Humanities Studio Events

LeiLani Nishime & Kim D. Hester Williams on Decolonizing Alternative Futures (in the) Present

April 27, 2023

We welcomed LeiLani Nishime and Kim D. Hester Williams, co-authors of the book Racial Ecologies, for a discussion about "Decolonizing Alternative Futures (in the) Present."

A 2021 report in The Lancet found that among 16-25 year-olds more than 50% felt fear, helplessness, powerlessness, and despair in regards to climate change. Rather than jolt us into action, the painful reality of environmental degradation frequently pushes us to withdraw from the world. How, then, can we narrate our place in the natural world in ways that enable connection and change? In this talk, Nishime and Williams explored how to incorporate our histories, introduce alternative worldviews, and create spaces to imagine new futures. Drawing from the work of POC and Indigenous activists and the promise of Afro-futurism, the talk engaged the audience in the project of new worldmaking and imagining a different, alternative environmental future.

LeiLani Nishime is a Professor of Communication at the University of Washington. Her research focuses on race and the environment, Asian American visual representation, and gender and technology. She is the author of Undercover Asian: Multiracial Asian Americans in Visual Culture and the co-editor of Racial Ecologies, Global Asian American Popular Culture, and East Main Street. Her writing can be found in journals such as Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Journal of Asian American Studies, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Communication Theory, and Quarterly Journal of Speech. Her writing can also be found in books such as Asian American Media, Mixed Race Hollywood, and Teaching Asian North American Texts. She is the grant writer for the Seattle Asian American Film Festival and the Associate Director of the Center for Communication, Difference, and Equity.

Kim D. Hester Williams teaches in the English and American Multicultural Studies departments at Sonoma State University. She is co-editor of Racial Ecologies, published by the University of Washington Press in 2018, and has published essays on the representation of race, gender and economy in literature, music, media, popular culture and film. Her latest work focuses on race and eco-horror, including essays about Jordan Peele's US film and a chapter about Stephen King's IT novel and film adaptations. She also writes poetry grounded in womanism and eco-Afro-poetics. Her poem, "Losing Count: A Re-Collection by Numbers", was recently published in the fall 2021 edition of the Canadian journal, The Goose.

 

Janet Gyatso on the Post-Human, Animal Ethics & Phenomenology

February 23, 2023

We welcomed Janet Gyatso, Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies at Harvard University, for her talk "Being-With Animals on Planet Earth: Explorations of Animal Ethics and Phenomenologies."

Janet Gyatso is a scholar in Buddhist studies with concentration on Tibet. Her PhD is from University of California at Berkeley in Buddhist Studies. Her books include a study of Tibetan autobiography, and an intellectual history of medicine in early modern Tibet. She has also been writing on memory; sex and gender; and on the current female ordination movement in Buddhism. Her present research focuses on animal ethics. Gyatso is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was president of the International Association of Tibetan Studies and co-chair of the Buddhism Section of the American Academy of Religion. Gyatso is Harvard Divinity School's first Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies and is also currently the Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs.

The event, co-sponsored by the Environmental Analysis Program and the Department of Religious Studies, was free and open to the public.

 

Laura Kaplan on Politics, Transformation & Activism

November 17, 2022

We welcomed Laura Kaplan, author of The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service, for a conversation about politics, transformation, and activism with Pomona College Professor and Chair of Politics Amanda Hollis-Brusky.

Laura Kaplan was a member of the Jane Collective. A life-long activist, she has been a lay midwife, an advocate for battered women, and an advocate for nursing home residents. She has worked on public policy for consumers covered by managed care plans and served on the board of the National Women’s Health Network. Kaplan continues to lecture about Jane and is featured in the HBO documentary The Janes.

Amanda Hollis-Brusky is Professor and Chair of Politics at Pomona College and is a 2022-23 Humanities Studio Faculty Fellow. A go-to expert on Supreme Court politics, she has written and spoken about the Supreme Court and the conservative legal movement in various media outlets, including NPR’s All Things Considered, BBC World News, The New Yorker, the Los Angeles Times, and KCRW’s Press Play and California Edition. She is a regular contributor to the politics round-up on AirTalk with Larry Mantle and an editor at The Monkey Cage blog at The Washington Post.

Hollis-Brusky is using her fellowship year with the Humanities Studio to analyze collective action at the state level in the wake of the United States Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022.

 

Julian Aguon on Indigenous Rights & Environmental Justice

September 29, 2022

The Humanities Studio welcomed human rights lawyer and author Julian Aguon for the inaugural talk in our Human||Nature Speakers Series.

Aguon read from his acclaimed new book No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies and spoke about the broader geopolitical context in which it was written. Part memoir, part manifesto, Aguon's book is both a coming-of-age story and a call for justice—for everyone but in particular for Indigenous peoples, his own and others. In the book, Aguon weaves together stories from his childhood in the villages of Guam with searing political commentary about everything from nuclear weapons to climate change. In this talk, Aguon also spoke to his larger body of work as an activist lawyer who has challenged the militarization of Guam both in and out of court for over a decade, commenting on the utility and limits of law, the centrality of Indigenous ways of seeing, and the importance of solidarity.

The presentation was followed by a Q&A hosted by Pomona College's own Aimee Bahng, associate professor of Gender and Women's Studies & 2022-23 Humanities Studio Faculty Fellow.

Julian Aguon is an Indigenous human rights lawyer and writer from Guam. He is the founder of Blue Ocean Law, a progressive firm that works at the intersection of Indigenous rights and environmental justice. He serves on the global advisory council of Progressive International. He was a Finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary.

