1000 Cranes Project
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- Wednesday, February 18
- 2:30pm to 4:30pm
Language Commons
We are excited to invite you to a special community event hosted jointly by the Japanese Language Program and the Japanese Student Association (JSA) as we participate in the 1000 Cranes Project commemorating the 15th anniversary of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. 東日本大震災（ひがしにほん だいしんさい）2011年 3月11日. This is a wonderful opportunity to learn or practice origami crane folding, take part in a meaningful act of remembrance, and connect with friends while contributing to a global memorial project.Our cranes will be submitted as part of the international 1000-crane project organized in partnership with Randolph-Macon College and the University of Alaska Anchorage — a project honoring lives lost and celebrating the bonds between Japan and the global community. If interested, you can also read about Taylor Anderson, a Virginia native and JET ALT whose life was tragically lost during the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake.No experience with origami? No problem! We have so many students who are excited to share their origami skills. All materials and Japanese snacks will be provided. (Funding generously supported by the Department of East Asian Languages, Literatures, and Cultures.)
"Men and Women, Submission and Violation: Raoul de Cambrai in the Age of 'Consent Culture'”
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- Thursday, February 19th
- 5:30pm
Nau Hall 101
The French department and the Medieval Studies Program are hosting a lecture by Charles Samuelson, Professor of French at the University of Colorado, Boulder and National Humanities Fellow on "Men and Women, Submission and Violation: Raoul de Cambrai in the Age of 'Consent Culture'”
Screening and Debating: Nanook of the North
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- Thursday, February 19th
- 7pm
Gibson Hall 211
The event is presented by the Responsible Conduct of Research of the Institute for Practical Ethics and the Media Studies department. In this event, we will screen and discuss the classical ethnographic documentary “Nanook of the North” from 1922 and will watch comparatively with the response film “Nanook Revisited” from 1988. In this screening, we will first revisit the film and discuss the ethics of representation, the "salvage" fantasization of indigenous culture and the birth of documentary one century ago. In the following discussion, after 104 years, we ask about the unspeakability of indigeneity and the intrinsic paradox of visual ethnography diachronically. The discussion session features media studies grad students in film studies and anthropology faculty members in ethnographic ethics, and all are welcome to join the conversation.
This event is free and open to the public, all undergraduate students and graduate students are welcome, especially those working on gender, sexuality, race and Indigenous studies, anthropology and film studies. FOOD AND BEVERAGES ARE PROVIDED! Please contact anh9ry@virginia.edu for further inquiry.
Let Only Red Flowers Bloom: Identity and Belonging in Xi Jinping's China
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- Friday, February 20th
- 3:15pm
Monroe 118
The East Asia Center will be hosting Emily Feng, award-winning international correspondent for NPR, for a conversation with Canaan Morse, Post-doctoral Research Associate and Lecturer for the UVA Department of East Asian Languages, Literatures and Cultures, about Feng's recent book Let Only Red Flowers Bloom. For most of the last decade, Emily Feng has covered China, Taiwan, and beyond for NPR, chronicling China's rise and its impact on the region. Learn More.
Digital Democracy from Below
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- Friday, February 20
- 12pm to 1:30pm
Bond House, 600 Brandon Ave and Online
Digital Democracy from Below is a public conversation hosted by UVA’s Digital Technology for Democracy Lab that examines how democracy is rebuilt from the ground up, through data practices, infrastructures, and ecological struggle. This in-person and online event will feature speakers representing different communities around the world and bringing a wealth of experience at the intersection of research, community-building, policy, and practice. Lunch will be served at 11:45am EST for in-person participants; the conversation will be livestreamed at 12:00pm.
Register Here. Contact Jane Kulow (jbk9s@virginia.edu) with questions.
- An American Girl Anthology @ UVA: Finding Ourselves in the Pleasant Company Universe
- Thursday, February 26
- 5pm
Campbell Hall 158
Recent years have seen an explosion of critical and cultural work related to the American Girl brand, and to the thousands of young women who were influenced by the dolls, books, and movies it spawned. The first line of 18-inch historical dolls, released in 1986 by the Pleasant Company, were many girls’ first exposure to pivotal moments in U.S. History – the Revolutionary War, Emancipation, and the WWII Homefront. Today, those same millennials consume nostalgic images of the dolls on social media by the thousands. Online, the American Girl brand has become a vector for discussions about reproductive justice, the electoral college, and the legacies of slavery. More than one millennial historian or developmental psychologist has cited early (sometimes fraught) exposure to American Girl as the impetus for their current careers.
