2023-24 Events

Wednesday, Oct. 18, 5:00pm 
Guerlac Room, A.D. White House 

The Society for the Humanities & CNY Humanities Corridor (in partnership with Cornell's Media Studies Colloquium) present: The Annual Digital Humanities Lecture

The world is teeming with objects, and today's AI models rely on datasets such as ImageNet to learn, for example, that a "seat belt" and a "waffle iron" are both types of "commodities". But might an earlier moment of scientific classification hold lessons for how we understand the dataset today? By examining collections of botanical specimens in the 17th century, this talk will track two competing modes of computational logic that tried to contain the disorder of the natural world.

Poet and scholar of digital media Tung-Hui Hu will present new work in the annual Digital Humanities Lecture at the Society for the Humanities, entitled "The Grid vs. the Set: Early Attempts at Classifying Data." The lecture is sponsored by the CNY Humanities Corridor, Cornell's Media Studies Colloquium and the Society for the Humanities. The event is free and open to the public and will be followed by a reception in the A.D. White House. 

Hu, Associate Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan, is the author of "A Prehistory of the Cloud" and "Digital Lethargy". The winner of a Rome Prize and a NEA fellowship for literature, Hu has also received an American Academy in Berlin Prize for his research.  https://www.tunghui.hu/

Hu will also lead a space-limited workshop for graduate students on Thursday, October 19, entitled "New Aesthetic Forms, from Lethargy to AI." 

Tuesday, September 19 
Olin Library, Room 701 

Dorothy Berry 
Digital Curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture

"Archives Aren’t Forever: Digital Collections and Digital Storytelling in Classrooms"

 A discussion-based workshop exploring interactions of archives, digital collections and digital storytelling in the classroom, with a focus on the transformations between archival collecting, digitization, and digital interpretation.

Dorothy Berry is the Digital Curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Formerly the Digital Collections Program Manager at Houghton Library, Harvard University, Berry graduated from Indiana University with an M.L.S. and an M.A. in ethnomusicology. Her undergraduate years were spent at Mills College, where she performed 20^th and 21^st century experimental and new music. Berry specializes in the intersections of information science and African American history, focusing on how description and digitization increase access and understanding to racially confrontational materials. She is committed to a career of expanding access to historical materials through creativity and innovation, and to exploring digital and physical methodologies that unite stakeholder communities with their often displaced heritages.

Tuesday, Sept. 19, 5:00pm 
Guerlac Room, A.D. White House 

Dorothy Berry 
Digital Curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture

Elaine Westbrooks
University Librarian, Cornell University 

"Fireside Chat" and Q&A 

A conversation between Berry and Westbrooks on digital archives, open to librarians from across Cornell University, as well as Librarians from the Tompkins County Public Library. 

These events were made possible with support from the CNY Humanities Corridor. 

Friday, Oct. 27 
Guerlac Room, A.D. White House 

This year's cohort of Fellows at the Society for the Humanities gave presentations on works-in-progress on the 2023-24 focal theme of Crossing. Each presentation was followed by a Q&A. Open to the public. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner provided.

10-11:30am PANEL 1
Ruslan Yusupov, Society Fellow; Academy Scholar, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard
University, "Pairing Up: The Militarization of Multiculturalism in the People’s War on Terror in China’s Xinjiang"
Dennis Wegner, Mellon Graduate Fellow; German Studies, Cornell University, "Marina Tsvetaeva’s Queer Multilingual Poetics"

1-2:30pm PANEL 2 
Emma Campbell, Society Fellow; Assoc. Prof./Reader, Modern Languages and Cultures, Univ. of Warwick, "Gender and Sexual Embodiment in Medieval Bestiaries"
Kim Haines-Eitzen, Faculty Fellow; Professor, Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, "On Fire: Kinesis, Apocalypse, Transformation"

2:45-5pm PANEL 3
Stephanie López, Mellon Graduate Fellow; Romance Studies, Cornell University, "Losing My Relation: Absence of Maternal Care in Latin American Fiction"
Perry Zurn, Society Fellow; Provost Assoc. Professor, Philosophy, American University, "The Advent of Cis: Lessons from the Mainstreaming of a Radical Term"
Cristina Florea, Faculty Fellow; Assist. Professor, History, Cornell University, "War and Revolution in the Lands In-Between: Bukovina in World War II"