Events

How Latino Voters Decide U.S. Elections

Latin American Studies Program Lecture Series Race and Ethnicity, which is focused on topics related to the histories, cultures, and struggles of racialized populations, from colonial times to the present.

Book Club: The Weight of Ink

Join University Libraries to discuss its December virtual book club selection, The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish.

Set in London of the 1660s and of the early 21st century, The Weight of Ink is the interwoven tale of two women of remarkable intellect: Ester Velasquez, an emigrant from Amsterdam who is permitted to scribe for a blind rabbi; and Helen Watt, an ailing historian with a love of Jewish history.

Book Club will begin with a virtual showcase of rare books from the Shimeon Brisman Collection in Jewish Studies, followed by a discussion of the book.

Free and open to all.

Nation Space Lecture Series: Katja Perat

Stretching from the Baltic to the Adriatic coast, Winston Churchill’s infamous Iron Curtain is often portrayed as a line on the map, dividing Europe and the World into the Democratic, Developed West and Autocratic Developing East. Zooming into the cartographic tissue of the Cold War, this talk by Katja Perat, doctoral candidate in comparative literature (Arts & Sciences) at Washington University, will take a look at the Iron Curtain not as a dividing non-entity, but as a territory in its own right, marked by a history of an external as well as internalized division stretching from the Enlightenment and into the future. From Milan Kundera’s “The Tragedy of Central Europe” in the eighties, to the Central European nationalist tragedy of today, this talk will examine how inhabiting the Iron Curtain has shaped the processes of subject- and nation-building in this invisible borderland.

Dreaming Liberation: Afro-Surrealism and Pop in the 1960s-70s

"Dreaming Liberation: Afro-Surrealism and Pop in the 1960's-70s" will be delivered virtually. If you are interested in attending, please contact Betha Whitlow. She will send you information about how to attend the event in advance.

Getting It Together Before It’s Too Late: Building Solidarity Across Race and Class

Ian Haney Lopez is one of the nation's leading experts on how race relations have evolved since the civil rights era. He has authored a number of books, scholarly articles and media contributions, including this recent op-ed in the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/opinion/biden-latino-vote-strategy.html. Barbara & Michael Newmark Endowed Sociology Lecture on Pluralism.

Josep Lluís Sert: The Architect of Urban Design

Josep Lluís Sert (1902–1983) was a Barcelona architect and leader of the Spanish CIAM (International Congresses for Modern Architecture) group, where he strongly supported the Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War 1936-39. After fleeing Fascist Spain in 1939, he moved to New York, Sert designed many urban plans for various Latin American cities from 1944-58, most of them unbuilt. He was also appointed Dean of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design from 1953 to 1969, where he introduced the discipline of urban design to the curriculum, which then had global impact. Beginning in the late 1950s, his firm Sert, Jackson designed major campus buildings in the Boston metro area and near Toronto, Canada, as well as many other works, such as the Eastgate housing on Roosevelt Island in New York City (1970).