Aimee Bahng is an associate professor of Gender and Women's Studies researching Pacific environmental histories and futures. While on fellowship at the Humanities Studio, she hopes to complete her second book manuscript, Transpacific Ecologies. The project builds on her recent studies in environmental law and centers Native Pacific women as stewards of land, water, and relational practice.

Bahng's first book, Migrant Futures: Decolonizing Speculation in Financial Times, was published by Duke University Press in 2018.

The event, co-sponsored by the Environmental Analysis Program, was free and open to the public.

 

Marcos Trinidad on Nature & City Life

October 27, 2022

We welcomed Marcos Trinidad, host of LAist Studio's "Human/Nature" podcast, for a discussion about nature and city life with Heather Williams, Pomona College professor of politics and coordinator of the Environmental Analysis program.

Marcos Trinidad is the Center Director at the Audubon Center at Debs Park and also works as a Senior Regional Manager at TreePeople. Born and raised in Northeast Los Angeles, where his family has lived for 75 years, Trinidad has deep roots in the community. His formal education is in geology and anthropology.

For two decades, Trinidad has advanced equity, diversity and inclusion in the environmental movement, including co-directing LA’s Environmental Professionals of Color chapter. Through that work, Trinidad promoted and sponsored forums for people of color working in environmentally-related careers. He was recognized by the North American Association for Environmental Education as the recipient of the Rosa Parks and Grace Lee Boggs Award for his leadership in environmental justice, education and advocacy. Trinidad loves to go bird watching with his two children, Paloma and Bija, along the Los Angeles River.

Heather Williams conducts research and teaches courses on the global politics of water, food, agriculture and land use. She is the author of numerous works on migration, labor and social movements in the Americas. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Haynes Foundation Fellowship for research on the Santa Ana River in Southern California. She also won two Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellowships in 2007 and 2011 and was a co-founder with Javier Bojorquez Gandarillas of the Suma Quta (in Aymara language, “Beautiful Lake”) Project, a community-based water monitoring, education, and stewardship project in the Lake Titicaca basin.

Williams was a Humanities Studio Faculty Fellow in 2019-20. Her work on our theme "Post/Truth" focused on the politics of water in Inland Southern California.

 

Walking Tour of Campus with Urban Naturalist Marcos Trinidad

October 28, 2022

The Claremont Colleges and surrounding communities were invited to join us for a walking tour of the Pomona College campus with urban naturalist Marcos Trinidad. Guests enjoyed about an hour of meandering through campus, noticing fascinations of local (and imported) nature and their interplay with the built environment.

Marcos Trinidad is the Center Director at the Audubon Center at Debs Park and also works as a Senior Regional Manager at TreePeople. Born and raised in Northeast Los Angeles, where his family has lived for 75 years, Trinidad has deep roots in the community. His formal education is in geology and anthropology.

 

Evelyn McDonnell on Music & Activism

April 21, 2022

The Humanities Studio welcomed Evelyn McDonnell, author of Women Who Rock: Bessie to Beyoncé. Girl Groups to Riot Grrrl to present the final talk in our Movement(s) Speakers Series.

In this talk, "Sonority of Sorority: The Power of Girl Groups," McDonnell explored how, for going on a century, estrogen-driven ensembles have created some of the most impactful music in the world. They have integrated the American music charts and fomented protest against a Russian autocrat. They have sung the songs we fall in love to and declared the supremacy of independent women. Fashion trends have been kicked up by their intricately choreographed steps and feminism has followed their assertions of wants and needs.

McDonnell focused on female popular musical acts in California particularly, tracing the arc of girl-group development from the 1930s to today. Mothers of invention, women have spearheaded musical innovations, such as the sonority of sorority found in the close harmony singing of vocal groups. Girl groups have notoriously faced exploitation and abuse, economic and sexual. But female acts have also served as sort of feminist cells, seeding 1960s women’s liberation and 1990s revolution girl style. Acts discussed included the Boswell Sisters, the Blossoms, Fanny, the Pointer Sisters, the Runaways, the Bags, the Go-Gos, L7, Haim and the Linda Lindas.

Professor of Journalism Evelyn McDonnell is an expert on music, gender, and politics. She has written or coedited six books, from Rock She Wrote: Women Write about Rock, Pop and Rap to Women Who Rock: Bessie to Beyonce. Girl Groups to Riot Grrrl. She is also series editor for Music Matters, a collection of short books about musicians. A longtime journalist, she has been a pop culture writer at The Miami Herald and a senior editor at The Village Voice. Her writing on music, poetry, theater, and culture has appeared in publications and anthologies including The New York Times, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, Ms., Rolling Stone, Los Angeles Review of Books, Travel & Leisure, Billboard, Interview, and Option. She teaches students how to write and make noise at Loyola Marymount University.

The event was co-sponsored by the Departments of English, History, and Anthropology.

 

Maurice Magaña on Youth Movements in Mexico

April 14, 2022

The Humanities Studio welcomed sociocultural anthropologist Maurice Rafael Magaña to present"Rebel Aesthetics: Art, Urban Space, and Youth Activism in Mexico." It was the fifth event in our Movement(s) Speakers Series.

