The Nature of Representation
Hosted by the English Department
“There is no event or thing in either animate or inanimate nature that does not in some way partake of language, for it is in the nature of each one to communicate its mental contents.”
— Walter Benjamin, “On Language as Such and on the Language of Man” (1916)
The Nature of Representation asks how our understandings of “nature” have been shaped by representational practices in both the aesthetic and political senses, exploring how the current climate catastrophe is inextricable from colonialism and anthropocentric worldviews. The festival features contemporary writers, artists, and thinkers who don’t take for granted that language is merely human, that there are other “natural” languages, and that attuning to those other languages allows us to tell stories that disrupt the violence of Man.
"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.
Kyla Wazana Tompkins, "Deviant Matter: Ferment, Intoxication, Jelly, Rot."
Thursday, January 30, 4:30 p.m. | Humanities Commons
Kyla Wazana Tompkins is professor and chair of the Department of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies at Buffalo University. She is the author of the James Beard Award-winning essay “On Boba,” and the author of Racial Indigestion: Eating Bodies in the Nineteenth Century and the forthcoming Deviant Matter: Ferment, Intoxicants, Jelly, Rot, as well as co-editor of Keywords for Gender and Sexuality Studies (A Choice Outstanding Academic Title). Her essay for Avidly —“We’re Not Here to Learn What We Already Know” — has been downloaded over 700,000 times and is widely assigned in gender studies and the critical humanities as a guide to asking questions well.
William Shakespeare’s "As You Like It"
Presented by Richmond Shakespeare in partnership with the UR Humanities Center
Friday & Saturday, February 7-8 | Location & Time TBA
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.
Jack Halberstam, "Unworlding: Queer and Trans Anarchitectures"
Thursday, February 13, 4:30 p.m. | Humanities Commons
Jack Halberstam is professor of gender studies and English, David Feinson Professor of Humanities, and director of the Institute for Research on Gender, Women, and Sexuality at Columbia University. He is the author of Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters, Female Masculinities, In a Queer Time & Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives, Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal, The Queer Art of Failure, Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variance, and Wild Thing: The Disorder of Desire, as well as the co-editor of the collections “What’s Queer about Queer Studies Now?” (Social Text), “Wildness” (SAQ), and Posthuman Bodies.
"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.
Alexis Pauline Gumbs: "Earth as a Relationship: Critical Lordean Ecologies."
Thursday, March 6, 4:30 p.m. | Humanities Commons
Alexis Pauline Gumbs is the author of the poetic trilogy of Black feminist study Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity, M. Archive: After the End of the World, and Dub: Finding Ceremony, as well as the author of Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Life and the forthcoming Survival is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde, and the editor of Revolutionary Mothering. She is the winner of the Windham-Campbell Prize.
Language of Man Humanities Center Event
Thursday, March 6, noon | Humanities Commons
Alexis Pauline Gumbs will hold a discussion of Audre Lorde’s “Of Survival and Generators.”
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.
Past 2024-2025 Events
Timothy Morton, "The War Against the Holy Spirit of Life: Some Countermeasures."
Thursday, September 12, 4 p.m. | Humanities Commons
Timothy Morton is Rita Shea Guffey Professor of English at Rice University. Both an acclaimed specialist in British Romantic poetics and a leading figure in the philosophical movement called speculative realism or object-oriented ontology, Morton’s many books include The Ecological Thought, Hyperobjects, Realist Magic, and Becoming Ecological, and their work has involved collaboration with figures far outside of academia, including Björk. Their most recent book is Hell: In Search of a Christian Ecology.
Language of Man Humanities Center Event
Thursday, September 12, noon | Humanities Commons
Timothy Morton will hold a discussion poetry by William Blake, Maya Angelou, and Audre Lorde.
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.
"Changing Gender: A Conversation with Susan Stryker."
Wednesday, November 13, 4:30 p.m. | Humanities Commons
Susan Stryker is one of the founders of trans studies, author of many award-winning books including the almost canonical Transgender History, as well as many influential essays across four decades, some collected in the just-published When Monsters Speak: A Susan Stryker Reader, edited by Mckenzie Wark. One of the most visible and influential trans scholars, she has appeared widely in national and international media. She was co-editor of the Transgender Studies Reader’s two editions, and co-founder of the journal TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. She was the recipient of the 2015 Yale University James Robert Brudner Class of 1983 Memorial Prize for lifetime accomplishment and contribution to the fields of lesbian and gay studies.
Language of Man Humanities Center Event
Thursday, November 14, noon | Humanities Commons
Susan Stryker will hold a discussion reflecting on the role of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in her thinking and trans scholarship more broadly.