Emilio Vavarella, Double Blind, 2020-2022. Photographic elaboration from artificial neural network. Lightjet print on Kodak metallic paper mounted on Dibond and acrylic glass, framed in black oak. 49 photos. Variable dimensions.
Space/Place
This year's topic, Space/Place, continues the work of last year鈥檚 theme, Time, as we expand to include the spacetime continuum. We all live in space; all places have their stories. How do we come to know a place? Might we think about borders, walls, signs, memories, a mind鈥檚 associations, our emotions and our narratives? How do human bodies move through, dwell in built environments? How do we understand and experience 鈥渓ived space鈥�? Whatever direction this topic takes you in鈥攁rchitecture, landscape, the public sphere, home/shelter, community/neighborhood, nation/planet, the poetics of space, preservation and destruction, rebuilding and repair of the past and/or for the future鈥攕pace and place tell us who we are.
All are invited to this year鈥檚 Humanistic Inquiry Symposium. The event will feature a keynote address by Jennifer L. Roberts, the X.D. and Nancy Yang Professor of Arts and Sciences and the Drew Gilpin Faust Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. President Marc C. Conner, along with faculty and staff presenters from more than 12 disciplines ranging from Media and Film Studies to Physics to English, will lead sessions examining space and place, foregrounding how humanistic inquiry helps illuminate this fundamental aspect of life.
Keynote Speaker - Jennifer Roberts
Jennifer L. Roberts is the X.D. and Nancy Yang Professor of Arts and Sciences and
the Drew Gilpin Faust Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. She is an
art historian and photographer whose scholarship focuses on the interface between
the arts and the natural sciences, the history and theory of craft and materiality,
and the history of print. She is the author of several books, including Mirror-Travels: Robert Smithson and History (2004), Transporting Visions: The Movement of Images in Early America (2014), and Contact: Art and the Pull of Print (2024). She has long advocated for the value of making as a form of historical and interpretive
research, and is a co-founder of Harvard鈥檚 Minding Making Project, which explores artisanal knowledge as a bridge between the humanities and the fine,
decorative, scientific, and industrial arts. She is also known for her work on close
looking and the value of immersive attention in the humanities and beyond.
Roberts is currently working on several projects that aim to challenge the binary
divisions that are assumed to exist between the humanities and the sciences. She is
particularly interested in exploring the reciprocity of art and astrophysics. She
has a book forthcoming with Scribner, co- authored with artist Dario Robleto, about
the EEG and EKG signatures that were engraved into NASA鈥檚 Voyager Golden Record in
1977 and launched into interstellar space. She teaches a course about the Moon, has
studied the women who analyzed Harvard鈥檚 glass plate astronomical photographs at the
turn of the twentieth century, and is working on a research project about the first
image transmitted from Mars.
Schedule of Events (all events in the Tang)
Friday, March 20 (3:30 - 6:30 p.m.)
| Time | Topic |
|---|---|
| 3:30 - 5 p.m. |
Welcome Remarks; Keynote Address by Jennifer Roberts鈥�"The Pastel from Mars and Other Tales from Outer Space Art History"鈥攊ntroduced by Ian Berry |
| 5 - 6:30 p.m. |
Session 1 Lisa Jackson-Schebetta, Theater: "Relational Movements/Relational Space: F煤tbol and Peace-building in Colombia" Violeta Lorenzo, World Languages & Literatures: "Arkansas as Poetic Space: Race, Memory, and Place in Guill茅n and Walcott" Emilio Vavarella, Media & Film Studies: "Physical Places or Mental Spaces? Italian Landscapes in the Age of Technical Reproducibility" |
Saturday, March 21 (8:30 a.m. - 7 p.m.)
| Time | Topic |
|---|---|
| 8:30 - 9 a.m. | Continental Breakfast |
| 9 - 10:30 a.m. |
Session II 撸短视频 President Marc C. Conner: 鈥淢aking the Past Home Present: Sacramental Memory of Place in Ellison鈥檚 Invisible Man" April Bernard, English: "Crossroads: Poems of Places Real and Imaginary" Mary Crone Odekon, Physics: "Our Place in (Outer) Space" |
| 10:30 - 11 a.m. |
Coffee Break
|
| 11 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. |
Session III Brian Lawson, Dance & Ryan Homsey, Director of Academic Advising: "Partner Sequence" Charlotte D鈥橢velyn, Music: "Sounds Like Home: Listening as Placemaking in Inner Mongolia, China" Natalie Taylor, Dean of the Faculty: "America: The Country of the M盲dchen" |
| 12:30 - 1:15 p.m. |
Lunch (Payne Room)
|
| 1:15 - 2:20 p.m. |
Session IV Kathy Butterly: Assume Yes with Ian Berry: An inside look at the mischievous, seductive and defiant ceramic sculptures of Kathy Butterly. This highly anticipated 30-year survey fills the Tang鈥檚 Wachenheim Gallery with experimental and expressive small-scale porcelain and earthenware artworks that contain a wide range of colors, textures and moods Performance in atrium, Lawson/Homsey |
| 2:30 - 4 p.m. |
Session V Kaylin O鈥橠ell, English: "The Spectacle of Devotion: Navigating Sacred Space in Old English Poetry" Ryan Overbey, Religious Studies & Asian Studies: "Space and Place in an Early Medieval Buddhist Grimoire" Philip A. Glotzbach, President Emeritus: "The Hansel & Gretel Fallacy: On Responsibility and Freedom in An Age of Excuse" |
| 4 - 4:30 p.m. |
Coffee Break
|
| 4:30 - 6 p.m. |
Session VI Lena Retamoso Urbano, World Languages & Literatures: "When Words Dream" Michael Gaige, Environmental Studies/Sciences: "Trees as Text: 撸短视频鈥檚 Arboreal Palimpsest" Adam Cottle, Metadata Librarian: 鈥淔igurative Echolocation and the Technologies of Dimensional Simulation Within the Terrain of Popular Music" Dennis Schebetta, Theater: "Brave Spaces: Building Community in the Rehearsal Room" |
| 6 - 7 p.m. | Closing Remarks and Reception (Atrium) |