Drawing on his award-winning book, Cartographies of Youth Resistance: Hip-Hop, Punk, and Urban Autonomy in Mexico, Dr. Magaña explored how urban and migrant youth in the Mexican state of Oaxaca embrace subcultures from hip-hop to punk and adopt creative organizing practices to create meaningful channels of participation in local social and political life. In the process, young people remake urban space and construct new identities in ways that directly challenge elite visions of their city and essentialist notions of what it means to be indigenous in the contemporary era. Magaña's research shows that paying close attention to such quotidian forms of organizing and participation helps reveal how social movements are sustained over time, through the ebbs and flows of more recognizable forms of political action.

Dr. Magaña's research focuses on the cultural politics of youth organizing, transnational migration, urban space, and social movements in Mexico and the United States. Specifically, his work examines how youth construct themselves as political actors in relation to multiple communities across time and space. His research aims to provide a transnational perspective on historic marginalization, racialization, youth political culture and the role of art in activism. He is an Assistant Professor of Mexican American Studies at the University of Arizona.

This event, co-sponsored by the International Relations Program and the Department of History at Pomona College, was free and open to the public.

 

Film Screening: Inside the Brick Wall & Taking Back the Legislature

April 13, 2022

The Asian Studies Program, the Humanities Studio, the History Department, the International Relations Program, and Envirolab Asia at Pomona College hosted a double feature documentary screening followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker.

Inside the Red Brick Wall

(86 mins) The 2019 Hong Kong Protest came to a horrifying peak in mid-November at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. When protesters blocking the Cross-Harbour Tunnel retreated to the University, police surrounded the area and put the school on lockdown. Anxious citizens made various rescue attempts, but could barely go near the campus. Meanwhile, within those red brick walls, the camera captured the protesters' desperation and determination.

Taking Back the Legislature

(46 mins) A storm was brewing in the early hours of July 1, 2019—the twenty-second anniversary of the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong. Facing the absurdity of the Hong Kong Government's indoor flag-raising ceremony, protesters questioned the effectiveness of peaceful protest. They stormed the Legislative Council Complex as a last-ditch effort to ignite change in the Anti-ELAB Movement. Violent street clashes with the police continued deep into the night.

Both films are in Cantonese with English subtitles.

 

Mia Bay & Genevieve Carpio on Race, Mobility, & Resistance

February 17, 2022

The Humanities Studio welcomed Mia Bay, author of Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance, and Genevieve Carpio, author of Collisions at the Crossroads: How Place and Mobility Make Race, for a virtual discussion followed by a Q&A.

Mia Bay is the Roy F. and Jeanette P. Nichols Professor of American History at the University Pennsylvania. A scholar of American and African American intellectual, cultural and social history, Bay's recent interests include black women’s thought, African American approaches to citizenship, and the history of race and transportation. She holds a Ph.D. and M.Phil. from Yale University and a B.A. from the University of Toronto.

Bay’s publications include The White Image in the Black Mind: African-American Ideas about White People, 1830-1925 (Oxford University Press, 2000); To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009) and the edited work Ida B Wells, The Light of Truth: The Writings of An Anti-Lynching Crusader (Penguin Books, 2014); as well as many articles and book chapters. She is the co-author, with Waldo Martin and Deborah Gray White, of the textbook Freedom on My Mind: A History of African Americans with Documents (Bedford/St. Martins 2012,1st Edition, 2016, 2nd Edition), and the editor of two collections of essays: Towards an Intellectual History of Black Women (University of North Carolina Press, 2015) and Race and Retail: Consumption Across the Color Line (Rutgers University Press, 2015), which she co-edited with Ann Fabian.

Bay’s current projects include additional works on race space and transportation and a book on the history of African American ideas about Thomas Jefferson.

Genevieve Carpio is an Associate Professor of Chicana/o and Central American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she works on questions related to relational racial formation, the urban humanities, and 20th century U.S. history. She has published in a range of journals, including American Quarterly, Journal of American History, and Journal of Urban Affairs, among other venues.

Carpio earned her BA in Anthropology from Pomona College (chirp! chirp!) and wrote a thesis which laid the foundation for Collisions at the Crossroads: How Place and Mobility Make Race (University of California Press, 2019), which received the Owen’s book award from the Western Historical Association and honorable mention from the National Association of Chicano and Chicana Studies.

The event was co-sponsored by the Departments of Anthropology, English, and History at Pomona College.

 

Twyla Tharp on Body Movement

February 10, 2022

Note: This event was rescheduled from its originally publicized date in September 2021, when we faced insurmountable technical difficulties.

The Humanities Studio welcomed acclaimed dancer, choreographer, and author Twyla Tharp for a conversation about her life, her work, and how body movement has shaped and sustained both.

Twyla Tharp has choreographed more than one hundred sixty works: one hundred twenty-nine dances, twelve television specials, six Hollywood movies, four full-length ballets, four Broadway shows and two figure skating routines. She has received one Tony Award, two Emmy Awards, nineteen honorary doctorates, the Vietnam Veterans of America President's Award, the 2004 National Medal of the Arts, the 2008 Jerome Robbins Prize, and a 2008 Kennedy Center Honor. Her many grants include the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship. She is a member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

In 1965, Ms. Tharp founded her dance company, Twyla Tharp Dance. Her dances are known for creativity, wit and technical precision coupled with a streetwise nonchalance. By combining different forms of movement — such as jazz, ballet, boxing and inventions of her own making — Ms. Tharp’s work expands the boundaries of ballet and modern dance.

In addition to choreographing for her own company, she has created dances for The Joffrey Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, The Paris Opera Ballet, The Royal Ballet, New York City Ballet, The Boston Ballet, The Australian Ballet, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, The Martha Graham Dance Company, Miami City Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Atlanta Ballet and Royal Winnipeg Ballet. Today, ballet and dance companies around the world continue to perform Ms. Tharp’s works.

