Jonathan Lethem, "The Novel as Lyric Essay and Stage Play"
Thursday, Sept. 12, 5:00 p.m.
Guerlac Room, A.D. White House
The Society for the Humanities welcomed Jonathan Lethem, Roy Edward Disney '51 Professor of Creative Writing and Professor of English at Pomona College, to present his talk "The Novel as Lyric Essay and Stage Play."
Out of his twenty-five years’ experience as creative writing instructor, Lethem presented his eccentric personal account of the elements and development of the basic forms of literary fiction – an account which, while possibly a kind of fiction itself, might prove a useful model for writers and readers to consider.
Celebrated for his novels, short stories and essays, Jonathan Lethem is recognized today as one of America’s foremost contemporary writers. His works include nine novels, five short-story collections, six non-fiction books and an array of essays published in such publications as Rolling Stone, Harper’s and The New Yorker.
His novel Motherless Brooklyn was named Novel of the Year by Esquire magazine and won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Salon Book Award, as well as the Macallan Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2005. At Pomona, he teaches classes in creative writing and contemporary fiction.
In addition to his visit to the Society for the Humanities, Lethem participated in the Ithaca is Books festival on Friday , September 13 and Saturday, September 14 in downtown Ithaca. More information on the festival's events can be found here: https://www.ithacaisbooks.org/schedule.
This event was free and open to the public.
Annual Digital Humanities Lecture: Hannah Zeavin
Tuesday, Oct. 22, 5:00 p.m.
Guerlac Room, A.D. White House
The Society for the Humanities & CNY Humanities Corridor, in partnership with Cornell's Media Studies Colloquium, presented The Annual Digital Humanities Lecture on October 22nd.
Scholar of digital media Hannah Zeavin presented this year's Digital Humanities Lecture at the Society for the Humanities. Her talk “Matrix, Environment, Atmosphere: How Mother Became a Medium”, was sponsored by the CNY Humanities Corridor, Cornell's Media Studies Colloquium and the Society for the Humanities. The event was free and open to the public and followed by a reception in the A.D. White House.
From the mid-1940s until the 1960s and beyond, class, race, and maternal function were linked in metaphors of temperature in pediatric psychological studies of Bad Mothers. Newly codified diagnoses of aloof “refrigerator mothers” and overstimulating “hot mothers” were inseparable from midcentury conceptions of stimulation, mediation, domesticity, and race, including Marshall McLuhan’s theory of hot and cool media, as well as maternal absence and (over)presence, echoes of which continue in the present in terms like “helicopter parent.” Whereas autism and autistic states have been extensively elaborated in their relationship to digital media, this talk attends to attributed maternal causes of “emotionally disturbed,” queer, and neurodivergent children. The talk thus elaborates a media theory of mothering and parental “fitness.”
Hannah Zeavin is a scholar, writer, and editor, and works as an Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley in the Department of History. Zeavin is the author of The Distance Cure: A History of Teletherapy (MIT Press, 2021) and Mother Media: Hot and Cool Parenting in the 20th Century (MIT Press 2025). She is at work on her third book, All Freud's Children: A Story of Inheritance for Penguin Press. Articles have appeared in American Imago, differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, Technology and Culture, Media, Culture, and Society, and elsewhere. Essays and criticism have appeared or are forthcoming from Dissent, The Guardian, Harper’s Magazine, n+1, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. In 2021, Zeavin co-founded The Psychosocial Foundation and is the Founding Editor of Parapraxis, a new popular magazine for psychoanalysis on the left.
The video recording of this lecture is available on the Society for the Humanities Vimeo channel.
Zeavin also presented the talk "The Distance Cure / The Far Voice" at the October 23rd Media Studies Colloquium.
Fall Fellows Conference
Friday, Oct. 26
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 2024-25 focal theme of Silence. Each presentation was followed by a Q&A. This conference was open to the public with breakfast, lunch, and dinner provided.
10 – 11:30 am PANEL 1
Angelica Allen, Society Fellow; Africana Studies, Chapman University, “Narrating the Lives of Afro-Amerasians in the Philippines”
Brian Sengdala, Mellon Graduate Fellow; Performing & Media Arts, Cornell University, “Silent Transduction”
Dawn LaValle Norman, Society Fellow; Classics, Australian Catholic University, “Blushing, Speech and Silence in Late Ancient Philosophical Dialogues”
12 – 1:30 pm KEYNOTE
Benjamin Piekut, Keynote Presenter; Music, Cornell University, “The Afterlives of Indeterminacy”
3 – 4:30 pm PANEL 2
Sara Warner, Faculty Fellow; Performing & Media Arts, Cornell University, “The Silent Majority: Lorraine Hansberry’s Queer Closet Dramas”
Andrew Campana, Faculty Fellow; Asian Studies, Cornell University, “Silent Protagonists: Feminist Video Game Poetry in Japan"
Bianca Waked, Mellon Graduate Fellow; Philosophy, Cornell University, “The Limits of Curative Violence: Oralism and the Black Deaf American Experience”