Whitney Humanities Center at Yale

Jhumpa Lahiri | Quiver and Fixity: On Rereading “Jude the Obscure”

Save the date: Jhumpa Lahiri at Yale

Pulitzer Prize–winning writer & translator Jhumpa Lahiri will deliver the annual Finzi-Contini Lecture, offering fresh insight into a literary classic.

🗓️ Monday, September 29 at 4:30 pm
📍 Humanities Quadrangle, lower level

events.yale.edu/event/quiver...

Nurfadzilah Yahaya- "British Hydrocolonialism in Southeast Asia" Wed, Sep 10 2025, 12 - 1pm | Across the British Empire, from the Caribbean to Hong Kong, colonial engineers perfected the art of manufacturing new territories from dredged sand and legal precedent, cr...

I will be speaking on September 10 on my current book project on History of Land Reclamation in the British Empire at the Council on Southeast Asian Studies at Yale. macmillan.yale.edu/southeast-as...

We are hiring a tenure track poet! I’m so excited / spread the word… wesleyan.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/career...

Does your work intersect with gender, economics, and colonial Latin America? Workshop your article draft with us at the RSA in San Francisco! CLAR can help with travel expenses ⬇️

A Year of Ideas, Connection, and Global Vision at the Whitney Humanities Center The Whitney Humanities Center’s 2024–2025 Annual Report celebrates the humanities community at Yale—faculty, students, postdoctoral and visiting fellows, invited speakers, and engaged audiences.

The Whitney Humanities Center’s 2024–2025 Annual Report celebrates the humanities community at Yale—faculty, students, postdoctoral and visiting fellows, invited speakers, and engaged audiences.

Explore the people, ideas, and collaborations that defined the year: whc.yale.edu/news/year-id...

Fellowships

Fellowships at the (stunning) Beinecke are open for scholars local + far (due Jul 31) + grad students (due Sept 15), and you're able to use materials from other Yale special collections:

beinecke.library.yale.edu/programs/fel...

Documenting the U.S. struggle for ‘something better,’ from postwar to present In a new book, Yale professor Laura Wexler frames photographs from the Magnum agency archive around an understanding of American history and conflict.

news.yale.edu/2025/05/30/d...

There's a new film festival in town! 🎞 Don’t miss your chance to join filmmakers and cinephiles for the first annual Lighthouse Lens Film Festival, June 5–8 in New Haven.


Enjoy films by Yale faculty, alumni, students, and other filmmakers from around the world: www.LighthouseLensFilmFestival.org

Event poster with Man Ray's AS YOU LIKE IT in the background. The text reads: ZACK BEAUCHAMP DAVID BELL SEYLA BENHABIB NOAH FELDMAN FRANKLIN FOER M. GESSEN MICHELLE GOLDBERG ADAM GOPNIK RONNIE GRINBERG MALACHI HACOHEN PAUL HANEBRINK REBECCA KOBRIN JOSHUA LEIFER ANTOINE LILTI SUSIE LINFIELD JAMES LOEFFLER HELENA ROSENBLATT STEVEN SMITH DAVID SORKIN ELISABETH ZEROFSKY Antisemitism and the Crisis of Liberalism YALE PROGRAM FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30, 2025 | 4:00–6:30 THURSDAY, MAY 1, 2025 | 9:00–5:30 HQ L02 | 320 YORK STREET FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC COSPONSORED BY THE CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF RACE, INDIGENEITY AND TRANSNATIONAL MIGRATION; THE PROGRAM IN JEWISH STUDIES; THE DEPARTMENT OF FRENCH; AND THE WHITNEY HUMANITIES CENTER. MADE POSSIBLE BY A GENEROUS GRANT FROM THE EDWARD J. AND DOROTHY CLARKE KEMPF MEMORIAL FUND AND THE BETTY MACMILLAN CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES AT YALE

The Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism invites you to the Antisemitism and the Crisis of Liberalism conference, April 30—May 1.