In 1992, Ms. Tharp published her autobiography Push Comes To Shove. She went on to write The Creative Habit: Learn it and Use it for Life, followed by The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons for Working Together and Keep It Moving: Lessons for the Rest of Your Life.

Today, Ms. Tharp continues to create. She attended Pomona College before graduating from Barnard College in 1963, and received an honorary degree from Pomona in 1987. We're thrilled to welcome her back to campus (albeit virtually). We hope you'll join us.

The event was co-sponsored by the Office of the President, the Dance Program, and the Department of English at Pomona College.

 

Juan de Lara on Protests, Movement-Making, & Radical Futures

November 4, 2021

The Humanities Studio welcomed Juan de Lara to present "Protests, Movement-Making, & Radical Futures" as part of our Movement(s) Speakers Series.

In this talk, professor De Lara used labor and environmental protests to examine how the movement of goods, capital, and people produced a contested political terrain in Inland Southern California at the beginning of the 21st century. Protests that center on warehouses, diesel-poisoned bodies, and racialized state agencies will serve as examples that highlight how movements shape and contest how space is imagined and produced. For example, Dr. De Lara discussed how warehouse workers used new strategies to contest the power of global capitalism by challenging how logistics companies expanded their geographic operations. Workers and organizers produced counter-narratives that challenged the movements of capital and goods by questioning public policies that placed growth and profit before economic, racial, and environmental justice. De Lara discussed how counter-narratives and immigrant testimonios can help us see the world differently by disrupting the normal order of things and by centering the radical futures enacted through protest.

Juan De Lara is associate professor of American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California and the inaugural director of the Latinx and Latin American Studies Center. Dr. De Lara received his Ph.D. in geography from the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Inland Shift: Race, Space, and Capital in Southern California (University of California Press, 2018). Dr. De Lara’s research focuses on social justice, urban ecologies, and the intersections between data, race, and power. His articles and essays have appeared in publications including Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, Labor Studies Journal, and American Quarterly.

This event was co-sponsored by the American Studies Program at Pomona College.

 

Patrisse Cullors on Social Movements

October 21, 2021

The Humanities Studio welcomed Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation and New York Times bestselling author, educator, artist and abolitionist, for a conversation with Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, Chair of the Pomona College English Department.

Patrisse Cullors has been on the frontlines of abolitionist organizing for 20 years. Since she began the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in 2013, it has expanded into a global foundation supporting Black-led movements in the US, UK and Canada. The New York Times recognized BLM as "the largest movement in US history" and in 2021 the movement was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2020, TIME100 named Cullors one of the 100 most influential people of the year.

Among her many roles and accomplishments in community organizing and social change, Cullors is the faculty director of Arizona’s Prescott College — a new MFA program focused on the intersection of art, social justice, and community organizing that is the first of its kind in the nation — and co-founder of the Crenshaw Dairy Mart, a reimagined art gallery and studio dedicated to shifting the trauma-induced conditions of poverty and economic injustice, bridging cultural work and advocacy, and investigating ancestries in Inglewood, CA.

Cullors is a former staff writer on Freeform’s Good Trouble series as well as an actress on the show, and co-producer of the YouTube Originals series RESIST. In 2020, she signed an overall production deal with Warner Brothers, where she intends to continue to uplift Black stories, talent, and creators that are transforming the world of art and culture.

Cherene Sherrard-Johnson is a professor and chair of English at Pomona College. Her research is primarily focused on Black female representation in literature and visual culture. She is the author of Portraits of the New Negro Woman: Visual and Literary Culture in the Harlem Renaissance and Dorothy West’s Paradise: A Biography of Class and Color, and editor of A Companion to the Harlem Renaissance. In 2020, one of her collections of poetry, Grimoire, was named among New York Public Library’s Top Ten Poetry Books. Her current scholarly projects include editing the Cambridge Companion to the Black Body in American Literature. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Award and the 2019 Outstanding Women of Color Award, among many other fellowships and recognitions.

The event was co-sponsored by the Office of the President and the Department of History at Pomona College.

 

Tom Lin ’18: "The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu"

October 11, 2021

Author and Pomona alumnus Tom Lin ’18 returned to campus to read a selection from his debut novel, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu.

Lin was born in China and immigrated to the United States when he was four. A graduate of Pomona College, he is currently pursuing his PhD in Literature at the University of California, Davis, where he focuses on the intersections of science, technology, and speculative fiction.

The event was co-sponsored by the Department of English.

Gustavus Stadler: "What is 'This Land'?"

April 29, 2021

The Humanities Studio welcomed Woody Guthrie biographer Gustavus Stadler to present “What is ‘This Land’?: A Song, a Phrase, and Their Histories” in the sixth episode of our 2020-21 Indigeneities Speakers Series.

In this talk, Stadler looked at the decades-long controversy concerning indigenous erasure and Woody Guthrie’s most famous song, “This Land is Your Land,” in the context of intimacy, whiteness, and the body. Stadler noted writer and musician Mali Obomsawin’s identification of the song as a passively reinforced “blind spot” on the US left in particular, and discussed how the song erases the true history of this continent, the fundamental violence and brutality of settler colonialism that made it possible for people of European ancestry to live here. Citing examples from Rebecca Nagle’s podcast on the Sharp v. Murphy case, to Gary Clark Jr.’s searing 2019 single about anti-Black racism, to the name of a now defunct progressive Tulsa literary and political journal, Stadler offered his thoughts on the phrase’s persistence and the work various people want it to do both politically and epistemologically.

