What Pete Ate Exhibit opening and artist reception with Maira Kalman

Special Events Friday, April 12, 2013 @ 9:30am Madison Children's Museum, 100 N. Hamilton Street

A collection of original artwork by Maria Kalman from her beloved children's book. Join us for an opening reception Friday, April 12 and join Maira for a reading of What Pete Ate for all ages at 10 a.m. The exhibition runs through August 2013 in the museum’s Community Concourse. 

Maira Kalman On Dreams, Worrying, Panic, and Pleasure

Humanities Without Boundaries Thursday, April 11, 2013 @ 7:30pm UW Hillel, 611 Langdon Street

The day is a roller coaster of emotions. We live only to make blunders, as Charles Darwin said. Is this true? Is there no respite from anxiety? Wait, is this what this talk is about? Maybe other things will be discussed like Robert Walser and the Countess of Castiglione, walking and the delight of small moments. 

Arundhati Roy An Evening with the Author of The God of Small Things

Special Events Thursday, March 21, 2013 @ 7:30pm Great Hall, Memorial Union

Acclaimed author, essayist, and activist Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things, The End of the Imagination, An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire) will read selections from her new work and answer questions about writing, reading, living, and advocating for change. 

Viking in the WID Raiding and Trading Approaches to Data

Special Events Thursday, March 14, 2013 @ 3:00pm 3rd Floor Teaching Lab, Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, 330 North Orchard Street

Anne Pasternak Making Arts Public

Special Events Friday, March 8, 2013 @ 3:00pm Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, 330 North Orchard Street

Anne Pasternak will give the keynote lecture for the 6th Annual Public Humanities Conference, "Making Public." 

Making Public 6th Annual Conference on the Public Humanities

Special Events Friday, March 8, 2013 @ 9:00am Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, 330 North Orchard Street

Gathering artists, scholars, community partners, and students for a day that is dedicated to discussing the importance of literary, visual, and cultural engagement to the practice of public life. 

Eddie Glaude, Jr. Democracy in Black: Identity Politics in a Post-Soul Era

Nellie Y. McKay Thursday, March 7, 2013 @ 4:30pm Conrad A. Elvehjem Building, L140

Galude confronts a possible paradox: that the current expression of "white democracy" requires a response in the form of black identity politics, but the political idea of Black America has collapsed in the face of fragmenting black communities, where the once powerful ideal of black solidarity crumbles under the weight of internal class and generational differences. 

Tiya Miles Haunted Emancipations: Seeking Ghosts of Slavery in the South

Humanities Without Boundaries Thursday, February 28, 2013 @ 7:30pm Conrad A. Elvehjem Building, L160

Miles mixes historical and literary sources to present meticulous and yet hauntingly engaging histories of the myriad complexities, ironies, and tensions among African Americans, Native Americans, and whites in the first half of the nineteenth century. 

Gregg Mitman Ecological Imperialism Revisited: Entanglements of Disease, Commerce, and Knowledge in a Global World

Focus on Humanities Wednesday, February 13, 2013 @ 5:30pm Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, 330 North Orchard Street

Gregg Mitman's teaching and writing interests span the history of ecology, nature, and health in American culture, and are informed by a commitment and hope to build a more equitable and just environment. 

China in Madison / Madison in China UW Faculty Address the Internationalization of the University

Humanities NOW Wednesday, February 6, 2013 @ 7:00pm Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, 330 North Orchard Street

The UW-Madison China Initiative has forged new connections and brought together cross-disciplinary faculty, alumni and leaders in business and government to create an international model for the university. What role do the humanities play in efforts to expand this university? 

Uncoupled Kate Bolick and Michael Cobb Talk About Singles

Humanities Without Boundaries Thursday, November 29, 2012 @ 7:30pm Conrad A. Elvehjem Building, L160

Close friends since college, Michael Cobb (author of Single: Arguments for the Uncoupled) and Kate Bolick (author of Atlantic cover story, "All the Single Ladies") take on friendship, the reign of coupledom, and the place of singles today. 

Edwidge Danticat Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work

Special Events Saturday, November 10, 2012 @ 5:15pm Overture Center for the Arts

Danticat will present the Mark Gates Memorial Lecture at the Wisconsin Book Festival, speaking about her work, Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work. 

Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen American Nietzsche

Special Events Saturday, November 10, 2012 @ 1:30pm Chicago, IL: First United Methodist Church at The Chicago Temple 77 West Washington Street

Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen charts the unlikely love affair between Americans and Friedrich Nietzsche, shedding new light on both Nietzsche and the American tradition he inspired. 