Conference program: ypsa.yale.edu/conference-p...
Register to attend in person: cglink.me/2dA/r2297345
Register for the livestream: yale.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Angela Davis gives lectures on abolition and global solidarity Activist, writer and academic Angela Davis spoke to the Yale and New Haven communities as part of this year’s Tanner Lectures on Human Values.

yaledailynews.com/blog/2025/04...

📷 Mara Lavitt

Scenes from an incandescent and inspiring first day of Angela Davis's 2025 Tanner Lectures on Human Values! Join us again at 4:30 pm in Battell Chapel for Professor Davis's second lecture, "Abolition: Learning from Global Trajectories." Doors open at 3:30 pm.

We couldn’t agree more! Thanks for joining us

Today at 12:30! Join us for lunch and a conversation with Professor Monica Styles (Howard University) about her book manuscript, “Recuperating Black Perspectives: Early Modern Caribbean Afro-Intertextuality.”

A graphic showing a mockup of the zine and the following text: LIMITED EDITION ANGELA DAVIS AT YALE ZINE Free! Please take one

To celebrate Angela Davis’s Tanner Lectures(April 15 & 16), our talented grad student communication fellows made a zine about her impact at Yale.

We’re giving away ~250 of these limited-edition zines at each lecture. Arrive early for a chance to get yours!

📍Battell Chapel 🕞 Doors open at 3:30 pm

Black broken chains on a green background. In the center is white text on a green background "abolition" Below in a white band, text publicizing Tanner Lecture on Human Values at Yale, featuring Angela Davis, April 15 and 16, 2025

Next week at Yale: Angela Davis on abolition. Just when we need her most 🔥. whc.yale.edu/program/tann...

@yalewhc.bsky.social

Black-and-white headshot of Angela Davis

Due to great enthusiasm at Yale & beyond, Angela Davis’ lectures on April 15 & April 16 will now be held at Battell Chapel (400 College St.). We hope this new, larger venue—which seats 840 people—will allow more of you to experience these important lectures on abolition.
whc.yale.edu/program/tann...

Looking foward to presenting in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese and with the support of the @yalewhc.bsky.social at Yale University this April!

A woman wearing a yellow African headwrap and red and yellow print dress speaking to an audience from behind a lectern.

The brilliant Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi reading from her forthcoming pan-African novel, Alkebulan: When the Lions Returned at the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale @yalewhc.bsky.social

Screening South Africa, Past and Present Lionel Rogosin, COME BACK, AFRICA (1959, 95 min. shown on 35mm)

Today at 3 pm! Join us at Yale for a free screening of COME BACK, AFRICA (1959) shown on 35mm.
The film follows real people in South Africa’s segregated townships during the 1950s, highlighting the injustices of apartheid in everyday moments.

Cohosted by YUAG
whc.yale.edu/screening-so...

Poster of Humans in Shackles with a picture of Ana Lucia Araujo to the left.

Very pumped for today, so we can show our appreciation for @araujohistorian.bsky.social —who has done so much to make a public space to discuss history books with #slaveryarchive— and learn more about her new book, 📙Humans in Shackles📙.

Rachel Cusk stands behind a podium that reads, "Whitney Humanities Center." She is smiling with her mouth closed and looking at a person, out of focus, holding a microphone for the audience Q&A.

It doesn’t matter that a picture’s worth a thousand words; no photo could do justice to Rachel Cusk’s singular voice.

Last week, Cusk delivered the 2025 Finzi-Contini Lecture at Yale. What an honor to hear entirely new writing from an author unlike any other at work today.

@yalereview.bsky.social

When Bacteria Rule the World: Notes Toward a Trans-species Architecture Western architecture has always been understood in terms of the body—more precisely the athletic white male body endlessly redrawn from Renaissance treatises to modern architecture manifestoes, from

Human-centered design sounds good, but it has been terrible for humans, other species, and the planet.

