Lectures/Conferences/Events 2015 – 2016

Yohangza Theatre Troupe

Saturday, April 23, 2016 Keynote Lecture with Tiffany Stern and Hyonu Lee at 4:30 PM in Collins Cinema Performance at 7:00 PM in Diana Chapman Walsh Alumnae Hall Auditorium Free and Open to the Public

The Shakespeare on the Global Stage festival celebrates the global reach of Shakespeare on the 400th anniversary of his death. The Festival will feature talks by eminent scholars from around the world that will highlight the on-going and volatile evolution of Shakespeare from the original Globe stage to the global stage, and a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream by Yohangza, an internationally acclaimed theatre troupe from Seoul, South Korea. The festival will begin on April 23 at 4:15 PM with the Keynote Lecture, followed by the Yohangza performance at 7:00 PM and will continue a few days later with Stephen Greenblatt's lecture on April 27 at 7:00 PM.

“Wonderfully wicked and magical” (The Scotsman) Through brilliantly choreographed dance, mimes, songs and contemporized traditional Korean music, a cast of 13 create an unforgettable production for the whole family. Join us for a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream by Yohangza, an internationally acclaimed theatre troupe from Seoul, South Korea, as part of Shakespeare on the Global Stage: A Festival of Performance and Scholarship, which celebrates the global reach of Shakespeare on the 400th anniversary of his death. The performance will be in Korean, with English subtitles.

Yohangza is a South Korean theatre company founded in 1997 by director/writer Yang Jung-Ung. The company is renowned for its exhilarating adaptations of Western classics in a unique theatrical idiom that combines traditional Korean practices with a global and modern sensibility. As a Telegraph reviewer explained, "it has been infused with themes from the country’s culture and folklore…And, in Korean, this play—perhaps all too familiar to me in English—seemed suddenly like an entirely new work."

Yohangza means voyager, and this groundbreaking company has travelled all over the world since its inception in 1997. The company has been invited to various Shakespeare festivals and world arts centers in Australia, Cuba, Germany, Poland, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taipei and the UK.

Elizabeth Turner Jordan '59 Lecture/Seminar

Teju Cole

Wednesday, April 6, 2016, 7:00 PM

Newhouse Center for the Humanities, Green Hall Free and Open to the Public

Cole is an author, photography critic of the New York Times Magazine, and the Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College. His works have been included in multiple “book of the year” lists, including the New York Times, the Globe and Mail, NPR and the Telegraph. His numerous awards include the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Rosenthal Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the 2015 Windham Campbell Prize for Fiction.

Ruth Guyer

Thursday, March 10, 2016, 4:00 PM

Newhouse Center for the Humanities, Green Hall Free and Open to the Public "A Conversation with the Author"

Ruth Levy Guyer is an American writer and commentator whose interests include medical ethics, environmental ethics, social justice, infectious diseases, narrative medicine, and public health. Her talk will focus on the life of Marjorie Day, a Wellesley alumna. After losing 17 years of her life to a mysterious illness, Day continues her personal adventures for almost a century.

Reel Africa: Films of Jean-Marie Teno

Our film festival, Reel Africa, features the films of our resident Newhouse Fellow and filmmaker Jean-Marie Teno, Q&A with the Director, and a reception. Through a comprehensive selection of films from Homage (1984) to Leaf in the Wind (2013), Teno offers a 2-day journey into his work and his life as a witness, critic, and artist. To claim his Africanness, Teno puts the African continent at the center, from where he addresses its complex, intertwined on-going issues.

Embracing a powerful first-person voice that weaves with others into polyphonic narratives, Teno’s radically committed works offer thought-provoking reflections on socio-political questions ranging from African history, memory, political systems, political violence, resistance and gender, to power.

Friday, March 4th

4:30 PM: Homage (13 min)

4:45 PM: A Trip to the Country (75 min)

6:30 PM: Reception at Collins Cafe sponsored by the French House

Sunday, March 6th 10:00 AM: Alex's Wedding (45 min)

10:45 AM: Chief! (65 min)

1:30 PM: The Colonial Misunderstanding (75 min)

3:30 PM: Clandestine (96 min)

5:30 PM: Afrique, je te plumerai (88 min)

7:00 PM: Leaf in the Wind (54 min)

All films are free and open to the public. French, with English subtitles. Discussion with director after each session. In collaboration with the French House.

Jane Gallop

Wednesday, March 2, 2016, 12:30 PM

Newhouse Center for the Humanities, Green Hall Free and Open to the Public

"The Phallus and its Temporalities: Sexuality, Disability, and Aging"

Gallop explores how late-onset disability is lived as a threat to one's sexuality and one's gender. She will address how sexuality survives and is transformed in the process, becoming, in these older, less able subjects, more perverse from a normative standpoint, more deviant from an ageist, ableist standpoint.

The Mary J. Cornille Distinguished Lecture in the Humanities

Françoise Lionnet

Thursday, February 25, 2016, 7:00 PM

Newhouse Center for the Humanities, Green Hall Free and Open to the Public

“Literary Routes: Migration and the Creative Economy”

Françoise Lionnet is Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and African and African-American Studies at Harvard. She was Director of the UCLA J.S. Coleman African Studies Center and co-director of the Mellon Postdoctoral Program “Cultures in Transnational Perspective” for the past decade. She is also Distinguished Professor of French and Francophone Studies, Comparative Literature, and Gender Studies at UCLA.

