On May 10, the Doctoral Theatre Students’ Association presents its 2018 conference, Objects of Study: Methods and Materiality in Theatre and Performance Studies, bringing together working groups of visiting scholars, graduate students, and independent artist-scholars to explore the multiple potential meanings of “object” within theatre and performance studies. In this second part of a two-part…

On May 10, the Doctoral Theatre Students’ Association presents its 2018 conference, Objects of Study: Methods and Materiality in Theatre and Performance Studies, bringing together working groups of visiting scholars, graduate students, and independent artist-scholars to explore the multiple potential meanings of “object” within theatre and performance studies. In this two-part blog post, three of…

Benedict Nguyen A semi-concrete abstract: I try to write about a lot of things: gentrification and space, the power and capacity to choose where to be (in dance and in the world), reparations and who’s owed what, and how to reorganize institutions and non-profit boards, workers cooperatives, and more. In Part I,…

After the success of the first meeting in October of 2017 that focused on the theme of Ethics and Anxieties, the theme for the second meeting of the VHS Archives Working Group at the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center, CUNY was Nostalgia. Held on November 16, 2017 the session was centered around…

After the success of the first meeting in October of 2017 that focused on the theme of Ethics and Anxieties, the theme for the second meeting of the VHS Archives Working Group at the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center, CUNY was Nostalgia. Held on November 16, 2017 the session was centered around…

In anticipation of her New York Chapbook Launch at Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop on April 11th with Major Jackson, we got in touch with Layla Benitez-James to celebrate the release of “God Suspected My Heart Was a Geode But He Had to Make Sure,” winner of the third annual Toi Derricotte & Cornelius Eady Chapbook…

On March 4th the Graduate Center community was deeply saddened to learn of the passing of internationally-renowned performance and installation artist Dr. James Luna (Payómkawichum, Ipai and Mexican). Luna’s art interrogated the representation, objectification, and exoticization of American Indian peoples, cultures, and histories primarily through the deployment of his body as a site of…

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