Humanities Speaker Series

A Talk by Christina Sharpe

Christina Sharpe 
TUE SEP 10, 7:00 PM
Hall Center Conference Hall (and online via Hall Center Crowdcast)

Christina Sharpe is a writer, professor, and researcher currently serving as the Canada Research Chair in Black Studies in the Humanities at York University in Toronto, Canada. She is also a Senior Research Associate at the Centre for the Study of Race, Gender & Class at the University of Johannesburg. The New York Times describes her work as “expanding the vocabulary of life in slavery’s long shadow—peeling back the meaning of familiar words and resurrecting neglected history.” Her writings explore literature, the cinematic, artifacts, personal memories, and scenes from everyday life.

Sharpe was named a Guggenheim Fellow this year, a testament to her contributions to the field of Black studies and her innovative approach to research and writing. She is also the recipient of a Hilary Weston Writer’s Trust Prize and a Windham-Campbell Prize.

Lessons in Chemistry: A Conversation with Bonnie Garmus

Bonnie Garmus
MON SEP 30, 7:00 PM
Liberty Hall (and online via Hall Center Crowdcast)

The Hall Center will host a conversation with Bonnie Garmus, the author of Lessons in Chemistry, a number-one global bestseller and winner of several national and international awards. Her debut novel centers around Elizabeth Zott, a chemist in the 1960s who finds herself relegated to a television cooking show after her academic career is derailed. The story, which has also been made into an Apple TV miniseries, explores Elizabeth’s journey navigating societal expectations, gender discrimination in scientific fields, and her own ambitions in a world where women’s roles are often narrowly defined.

Garmus’s exploration of themes of resilience, identity, and the pursuit of personal fulfillment amidst societal constraints has won world-wide acclaim, including Barnes & Noble’s Book of the Year, Hay Festival’s Book of the Year, Goodreads Choice Award Debut of the Year, British Book Awards Author of the Year, Waterstones Author of the Year, Books Are My Bag Author of the Year Award, and Readers’ Choice Award, Germany and Australia’s Booksellers Book of the Year, Australia’s International Book of the Year, and many more.

Novelist and KU Professor Laura Moriarty will lead the conversation with Garmus. In addition to being a published author herself, Moriarty  conducts research on fiction writing with a particular interest in how writers use voice, characters, plot, and language to engage readers. 

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
Lied Center Pavilion (and online 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

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.