Josiah Ober discusses an ancient Greek case study that points to a self-enforcing equilibrium in which citizens have the motive and means to coordinate against threats to democratic order.
Featured Podcast
Thursday, February 21, 2013
According to Cathy N. Davidson, we are on the threshold of a monumental transformation in higher education, one aimed at the needs and expectations of the next generation of resilient, connected, self-paced, peer-inspired, creative, multidisciplinary, and multicultural global learners.
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
An internationally respected feminist geography, Victoria Lawson considers the ethics of care in the global era in this lecture.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
As political parties fail to represent their constituencies, people are re-learning to represent themselves through performance, art, and activism. Diana Taylor explores this intersection of scholarship, artistic expression, and politics.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Doris Sommer discusses how community-based educators, activists, artists, and intellectuals combine politics and pedagogy in civic cultural experiments to engage publics in acts of community building and in democratic social change.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Interested in the intersections of art, history, and science, Linda Bierds’ poems feature rich portraits of historical figures beyond their great achievements. She situates them in intimate, everyday moments, and by doing so presents the unique ways in which each interprets the world.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
In his Katz lecture, Raymond Jonas chronicles the story of the Battle of Adwa in Ethiopia and its aftermath, probing the world historical implications of an event that determined the color of Africa.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Robin D.G. Kelley’s work explores the history of black radical movements, the location of public intellectual work in contemporary social movements, and the role of the imagination in transformational politics. In this talk he discusses modern jazz in revolutionary times.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
A renowned art historian, T. J. Clark speaks on Picasso’s conception of space and his struggle in the 1920s and 1930s to find a convincing alternative to the intimate, proximate “room-space” of Cubism.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
In this lecture Richard Gray engages the conflicts between poetic technique and historical reliability that haunt contemporary German Holocaust literature.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Dipesh Chakrabarty talks on the science of climate change and its impact on historical thinking.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
David Knechtges reframes European lyric traditions and visual conventions through the rhapsodic poetry of Xie Lingyun, engaging questions of sensual experience, philosophical knowledge, and spiritual truth.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Steven Ungar is a scholar of twentieth-century French literature, intellectual history, and film. In this lecture he discusses documentary film.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
With a varied background in activism, journalism, and urban studies, Mike Davis speaks explores alternative forms of dual power that have arisen in the vacuum of public services and legitimate government in poor cities across the world.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Known for her subtle and sophisticated interpretations of political theory and practice, Wendy Brown addresses the curious phenomenon that finds nation-states building physical walls at their borders.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Vicente Rafael works across three languages and three centuries of modern empire. His lectures focuses on questions about the historical, political, and pragmatic relationship between translation and empire.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Derek Attridge addresses the questions of what we might learn—of receptivity, of otherness, and of responsibility—by way of reading.
Thursday, February 1, 2007
A model of interdisciplinarity, Charles Johnson discusses his personal journey in finding his passions as an artist, a writer, and a scholar in this talk. He explores how various interrelated factors such as race, culture, faith, and history converged to shape his work.
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Derek Gregory explores the strategic geographical sites of the global war prison including Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraid, Bagram, and the so-called ‘Black Sites,’ showing how they are produced through constantly shifting folds between law and violence.
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Geoffrey Parker’s talk brings the historical perspective of climate change in seventeenth-century Europe to bear on current discussions about environmental policies, international politics, and globalization.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Alain Badiou is a poet, playwright, critic, screenwriter, aesthetician, and political activist in addition to his work as a scholar. In this talk he discusses the relationship between politics, democracy, and philosophy.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Richard Saloman discusses the discovery of the earliest surviving Buddhist texts and their implications on the Buddhist tradition.
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Internationally known philosopher Alexander Nehamas discusses the importance of beauty, and why it has been discredited as a philosophical notion.
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
One of the world’s foremost experts on ancient Indian history, Romila Thapar discusses differing interpretations of early Indian history in this lecture.
Thursday, May 5, 2005
Writer, editor, broadcaster, and critical commentator on Islam, culture, and science, Ziauddin Sardar is one of the world’s leading public intellectuals. In this lecture he discusses Islam and modernity.
Thursday, October 28, 2004
Herbert Blau draws upon his memories and plumbs his beginning in the mean and ugly Brooklyn streets and the unlikely connection that informed his subsequent life as a director, an educator, and as a writer.
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
Marjorie Perloff, one of America’s most prominent critics of contemporary poetry, is renowned for her study of the avant-garde. In this talk she discusses modernism and poetry.
Friday, February 27, 2004
In this talk, Anthony Vidler shares his historical and theoretical insights concerning the complex and difficult relationship between politics, social thought, and architectural design.
Thursday, December 4, 2003
Poet Heather McHugh has published a number of award-winning collections. In this lecture she discusses her poetry about art and the senses.
Wednesday, July 16, 2003
Antonio Damasio discusses emotions, feelings, and social behavior as related to the brain in this Katz lecture.
Thursday, December 12, 2002
Susan Jeffords explores what stories about fathers and sons look like in a post-September 11 environment.