George Marcus, Chancellor's Professor of Anthropology, UC Irvine
Emily Thompson, Professor of History, Princeton University
2017–2018 Speaker Series
Tim Slade, independent filmmaker, screening of "The Destruction of Memory," followed
by round table conversation, with Hilary Becker, Lubna Omar, and Sule Can, moderated
by Jeffrey Becker (In collaboration with MENA)
Bill Brown, Deputy Provost for the Arts, and Karla Scherer Distinguished Service Professor
in American Culture, English Language and Literature, and Visual Arts, University
of Chicago: "Reassemblage: Theory and Practice, Matter and Form"
Yannis Hamalakis, Joukowsky Family Professor of Archaeology and Professor of Modern
Greek Studies, Brown University: "The New Nomadic Age: Archaeologies of Forced and
Undocumented Migration in the Mediterranean"
Marcy Norton, Associate Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania: "The Case
of Chocolate, Still Life Painting and the Flowery World"
Cancelled due to family loss: Aden Kumler, Associate Professor of Art History, Romance
Languages and Literatures, University of Chicago: "The arts of unmaking in the Middle
Ages." (In collaboration with CEMERS)
2016-2017 Speaker Series
Martin Jay, Ehrman Professor of European History, UC Berkeley: "Can Photographs Lie?
Reflections on a Perennial Anxiety"
Hai Ren, Associate Professor of East Asian Studies and Anthropology, University of
Arizona: "What Is a Socially Engaged Art Museum?"
Marvin Bolt, Curator of Science and Technology, Corning Museum of Glass: "Through
Looking Glasses, Almost to Infinity and Beyond"
Amie Siegel, artist: "Artist Talk"
Anthony McCall, artist: "Solid Light, Dark Rooms"
2015–2016 Speaker Series
Graham Harman, Distinguished University Professor, American University of Cairo: "The
Relational and the Theatrical"
Jimena Canales, Thomas M. Siebel Chair in the History of Science at the University
of Illinois-UC: "Einstein to Bergson: from our Earth to outer space and back"
Yarn/Wire, musicians: "Material Sound" (in collaboration with Music Department)
Susanne Küchler, Professor of Anthropology at University College London: "Toward an
Anthropology of Thought: Thought and Thing Reconsidered"
Ben Schmidt, Giovanni & Amne Costigan Endowed Professor of History, University of
Washington: "Alchemy at Meissen, or How China Became china (and Europe Transmuted
the World)"
2014–2015 Speaker Series
Jane Bennett, Professor of Political Theory, Johns Hopkins University: "Anxiety, Whitman,
Sympathy"
Michael Snow, artist/filmmaker: "Michael Snow: Photocentric"
Alfredo González-Ruibal, archaeologist, Institute of Heritage Sciences – Spanish National
Research Council (Incipit-CSIC: "Visualizing war: the materiality of modern conflict
in Spain"
Michael Taussig, Class of 1933 Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University: "Rastelli
The Juggler, Or What Are The Turks Doing in Walter Benjamin's Theses on History and
the Bodily Unconscious? (A Performance)"
Jonathan Sterne, Professor and James McGill Chair in Culture and Technology in the
Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University: "Stretching
Time: Quantum Legacies in Analog and Digital Media"
Spring 2014 Speaker Series
Michael Shanks, Professor of Classics at Stanford University: "Modeling Antiquity:
Escaping the Constraints of Historiography"
Daphne A. Brooks, Professor of English and African American studies at Princeton University;
"(Liner) Notes for the Revolution: Black Feminist Phonographies from Zora Neale Hurston
to Janelle Monae"
Timothy Ingold, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland:
"Lines and the Weather"
Walid Raad, Associate Professor of Art at The Cooper Union: "Walkthrough"
W. J. T. Mitchell, the Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor of English,
Art History and Visual Arts at the University of Chicago: "Seeing Madness: Insanity,
Media, and Visual Culture"
