Lecture series highlights humanities research

Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center will become an intellectual salon again on Friday as Scholars@Hallwalls, the Humanities Institute’s signature discussion series, returns for the fall semester with a talk by UB faculty member Jonathan Katz.

Katz, associate professor and director of the doctoral program in the Department of Art, will discuss “Art, Sex and the Sixties.”

His lecture on Sept. 19, as well as all lectures in the annual series dedicated to research and scholarship in the humanities in Western New York, will take place at 4 p.m. in Hallwalls, 341 Delaware Ave., Buffalo. Lectures, which take place on select Fridays during the fall and spring semesters, are free and open to the public.

The series aims to connect UB humanities scholars with the community through presentations by Humanities Institute faculty fellows.

The events are casual and social, as well as intellectual. Audience members may enjoy hors d’oeuvres and complimentary wine as they discuss with eight provocative and award-winning scholars their cutting-edge humanities research in terms accessible to those in other disciplines and outside academia.

The first lecture of the year by Katz will consider the importance of the psychoanalytic concept of Eros in the heyday of body art internationally.

The remainder of the lecture schedule:

• Oct. 17: “What is a Project? Scheming and Dreaming in Eighteenth-Century Britain,” David Alff, assistant professor, Department of English. Alff’s talk will explore the 18th-century origins of the seemingly modern idea of projects. He will look at what old plans for the future can tell us about the past by examining a series of failed schemes in the fields of agriculture, engineering and urban planning.
• Nov. 14: “Stories of Indemnity, Stories of Pardon: What the 1835 Baltimore Bank Riot Tells Us about Policing in the Early American Republic,” Adam Malka, assistant professor, Department of History. Malka’s talk will focus on the Baltimore Bank riot of 1835, one of the largest riots in U.S. history. He will argue the riot reveals both the growing importance of property rights in U.S. political discourse, as well as the ways that discourse empowered certain people —in particular adult white men — to police the city on their own.
• Dec. 5: “Patterns of Intention: Modern Time-Space in Mass-Disseminated Berlin Photo Panoramas around 1900,” Miriam Paeslack, assistant professor, Arts Management Program. Paeslack’s presentation will examine a set of 12 panoramic photographs taken in Berlin around the turn of the 19th century, viewing them both as historic documents and as generators of a specific city image.
• Feb. 6: “Life for Life: Tithes and Blessings in Buffalo’s African-American Churches,” Fred Klaits, assistant professor, Department of Anthropology. In this talk, Klaits will discuss his ethnographic work on how members of predominantly African-American charismatic churches on Buffalo’s East Side make tithes and donations in order to secure material and spiritual benefits for themselves and others.
• March 6: “Reversal of Fortune: The Garden of Virtual Kinship,” Stephanie Rothenberg, associate professor, Department of Art. Rothenberg will discuss her interactive art installation that takes the form of a telematic garden existing in both physical and virtual environments.
• April 10: “Nimble Knowledge Production in an Era of Academic Capitalism,” Steve Hoffman, assistant professor, Department of Sociology. Hoffman will discuss the concept of “nimble knowledge production,” in which scientists who rely on intermittent industry funding continually reassess and readjust their research program to take advantage of piecemeal commercial opportunities as they arise.
• May 1: “Homeward Bound: An Epic Journey,” Martha Malamud, professor, Department of Classics. Malamud will talk about her work translating the epic poem “Ed reditu suo” by Roman aristocrat Rutilius Namatianus. Namatianus was in Rome when it was sacked by the Visigoths in 416 C.E. He wrote the poem describing his journey from Rome to Gaul after the sacking of the city, providing a first-hand account of the event.