On ‘Derry Girls’ and remembering the Good Friday Agreement
When the final episode of ‘Derry Girls,’ set in late 1990s Northern Ireland, dropped last fall, it presaged an important milestone – the inevitable remembering the Good Friday Agreement referendum, sparked by its upcoming 25th anniversary. Irish literature PhD candidate Ian Clark walks us through the series’ complicated relationship with the Troubles and what it says about how people remember the violence today.
A major demographic change is underway in the United States, one that will see whites lose their majority status by the year 2050. Alongside scholars of “whiteness studies,” authors such as Dave Eggers and Claire Messud have grappled with this impending reality in literary works that foreground issues of race — the white race. With her new book project, “Ugly White People: Whiteness in Contemporary American Literature,” literary scholar Stephanie Li sets out to explore how white writers display this new understanding of white racialized behavior.
From ‘pétroleuse’ to pornstar, the radical theorizing of sex workers
In her current book project, “An Intellectual History of the Sex Worker Left,” Faculty Fellow Heather Berg will analyze two centuries of criticism by sex workers of non-sex work, unpaid sex, citizenship and bourgeois morality. It’s a story, she says, about what sex workers think rather than about what they do.
The human fingerprint maps our identity, the ties that bind us, the lingering traces we leave on this earth. As humanists, we explore the durability as well as the fragility of the human condition — opening windows onto worlds near to home and oceans away, worlds we interpret through stories and images, poems and performance, history and narratives, sounds and silence. At Washington University in St. Louis, the Center for the Humanities facilitates the labor of humanists by nurturing innovative research, transformative pedagogy, and vibrant community engagement locally and globally.
The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler
Graham Chapel, Washington University in St. Louis
Author David Kertzer in conversation with Marie Griffith, director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics
View Event
27March
The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler
Author David Kertzer in conversation with Marie Griffith, director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics
Graham Chapel, Washington University in St. Louis | 7:00 PM
Join the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics for a conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Kertzer about his new book The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler. Marie Griffith, director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, will discuss with Kertzer his research based on newly opened Vatican archives. There will also be time for audience Q&A.
When Pope Pius XII died in 1958, his papers were sealed in the Vatican Secret Archives, leaving unanswered questions about what he knew and did during World War II. Those questions have only grown and festered, making Pius XII one of the most controversial popes in Church history, especially now as the Vatican prepares to canonize him.
In 2020, Pius XII’s archives were finally opened, and David Kertzer — widely recognized as one of the world’s leading Vatican scholars — has been mining this new material ever since, revealing how the pope came to set aside moral leadership in order to preserve his church’s power.
Based on thousands of never-before-seen documents not only from the Vatican, but from archives in Italy, Germany, France, Britain, and the United States, The Pope at War paints a new, dramatic portrait of what the pope did and did not do as war enveloped the continent and as the Nazis began their systematic mass murder of Europe’s Jews. The book clears away the myths and sheer falsehoods surrounding the pope’s actions from 1939 to 1945, showing why the pope repeatedly bent to the wills of Hitler and Mussolini.
Working at the Intersection of Art, Activism, and Anti-Carcerality: Sarah Shourd and Shubra Ohri in Conversation
Duncker Hall, Room 201 (Hurst Lounge)
View Event
27March
Working at the Intersection of Art, Activism, and Anti-Carcerality: Sarah Shourd and Shubra Ohri in Conversation
Duncker Hall, Room 201 (Hurst Lounge) | 4:00 PM
The Washington University Prison Education Project is delighted to present the 2023 Maggie Garb Memorial Lecture, featuring playwright and journalist Sarah Shourd in conversation with Shubra Ohri, an attorney with the Missouri office of the Roderick & Solange MacArthur Justice Center.
Join us for a discussion of the state of anti-carceral efforts locally and nationally and the role of journalism, art, and public activism in resisting mass incarceration.
Time devoted exclusively to research and writing is integral to academic productivity. Faculty fellowships provide the opportunity to make significant strides.
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The humanities center facilitates the labor of humanists by nurturing innovative research, transformative pedagogy, and vibrant community engagement locally and globally.