Writing for the Public: How to Share Your Scholarly Work With Ordinary People

This workshop is offered as part of Washington University’s RDE Initiative (Redefining Doctoral Education in the Humanities, or “Ready”). RDE focuses on supporting faculty efforts to develop the best pedagogical practices in graduate education for instilling capacities essential for success — such as writing for the public — both within academia and in the world beyond. Faculty Workshops are offered once per year on a different topic.

Full event details available here: https://humanities.wustl.edu/rde-faculty-retreat-spring-2021. 

Virtual symposium on Plautus and the women of Washington University

In 1884, the Washington University Ladies’ Literary Society staged the first American performance of an ancient Roman comedy in Latin: Rudens (“The Rope”), first staged by Plautus in the early 2nd century BCE. The event was marked not only by the group’s efforts to make Plautus’ style and humor accessible to a contemporary audience, but by its striking engagement with social issues such as slavery and gender. This symposium will include lectures by scholars from Washington University and abroad, and a performance of the play.

This event is co-sponsored by the Washington University Performing Arts Department.

To Do Without People: Moyra Davey’s Impossible Renunciation

The work of Moyra Davey is invested with individual subjectivity and autobiography. The distinct absence of any figures, however, in her photographs from 2003—along with Davey’s choice to focus attention instead on space, in its “empty,” uninhabited variations—harkens back to the decade in the artist’s life (roughly 1984–94) when, burdened by the notion of “image theft,” Davey retreated from the genre of portraiture. This talk by Jenny Wu, MA student in the Department of Art History & Archaeology in Arts & Sciences, will situate four of Davey’s photographs from the collection of the Kemper Art Museum within the artist’s most recently published meditations on craft and discuss her unpeopled interiors in relation to issues of ownership, medium, and the representation of time and space.

The program will include live closed captions.

Free, but registration is required.

International Writers Series: Baba Badji

In this virtual reading and discussion, Baba Badji will present his recently published first collection of poems, Ghost Letters. Badji is a Senegalese-American poet, translator, researcher, and PhD candidate in Comparative Literature. Ghost Letters creates a ghost mother who becomes a presiding presence. His poetry explores what it means to be Senegalese, American, and Black, as well as the bonds of Black people across the Black diaspora.

Explore Faculty Papers with the University Archivist

Ever wonder what faculty do with their papers when they retire?  Some come to University Archives where they are cared for and made available to researchers. Join University Archivist Sonya Rooney to hear about different faculty material, how they got to the Archives, and how they have been used.

Uncontrollable Blackness: African American Men and Criminality in Jim Crow New York

Inaugural Annual Black History Month Lecture, Department of History, College of Charleston. Douglas Flowe is an assistant professor of history at Washington University in St. Louis, where he teaches courses on urban history, criminality, masculinity and other subjects relating to race, crime and gender. He earned his PhD at the University of Rochester and has recently published his first book, Uncontrollable Blackness: African American Men and Criminality in Jim Crow New York (UNC Press).

This event is organized and moderated by Elisa J. Jones and Shannon Eaves, assistant professors of history at the College of Charleston. In order to attend, please register by 5:00PM on February 15. 

Details and registration here: https://blogs.cofc.edu/history/2021/01/12/history-depts-annual-black-his...

Bloodied Waters, Hidden Histories: Race, Terror and the Unmaking of Freedom

Join us as Sowande’ Mustakeem (History) discusses her book Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage (University of Illinois Press, 2016),  revealing for the first time how the institution of slavery took critical shape at sea. The book was recognized with a 2017 Wesley-Logan Prize (American Historical Association) and a 2020 Dred Scott Freedom Award (Dred Scott Heritage Foundation). The talk will be followed by a Q&A.