Past Events

In this bold, wide-ranging study, Martin Jay examines the conflict between “conventional” and “magical” nominalism in philosophy, history, aesthetics, and photography.

Claire Kahane recounts her nine-decade journey of self-transformation, moving from free-spirited rebel in the 1950s to feminist scholar, and confronting personal and historical traumas along the way.

Todd Olson sheds new light on the complexity of Jusepe de Ribera’s artwork and artistic methods and their connections to the Spanish imperial project.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs, author of Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals talks with Malaika Parker, executive director of the Black Organizing Project.

Exploring the ways in which visual conceptions of vowels have inflected the arts and sciences of modernity, Liesl Yamaguchi asks how discourses of the 19th and 20th centuries crafted the enigma we now readily recognize as “synesthesia.”

Visionary computer scientist and author Jaron Lanier is known for his critical perspective on the digital world. He discusses the impact of A.I. on writing and the intellectual skills that inform it.

Francine Masiello's debut novel, written with pleasure and wit, weaves a multigenerational tale of small-time artists and crooks who, over the course of a century, wend their way from southern Italy to Paterson, New Jersey.

What might the study of psychoanalysis in and for the 21st century look like? Forty scholars, artists, and clinicians gather to explore the idea of a “Return to Freud.”

Jamaica Kincaid, one of the most celebrated writers of her generation, is the 2024-25 Avenali Chair in the Humanities. She talks with Townsend Center director Stephen Best.

Beginning with four films chosen and presented by the director himself, this extensive retrospective at BAMPFA includes all of Todd Haynes’s feature films and a selection of early works.