Stadler is the author of Woody Guthrie: An Intimate Life and Troubling Minds: The Cultural Politics of Genius in the U.S. 1840-1890. His essays on U.S. literature, left politics, music, and sound culture have appeared in Al Jazeera, Public Books, avidly.com, Social Text, American Literature, and many other venues. He is currently beginning work on a book about Cafe Society, New York's first fully integrated nightclub, and collaborating on a film adaptation of his Guthrie book. He is Professor of English at Haverford College.

The event was co-sponsored by the Department of Music.

 

Novelist Tommy Orange in Conversation

February 11, 2021

About 200 members and friends of the Pomona College community joined us in welcoming novelist and Pulitzer Prize finalist Tommy Orange in the fifth episode in our 2020-21 Indigeneities Speakers Series.

Orange is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel There There, a multi-generational, relentlessly paced story about a side of America few of us have ever seen: the lives of urban Native Americans. There There was one of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year in 2019, and won the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and the Pen/Hemingway Award. There There was also longlisted for the National Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Orange graduated from the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, and was a 2014 MacDowell Fellow and a 2016 Writing by Writers Fellow. He is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. He was born and raised in Oakland, California.

 

Kyle Whyte: "Against Crisis Epistemology"

November 5, 2020

The Humanities Studio welcomed Kyle Whyte, professor of environment and sustainability at the University of Michigan, to present "Against Crisis Epistemology: Challenging Presumptions of Time in Climate Justice Advocacy," an examination of how humans perceive crisis and the relationship of those perceptions to certain Indigenous ways of knowing. It was the fourth episode in our 2020-21 Indigeneities Speakers Series.

People who perpetrate colonialism often defend their actions as necessary responses to real or perceived crises. Epistemologies of crisis involve knowing the world in such a way that a certain present is experienced as new. In this talk, Whyte will discuss newness in terms of the presumptions of unprecedentedness and urgency. According to Whyte, these presumptions often depend on an unquestioned linear conception of time. In contradistinction to an epistemology of crisis, he suggests that one interpretation of certain Indigenous intellectual traditions emphasizes what he calls an epistemology of coordination. Different from crisis, coordination refers to ways of knowing the world that emphasize the importance of moral bonds—or kinship relationships—for generating the (responsible) capacity to respond to constant change. Epistemologies of coordination are conducive to responding to expected and drastic changes without validating harm or violence.

Kyle Whyte is Professor of Environment and Sustainability and George Willis Pack Professor at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability, serving as a faculty member of the environmental justice specialization. Previously, Whyte was Professor and Timnick Chair in the Department of Philosophy and Department of Community Sustainability at Michigan State University. Whyte’s research addresses moral and political issues concerning climate policy and Indigenous peoples, the ethics of cooperative relationships between Indigenous peoples and science organizations, and problems of Indigenous justice in public and academic discussions of food sovereignty, environmental justice, and the anthropocene. He is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and has partnered with numerous Tribes, First Nations and inter-Indigenous organizations in the Great Lakes region and beyond on climate change planning, education and policy. He is involved in a number of projects and organizations that advance Indigenous research methodologies, including the Climate and Traditional Knowledges Workgroup, Sustainable Development Institute of the College of Menominee Nation, Tribal Climate Camp, and Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga. He has served as an author on reports by the U.S. Global Change Research Program and is a former member of the U.S. Federal Advisory Committee on Climate Change and Natural Resource Science and the Michigan Environmental Justice Work Group. Whyte’s work has received the Bunyan Bryant Award for Academic Excellence from Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice and MSU's Distinguished Partnership and Engaged Scholarship awards, and grants from the National Science Foundation.

 

Tribal Elder Julia Bogany: "Journey of the Tongva"

October 22, 2020

The Humanities Studio was honored to welcome Tongva tribal elder Julia Bogany to present “Journey of the Tongva” in the third episode of our Indigeneities Speakers Series. Join Ms. Bogany for “a journey with the Tongva, from where we started to where we are today.”

Julia Bogany is a member of the Tongva tribe, is on the Tongva Tribal Council, and is the Tongva Cultural Consultant. She has helped to reawaken and revive Tongva language, arts, and culture through teaching classes and workshops and assembling a Tongva dictionary.

Ms. Bogany has worked for over thirty years for the American Indian community, providing cultural trainings and workshops in the Los Angeles, San Bernardino, and Riverside areas as well as in Sacramento for the California Rural Indian Health Board. She is vice president of the Keepers of Indigenous Ways, a non-profit group of the Tongva; president of Residential Motivators, her own non-profit consulting firm; a community health worker for the California Indian Education Association; president of Kuruvanga Springs; a representative for California tribes on Route 66; a member of the California Native American College Board; and the Pitzer College Elder in Residence. She teaches native culture and history and women's issues at Pitzer, Scripps, Pomona and Harvey Mudd Colleges and the Claremont School of Theology. In the summer, she assists with the Native Youth to College program. Ms. Bogany is active in the Children Court L.A. Round Table, runs co-ed and women's circles, and consults with teachers and school boards on how to revise their curriculum to reflect an accurate history of California and California tribes.

In 2010, Ms. Bogany received the Heritage Award from the Aquarium of the Pacific at their sixth annual Native American festival, Moompetam. She has been nominated for Coastal Commission for the State of California and is a Stake Holder Consultant of 200 parks in Los Angeles County.

