2025-26 Events

Wednesday, March 4, 5pm

Guerlac Room, A.D. White House

Zahid R. Chaudhary, Associate Professor of English, Princeton University

"Technofascism"

How to understand the contemporary conjuncture of technology and fascism? This lecture will develop a psychosocial account of this conjuncture in light of recent political and economic developments: the rise of platform capitalism, state-sanctioned kidnappings and executions by federal agents in the United States, the global militarization of artificial intelligence, and the proliferation of deepfakes that no longer aim to deceive but to provide enjoyment. From fantasies of libertarian escape to the nihilistic commitments of accelerationism, technofascism amplifies apocalyptic fears and pleasures while eroding legal, ethical, and political limits. Critical theory allows us to consider psychosocial and aesthetic elements of these dynamics alongside their political-economic realities, in order to understand how contemporary forms of power operate through affect, spectacle, and technological efficiency, and are sustained by widening practices of impunity.

In addition to this lecture Chaudhary also offered a lunch workshop for graduate students on Thursday, March 5, called “Paranoid Publics.”

Thursday, April 16, 5:15 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 April 16. 

Professor of English and Faculty Director of the Center for Digital Humanities at Princeton Scholar Meredith Martin presented this year's Digital Humanities Lecture at the Society for the Humanities. Her talk “Humanities & AI: Modeling Culture Across the Disciplines”, 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. 

Computational social scientists have long worked to show the necessity of integrating social scientific expertise into data science workflows. Kate Crawford and dana boyd (2011) Hanna Wallach (2014), and Justin Grimmer (2015), to name a few, have developed research programs that model this interdisciplinary work. Grounded in many aspects of the humanities, cultural analytics and computational humanities research only flourishes in Information Science departments in the U.S. Practitioners in humanities departments struggle to find community in their home institutions, even those with data science programs. In this talk, I urge us to use this moment of AI’s marketing as a ‘cultural technology’ to build mutually reinforcing interdisciplinary collaborations that both address and overcome the history of unequal methodological integration for social sciences and humanities in machine learning research.

Meredith Martin is Professor of English and Faculty Director of the Center for Digital Humanities at Princeton, which started under her leadership in 2014. Her book, The Rise and Fall of Meter, Poetry and English National Culture, 1860-1930 (Princeton UP, 2012), was the winner of the MLA Prize for a First Book, the Warren Brooks Prize for Literary Criticism, and co-winner of the Sonya Rudikoff Prize for the Best First Book in Victorian Studies. Her second book Poetry’s Data: Digital Humanities and the History of Prosody (Princeton UP, 2025) was published in April 2025 and argues that poetry can teach us how to think critically about data, and that critical data studies can teach us something about how we read poems. With several collaborators, she has been building and directing, since 2007, the Princeton Prosody Archive, which contains writing on poetics, prosody, rhetoric, grammar, speech, and literary history published between 1570-1923. In 2015, Martin received the Andrew W. Mellon New Directions Fellowship for research on her project Before We Were Disciplines: Poetry at the Origin of Language. She is also co-writing Data Work in the Humanities with Zoe LeBlanc, Assistant Professor in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and former CDH Post-Doctoral Fellow, and co-writing Beyond the Walled Gardens with Dr. Mary Naydan and Dr. Rebecca Koeser, both colleagues at the Center for Digital Humanities. She is co-PI, with Associate Research Scholar Wouter Haverals, of the Exercises in Literary Style project, funded with a grant from the Princeton Language and Intelligence Initiative.

Martin also lead a workshop on “Poetry’s Data” for graduate students on Friday, April 17. 

Friday, April 24
Guerlac Room, A.D. White House 

Opening this year's Spring Fellows Conference on the 2025-26 Society for the Humanities focal theme of "Scale," Nick Salvato delivered the keynote address. 

3:00 pm KEYNOTE

Nick Salvato, Frederic J. Whiton Professor of Liberal Studies in the Department of Performing and Media Arts, Cornell University

"Scale's Remainders; or, Television's Impossible Floor Plans"

This talk revisits and expands on ideas from my monograph Television Scales (punctum books, 2019), a project in which I argue that scale is both an irresolvable intellectual problem and an invaluable methodological tool for the field of television studies. In elaborating that claim anew, I make two further moves. First, I consider what resources a conceptualization of scale like mine may offer to a more capaciously understood media studies and to the scholarly humanities writ large. And then, with an eye still trained nonetheless on television, I raise the question of how some challenges persist beyond that conceptualization of scale as I turn my attention to what I am provisionally calling “television’s impossible floor plans,” manifested at such sites as Mark Bennett’s book "TV Sets: Fantasy Blueprints of Classic TV Homes," Iñaki Aliste Lizarralde’s drawings of floor plans for television houses and apartments—which he describes as “deviations”—and the recent HGTV reality series A Very Brady Renovation.

