Seminars
Seminars at the Robert Penn Warren Center invite faculty and graduate students to engage in rich conversations and innovative scholarship with colleagues from a wide range of disciplines.
- View the RPW events calendar for the full seminar schedule.
- View RPW’s seminar history.
- We are no longer accepting invite proposals for the 2025-2026 academic year.
2026-2027 Seminar Series
Co-directors: Alexis Finet (Romance Languages) and Cameron Pattison (Philosophy)
AI and the Human Seminar aims to explore the philosophical implications of artificial intelligence (AI) on our understanding of intelligence and the human condition, focusing on redefining AI's impact on the humanities. It will continue to foster interdisciplinary dialogue among faculty, graduate students, and visiting scholars, addressing questions about AI's challenge to traditional intelligence, ethical considerations, and the humanities' role in AI discourse. Sessions of this monthly seminar will combine in-depth reading discussions and presentations by leading experts in AI ethics. This seminar seeks to advance interdisciplinary research and enhance understanding of AI's impact on research and teaching while fostering a community of scholars dedicated to examining the ethical and philosophical dimensions of AI. To help us feed original, deep, and unique conversations, we strongly encourage members of diverse academic departments and community leaders to attend. For upcoming speakers, resources, and more information, visit our website.
Co-directors: Brandon Byrd (History) and Anthony Reed (English)
The Black Worlds and World-Making Seminar is about Black people and the modern world. It attends to the historical and current thought and subjective experiences of the people who have claimed Blackness as a political, social, and cultural identity. It is about Black world-making too. Once a month, our meetings will convene scholars from Vanderbilt and beyond who will share new and in-progress research on topics such as interrelated struggles for racial justice, practices of resistance, and dreams of freedom across Africa and its Diaspora. Working across disciplinary and activist modes of scholarship, these meetings will establish a common ground on which students and scholars from a variety of backgrounds can collaborate for the mutual purposes of study and struggle.
Co-directors: Matt Worsnick (History of Art and Architecture) and Ben Sawyer (History, MTSU)
East Europe and Eurasia: Critical Engagements invites scholars from across disciplinary and institutional lines to join a community that seeks to enrich the scholarship of the presenter as well as those in attendance. The seminar explores humanistic topics related to Russia, Eastern Europe, and former Soviet Empire. This includes East European and Eurasian culture and politics; the complexities of empire (both past and present); questions of religion, law, and political authority; socialism and post-socialism; minority rights and mass violence; and the role of Russian scholarly paradigms in shaping disciplinary methods and conversations. A typical meeting consists of an open discussion of a pre-circulated work-in-progress approached with the dual aims of providing constructive feedback and provoking discussion and collegial debate. The author, in attendance, briefly contextualizes the piece and responds to inquiries and critiques. By hosting speakers and participants from multiple disciplines and academic institutions, this seminar brings multiple voices and perspectives to the table in an inclusive scholarly community that explores original questions and fosters new and innovative approaches to research.
Co-directors: Sasha Crawford-Holland (Cinema & Media Arts/Communication Studies), Jennifer Fay (Cinema & Media Arts/English), and Huan He (English)
The Film Theory and Visual Culture Seminar fosters dialogue among faculty and graduate students interested in film, visual culture, literature and media studies, as well as in philosophies of perception, aesthetics and critical theory, the politics of technology, and the history of vision. Each semester we host scholars, media-makers, and artists from leading film and media programs (and adjacent fields), as well as scholars and teachers from our own Vanderbilt community. Additionally, we gather to discuss how to bring these topics, methods, and approaches into the classroom to highlight the pedagogical benefits of thinking with film, media, and visual culture. See our line-up of speakers below and please join us for the conversation! For examples of previous speakers, or for more information about upcoming programming, please click here.
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Co-directors: Jana Harper (Art), Helen Makhdoumian (English), and Jean-Paul Rojas (Anthropology)
The Indigenous Studies Seminar provides an opportunity for sharing research in critical Indigenous studies and for hosting events on current Native American and global Indigenous issues. The seminar is an interdisciplinary space where faculty, staff, graduate students, and postdocs come together to dialogue, discuss works-in-progress, share networks, and build community. The seminar supports relationship-building both within and outside the University and hosts discussions with local, national, and international Indigenous Scholars and Knowledge Keepers.
Co-directors: Daniel Sharfstein (Law/History), and Kimberly Welch (History/Law)
The Legal History Colloquium (LHC) is a speaker series and workshop that brings together historians and other scholars interested in the history of law, socio-legal questions, methods, and theories, and law and society research. The workshop spans across time and place—from ancient Rome, medieval Spain, and colonial Peru to late imperial China and the modern United States. Workshop paper topics vary depending on the speaker’s interests and expertise, but have included themes such as comparative constitutionalism, the legal consciousness of ordinary people, and battles for citizenship and rights. The LHC meets approximately six times per academic year to read and discuss work-in-progress by both Vanderbilt and outside guest scholars.
Co-directors: Margaret Achee (VUMC), Fatima Kola (MHS), Odie Lindsey (MHS), Lauren Mitchell (MHS), Caroline Williams (MHS), and Andrew Wooldridge (VUMC)
The Medical Humanities Seminar explores the intersections of literature, philosophy, the arts, and medicine through current scholarship and practical applications to caregiving. Although medicine is a science, it is a narratively mediated science, where patients and providers alike must make sense of diagnosis, illness, injury, and trauma through story and aesthetic representation. Medical Humanities is a field that addresses the ways in which people make meaning of complex embodied experiences. Its foothold among medical providers over the past 20 years and its continued growth with renewed interests across disciplines combats the stereotype of a two-culture split between STEM fields and the arts. We welcome faculty, students, and community members of all academic backgrounds to come and share insights at our monthly meetings, which will include reading-based discussions and guest lectures.