 

"Where Have All the Good Fires Gone? An Indigenous Perspective on the Fire Relationship"

October 15, 2020

The Humanities Studio presented “Where Have All the Good Fires Gone? An Indigenous Perspective on the Fire Relationship,” a conversation between Michael Connolly Miskwish (Kumeyaay) and Pomona College's own Char Miller.

We’re often told that today’s Southern California residents have a lot to learn about living in this wildfire-prone landscape from the area’s Native Nations. What exactly are those lessons? In this discussion, Miskwish (San Diego State lecturer in American Indian Studies) and Miller (Pomona College Professor of Environmental Analysis) considered historical fire usage by California tribes; the Kumeyaah’s reintroduction of managed fire on its Campo; and the carrying capacity of this fire-prone terrain, among many other related topics.

Michael Connolly Miskwish is a citizen of the Campo Kumeyaay Nation. He has authored many papers on tribal economics, Kumeyaay history and resource management. He has three published books on Kumeyaay history and cosmology. He has curated exhibits on Kumeyaay culture and history for the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Man in San Diego, California. In 2006 he was the recipient of the John Montgomery Education Award by the Congress of History of San Diego and Imperial Counties and, in 2017, was inducted into the Kumeyaay Kuseyaay Association. Michael’s formal education includes a Master of Arts in Economics from San Diego State University, a Bachelor of Science in Manufacturing Engineering from National University and an Associate of Arts in Kumeyaay Studies from Cuyamaca/Kumeyaay Community College. He is an adjunct faculty in American Indian Studies at San Diego State University. He served 17 years in elected office for the Campo Kumeyaay Nation. He currently consults with tribal governments and governmental agencies on topics of economics, resource management, taxation and education. He continues to write and lecture on Kumeyaay history and culture.

Char Miller teaches classes on U.S. environmental history, water in the U.S. West, and public lands management, like those on urbanization and the interplay between the natural and built landscapes, as part of Pomona College's Environmental Analysis and History programs and the Claremont Colleges' Environmental Analysis major. An active and award-winning scholar, Miller's most recent books include Hetch Hetchy: A History in Documents (2020), Theodore Roosevelt: Naturalist in the Arena (2020); Elers Koch’s memoir, Forty Years a Forester; The Nature of Hope: Environmental Justice, Grassroots Organizing and Political Change (2019); Ogallala: Water for a Dry Land (2018); San Antonio: A Tricentennial History (2018); and Where There’s Smoke: The Environmental Science, Policy, and Politics of Marijuana (2018). He is senior fellow of the Pinchot Institute for Conservation, a Fellow of the Forest History Society, and a consulting historian for more than a dozen documentaries. He has worked closely with museums in Los Angeles and San Antonio to develop exhibits and educational materials.

 

U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo Reads Native Nations Poetry

September 24, 2020

The Humanities Studio welcomed Joy Harjo, 2019-2021 United States Poet Laureate, to present a reading of Native Nations poetry in the second episode in our 2020-21 "Indigeneities" Speakers Series.

Harjo read from her edited volume, When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through, which gathers the work of more than 160 poets representing nearly 100 indigenous nations in the first historically comprehensive Native poetry anthology. She also read from her own work and shared the process of putting this landmark collection together.

Joy Harjo’s nine books of poetry include An American Sunrise, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems, and She Had Some Horses. Harjo’s memoir Crazy Brave won several awards, including the PEN USA Literary Award for Creative Non-Fiction and the American Book Award. She is the recipient of the Ruth Lilly Prize from the Poetry Foundation for Lifetime Achievement, the 2015 Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets for proven mastery in the art of poetry, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the United States Artist Fellowship. In 2014 she was inducted into the Oklahoma Writers Hall of Fame. A renowned musician, Harjo performs with her saxophone nationally and internationally, solo and with her band, the Arrow Dynamics. She has five award-winning CDs of music including the award-winning album Red Dreams, A Trail Beyond Tears and Winding Through the Milky Way, which won a Native American Music Award for Best Female Artist of the Year in 2009. Harjo’s latest is a book of poetry from Norton, An American Sunrise. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The event, co-sponsored by the Departments of English and Religious Studies and the Gender & Women's Studies Program, was free and open to the public.

 

Kēhaulani Vaughn on Trans-Indigenous Relations

September 10, 2020

The Humanities Studio welcomed Kēhaulani Vaughn, Indigenous scholar and practitioner, to present "Beyond Performativity: Trans-Indigenous Recognition and Indigenous Futures" as the inaugural address in our "Indigeneities" Speakers Series.

Land acknowledgements have become an important practice in event organizing both in social justice circles and educational institutions. What are the goals of such practices and have they become a repetitive script that is devoid of relationships and responsibilities with and to Native Nations? Are they more or less, a liberal form of settler normativity? How can we think differently about land acknowledgement? As more Indigenous communities become displaced through settler colonialism there is a greater need to regenerate relationships to land and people that moves beyond the discourse of acknowledgement to ensure Indigenous futurities.

This talk offered an example of recognition that is grounded in Indigenous relationalities. Vaughn highlighted a trans-Indigenous recognition between diasporic Native Hawaiians and the Juaneño Band of Mission Indians, the Acjachemen Nation. Trans-Indigenous recognitions is a process for diasporic Indigenous communities to acknowledge both the land and the people that currently host them. Additionally, it emphasizes an intrinsic responsibility to the Indigenous caretakers of land that moves beyond settler recognition politics. Through this case study, Vaughn provided an example of relationalities with Indigenous people that moves beyond a liberal discourse of land acknowledgement.