In an exciting new collection, editors Justine Orlovsky-Schnitzler and KC Hysmith have curated "an ode to the democratizing power of the internet and the intoxicating power of nostalgia" in the world of American Girl. The proposed panel with the editors will focus on the young scholars' path to creating the anthology, the company's influence on a generation of historians and cultural scholars, and the surprising new life of American Girl online.
Contact Carrington OBrion for more information: yvp5ng@virginia.edu.
- Being Jewish in America Today: Arnold EisenImage
- Tuesday, March 10
- 5:30pm to 7pm
- Wilson 301 or livestream via UVA Jewish Studies YouTubeAuthor and Chancellor Emeritus of Jewish Theological Seminary Arnold Eisen will visit UVA Jewish Studies on Tuesday, March 10 at 5:30 for the next "Being Jewish in America Today" conversation. He will speak with Professor Elizabeth Shanks Alexander (Religious Studies) about God, Torah, and being a Jew in America today. His talk will draw heavily from his 2024 book, "Seeking the Hiding God: A Personal Theological Essay."
- Lecture by Marquis Bey: Nonbinary Life and Living: An Offering
- Thursday, March 12
- 4pm to 5:30pm
Minor Hall 125
This talk, gleaned from Bey's forthcoming book Nonbinary Life: An Autotheory (Bloomsbury Transgender Theory Series, April 2026), offers the possibility of what nonbinary life might look like when it neither genuflects to the gender binary nor concedes that nonbinary is, strictly speaking, an identity with identifiable traits. Moving through the experiential, the philosophical, and the imaginative, this talk asks as humbly as possible: what do we have to gain by giving up a willingness to be included in the project of gender?
Contact Sarah Orsak with questions: orsak@virginia.edu
- Lecture by Marquis Bey: Nonbinary Life and Living: An Offering
- Friday, March 13
- 2pm to 3:30pm
Minor Hall 110
This workshop will engage with Bey’s essay-in-progress: “Bad Enbies: Scrawled Notes on the Intramural,” which attempts to think through the ways queer, trans, and/or nonbinary theory can be done in a moment where there are circumscriptions of that work by conservatives and “gender critical” feminists and by Leftists who sometimes insist on a “correct” template for social justice work. The workshop will be a collaborative one that invites others to share how they, too, have had their thinking foreclosed by structures and discourses of various modes of power. We will attempt to forge together how to continue to do radical work in the face of persistent resistance to that work.
Contact Sarah Orsak by March 6 to REGISTER: orsak@virginia.edu
- Writing the Object, Writing the World
- Wednesday, March 25
- 5:30pm
Campbell Hall 160
Dr. Jennifer Raab will deliver the keynote lecture for the symposium One and Done: Single Object Studies in which Art and Architectural History graduate students present research centered around a singular object. In this lecture, Dr. Raab will focus on her recent publication Relics of War: The History of a Photograph which examines how one photograph—carefully staged by Clara Barton through acts of collecting, naming, and labeling—transformed salvaged artifacts from a Civil War prison camp into material testimony, serving as both evidence of absence and witness to wartime suffering. The lecture will also reflect more broadly on photography, political violence, and cultural memory, as well as Dr. Raab’s methodological commitment to single object writing.
- ‘Love, All’: Tending the Tradition: A Retirement Conference and Celebration in Honor of Deborah E. McDowell
- Friday, May 22 & Saturday, May 23
- 9am to 5pm
Minor Hall 125
An event honoring the career of Deborah E. McDowell, "Love All": Tending the Tradition celebrates McDowell's intellectual production, trailblazing leadership, and groundbreaking contributions to the field of African American literary studies and Black feminism as a scholar, editor, mentor, colleague, and friend. This conference gathers the generations of scholars to share papers focused on the vast impact of Deborah McDowell's work and legacy.
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