Past Events

Through the lens of Aleksandr Rodchenko’s photography, Aglaya Glebova charts a new understanding of the troubled relationship between technology, modernism, and state power in Stalin’s Soviet Union.

Artist and choreographer Tanya Lukin Linklater, whose work engages with Indigenous art and culture, presents a series of open rehearsals with dance artists Ivanie Aubin-Malo and Ceinwen Gobert that respond to the works on view in BAMPFA's exhibit Duane Linklater: mymothersside.

Kevis Goodman approaches late 18-century medicine, aesthetics, and poetics as overlapping forms of knowledge that probe the relationship between the geographical movements of persons displaced from home and the physiological “motions” within their bodies and minds.

Kevin McLaughlin, author of The Philology of Life: Walter Benjamin's Critical Program, traces the development of a theory of literature and a method of criticism in Benjamin's early interpretations of a nexus formed by Hölderlin, the German romantics, and Goethe.  McLaughlin's lecture will focus on Benjamin's thesis of what he calls Goethe's "new approach" to aesthetic matters as it gathers around the enigmatic term Gehalt.

Daphne A. Brooks is William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of African American Studies, American Studies, Music, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Yale University.

In her examination of Finland — where public health officials named occupational burnout a "new hazard" of the new economy — Daena Funahashi asks what moves people to work to the point of pathological stress.

In her study of the inhabited landscape paintings of 19th-century artist Fitz H. Lane, Margaretta Lovell asks how New Englanders conceived of their land, economy, history, and place in the global community.

The advent of digital media has fundamentally transformed academic publishing. Manuela Gerlof, vice president at De Gruyter, outlines major current trends and provides authors with guidance for making the most of digital publishing.

Alan Tansman traces the rich history of Japanese literature, which encompasses a vast range of forms and genres stretching back nearly 1500 years.

Chinese artist and human rights activist Ai Weiwei discusses art, politics, and modern life with theater director Peter Sellars and Orville Schell, director of the Center on US-China Relations at the Asia Society.