University of Virginia, College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Humanities Week: 2014

Humanities Weeks logo

A celebration of Humanities, Humanistic Social Sciences, and the Arts.

As a central feature of Humanities Week, the participants of an IHGC short course, along with other graduate and undergraduate collaborators, will construct a space on the green lawn in front of Dawson's Row #2. Part shelter, part nostalgia, part art installation, part performance space, Dawson's Green will be transformed into a place where people gather to engage and celebrate the Humanities.

Note our rain location: the English Department faculty lounge in 229 Bryan Hall.

Schedule of Events

 

Saturday, April 5

Pre-Humanities Week Gardening

4-8 p.m.
The Lawn

Come join in a community effort to plant spring vegetables in repurposed milk jugs.

Sponsoring Org: IHGC

Monday, April 7

Open Table with Emily Mendenhall

12 pm
OpenGrounds

Conversation with author of young adult illness narratives.

Sponsoring Org: Center for Global Health , OpenGrounds, IHGC

Monday, April 7

Emergency Poetry

5 pm
Bryan 229

Back by popular request, with new participants, a celebration of the Emergency Poem. The poem you can’t do without: a beloved object, a restorative, a mantra, a momentary stay against confusion, a special touchstone for its possessor (or borrower). Nine professors from several departments will recite their own Emergency Poems and offer brief remarks on just why they love them. Participants (lineup may be subject to change): Elizabeth Fowler, Michael Levenson, Steve Arata, Kate Burke, Debra Nystrom, Herbert Tucker, John Miller, Clare Kinney, Gordon Braden.

Sponsoring Org: IHGC

Monday, April 7

Contemplations on Body, Other, & Beyond

6:00 pm
Bryan 229

Join us for a three part contemplative exploration that will begin with a meditative scan of your own self, extend into a interpersonal contemplation of another, and end by bringing your experiences into poetic words of self, other, and beyond.

Sponsoring Org: Contemplative Science Center, IHGC

Monday, April 7

On Being Human

6:45 pm
Bryan 229

Seven undergraduates each give a seven-minute speech on the conditions of their lives and the values by which they lead them.

Sponsoring Org: IHGC

Monday, April 7

Meanings in a Morsel: How to Think with Food

7:30 pm
Bryan 229

A tasting with small bites and a conversation about what we think we're doing when we digest parts of our universe. Including: Marissa Bialek, 'The Unnamed Food and the Nanny Conscience'; Kathryne Appleby, 'Baby Spinach and the Search for Authenticity'; Love Jonson, 'Eating Exclusion: Are Farmers’ Markets Elitist?'; Samantha Taggart, 'What Efficiency Tastes Like: Market Tomato and Market Culture.

Sponsoring Org: IHGC

Monday, April 7

Global Film Festival

8:30 pm
Bryan 229

An outdoor screening of 'Wings of Desire'

Sponsoring Org: IHGC

Tuesday, April 8

What Does It Feel Like to Relate?

4 pm
Dawson's Green

How do you relate to those in the world around you through the medium of literature and the arts? Can this even be done, truly? Come join us for this conversation, led by Stephen Cushman, Sandra Menendez, and Natasha Oladokun.

Sponsoring Org: IHGC

Tuesday, April 8

Supriya Chaudhauri, 'India, Modernism, and the Question of World Literature'

5 pm
Faculty Lounge, Bryan Hall

A distinguished scholar from Jadavpur University will lecture on modernist literature and culture in India.

Sponsoring Org: IHGC

Tuesday, April 8

'Our Gadgets, Ourselves: Virtues, Vices and Devices”

7:00 pm
The Bridge PAI

Three panelists offer short presentations on the machines that keep getting closer and smaller, and bigger in our lives. Conversation with the audience follows.

Sponsoring Org: IHGC, The Bridge

Tuesday, April 8

Global Film Festival

8:30 pm
Dawson's Green

An outdoor screening of 'Pan's Labyrinth'

Sponsoring Org: IHGC

Wednesday, April 9

Gary Gallagher: On the End of the Civil War

5 pm
Minor 125

On the day of the 150th anniversary of the battle of Appomattox, the eminent Civil War historian speaks on its meaning and legacy.

