2022-23 Reading and Writing Groups and Faculty Seminars

Faculty Seminar

New Research on Live and Mediated Performance

This three-year Faculty Research Seminar will bring together faculty from across campus whose research focuses on performance: live or mediated, historical or contemporary, and in comparative relation among world cultures. Through a transdisciplinary conversation across departments, we hope to direct our shared research energies to reinvigorate our understanding of epistemological change, cultural expression, and identity formation in and for the 21st century. If you’re interested in joining or would like further information, please contact Pat Burke (pburke@wustl.edu) and/or Julia Walker (jwalker28@wustl.edu) by September 23. Our first informational meeting will take place at noon on October 14 in Umrath 201.

Writing Groups

Interdisciplinary Experimental Writing Group

The Interdisciplinary Experimental Writing Group is a multidisciplinary writing group that aims to explore different forms of expression with the purpose of building knowledge outside of traditional academic writing styles. We work with poetic, prose, scriptwriting, images, and more. We welcome any student or faculty member from any discipline to join us in this ludic and provocative exploration that seeks finding better ways to share the findings of our research. If you’re interested in joining, please contact Francisco Tijerina (francisco@wustl.edu).

Medieval Studies Writing Group

The Medieval Studies Writing Group brings together faculty and graduate students across departments to share works in progress and host invited speakers.  We aim to cross disciplines within European medieval studies and also to include work outside the European frame – in comparative and global premodern studies, Mediterranean studies, Jewish and Islamic studies. Any interested colleagues and students are welcome to join; contact Jessica Rosenfeld (jrosenfe@wustl.edu).

Religion, Human Rights, and Migration

The Religion, Human Rights, and Migration Writing Group aims to provide an intellectual forum for scholars who work on Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies in the modern and contemporary periods across a variety of disciplines, from history and gender studies to religious studies, to convene in order to develop their research. The group seeks to provide an interdisciplinary venue where advanced graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty with shared interests can gather to receive feedback on their articles-in-progress, dissertation chapters, and book chapters. The group is co-convened by Dr. Aria Nakissa and S. Veronica Anghel. To learn more about this working group, please email S. Veronica Anghel (shirley.anghel@wustl.edu).

Reading Groups

Contemporary Latin American Women Writers Reading Group

This reading group meets once per month to discuss the contemporary writings of Latin American women and/or gender non-conforming writers. We’ll have a manageable amount of reading from acclaimed authors like Rita Indiana, Isabel Zapata, Camila Sosa, Sara Uribe, and more. Most of our readings will be in Spanish, but we can provide English translations if necessary. Grad students and faculty of all disciplines are welcome! If you’re interested in joining, please contact Katherine Tilghman (k.a.tilghman@wustl.edu) or Paco Tijerina (francisco@wustl.edu).

Cruising Utopia in the 2020s

The reading group accounts for foundational and new scholarship in queer theory and corresponding fields. Our point of departure is the seminal work Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (2009) by the late performance studies and queer of color critique scholar José Esteban Muñoz. Over a decade after the publication of Cruising Utopia and almost ten years after Muñoz’ passing, we wish to take inventory and trace a trajectory of Muñoz’s queer utopian thought that has lived on and evolved in various interdisciplinary branches. The reading group will juxtapose foundational scholarship in queer theory with new works written in response or inspired by it across humanities, arts, and social sciences. We are interested in interdisciplinary conversations across departments. Our goal is to expand the group members’ intellectual horizons and pedagogical skills. To learn more about this reading group, please contact its conveners, Franzi Finkenstein (f.finkenstein@wustl.edu) and Ivan Bujan (ibujan@wustl.edu).

Deleuze & Guattari Reading Group

This reading group will meet to discuss the work of postructuralist French thinkers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Deleuze and Guattari’s work is transdisciplinary and eclectic, and therefore relevant for anybody working in cultural studies or the social sciences. This semester, we will read and discuss sections from their book A Thousand Plateaus. Our first meeting is in Umrath Hall, Room 201 on Thursday September 22 from 4 to 6 pm. To learn more about this reading group, please contact its conveners, Salvador Lopez Rivera (salvadorlopezrivera@wustl.edu) or Victor Putinier (victor.putinier@wustl.edu).

Disability and Embodied Difference Reading Group

The Disability and Embodied Difference Reading Group brings together a diverse array of faculty and advanced graduate students across disciplines and schools at WashU around the study of disability. We have participants in various humanities and social sciences disciplines as well as in public health, education, occupational therapy, and social work. During this inaugural academic year, we are focusing on recently published scholarship theorizing disability justice and disability’s intersections with other markers of identity, such as books by Michele Friedner, Eunjung Kim, Sami Schalk, and Liat Ben-Moshe. We also invite authors each semester to discuss their work with us. Our meetings are hybrid and held once a month (contact eliza.williamson@wustl.edu for location, Zoom link, and reading schedule). All graduate students, faculty, and staff interested in exploring disability are welcome to join us. This group is coordinated by Eliza Williamson (Latin American Studies and Portuguese/Romance Languages & Literatures), Cynthia Barounis (Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies), and Julie Singer (French/Romance Languages & Literatures).

Ethnicity & Literature Reading Group

The Ethnicity & Literature Reading Group was founded out of a desire to appreciate literature’s diversity and transnationality. Our group seeks to analyze how one’s ethnicity is centered and constructed in literature and aims to understand how foregrounding ethnic subjectivity challenges and renovates traditional forms of literary expression. Rather than focusing on one geographical location or time period, we read works of Anglophone literature — novels, plays, poetry — rooted in varying racial, ethnic, and cultural histories. Interested colleagues may contact Crystal Payne (c.payne@wustl.edu), Sara Flores (flores.sara@wustl.edu), or Ashley Antony (ashleyantony@wustl.edu).

Medical Humanities Reading Group

This group of faculty and graduate students from the Danforth Campus, Medical Campus and other nearby universities meets two to three times per semester to discuss works of interest to Medical Humanities.  We also use the group to help members develop works in progress. To learn more about this reading group, please contact its conveners, Amy Cislo (acislo@wustl.edu) or Jen Arch (jarch@wustl.edu).

Sports and Society Reading Group

Sports and Society: Culture, Power, and Identity is an AMCS program initiative and reading group that aims to generate scholarship, dialogue, and activities focused on the intersections of athletics, identity, and social power. The initiative probes the impact of sports on broader discourses concerning politics, the economy, nationhood, and identity formation in the contemporary moment. Embracing an intersectional approach, the initiative aims to generate inclusive critical insights on the problems and possibilities presented by American and international sports cultures. To learn more about this reading group, please contact its conveners, Noah Cohan ncohan@wustl.edu and/or Sunita Parikh saparikh@wustl.edu.

Washington University Translators Collective

The WashU Translators Collective (WUTC) welcomes all practicing translators — experienced and beginning as well as those newly curious about translation — to be a part of our interdisciplinary, multilingual, and collaborative workshops in which we engage critically and creatively with literary translation. The WUTC also organizes translation-related events that facilitate dialogue with fellow translators and a diverse array of texts, including readings, book discussions, and conversations with active professional translators. To learn more about this group, contact Rebecca Hanssens-Reed (h.rebecca@wustl.edu) and Pili Cuairán (pili.cuiaranchavarria@wustl.edu).