 2014 - 4:00pm
Vanderbilt University, Yamada Room
Presented by Rana Dasgupta.
Sponsored by the Curb Center for Art Enterprise and Public Policy, the Asian Studies Program, the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, the Department of English, and the Department of Religious Studies.
In God's Land / Kadavulin Nilathi: Film Screening and Discussion
Department of History
29 October 2013
Vanderbilt University, 201 Alumni Hall
Sponsored by the Department of History, Asian Studies Program, and the Department of Religious Studies.
Reading Communities, Reading Scripture, Reading Responsibly: A Symposium in Honor of Daniel Patte
Department of Religious Studies
6 April 2013
Vanderbilt University, 129 Divinity School
For more information, please visit the symposium homepage.
Buddhism After the Tsunami / The Souls of Zen 3/11 Japan Special: Film Screening and Discussion
Asian Studies Program
11 March 2013 - 4:30pm
Vanderbilt University, 203 Cohen Memorial Hall
Panelists include Helen Auer, Yoshikuni Igarashi, Bryan Lowe, and Takashi Suzuki.
Sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies, the Asian Studies Program, and the Center for U.S.-Japan Studies Cooperation.
Buddhist Blood Writing and Agency in Early Modern China
Colloquium on Religious History
15 January 2013 - 4:00pm to 5:30pm
Vanderbilt University, Tillet Faculty Lounge
Presented by Jimmy Yu, Department of Religion (Florida State University).
Sponsored by Vanderbilt University Divinity School.
Co-sponsored by the Asian Studies Program and the Department of Religious Studies.
The Cult of Confucius and the Shrine of His Robe and Cap
Norman L. & Rosella J. Goldberg Lecture Series
8 November 2012 - 4:10pm to 5:30pm
Vanderbilt University, 203 Cohen Memorial Hall
Presented by Julia K. Murray, University of Wisconsin.
Sponsored by the Department of the History of Art and co-sponsored by the Asian Studies Program.