Humanities Speaker Series

Emily Taylor and Marilyn Stokstad Women’s Leadership Lecture

Gender and the Speech Police: Unpacking the varied guidance on how girls and women are "supposed" to speak

Lisa Damour
WED FEB 12, 7:00 PM
Due to campus closure, this event will be online only. Join us via Hall Center Crowdcast. 

Women hear a lot of advice about how to talk, but not all of it fits with what the research shows about effective communication. Lisa Damour will address popular misconceptions about how women speak and share her path-breaking work on how everyone can develop effective strategies for advancing their ideas, managing conflict, and saying “no” without harming their relationships.

Damour is the author of three New York Times best sellers: Untangled, Under Pressure, and The Emotional Lives of Teenagers. She co-hosts the “Ask Lisa” podcast, works in collaboration with UNICEF, and is recognized as a thought leader by the American Psychological Association.

Journey to the Edge of Space-Time

Co-sponsored by the Department of Physics and Astronomy

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
MON MAR 10, 7:00 PM
Hall Center Conference Hall (and online via Hall Center Crowdcast)

Every day we move through space, but what is it? And how is space-time different from our every day-concept of space? Exploring concepts from the vacuum to quantum radiation from black holes, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein will take us on a journey to the edge of space-time, discussing along the way what it means for humanity to attempt to answer these questions. Regarded as one of the leading physicists of her generation, she is also one of fewer than one hundred Black American women to earn a doctorate from a department of physics. Her viewpoint has been praised as vibrant and buoyantly nontraditional, taking a bold approach to science and society.

Prescod-Weinstein is an associate professor at the University of New Hampshire. Her research in theoretical physics focuses on cosmology, neutron stars, and dark matter. She also does research in Black feminist science, technology, and society studies. Nature recognized her as one of 10 people who shaped science in 2020, and Essence has recognized her as one of “15 Black Women Who Are Paving the Way in STEM and Breaking Barriers.”

Other Rivers: A Chinese Education 

Peter Hessler
TUE APR 1, 7:00 PM
Hall Center Conference Hall (and online via Hall Center Crowdcast)

Peter Hessler will discuss his book, Other Rivers: A Chinese Education, which uses his inside view of China’s education system as a way of examining the country. In 1996, when he arrived in China, almost all of the people in Hessler’s classroom were first-generation college students. They typically came from large rural families, and their parents, subsistence farmers, could offer little guidance as their children entered a brand-new world. By 2019, when Hessler arrived at Sichuan University, he found a very different China, as well as a new kind of student—an only child whose schooling was the object of intense focus from a much more ambitious cohort of parents. Hessler also draws insights from the experience of his own daughters, who gave him an intimate view of their local school in China.

Hessler is an award-winning author and a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he served as Beijing correspondent from 2000 to 2007, Cairo correspondent from 2011 to 2016, and Chengdu correspondent from 2019 to 2021. He won the 2008 National Magazine Award for excellence in reporting, and he was named a MacArthur fellow in 2011.

This event is co-sponsored by KU's Center for East Asian Studies.

A Mind Spread Out on the Ground

Alicia Elliott
THU APR 17, 7:00 PM
Haskell Auditorium (and online via Hall Center Crowdcast)

Alicia Elliott, a Mohawk writer and editor living in Ontario, will address topics such as intergenerational trauma, colonization, and the complexities of living as an Indigenous woman in contemporary society. These themes are pursued in the essays comprising her bestselling memoir A Mind Spread Out on the Ground. Her innovative and deeply personal storytelling reveals powerful insights on parenthood, love, art, poverty, representation, the land, memory, and mental health, exposing the enduring impact of colonialism and racism on Indigenous lives.

Elliott’s short fiction was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2018, Best Canadian Stories 2018, and The Journey Prize Stories 30. She was chosen as the 2018 recipient of the RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award for A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, which was a national bestseller in Canada and won the Forest of Reading Evergreen Award. 

This event highlights the newly revitalized partnership between the University of Kansas and Haskell Indian Nations University, providing students on both campuses enhanced learning opportunities through collaborative programming.