Kēhaulani Vaughn (Kanaka Maoli) is an assistant professor in the Department of Education, Culture, and Society and the Pacific Islands Studies Initiative at the University of Utah. Currently, she is a National Academies of Science Engineering and Medicine Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow. Her book manuscript, Trans Indigeneity: The Politics of California Indian and Native Hawaiian Relations, is about the trans-Indigenous recognitions between Native Hawaiians living in the U.S. and California Indian tribes. An interdisciplinary ethnographic project, Trans Indigeneity utilizes a Native Feminist praxis to forge new methodological, theoretical, and political directions for Indigenous recognition-based politics. As a scholar-practitioner, her teaching and research interests are in Pacific Island Studies, Indigenous epistemologies, education, and decolonial practices and pedagogies.

This event, co-sponsored by the Pacific Basin Institute at Pomona College, was free and open to the public.

In light of the global coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, with heavy hearts we were forced to cancel the final two events in our 2019-20 Post/Truth Speakers Series. We will post here any plans to reschedule events with Chuck Klosterman and Lewis Hyde in the future. Please stay safe and healthy, friends. You are important (essential!) to us. —Kevin & Gretchen

 

CANCELLED:
Chuck Klosterman: Thinking About the Past As If It Were Present

April 1, 2020

CANCELLED:
Lewis Hyde: Truth as a Liquid

April 16, 2020

 

Tavia Nyong'o: "Non-Binary Blackness"

March 5, 2020

The Humanities Studio welcomed Tavia Nyong'o, Professor of American Studies at Yale University, to present on "Non-Binary Blackness" as part of our "post/truth" Speakers Series.

In this talk, Nyong'o asked: Can we redress historical injury through our contemporary fictions and counter-narratives? What might it take to do justice to queer, transgender, and/or gender non-conforming figures from our past? This discussion will draw on black feminist critiques of gender, ontology, and the human to pursue a speculative fabulation of blackness as it exceeds standard historical narration and linear time.

Nyong'o is the author of The Amalgamation Waltz: Race, Performance, and the Ruses of Memory (2009) and Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life (2018). He teaches black performance theory, queer and affect studies, and diaspora aesthetics. He is Professor of African American Studies, American Studies, and Theater & Performance Studies at Yale University.

 

"Fake News" Colloquium

February 14–15, 2020

Students, alumni, parents, faculty, staff and the community joined us for two days of events addressing the crisis of authority facing the news media.

Friday, February 14

9–10:30 a.m. | "A Brief History of Fake News": Keynote with Joel Simon P'22 (Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists) | Hahn Hall, Room 101

10:30 a.m.–Noon | "What is Fake News?": Roundtable Discussion moderated by Robyn Norwood (Communications, Pomona College) with Trevor Hunnicutt ’10 (reporter, Reuters News), Anjali Kamat ’00 (investigative journalist, WNYC/New York Public Radio), Susan Schneck Sawyers P'20 (former producer, Bloomberg Radio's BloombergEDU), and Marc Rod ’20 (managing editor, The Student Life) | Hahn Hall, Room 101

Noon–3 p.m. | "The Truth is...": Share what "The Truth" means to you in this roving sociological art exhibit brought to us by the Cause Collective. Since 2011, this exhibit has traveled the world with an aim to "represent and celebrate the world's diverse people, cultures, and locations and capture as many definitions, representations, confessions, and thoughts on 'The Truth' as possible." What is your truth? Tell us about it at the Truth Booth. Submissions will be available to view on the Truth Booth website. | Carnegie Building, North Lawn

Saturday, February 15

11 a.m.–Noon | "Very Bad People: Journalism, Identity, and the Trump Era's New Enemies Within": Keynote with Jeff Sharlet (professor of journalism at Dartmouth College, author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power) | Millikan Laboratory, Argue Auditorium (Room 1051)

3–5 p.m. | Screening of the Netflix Series The Family followed by Q&A with series creator Jeff Sharlet | Millikan Laboratory, Argue Auditorium (Room 1051)

 

A. Van Jordan: Poetry Reading & Book Signing

February 12, 2020

We welcomed acclaimed poet A. Van Jordan, author of four volumes of poetry including The Cineaste, to read from his poetry and sign copies of his books.

A. Van Jordan is the author of four collections of poetry: Rise (2001), which won the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award; M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A (2005), which was listed as one the Best Books of 2005 by The London Times; Quantum Lyrics (2007); and The Cineaste (2013), which has been awarded a Whiting Writers Award, an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and a Pushcart Prize. Jordan is also a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a United States Artists Fellowship, and a Lannan Literary Award in Poetry. He has taught at a number of institutions including Prince Georges Community College; the University of North Carolina at Greensboro; the University of Texas at Austin, where he was tenured as an Associate Professor; Rutgers University-Newark, where he served as the Henry Rutgers Presidential Professor; and at the University of Michigan, where he currently serves as the Robert Hayden Collegiate Professor of English Language & Literature.

The event was co-sponsored by the Office of the President.

 

Nalo Hopkinson: "Fiction or Lies?"

January 30, 2020

Novelist Nalo Hopkinson, professor of creative writing at UC Riverside, visited the Humanities Studio to present “Fiction, or Lies?” as part of our “post/truth” Speakers Series.

Hopkinson is the author of Brown Girl in the Ring, The Salt Roads, Falling in Love with Hominids, and half a dozen other fantasy and science fiction novels, short story collections, and chapbooks. She is fascinated by the ability of fantasy literature to create narratives that re-imagine, even re-invent, the past — especially when grounded in real world marginalized/oppressed subjectivities.