Gérard Araud, French Ambassador to the United States

Wednesday, February 10th, 2016, 10:30 AM

Newhouse Center for the Humanities, Green Hall Free and Open to the Public

"French Foreign Policy in an Unstable World"

Gérard Araud, 62, a career diplomat, was appointed Ambassador of France to the United States in September 2014. He previously held numerous positions within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development, notably including that of Director for Strategic Affairs, Security and Disarmament (2000-2003), Ambassador of France to Israel (2003-2006), Director General for Political Affairs and Security (2006-2009), and, most recently, Permanent Representative of France to the United Nations in New York (2009-2014).

He has written numerous journal articles, including recently in ‘’Commentaire’’, two on the outbreak of WWI and one on the French foreign policy between 1919 and 1939, and another in ‘’Esprit’’, on the search for a new world order. He is working on an article on the treaty of Versailles.

Elizabeth Turner Jordan '59 Lecture/Seminar

Abiola Irele

Tuesday, February 9, 2016, 7:00 PM

Newhouse Center for the Humanities, Green Hall Free and Open to the Public

"An Identity of Passions: Negritude in the Black and Postcolonial World"

Abiola Irele is a Nigerian academic who has taught at the Ohio State University and Harvard University. He is a former provost of Kwara State University in Nigeria, which recently established the Abiola Irele School of Theory and Criticism in his honor.

Eric Helleiner

Wednesday, November 4, 2015, 7:00 PM

Newhouse Center for the Humanities, Green Hall Free and Open to the Public

"The Deep History of the North-South Dialogue: Neglected Southern Pioneers of International Development”

Eric Helleiner’s lecture will build on his recent book, The Forgotten Foundations of Bretton Woods, which shows how those gathered at the famous 1944 meeting in New Hampshire to build the postwar financial system included many officials and analysts from poorer regions of the world. He will show how their innovative proposals anticipated more contemporary debates about how to reconcile the existing liberal global economic order with the development aspirations of emerging powers such as India, China, and Brazil.

Eric Helleiner is Faculty of Arts Chair in International Political Economy and Professor in the Department of Political Science of the University of Waterloo.

The lecture is part of the lecture series linked to Professor Quinn Slobodian's course "World Economic Orders, 1918-2008".

Michèle Longino (Professor of French at Duke University)

Thursday, October 29, 2015, 4:30 PM

Newhouse Center for the Humanities, Green Hall Free and Open to the Public

“Writing about Travel Writing: The French and the Ottomans in the Seventeenth Century”

Professor Longino’s roundtable discussion will stem from her recent book, French Travel Writing and the Ottoman Empire: Marseilles to Constantinople, 1650-1700 (Routledge Press, 2015), which features travel journals written by six French voyagers who followed roughly the same itinerary from Marseilles to Constantinople. Specifically, Longino analyzes the travel journals of Guillaume-Joseph Grelot, the artist; Jean Chardin, the Protestant jewel merchant; Antoine Galland, the antiquarian; Laurent D’Arvieux, the linguist and diplomat; Jean Thévenot, the orientalist; and Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, the French king’s diamond merchant. Each of these travelers treats the same basic trajectory--the sea voyage between Marseilles, then as now France's "Gateway to the Orient," and the port of destination, Constantinople, also then as now, a symbolic center of Levantine power, and the major hub of East-West contact. Together, these writings enable us to appreciate the diverse shapes that travel narrative can take at a single historical juncture and have much to teach us about the nature of travel writing. Longino will tie their writings to the question of France’s attitudinal resistance today to Turkey’s inclusion in the European Union.

Professor Longino will take part in Hélène Bilis' course on Versailles and the Age of Louis XIV and conduct a short workshop with selected students under Prof. Bilis' direction.

Orlando Consort: Newhouse Salon/Workshop

Monday, October 19, 2015, 4:30 PM

Newhouse Center for the Humanities, Green Hall Free and Open to the Public

This Newhouse Salon performance and discussion offers the ensemble an opportunity to discuss the genesis of their musical accompaniment for the film La Passion de Jeanne D'Arc and its place in the world of early music.

The Orlando Consort is one of Britain's most important chamber music ensembles, performing repertoire from the years 1050 to 1550. Their work combines captivating entertainment with fresh scholarly insight.

For more information about the Concert Series, please click here.

All Orlando Consort residency events are generously supported by a gift from Kathryn Gaubatz '63, the Moffett Fund, and The Florence Jeup Ford '22, Mary M. Crawford '22, and Virginia Ford '48 Artist in Residence Endowment Fund.

Vincent Brown

Tuesday, October 6, 2015, 5:00 PM (Tea will be served at 4:30 PM)

Newhouse Center for the Humanities, Green Hall Free and Open to the Public

"Designing Histories of Slavery in the Age of the Database"

Professor Vincent Brown, Charles Warren Professor of History, Professor of African and African American Studies, and Director of the History Design Studio at Harvard will speak about his project, Slave Revolt in Jamaica, 1760-1761. This multilayered interactive map narrates the spatial history of the greatest slave insurrection in the eighteenth century British Empire and serves as an example of how integration of technology can help highlight the excellence of humanities.

Brown's visit is integrated into the program for Professor Anjali Prabhu's CPLT 310/ FREN 330 "French, Francophone, and Postcolonial Studies - World of Fictions."

Mark Blyth

Monday, September 28, 2015, 7:00 PM

Newhouse Center for the Humanities, Green Hall Free and Open to the Public

"Whatever Happened to Europe? From Social Democratic Heartland to Heartless Creditors Paradise”

Whatever happened to social democratic Europe? Mark Blyth, professor of political economy at Brown University and author of the award-winning book Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea will talk about how policies of austerity in the Eurozone, supported in many cases by parties of the left, are the wrong solutions to the economic problems of debt-ridden countries like Greece. He will also discuss how the idea of austerity gained ground and where it is likely to lead.

The lecture is part of the lecture series linked to Professor Quinn Slobodian's course "World Economic Orders, 1918-2008."