Fall 2019
Revolutions: Material Forms, Mobile Futures
On its 50th anniversary, the Center for the Humanities at Wesleyan University returns to its inaugural theme of 1969-70 (“The Humanities in Revolution”) to consider anew the forms and meanings of revolutions past, present and future. Evolving from the Latin verb revolver (meaning to turn back, again, around or over), revolutions take many forms, from periodic, temporal returns to spatial rotations around a central point or axis. Although cyclical, their movements need not demarcate a closed circuit, whether that of a defined historical period or geographical boundary, but often coil, spiral and loop through unexpected convolutions in hitherto unimagined, unbounded configurations. They recur in myriad scales (from the micro to the macro) and temporalities, unfolding gradually in the ongoing work of sustaining or re-making everyday life, and suddenly, in the form of crises or upheavals that overturn established orders, paradigms and institutions.
Repetition and transformation form the double helix of revolutions. Whether small or grand, sudden or gradual, fugitive or epochal, revolutions past may serve as resources for grappling with challenges of the present moment, as occasions to reexamine the histories, contemporary realities and future possibilities of social and cultural movements, and as opportunities to rethink the material flows, forms, and shapes of power and resistance today. In so doing, we return to an older meaning of “revolution,” namely, the process of turning over in the mind, of considering, reflecting and mediating upon, of discussing and debating an idea, and of searching and researching, as a means of turning, returning and overturning, of moving on, around and beyond.
This year, the Center for the Humanities provides an axis around which researches into the many forms of revolutions past, present, and future may unfold from diverse disciplinary, interdisciplinary and anti-disciplinary perspectives.
Lectures
All lectures begin at 6 p.m. unless otherwise noted, and are held in the Daniel Family Commons, which is located in the Usdan University Center.
Beyond the Box: The Politics and Aesthetics of Flow in the Logistics Revolution
9/16/2019
SUSAN ZIEGER • University of California, Riverside
Sequel as Revolution: Taylor Mac's Queer Time
09/23/2019
SEAN EDGECOMB • City University of New York
Desiring Otherwise
9/30/2019
MARGOT WEISS • Wesleyan University
Reading between Freedom and Necessity
10/7/2019
MATTHEW GARRETT • Wesleyan University
The Bookshop of Black Queer Diaspora
10/14/2019
RODERICK FERGUSON • Yale University
Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership
10/28/2019
KEEANGA-YAMAHTTA TAYLOR • Princeton University
Toward an Abolitionist University Studies
11/4/2019
ABIGAIL BOGGS • Wesleyan University
Collecting the Future: Photography, Waste and the Industrial Revolution
11/11/2019
JENNIFER TUCKER • Wesleyan University
Yellow Vest, Red Nation, Black Strike
12/02/2019
JOSHUA CLOVER • University of California, Davis