Visions of the Body: Embodied Simulation and Aesthetic Experience

This essay addresses the questions raised by the distinctly human trait of creating images.

Almost Citizens: Racial Translations, National Belonging, and the Global "Immigration Crisis"

The article examines some of the ways in which racialized immigrants and their descendants translate hegemonic ethnoracial terms to assert belonging and citizenship in the nation.

Afro-Pessimism and the End of Redemption

— Frank B. Wilderson III —

This essay addresses the tenets of Afro-Pessimism in relation to the condition of slavery, Blackness, and Black nonexistence.

Pleasure Pillars by Shahzia Sikander (2001), RISD graduate, Pakistani-US artist and Islamicate cosmopolitan. In Daftari.

Islamicate Cosmopolitan: A Past Without a Future, Or a Future Still Unfolding?

— Bruce Lawrence —

Islamicate is a term invented by world historian Marshall Hodgson. At once precise and woolly, it invokes Islam—its past, present, and future—yet marks its influence as exceeding any creedal or cultural limits.

Slavery’s History in the Age of the Database: Interface Design for Corrupted Files

By responding creatively to the archival challenges presented by the social history of slavery, Harvard Professor Vincent Brown hopes to…

"Tasso in the Hospital of St. Anna at Ferrara" by Eugène Delacroix, 1838

Linguistic Hospitality: Reflections on Voice, (Early) Modernities, and the Future of Italian Studies

— Jane Tylus —

As émigrés currently adopt Italian to relate their personal experiences, a new edginess and perceptivity is developing in the arts, particularly in the cinema and in literature.

Towards a Materialist History of Music: Histories of Sensation

— David Trippett —

This essay examines the history of auditory sensation, specifically music, in materialistic terms related to sensory communication and raw physicality.

A Liberian Journey

— Gregg Mitman —

In this essay, the author relates a journey to retrace the steps of a 1926 Harvard medical and scientific expedition to Liberia.

When Angels Speak with Tanya Luhrmann

This talk examines the phenomenological features of voice-hearing in different settings—religious and secular, modern and medieval. Prof. Tanya Luhrmann drew…

Building a Union at Duke

Eileen Anderson is currently teaching language, writing, and culture courses in the Spanish Language Program at Duke University. She was…

The Campus as Social Factory: Monetizing the Student

Students create institutional value most obviously by paying tuition, adopting debt, performing waged work, submitting to compulsory volunteerism, donating to…

Public Anthropology in the Time of Trump

What responsibility do scholars have in times of political crisis? To whom, why, and how do we reach our intended…

A Black Feminist Politic of Teaching & Organizing with Emotion

University of Colorado-Boulder Associate Professor of Anthropology Bianca Williams is a teacher/organizer with Black Lives Matter, and a mobilizer for…

How Should We Read a Painting Now?

— Kate Flint —

How does today’s global art world help open up questions about the global reach of art and artists in the past? And, linking past and present, how do we most effectively use language to convey, and interpret, the always elusive affective impact of art?

Against Digital Art History

— Claire Bishop —

This article responds to two issues affecting the field of contemporary art history: digital technology and the so-called computational turn in the humanities.

Re-imagining World Spaces: The New Relevance of Eurasia

— Mark Bassin —

Although we often think about geographical continents as fixed natural entities, they are in fact also the product of imaginative construction. The most recent example of this process is the emergence of the continental concept of "Eurasia."