Friday, April 24
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 2025-26 focal theme of "Scale", closing with the Keynote Lecture from Nick Salvato. Fellows gave presentations on Friday, April 24. Each presentation was followed by a Q&A. This conference was open to the public with lunch and a reception provided. 

9:30-10:30am Panel 1

• Luke Fidler, Society Fellow, Art History, University of Southern California, "Addicted to Formlessness: Thomas Mann's Medieval Sculpture"
• Spencer Beswick, HSP Postdoctoral Associate, Cornell University, "Building the North American Anarchist Movement Through Continental Convergences (1986-1989)"

10:45am-11:45am Panel 2

• Ernesto Bassi, Faculty Fellow, History, Cornell University, "The Long 1780s from Provincial, Viceregal, and Imperial Perspectives"
• Shaoling Ma, Faculty Fellow, Asian Studies, Cornell University, "Integrated Rural Circuits: A Scalar History of Southeast Asia’s Computational Environments"

1:15pm-2:45pm Panel 3

• Tiffany Hale, Society Fellow, Religion, Barnard College, "A Love Supreme: Toward an Afro-Native Study of Land Acknowledgments"
• Teagan Bradway, Society Fellow, English, SUNY Cortland, "Group Work: How to Practice Queer and Trans Kinship"
• Benjamin Anderson, Faculty Fellow, History of Art and Classics, Cornell University, "Poussin’s Blind Orion"

Friday, Sept. 5, 1-5pm 
Guerlac Room, A.D. White House 

Celebrating the career, mentorship, and many contributions to Cornell University of Professor Tim Murray, Comparative Literature and Literatures in English, former director of the Society for the Humanities, curator and innovator of the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art in the Cornell Library, and director of the Cornell Council for the Arts and curator of the Cornell Arts Biennial.

Several of Tim’s former students and colleagues gave short presentations on their own life and work as it has been influenced by Tim. The occasion was followed by a reception.

Full Program of Events:

1:00 Welcome & Opening Remarks - Durba Ghosh, Taylor Family Director, Society for the Humanities

1:15 Panel 1 - Moderator: Neil Saccamano, Associate Professor Emeritus, Literatures in English, Cornell University

Irving Goh, PhD, 2012, Comparative LIterature, Cornell University; Professor of Comparative Literature, Emory University

Elizabeth Wijaya, PhD, 2018, Comparative Literature, Cornell University; Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies and Visual Studies, University of Toronto

Constanza Salazar, PhD, 2023, History of Art, Cornell University; Adjunct Assistant Professor of Film & Media, Hunter College

2:00 Remarks from E. Haven Hawley, Associate University Librarian of Special Collections, on behalf of Elaine Westbrooks, Carl A. Kroch University Librarian and Vice Provost

2:15 Panel 2 - Moderator: Brett de Bary, Professor Emeritus, Asian Studies and Comparative Literature, Cornell University; former director of the Society for the Humanities

Burlin Barr, MFA and PhD, 1999, Literatures in English, Cornell University; Professor of English, Central Conneticut State University

Lauren van Haaften-Schick, PhD, 2022, History of Art, Cornell University; Full-Time Lecturer, Arts Administration, Teachers College at Columbia University

Junting Huang, PhD, 2021, Comparative Literature, Cornell University; Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, Binghamton University

3:15 Panel 3 (Virtual Panel) - Moderator: Jessica Levin-Martinez, Director, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art 

A series of prerecorded video messages from the following:

Shin Yi Yang, PhD Art History, Cornell University; Curator and Gallery Owner, Shanghai, China.

Grace An, PhD, 2004, Romance Studies (French Visiual Studies), Cornell University; Associate Professor of French and Cinema/Media, Oberlin College

Jennifer Row, PhD, Romance Studies (French), Cornell University; Associate Professor of French, University of Minnesota

Walter Ren Hao, PhD, Theatre, Cornell University; National Sun Yat-Sen University, Professor in Theatre

Wendy Walters, MFA, Creative Writing, PhD, English, Cornell University; Associate Professor of Writing, Columbia University

Ryan Platt, PhD, Theatre, Cornell University; Associate Professor of Theatre and Dance, Colorado College

Rebecca Eggar, PhD, English, Cornell University; Executive Director, Townsend Center for the Humanities, University of California, Berkeley

4:00 Panel 4 - Moderator: Jonathan Culler, Class of 1916 Professor Emeritus, Literatures in English and Comparative Literature, Cornell University; former director of the Society for the Humanities

Tim Corrigan, Professor Emeritus of English, Cinema and Media Studies, and History of Art, University of Pennsylvania

Harvey Young, PhD, 2004, Theatre; Dean of the College of Fine Arts and Professor of English, Theatre, and African American & Black Diaspora Studies, Boston University

Amy Villarejo, Professor of Theatre, Film & Television, UCLA; previously the Frederic J. Whiton Professor of Humanities in the Department of Performing and Media Arts and the Department of Comparative Literature, Cornell University 

Closing Remarks: Tim Murray, Professor Emeritus, Comparative Literature and Literatures in English, Cornell University

This film series featured a dynamic selection of films that approach questions of scale from different perspectives. Screenings were introduced by the year’s Society for the Humanities Fellows and were inspired by the topics and themes of their fall course offerings.

Featuring:

The Draughtsman's Contract (1982, dir. Peter Greenaway)
Tuesday, September 16, at 6pm, Cornell Cinema

Framing Agnes (2022, dir. Chase Joynt)
Tuesday, October 30, at 6pm, Cornell Cinema

Marwencol (2010, dir. Jeff Malmberg) 
Tuesday, October 21, at 6pm, Cornell Cinema

Scale (or scales) as a form of measurement that can generate relationships between objects or ideas, forms of embodiment, ideas of justice. From the object (noun) by which we measure to the process of scaling (verb), scale is a question we are constantly confronted with. Thinking about scale through humanistic inquiry raises questions about the cultural, social, moral, aesthetic, political implications of quantification. How big of a story, of a theory, of a history does one need to tell to properly encompass an object or idea? What is too much, too many (maybe excessive)? What is too little, too few (maybe insufficient)? What does it mean to say something is out of scale? What does it mean to propose "scaling up" or "scaling down"? How do scales facilitate or interfere with comparison? Scale provokes us to consider how concepts of proportionality shape our lives.

Thursday, Nov. 6
Guerlac Room, A.D. White House 

Opening this year's Fall Fellows Conference on the 2025-26 Society for the Humanities focal theme of "Scale," Jenny Sabin delivered the keynote address. 

5:00 pm KEYNOTE

Jenny E. Sabin, Arthur L. and Isabel B. Wiesenberger Professor in Architecture, and Chair of the Design Tech Department in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning, Cornell University 

"Biosynthetic Design: Towards Adaptive Architecture" 

To address pressing issues in our built and natural environments, architects and designers must develop new models that respond to social, environmental, and technological imperatives. This shift requires a departure from traditional research toward hybrid, transdisciplinary approaches and collaborative frameworks. Advances in computation, visualization, material intelligence, and fabrication are transforming how we design and build across disciplines and scales, forging new intersections between the digital, physical, and biological realms.

This lecture presents ongoing research spanning biology, materials science, fiber science, fashion, engineering, and architecture. Sabin’s work investigates material and formal intersections among architecture, science, and emerging technologies, revealing nonlinear modes of fabrication and self-assembly that operate from surface to structure. These projects open new possibilities for redefining architecture within broader frameworks of generative design, sustainability, and advanced fabrication. The keynote will highlight methodologies, prototypes, and architectural projects developed by Sabin and collaborators, including adaptive building skins, textile and ceramic assemblies, and responsive architectural systems that dynamically reconfigure their own performance in response to local environmental conditions and human interaction.

Jenny Sabin is a professor of architecture and chair of the design tech department at Cornell University and is an architectural designer whose work is at the forefront of a new direction for 21st-century architectural practice — one that investigates the intersections of architecture and science and applies insights and theories from biology and mathematics to the design of material structures. Sabin specializes in adaptive architecture, bioinspired design, material computation, programmable matter, sustainability, responsive materials, digital ceramics, biomimicry, and Kirigami geometry. More on Sabin, including selected works, can be found via her department profile. 

The video recording of this lecture is available to view on the Society for the Humanities' Vimeo Channel. 

Friday, Nov. 7 
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 2025-26 focal theme of "Scale", following the opening Keynote Lecture from Jenny E. Sabin. Fellows gave presentations on Friday, Nov, 7. Each presentation was followed by a Q&A. This conference was open to the public with lunch and a reception provided. 

1 – 2:30 pm PANEL 1 
David Leheny, Society Fellow, Asia-Pacific Studies, Waseda University; "Scaling Injustices as National History: Site and Victimhood in Clint Eastwood’s The Outlaw Josey Wales and Okamoto Kihachi’s Akage"

Ernesto Bassi, Faculty Fellow, History, Cornell University; 
"A Fugitive Red: Santa Marta’s Brazilwood in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World"

Yue Zhao, Mellon Graduate Fellow, Science and Technology Studies, Cornell University; "Cultivating Potential: Potential Science and Embodied Laws of Scientific Discovery"

2:45 – 3:45 pm PANEL 2

Elizabeth Barrios, Society Fellow, Modern Languages and Culture, Albion College; "Plastic Environmentalisms"

Isabel Calderón Reyes, Mellon Graduate Fellow, Romance Studies, Cornell University; "Shared Terrains: Children, Landscape and the Frame of Togetherness" 

4 – 5:00 pm PANEL 3

Leif Weatherby, Society Fellow, German, New York University; "Language at Scale"

Michell Chresfield, Faculty Fellow, Africana Studies and Research Center, Cornell University; "Scalar Sovereignties: Afro-Native Histories and the Uneven Terrain of Recognition"

Tuesday, Nov. 11 
Guerlac Room, A.D. White House 

Stacey A. Langwick, Associate Professor of Anthropology,  College of Arts & Sciences, Cornell University

“Healing in a Toxic World: Reimagining the Times and Spaces of the Therapeutic"

What does it mean to heal in a toxic world? How is that which counts as “therapeutic” shifting with the growing acknowledgment that the extractive relations fueling contemporary economies and animating modern life undermine possibilities for future survival? In Tanzania, this double-bind defining our contemporary moment is forging creative responses that reimagine the territorial and the corporeal, posing configurations of care that invite alternative forms of sovereignty in the service of both ecological and bodily healing. Social-therapeutic projects are challenging the ways that “health” conceptualizes and governs the entanglement of bodies and ecologies. 

A charismatic banana, kitarasa, has emerged as a key player in both entrepreneurial and nongovernmental experiments striving to heal bodies and soils in a world where that which enables survival in the near term, undermines it for future generations. Articulating the efficacy of kitarasa, and the social-therapeutic projects in which it is entangled, requires decentering 19th and 20th century articulations of toxicity and its relation with remedy. The story of Dorkia Enterprises, a small business, working to commercialize kitarasa flour as a “therapeutic” food reveals the tensions between the economic and the ecological, as it is caught up in efforts to heal land and bodies. Animated by connections to international food sovereignty initiatives, it reimagines the scalar work of economy and disrupts the forms of property on which it depends. 

This talk moves between (1) Dorkia Enterprises’ elaboration of kitarasa through partial engagements with the state and the market and (2) an effort to think with kitarasa and the liveliness in its insistent excesses of these logics. As this charismatic banana folds the scales of bodies and lands into one another, it incites the theorizing of relations among toxicity, healing, and memory.

Stacey Langwick is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Cornell University. Her most recent book Medicines That Feed Us: Plants, Healing and Sovereignty in a Toxic World is forthcoming from Duke University Press (Feb 2026). She is also author of Bodies, Politics and African Healing: The Matter of Maladies in Tanzania (2011) and co-editor of Medicine, Mobility and Power in Global Africa (2012). Her ethnographic work has led to co-leading a collaborative international design project that invites a rethinking and reworking of healing on and of the planet in the face of climate change. Uzima: Wellness has begun with the cultivation of a teaching, research, and healing garden that reimagines medicine’s land relations in a major teaching-research hospital in Tanzania. The land-based pedagogy emerging from this project offers the garden as a central site of medical training, together with the clinic, classroom, and laboratory. Prof. Langwick teaches classes on medicine and healing, the body and bodiliness, toxicity, postcolonial science, critical plant studies and anthropological methods.

The Annual Invitational Lecture of the Society for the Humanities is designed to give a Cornell audience a chance to hear one of our distinguished Cornell humanities faculty members who may frequently speak at other universities, but whom we seldom have the privilege of hearing.

The video recording of this lecture is available to view on the Society for the Humanities' Vimeo Channel.