In preparation for “Slam Precarious Work” on February 14th, a performance of anti-love letters to work and precarity, in celebration of the new issue of WSQ, edited by Alyson Cole and Victoria Hattam, we’d like to share some suggested readings from the issue. Included here are links to four articles: Cole and Hattam’s…

On December 3, 2017, Kyoo Lee and Lee Ann Brown, together known as Q Lee Ann or Q Lee B, gathered dozens of forward thinkers at the Queens Museum. A prequel event entitled “QueensEnglishToday.mp3” took place a few days prior at the CUNY Graduate Center, centered on the metamorphosis of “Queens English,” in its many…

October 2017 marked the first (substantive) meeting of the new VHS Archives working group—a project convened by AIDS activist filmmaker and Brooklyn College Professor Alexandra Juhasz and sponsored by the Center for the Humanities. The group is designed to bring together students, scholars, librarians, archivists, artists, and activists—anyone with an interest in the places where…

At the event, “The Future of Public Education: Searching for The Public Good Amid Gentrification, Privatization, and Inequality,” members of Dr. Amy Stuart-Wells’ research team and Public School Support Organization, The Public Good, reported on their investigations into how dynamics of segregation and displacement play out in schools in gentrifying neighborhoods. Dr. Wells began…

In preparation for “Puerto Rico/New York/Morocco: Poet’s Journey—Victor Hernández Cruz in Conversation with Dorothy Wang & Ammiel Alcalay,” we’d like to share some suggested readings. This conversation will center on readings from Hernández Cruz’s new book, Beneath the Spanish, followed by a conversation with Profs. Dorothy Wang and Ammiel Alcalay. The readings below are…

My Project: Housing Literacy As I begin the second year of my PhD program in sociology, I have started a two-year fellowship as a Digital Publics Fellow for the Center for the Humanities, during which I will develop a project around rent regulation in New York City. The project is entitled “Housing Literacy” and…

As one of the Center for the Humanities’ newest Digital Public Fellows, I was asked to introduce my work and the stakes it holds. Briefly, my work is immersed in archives and archival practices, oral histories and stories (for more information, visit my project page “Meandering through the Not Yet Found: Recuperating Life Histories of…

This spring, the pilot program of the Collaborative Research Seminar on Archives and Special Collections welcomed a cohort of twelve students to participate in two sessions—one at the Graduate Center Library, and the other in the Brooke Russell Astor Reading Room of the New York Public Library. We collectively discussed methods for engaging primary source…

This spring, the pilot program of the Collaborative Research Seminar on Archives and Special Collections welcomed a cohort of twelve students to participate in two sessions—one at The Graduate Center Library, and the other in the Brooke Russell Astor Reading Room of the New York Public Library. We collectively discussed methods for engaging primary source…

In the Spring of 2016, I received a Fellowship from the Center of the Humanities to support my work at the magazine Triple Canopy. Triple Canopy is a publication that exists in multiple formats: online, in print, and as events and exhibitions. This elasticity and their critical approach to publishing were what originally drew me…

On April 7th, I attended the Graduate Center’s Activism in Academia conference, where CUNY-wide scholars presented primarily on work that was produced from within the “ivory tower” of academia but still valuable for underrepresented communities wanting change. The Consciousness & Revolution II conference on May 5th offered a different perspective: the panels collectively focused on…

In preparation for “Intimate Measures,” a conversation between scholar Amy Herzog and gastroenterologist and writer Nitin Ahuja, we’d like to share some suggested readings. Through two parallel tracks, the conversation will consider discourses and practices of intimate self-management in relation to the growing interest in intestinal health and digital mediations of intimacy, self-care, and caring…

Activism in Academia: Empathy and Literature At the CUNY Graduate Center, on April 7th, professors, graduate students, and undergraduate students gathered for a conference on activism in the classroom. Organized by Lehman College English professors Olivia Loksing Moy and Dhipinder Walia, the day-long symposium consisted of four panels. The first panel, “Words for Social…

In looking toward the opening reception for the exhibition Soft Skills, we would like to share some suggested readings, selected by the exhibition’s curator Kaegan Sparks. These materials are intended to provide further context for the exhibition and the accompanying series of public programs. They touch on subjects ranging from reproductive and affective labor to…

This year’s English Student Association Graduate Student Conference, “The Vibrating World: Soundscapes and Undersongs” centered around the interdisciplinary field of Sound Studies, which explores ideas of music, voice, noise, silence, and vibration in relation to politics, space, and corporeality. The morning session included the panel “Sonic Warfare” named after Steve Goodman’s foundational text Sonic…

It is hard to imagine a more opportune place than a theater in a public university for a conference structured around the theme public and publics. As Provost Joy Connelly pointed out in her opening remarks, the Graduate Center’s publicness is an integral part of its ethos. The day-long conference, conceived by Dr. Amy Chazkel…

This is the first of two blog posts about the English Student Association conference The Vibrating World

In preparation for the event, Behind the Camera, Covering the Image: Caroline Key & Shelly Silver, the artists and the organizers of the event would like to share some suggested readings. These materials are, by no means, necessary, but they are intended to provide further context for the conversation. We have included links for all…

In looking forward to “Interventions in the Interview, Fugitive Subjects,” the artists and organizer of the event would like to share some suggested readings. These readings include an essay on bad movies; a series of transcripts from the 60-hour performance Doll Closet (a 10-minute excerpt of the documentation of the performance will be shown); and…

Over the last 5 years, academic, writer, and videomaker Alexandra Juhasz and writer and organizer Theodore Kerr have enjoyed a public conversation project around changes within the AIDS media ecosystem. In the text below, they build upon two previous conversations where they discussed movies like The Dallas Buyers Club, How to Survive a Plague and…

The Danspace Project Platform 2016: Lost and Found took place October 14 – November 19th. Co-curated by choreographers Ishmael Houston-Jones and Will Rawls, with the assistance of Judy Hussie Taylor (Executive Director and Chief Curator of Danspace Project), Lydia Bell (Program Director), and myself (Curatorial Fellow), the Platform considered the impact of the early years…

When I first became involved with the Center for the Humanities’ Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research, I could not wait to see the projects that would come to fruition after two years of collaboration between professors, graduate students, artists, and activists. When Debra Caplan and Cheryl Smith started talking about a collaboration with…

“Our journey has only just begun. We have not yet come up against the cyclical butchery of values, against the impasses that lead certain civilizations towards apathy or absolute skepticism. We are at the stage of reconsolidation, of rediscovery. We are on the threshold of speech that has not lost its meaning for us.” …

In looking forward toReason After Its Eclipse: A Conversation with Martin Jay, we’d like to share some suggested readings. These readings are not required; however, they are intended to provide entry points into the conversation that will take place. On November 15th, the Center for the Humanities will present a conversation between intellectual historian Martin…