"Art as a Vehicle for Change: a Conversation with Cathy Park Hong" with Chad Shomura.

Thursday, January 23, 4:30 p.m. | Humanities Commons

Cathy Park Hong is professor and Class of 1936 Chair in the College of Letters and Sciences at the University of California – Berkeley. She is the author of three volumes of poetry — Translating Mo’um, Dance Dance Revolution, Engine Empire — and the award-winning collection of essays, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning. She is the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pushcart Prize, and the Windham-Campbell Prize, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Chad Shomura is assistant professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado, Denver. His research interests include political thought, affect, biopolitics, new materialism, and ecology. His recent publications are in Theory & Event, American Quarterly, Oxford Encyclopedia of Asian American Literature and Culture, and Empire and Environment: Ecological Ruin in the Transpacific. Chad’s current book project, A Life Otherwise, examines minor assemblies of life that upset the good life.

William Shakespeare’s "As You Like It"

Presented by Richmond Shakespeare in partnership with the UR Humanities Center 

Friday, February 7, 7 p.m. & Saturday, February 8, 2 p.m. | The Current, Tyler Haynes Commons

Join us for As You Liked It!, a sustainable spin on William Shakespeare’s As You Like It, brilliantly adapted by Jan Powell, Ph.D. from Richmond Shakespeare, an RVA-based theater company led by artistic director James Ricks, committed to presenting both classical and contemporary works with a strong focus on Shakespeare. This innovative adaptation is directed by Mel Rayford, whose creative vision shapes the narrative. The imaginative production design by Emmy Weldon reimagines the Forest of Arden using materials sourced from the University of Richmond’s waste stream, striving to create 90-95% of the scenery, props, and costumes from recycled items.

Emmy Weldon, an assistant professor in theatre and dance with a professional scenic design background in experimental and activist theater, will orchestrate UR’s support for this experimental production. They are building a network of students, faculty, staff, and community members passionate about environmental responsibility, bringing their diverse expertise to the project. Participation opportunities include events like the Community Eco-Crafting Workshops, where participants can transform recycled materials into artistic elements for the performance.

Click here to learn more about ways you can support and participate.

"After the Clearing: Toni Morrison’s Ecopoetics – Sharon Holland and Sarah Jane Cervenak In Conversation"

Thursday, February 27, 4:30 p.m. | Humanities Commons

Sharon Holland is Townsand Ludington Distinguished Professor of American Studies at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and the author of three books: Raising the Dead: Readings of Death and (Black) Subjectivity, The Erotic Life of Racism, and an other: a black feminist consideration of animal life, and the co-author, with Tiyana Miles, of Crossing Waters, Crossing Worlds: The African Diaspora in Indian Country. She was the 2022-23 President of the American Studies Association.

Sarah Jane Cervenak is professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies and African American studies at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. She is the author of Wandering: Philosophical Performances of Racial and Sexual Freedom, and Black Gathering: Art, Ecology, Ungiven Life. She is the editor, with J. Kameron Carter, of the book series The Black Outdoors: Innovations in the Poetics of Study.

Artist in Residence: Tanya Tagaq

Reading: Wednesday, March 26, 4:30 p.m. | Humanities Commons
Performance: Thursday, March 27, 7:30 p.m. | Modlin Center for the Arts

Tanya Tagaq, from Ikaluktutiak (Cambridge Bay, Nunavut), is an internationally celebrated improvisational singer, avant-garde composer, visual artist, and bestselling author of Split Tooth. A member of the Order of Canada, and recipient of multiple honorary doctorates, she has released six albums of music, including Animism (2014), which won the Polaris and JUNO Awards.

She will read from Split Tooth and a forthcoming follow up book. She will also be in residence as a musician at the Modlin Center, with her time overlapping with the Department of Music’s artist in residence, Peni Candra Rini.

Cary Wolfe, "What Species is Multispecies Justice?"

Wednesday, October 2, 4:30 p.m. | Humanities Commons

Cary Wolfe is Bruce and Elizabeth Dunlevie Professor of English at Rice University, and Founding Director of the Center for Critical and Cultural Theory. One of the leading figures in the fields of animal studies, the posthumanities, and the environmental humanities. Wolfe is the author of six books, including The Limits of American Literary Ideology in Pound and Emerson, What is Posthumanism?, Before the Law: On Humans and Other Animals in a Biopolitical Frame, and, most recently, Ecological Poetics, or Wallace Stevens’s Birds. He is the editor of the Posthumanities book series at the University of Minnesota Press.

Language of Man Humanities Center Event

Thursday, October 3, noon | Humanities Commons

Cary Wolfe will hold a discussion of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature.