{"id":14583,"date":"2020-05-11T12:53:41","date_gmt":"2020-05-11T16:53:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/humanities\/?page_id=14583"},"modified":"2025-09-25T17:02:27","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T21:02:27","slug":"public-programs","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/humanities\/community\/public-programs\/","title":{"rendered":"BUCH-Produced Programs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Each academic year, the Center engages students and faculty across departments and disciplines through the curation, administration, and production of public-facing programs. Programming is governed by the Center’s three initiatives<\/a><\/strong>, which the BUCH Expanded Charter developed in 2022\/2023 to focus the Center\u2019s efforts in maintaining and enlarging its current programmatic scope.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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A few of our favorite photos from AY 23-24 public programs<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Building Bridges: Connecting the Humanities and Technology<\/h3>
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On Thursday, November 9, 2023, the Center welcomed over thirty faculty members, administrators, graduate students, and undergraduates to Building Bridges: Connecting the Humanities and Technology, a “meet and greet” event that officially launched the Center\u2019s Digital Humanities Initiative<\/a><\/strong> DHI. Attendees represented many departments and programs as well as schools and colleges. The crowd enjoyed lively conversation over refreshments and took full advantage of the opportunity to make connections with other members of the BU community who share an interest in digital humanities.\u00a0<\/span>Learn more<\/a><\/strong>.\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

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Lectures in Criticism<\/h3>
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For nearly forty years, the Lectures in Criticism series has brought renowned scholars in the humanities to Boston University.\u00a0 It has run since 1983, hosting four external speakers every year in addition to one member of the BU faculty. Lectures in Criticism is dedicated to continuing this legacy of excellence with lectures every year in Fall and Spring. Learn more<\/a><\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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View Events Archive<\/h3>
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Humanities in the World: Alumni Career Panel, 2021<\/strong><\/h3>\n

On Monday, March 8, the Center partnered with BU Alumni & Friends to present “Humanities in the World: Alumni Career Panel.” This virtual event, moderated by Center director Susan Mizruchi, brought together five distinguished CAS humanities alumni who shared thoughts about their career trajectories with a primarily undergraduate audience. The panelists spoke to a range of professional experiences in fields including publishing, law, and finance. Despite the heterogeneity of their experiences, all agreed that the critical thinking, research, writing, and communication skills that they cultivated as students of the humanities at BU prepared them to embark on fulfilling careers. The panelists also concurred that studying the humanities afforded them a high degree of professional flexibility. While some took to fields with obvious applications to their academic major, others thrived in fields in which they never imagined themselves during their time at BU. In all cases, the open-ended nature of a humanities degree worked to the panelists\u2019 advantage, affording each a range of meaningful professional possibilities.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Panelists
\n<\/b>Philip Carey (CGS\u201992, CAS’94 – Classical Civilization)
\n<\/b>Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Lion Capital Advisors LLC<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Jay Fielden (CAS\u201992 – English)
\n<\/b>Editor and Writer, Former Editor-in-Chief, Esquire<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Christine Fletcher (CAS\u201991 – French Language & Literature)
\n<\/b>Partner, Burns & Levinson LLP<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

Josh London (CAS\u201994 – English)
\n<\/b>Chief Marketing Officer, Reuters and MD, Reuters Professional at Thomson Reuters<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

John “Jack” J. Lynch, Jr. (CAS’82 – English)
\n<\/b>President, Chief Executive Officer and Director, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

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\n#UsToo: feminist artists intersect with #MeToo, 2020<\/strong><\/h3>\n

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Content warning: mentions of racial and sexual violence.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In early February, the Center brought together a multi-generational, diverse group of feminists representing a variety of<\/span> artistic<\/span> disciplines and professions. The goal was to discuss inclusive feminism today. The panel included biographer Lyndall Gordon, philosopher and librettist Patricia Herzog, BU English professor and performance artist Sophie Seita, and poet and BU Associate Provost for Diversity & Inclusion Crystal Williams. As <\/span>Angela Onwuachi-Willig, the panel\u2019s moderator and dean of BU’s law school, said in her summary response, the participants addressed the ways in which feminism and its subjects are visible and invisible.<\/span><\/p>\n

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(from left): Lyndall Gordon, Patricia Herzog, Sophie Seita, Crystal Williams, and Angela Onwuachi-Willig<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

Lyndall Gordon spoke about female intellectuals Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Virginia Woolf and their feminist predecessors. Gordon noted that these accomplished writers were motherless, and thus lacked women role models. Instead, they \u201cread one another, in a chain of making \u2013\u2013 a new genus<\/span> of womanhood across generations.\u201d As Gordon also pointed out, because women are excluded from male intellectual communities, they have the opportunity to reject the violent norms of patriarchal society and pursue their own moral values.<\/span><\/p>\n

Where Gordon\u2019s talk showed how women\u2019s exclusion from patriarchy afforded opportunities for social and intellectual innovation, Patricia Herzog\u2019s talk investigated how women are portrayed in an operatic canon marked by misogyny and violence. Herzog began her talk with a nod to the Freudian concept of culture as \u201cthe work of reclaiming.\u201d For Herzog, the retelling of canonical stories is a way of recuperating suppressed elements in classics. In her artistic work, Herzog reconceives well-known operas such as Puccini\u2019s <\/span>Madame Butterfly<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Tosca,<\/span><\/i> or rewrites literary works such as <\/span>The Scarlet Letter<\/span><\/i> as opera to re-present women characters as agents. In a striking, even paradoxical acknowledgment of tradition, Herzog noted that \u201ccertainly I am no Puccini, but I do hear voices. And the gloriously sung voices of Puccini\u2019s heroines are what inspired me to take up this project.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Sophie Seita offered an overview of her work as a feminist performance artist and scholar. Seita\u2019s interest in experimental poetry and performance unifies her academic and artistic work. She notes that much of her scholarship explores the intellectual and cultural legacy of the Enlightenment\u2013\u2013a period dominated by white male thinkers. For her project \u201cMy Little Enlightenment Plays,\u201d Seita engages with Enlightenment writers, scientists, and artists from an explicitly queer feminist perspective, inviting queer and feminist artists to collaborate with her. Her goal is to stage a \u201ccreative form of reading that thinks through and alongside my source materials\u201d in order to \u201ccreate a more diverse and inclusive republic of letters.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Audience members during the Q&A at the end of the event.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

The last speaker, Crystal Williams, chose to feature black feminist poets whose work she turned to when asked to think about what it means to be a feminist artist in the age of #MeToo. She noted that the poems she selected had been \u201cinstructive to [her] as a developing artist and developing thinker.\u201d Williams read \u201cA Poem About My Rights\u201d by June Jordan and also Lucille Clifton\u2019s \u201cwon\u2019t you celebrate with me.\u201d June Jordan\u2019s poem portrays the intertwining of sexual violence with colonial, economic, and racial violence, as confirmed by her eloquent declaration:<\/span><\/p>\n

I am the history of rape
\n<\/span>I am the history of the rejection of who I am
\n<\/span>I am the history of the terrorized incarceration of
\n<\/span>myself
\n<\/span>I am the history of battery assault and limitless
\n<\/span>armies against whatever I want to do with my mind
\n<\/span>and my body and my soul . . .<\/span><\/p>\n

At the conclusion of these diverse presentations, moderator Angela <\/span>Onwuachi-Willig deftly identified their continuities. For instance, Onwuachi-Willig showed how each speaker carefully negotiated the relationship between silence and being compelled to speak. And each addressed how women find their voices as artists while contending with historical pressures that keep women silent.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Forum 2019, Can We Talk ? Dialogue and Debate in the Contemporary Academy<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>\n

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Kilachand Honors College director Carrie Preston speaking at 2019 Round Table<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

Dialogue and Debate in the Contemporary Academy<\/strong>, explored one of the biggest challenges facing universities today: the question of how to promote honest intellectual exchange. In fall 2020, we plan to continue the work begun in Forum 2019 through three working groups of undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty and staff.<\/p>\n

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Incarceration Film Series, November 2019<\/h3>\n

\"\"As part of the Center\u2019s efforts to program events on topics of importance to the BU community, we launched a film series on the subject of incarceration, and in November 2019, we hosted our inaugural screening, with co-sponsorship from the Kilacha<\/span>nd Honors College, the African American Studies Program, and the American\u00a0 Studies Program.<\/p>\n

Hannah Kinney-Kobre, the senior undergraduate staff assistant at the Center, and Christine D\u2019Auria, the Center\u2019s 2019\/2020 graduate student intern conceived the event, in a rare collaboration between graduate and undergraduate students that we hope to have more of in the future. D\u2019Auria and Kinney-Kobre decided the best way to allow members of the BU community to critically engage with the experiences of people in prison was to show films made by incarcerated people. The two films screened in November, Brett Story\u2019s <\/span>The Prison in Twelve Landscapes<\/span><\/i> and the animated short film <\/span>Freedom\/Time<\/span><\/i>, represent the effects of incarceration on families, friends, and communities, demonstrating how prison affects relationships and the lives of everyone in society.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Students discuss issues sparked by the Center’s inaugural incarceration film screening event<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

Kinney-Kobre introduced the two films at the event and provided background on Story\u2019s film: \u201cWe see playgrounds, bus stops, parks, radio stations, offices\u2013\u2013as well as idyllic Appalachian vistas, skies streaked with smoke and flames from raging forest fires, and softly flickering footage of tanks rolling down the highway. The prison as both an idea and a system is, in Story\u2019s view, stitched into our very lives. Though it is often invisible to us, our economy, our sense of safety and community, and our relationships with each\u00a0other are fundamentally tied up with incarceration. We see this even in our own community. BU Students Against Mass Incarceration has found that through the use of large investment funds (ETFs), BU, like many other universities, invests in private prisons. But BU also has a long-standing prison education program, one of the oldest in the country.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The audience lingered after the screenings to talk informally about issues sparked by the films. Even though the second event in the series had to be cancelled because of COVID-19, the Center plans to continue screening films in AY 20\/21 to expand the community\u2019s engagement with incarceration, which has become a subject of heightened concern in the COVID-19 era.<\/span><\/p>\n

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BU Journals, February 2019<\/h3>\n

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Left to right: Aaron Garrett (Philosophy), Sarah Phillips (History), and Adriana Craciun (English)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

On February 5, 2019, the Center cosponsored with the Office of the Associate Dean of Faculty\/Humanities, \u201cA Celebration of Boston University Humanities Journals.\u201d The event featured a panel of editors representing six celebrated humanities journals, all of which are associated with BU.<\/p>\n

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Left to right: William Pierce, Herbert Golder, and Louis Chude-Sokei<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

The journals featured were AGNI, Arion, The Black Scholar, The Journal of Modern Philosophy, Modern American History, and Studies in Romanticism. In addition to highlighting the unique perspectives the journals provide in the context of their fields, the editors discussed the shifting media landscape and its impact on academic publishing. They also discussed the methodological and disciplinary flexibility that their journals strive to encourage. The event concluded with a moving, memorable reading of Horace by esteemed poet David Ferry, whose own work has been published in Arion for many years.<\/p>\n

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Forum 2018<\/strong>, Humanities Approaches to the Opioid Crisis<\/a><\/h3>\n

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2018 Speaker Samuel Kelton Roberts with an attendee<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

Partnering with area schools of public health and medicine<\/strong>, and representatives of city, state, and federal government<\/strong>, this forum demonstrated how humanities disciplines provide languages that address social and health problems. The goal was to initiate local, national, and global conversations with experts at both academic and non-academic institutions on the opioid crisis.<\/p>\n

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Ex-Libris Screening, 2018<\/h3>\n

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On February 7, 2018, renowned documentarian Frederick Wiseman visited BU for a screening of his award-winning 2017 documentary, Ex-Libris, about the New York Public Library system, and how it contributes to the lives of New Yorkers from all backgrounds and walks of life. Through the film\u2019s stunning portrait of the social center that the contemporary urban library has become, Wiseman\u2019s work provides the human dimension for the ideas and theories of the October 2017 \u201cRecording Lives\u201d forum<\/a>,<\/strong> showing how libraries and archives function on a daily basis. While Wiseman is notoriously reticent about his filmmaking methods, he provided some jewels of insight for the students, faculty, and community members in attendance. \u201cWhen filming, you come across absolutely extraordinary things which you don\u2019t invent and you\u2019re lucky enough to be present when they occur, and recognize how to use them,\u201d he noted, adding that every film is the product of extensive editing and orchestration of materials.<\/p>\n

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Report from the Archives, 2018<\/h3>\n

\"\"On February 6, 2018, the Center hosted \u201cReport from the Archives,\u201d a round table discussion of archival work, featuring speakers from The HistoryMakers\u00ae, the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center and BU faculty, including Dick Lehr, Professor of Journalism, Walter Fluker, Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Ethical Leadership, and Christine D\u2019Auria, PhD student in American Studies. Louis Chude-Sokei, Director of the African American Studies Program, moderated.<\/p>\n

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Louis Chude-Sokei and Christine D’Auria on Report from the Archives panel<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

Developing ideas from the October 2017 forum<\/a>,<\/strong> \u201cRecording Lives,\u201d panelists highlighted the relationship between technology and archives, and discussed how archival collections serve to prevent marginalized cultures from being erased. During the Q&A that followed, panelists and audience members contemplated the varied purposes of the archive\u2014as a place of law and authority as well as a source of wonderment.<\/p>\n

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Forum 2017, Recording Lives: Libraries and Archives in the Digital Age<\/a><\/h3>\n

In this forum, the Center reached beyond its academic borders to highlight what humanities fields have to offer a broader public.<\/p>\n

Partnering with the Boston Public Library<\/strong><\/a> and the Boston Athen\u00e6um<\/strong><\/a>, the forum featured panelists from the Athen\u00e6um, the Congressional Library & Archives, the Handel and Haydn Society, Historic Newton, Mount Auburn Cemetery, and the Mellon Sawyer Seminars at BU, to discuss how local cultural and academic organizations are deploying digital technologies to provide or expand access to their collections and engage more diverse audiences. The Center published a book collection<\/a><\/strong> of essays from the 2017 forum, edited by former Director Susan Mizruchi, in 2020.<\/p>\n

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