Sponsoring Org: IHGC

Wednesday, April 9

Mark Edmundson in conversation

6 pm
Bryan 229

Professor Edmundson will lead a discussion under the title, 'Real Life or Ideal Life: What Shall I Do after I Graduate?'

Sponsoring Org: IHGC

Wednesday, April 9

Finding Space: Using Photovoice to Explore Stress and Mindfulness at UVa

7 pm
Dawson's Green

How do you experience stress at UVa? What helps you to manage your stress? Where do you feel in control of your stress? Positive stress management is an important contributor to your emotional, mental, and physical health. Use your smartphone or camera to take three photographs in response to the questions above and send to cel2j at virginia.edu by Wednesday, April 9 at noon. Then, come at 7 that evening to view all submissions and discuss what they tell us about stress at UVa, how we can manage it, and which places help us do so.

Sponsoring Org: IHGC, Center for Global Health

Wednesday, April 9

Alice Driver: 'If Images Could Fill Our Empty Spaces'

8 pm
Dawson's Green

Writer, translator, editor shows her film about photography and journalism in Mexico.

Sponsoring Org: IHGC

Wednesday, April 9

Global Film Festival

9 pm
Dawson's Green

An outdoor screening of 'Atonement'

Sponsoring Org: IHGC

Thursday, April 10

George Lewis Improvisation Workshop

3:30 pm
Cabell Hall Auditorium

Musicians from U.Va.'s Program in Composition and Computer Technologies, the Jazz Improvisation Workshop, and the New Music Ensemble engage Lewis's Artificial Life (2007), under the composer's direction.

Sponsoring Org: Music Department, IHGC

Thursday, April 10

Global Poems Locally

5 pm
Dawson's Green

Our poets on grounds will read other poets from all over the world in a celebration of global lyric connection crossing language, nation, tradition. Original verses will be read alongside their translations, letting voices mix in the evening air. Among our reading/translating poets will be Mehr Farooqi, Paul Guest, Debra Nystrom, Greg Orr, Lisa Spaar, Julia Carino, Teresa Kim, Safiya Sinclair, Brian Sneeden, Lindsay Hill, Jack Berkley.

Sponsoring Org: IHGC

Thursday, April 10

Keats and Yoga

6 pm
Dawson's Green

Ann Mazur leads a session of yoga exercise in tune to the lyrics of John Keats.

Sponsoring Org: IHGC

Thursday, April 10

Gladys Blizzard lecture by David Freedberg

6 pm
Newcomb Hall Theatre

Professor Freedberg's lecture is entitled 'From Scaffold to Scaffold: Representations of Justice from Breughel to Rembrandt.'

Sponsoring Org: Fralin Museum of Art, IHGC

Thursday, April 10

Global Film Festival

7:30 pm
Dawson's Green

A selection of global short films

Sponsoring Org: IHGC

Friday, April 11

Plant Giveaway

12 pm
Dawson's Green

Vegetables planted in repurposed milk jugs will be given away, first come, first-served.

Sponsoring Org: IHGC

Friday, April 11

Salman Ahktar

3 pm
124 Monroe Hall

'The Dream in Urdu Verse: Poetry as the Royal Road to the Unconscious'

Sponsoring Org: IHGC

Friday, April 11

George Lewis Colloquium: 'Why Do We Want Computers to Improvise?'

3:30 pm
Cabell 107

George Lewis will discuss the 'hybrid, cyborg sociality' formed when free improvisation meets AI and other creative technologies.

Sponsoring Org: Department of Music, IHGC

Friday, April 11

When Science and Culture Collide

7:30 pm
The Woolly Mammoth

Come close Humanities Week with a special collaboration between Science and the Humanities. IHGC partners with Science Straight Up! to bring a medical anthropologist's perspective into the community. Clashes between biomedicine and culture have been observed throughout history. Acts of resistance reveal the constant power struggles that exist between the objective rationalization of science and the subjective experience of everyday life. Join this discussion with Nicola Bulled, MPH, PhD, and Fellow of CGH Water and Health in Limpopo Innovations.

Sponsoring Org: Science Straight Up!, IHGC Dawson's Row
Map to Dawson's Green