Stephen Kantrowitz and David S. Cecelski Freedom Stories: African Americans and the Civil War

Special Events Thursday, November 8, 2012 @ 7:30pm Overture Center for the Arts, Wisconsin Studio

In honor of the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, Kantrowitz (History, UW-Madison) discusses his new book, More than Freedom: Fighting for Black Citizenship in a White Republic, 1829-1889 with Cecelski, and independent historian and author of The Fire of Freedom: Abraham Galloway and the Slaves' Civil War​. 

States of Nature featuring Timothy Morton, Kim Fortun, Becky Mansfield, Juliana Spahr, and Joshua Clover

Special Events Friday, October 19, 2012 @ 9:00am 313 University Club

This meeting of the Sawyer Seminar on Biopolitics aims to set up an interdisciplinary conversation about the relationship between ecopolitics and biopolitics. Should we situate ecological thought and environmentalism within or against biopolitics? Are theories of biopolitics useful for analyzing the state management of nature? Does environmentalism participate in what Foucault called the state imperative to "make live," or does ecopolitics instead offer an alternative to biopolitics as mode of decision-making or as a theoretical approach? 

Timothy Morton Dark Ecology: Philosophy in the Anthropocene

Humanities Without Boundaries Thursday, October 18, 2012 @ 7:30pm Conrad A. Elvehjem Building, L160

Morton ponders the end of the world. That is, the end of "world" as a stable background against which humans can project meaning, the end of the possibility of drawing a clear distinction between humans and nonhumans. 

Lauren Redniss Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout

Special Events Monday, October 15, 2012 @ 7:00pm Varsity Hall, Union South

Redniss will present on her book, the 2012-13 Go Big Read selection. 

Creative Time 2012 Summit: Confronting Inequity AND Lunchtime Discussion with Dan Wang and Michael Peterson Streaming Live from the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, NYU

Special Events Friday, October 12, 2012 @ 9:30am Memorial Library, Room 126

UW-Madison’s Center for the Humanities and Art Department are collaborating to host our first live streaming of the Creative Time day-long conference, which is devoted to the topics of art and performance as critical forms of engagement with increasing socio-economic inequality and as transformative political response to that problem. Along with a stellar cast of presenters assembled by Creative Time, Madison-based artist and critic Prof. Dan Wang and Prof. Michael Peterson, from UW’s Theatre and Drama department, will also lead an afternoon discussion and performance, which will invite the attendees to engage more directly with the topics and questions that arise during the Summit. 

Eli Clare Listening to the Freaks: A History of Circus Tents and Everyday Gawking

Special Events Wednesday, October 10, 2012 @ 7:00pm 5120 Grainger, Capitol Conference Room, 5th Floor, 975 University Ave

Brittingham Visiting Scholar Lecture featuring real time captioning. Reception to follow. 

Rachel Feldhay Brenner The Holocaust and the Ethics of Witnessing: Polish Writers Look at the Ghetto

Focus on Humanities Wednesday, October 10, 2012 @ 5:30pm Conrad A. Elvehjem Building, L140

Brenner will showcase her work on representations of the Holocaust in literature and in autobiographical writings. 

Adam Phillips Freud's Impossible Life: An Introduction

Humanities Without Boundaries Friday, September 28, 2012 @ 5:30pm Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center

Freud's life is of great interest partly because, as the inventor of psychoanalysis he was preoccupied with the way people tell the stories of their lives. Adam Phillips, psychoanalyst, literary critic, and essayist, will talk both about Freud's remarkable life, and about what Freud had to say about the larger art of biography.  

Adam Phillips and Jordan Ellenberg Writing About Difficult Subjects

Special Events Friday, September 28, 2012 @ 11:30am UW Hillel Foundation, 611 Langdon Street

Join psychoanalyst Adam Phillips and mathematician Jordan Ellenberg for a discussion about the challenges and pleasures of writing about complex concepts--whether the impassivity of poetics, the perplexities of individual motivation and behavior, or the complexities of pure mathematics. 

Steven Hahn The Dimensions of Freedom: Slave Emancipation, Indian Peoples, and the Projects of the New American States

Humanities Without Boundaries Thursday, September 13, 2012 @ 7:30pm Conrad A. Elvehjem Building, L160

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and professor of nineteenth-century African-American history and the international history of slavery and emancipation launches the 2012-2013 Emancipations Series.