Co-directors: Julia Phillips Cohen (Jewish Studies) and Samuel Dolbee (History)
The Ottoman History Workshop explores the dynamism of the Ottoman world and its impact beyond the empire’s borders and into the present in southeast Europe, southwest Asia, north Africa, and beyond. To promote collaboration, the seminar partners with various units across campus and focuses on works-in-progress. Seminar topics in the past have included American oil interests in the empire, the political ecology of charcoal and forests in Ottoman Kurdistan, science and sexology, and the question of race and the British Mandate in Iraq.
Co-directors: Jack Crawford (Art History) and Rachel P. Kreiter (VUMA)
The Queer Studies Seminar is a wide-ranging exploration of the area of queer studies, with a focus on culture and aesthetics in its first year. Embracing the slipperiness and capaciousness of the term “queer,” and in the spirit of queer studies as an interdisciplinary concern, scholars and staff seeking intellectual community around the seminar’s concepts are welcome regardless of field or specialization. We seek a wide and diverse group with many approaches and backgrounds to foster and challenge ingrained orthodoxies. Via book discussions, presentations of new research from Vanderbilt and outside scholars and critics, and practica away from the seminar room, our aim is to generate new conversations and activity around other ways of thinking and being.
Co-directors: Ajay Batra (English) and Maya Singhal (Asian Studies)
The Race & Capitalism Seminar (R&C) is a forum for discussion about the role of race and other forms of difference in structuring economic inequality, social injustice, and the terrain of politics across time and space. Our programming fosters multi-disciplinary dialogue on a core set of inter-related themes and topics: the historical development and expansion of capitalism; colonialism and empire; free and unfree labor; race, ethnicity, and gender; and working-class politics and culture. To that end, we host lectures and workshop sessions that highlight the cutting-edge research of both Vanderbilt community members and visiting scholars. We welcome participants from the full range of disciplines across the humanities and the humanistic social sciences, including anthropology, ethnic and area studies, history, literary and cultural studies, and sociology.
Co-directors: Mabel Denzin Gergan (Asian Studies), Adeana McNicholl (Religious Studies), and Akshya Saxena (English)
The Remaking South Asia Seminar examines the complex histories of bordering, migration, and religion that have shaped South Asia as a political region and scholarly area. Our programming recognizes that literature, art, and music are vital components to conceptualizing visions of the future. Our visiting speakers include scholars, writers, and artists who are crafting new conceptions of time, temporality, community, mythology, and rituals. Together, they offer collective reflection on how many modern-day challenges in South Asia—climate change, displacement and dispossession, caste oppression, ethno-religious nationalism, and new technologies—can be traced to how we relate to the past, present, and future.
Co-directors: Elizabeth Covington (GSS/English), Kristin Rose (GSS/CES), Stacy Clifford Simplican (GSS), and Danyelle Valentine (GSS)
Working across disciplinary boundaries in a dynamic and inclusive scholarly community, the Rights and Resistance Seminar addresses significant cultural issues, politics, and scholarship that describe the current state and consider the future of human rights in the United States. The seminar will use both scholarly and popular texts as a jumping-off point to discuss human rights and resistance to power structures related to race, gender, class, sexuality, and ability.
Co-directors: Ellen Osborn (Human Genetics) and Laura Stark (MHS, History, CES)
Science and Technology Studies is a multidisciplinary seminar focused on science, power, and justice. Through collective reading, conversations, and events, this seminar series will bring together faculty and students from across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences to explore the processes and power structures through which knowledge is collectively crafted, as well as the impacts and erasures of collective knowledge. The premise of the seminar is that critical humanistic perspectives are needed now more than ever to shed light on the possibilities and limits of science and technology for addressing profound global challenges—with the benefit of insights from a range of geographic locations, time frames, and political positionalities.
Co-directors: Sofia Berrospi (Political Science) and Gavin Riley (Sociology)
Social movements are major catalysts for social, economic, and political reform. From anti-immigration protests and pro-life rallies to anti-war activism and environmental demonstrations, activists engage in collective action to set agendas and demand structural change. But what does it take to start a social movement? Who participates in them? Why are some movements effective agents of change while others fail to achieve their demands? The Social Movements Seminar provides a forum to explore these questions with a diverse group of movement scholars from across disciplines and community activists. These speakers’ knowledge and experience will help foster productive discussions within the Vanderbilt community about the role of social movements in the modern world. For upcoming speakers, resources, and more information, visit our website.
Co-directors: Jay Clayton (English/CMA) and Scott J. Juengel (English)
The Novel Seminar brings together the Vanderbilt community and visiting scholars to engage with groundbreaking scholarship on the history, theory, and politics of the novel form, from its early modern provenance to its contemporary persistence in a hyper-mediated public sphere. Our sessions explore matters of fictional world-building and narrative form as they intersect with pressing questions in multiple fields of inquiry, from climate change to racial capitalism, sexual politics to social justice. While largely focused on the Anglophone world, the seminar welcomes scholars working in a range of national literatures and disciplines to share work and join the discussions.