🦠 What if we centered bacteria instead? What would a probiotic architecture be? 🧫

Find out today in our second Architecture of Illness lecture: whc.yale.edu/when-bacteri...

Into the Light: A Woman Artist Uncovered Using the life and work of the neglected Norwegian painter Anna Eva Bergman, the lecture examines the problem of justice in the context of female creativity and asks whether biographical and

Today at Yale: Rachel Cusk will deliver the 2025 Finzi-Contini Lecture. Don’t miss your chance to hear this brand new, never-before-presented work!

A revised version of the talk will later grace the pages of @yalereview.bsky.social 🖋️📚

whc.yale.edu/light-woman-...

Bauhaus Architectures of Illness, Health, and Race: Johannes Itten’s Mazdaznan Teaching at the Early Bauhaus Germany’s Bauhaus (1919–1933) is remembered for its minimalist modern design and globally influential art pedagogy. However, during its early years, in the wake of the First World War, the

How has the architecture of illness—and the medicalization of architecture—shaped our experiences of sickness, care, and contagion from the 19th century to today?

Architecture of Illness begins Monday, February 10, with a talk by art & cultural historian Elizabeth Otto

whc.yale.edu/bauhaus-arch...

Join us on Thursday, February 13 to hear Rachel Cusk deliver the 2025 Finzi-Contini Lecture at Yale!

Presented by @yalewhc.bsky.social and cosponsored by The Yale Review, a version of Cusk's talk will appear in our Summer 2025 issue.

More details:
whc.yale.edu/light-woman-...

The Ghosts of Empire SYMPOSIUM at YALE UNIVERSITY Friday, January 31, 2025 Yale MACMILLAN CENTER European Studies Council

TOMORROW! The Ghosts of Empire Symposium at Yale looks at the haunting and ghostly traces of empires—Austro-Hungarian, Russian, Ottoman, US-American, etc.—as they move in and across various geographical and temporal zones.

Conference schedule: macmillan.yale.edu/sites/defaul...

Event poster that reads: Humanities Now Yale | Spring 2025 GAZBIA SIRRY AND EGYPTIAN MODERNISTS IN NASSER’S REVOLUTIONARY EGYPT Chika Okeke-Agulu examines the work of Egyptian artist Gazbia Sirry (1925–2021) to show how, in the wake of the 1952 Free Officers Revolution, leading modernists were influenced by Gamal Abdel Nasser’s charisma and aligned their art with his brand of Egyptian nationalism and Pan-Arab ideology. Tracing formal and tonal shifts in Sirry’s art, Okeke-Agulu analyzes how she responded to Nasser’s increasingly repressive regime and the devastating outcome of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Thursday, January 30 | 4:30 pm Humanities Quadrangle (HQ) Alice Cinema (L01) Chika Okeke-Agulu, an artist, critic, and art historian, is Director of the Africa World Initiative, and Robert Schirmer Professor of Art & Archaeology and African American Studies, Princeton University. WHITNEY HUMANITIES CENTER Humanities Now, a lecture series at the Whitney Humanities Center, is designed to spark deep thinking, inclusive deliberation, and smart action on current intellectual and social concerns. Cosponsored by History of Art Free and open to the public.

How did artists respond to the rise of postcolonial strongmen in Africa in the mid-20th century? Join artist, critic, and art historian @chikaokekeagulu.bsky.social as he answers this question in the context of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s revolutionary Egypt.

🗓️ Jan. 30 • 4:30 pm
📍Alice Cinema • HQ L01

Looking forward to talking about Thinking With Moss (+ navigating experimental projects with academic work) with Yale's Whitney Humanities Center Grad Fellows in Environmental Humanities today over a happy hour! Moss + drinks - what's better?

Thanks to @meganeodonnell.bsky.social for the invite!

We’re grateful you’re here! Excited to learn with—and from—you.