In this talk, Hopkinson considered the use of revisionist historical fiction, especially in a fantastical mode. Is it merely a futile exercise in wishful thinking? And does it have any connection to science fiction's project of considering the future?

The talk was co-sponsored by the Department of English and by the Gender and Women's Studies Program.

 

Catherine Gallagher: "Counterfactual Characters"

December 5, 2019

Catherine Gallagher, professor emerita of English at UC Berkeley and author of Telling It Like It Wasn't: The Counterfactual Imagination in History and Fiction, just us for the last "post/truth" Speakers Series event of fall semester.

In her talk "Counterfactual Characters," Gallagher explored the kinship between the concept of character found in most modern historical and fictional narratives and the counterfactual mode of thought. When constructing characters, writers routinely both imagine what individuals lived through and (in order to emphasize the significance of certain actions and episodes) indicate other things that might have happened instead. Full-blown counterfactual works, though, are devoted solely to the narration of the alternatives, to the lives that were not led but might have been. Although we might think that this multiplication of other possible destinies should weaken the individuality and continuity of characterization, it instead tends to reinforce character’s narrative centrality and ontological priority. The character-centrism of counterfactual narratives can help illuminate emerging forms of the protagonist, literary and historical.

Gallagher held the Ida May and William J. Eggers Chair in English at UC Berkeley until her retirement in 2013. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and she has received NEH, ACLS, and Guggenheim fellowships, as well as residential fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study, the National Humanities Center, the Stanford Humanities Center, and the American Academy in Berlin. She was a founding member of the editor board of the journal Representations and served as its co-editor for ten years, helping to popularize a form of literary studies that was called “new historicism” in the 1980s; it aimed simultaneously to understand literary works through their historical context and to understand cultural and intellectual history through an attention to literary form. Her latest book, Telling It Like It Wasn’t: The Counterfactual Imagination in History and Literature, was published by Chicago University Press last year and won the American Philosophical Society’s Jacques Barzun Prize for the year’s best book in cultural history.

 

Russell Muirhead: "Conspiracy (without the) Theory"

November 21, 2019

Political scientist Russell Muirhead, the third speaker in our "post/truth" Speakers Series, joined us to present “Conspiracy (without the) Theory" — a talk about how the new conspiracism enveloping American politics threatens democratic institutions.

According to Muirhead, conspiracy theory has been around as long as democracy. What we see today — take Pizzagate or QAnon — is something different. The blizzard of conspiratorial charges can be disorienting and the effect on politics delegitimating. This talk aimed to help us understand — and resist — this assault on democratic institutions.

Muirhead teaches courses on political theory and American constitutional democracy at Dartmouth College. He is the co-author of A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy. He has also published books on partisanship and the moral meaning of work.

The talk was co-sponsored by the Departments of English and Politics.

 

"Weird Science" Colloquium featuring Joe Palca ’74

November 8, 2019

Students, faculty, staff, and members of the Claremont community gathered for “Weird Science” — a day-long colloquium on the history and varieties of science denial, including alchemy, mesmerism, climate-science denial, and vaccine hesitancy. The colloquium was a special edition of the Studio's 2019-20 "post/truth" Speakers Series.

Colloquium sessions began at 10 a.m. in Hahn Hall, Room 101, and were capped off with a keynote address from Joe Palca, NPR Science Correspondent and Pomona College alumnus from the class of 1974.

General Sessions:

10 a.m. — Welcome with Robert Gaines (Geology; Interim Dean of the College, Pomona)

10:30 a.m. — Credulity, Dis-Knowledge, and the Margins of Science with Katherine Eggert (U. Colorado, speaking on Alchemy) and Emily Ogden (U. Virginia, speaking on Mesmerism)

Noon — Break for lunch

1:30 p.m. — Vaccine Hesitancy with Alison Buttenheim (U. Pennsylvania) and Hilary Schor (U. Southern California)

3:15 p.m. — Climate-Change Denial with Marc Los Huertos (Environmental Analysis, Pomona) and Adam Pearson (Psychology, Pomona)

Keynote Lecture:

5 p.m. — "Do Facts Matter?" with Joe Palca ’74 (NPR Science Correspondent)

 

Film Screening: "Motherless Brooklyn" with Jonathan Lethem

October 30, 2019

Students, faculty, staff, and fans of literature and film joined us for a special, pre-release screening of the Edward Norton film Motherless Brooklyn followed by Q&A with Pomona professor Jonathan Lethem, author of the book from which the film was adapted. The screening was free and open to the public, though tickets were required and Pomona College students will be given first access.

 

Toni Morrison Tribute

October 16, 2019

Pomona College invited the community to a celebration of the life of writer, teacher, and icon Toni Morrison. The celebration included a memorial in the Millikan Laboratory Courtyard followed by a screening of the documentary film Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am in Rose Hills Theatre.

 

Lee McIntyre On Writing

October 4, 2019

Lee McIntyre, research fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and the author of Post-Truth, sat for a staged interview and Q&A exploring his career arc, his writing process, advice for young writers, and tips for reaching a broad audience with sophisticated material, including “defending science from denial, fraud, and pseudoscience” (the subtitle of his most recent book, The Scientific Attitude).

 

Lee McIntyre: "Defending Truth"

October 3, 2019

In his book Post-Truth, Lee McIntyre — philosopher (and parent of a recent Pomona grad!) addresses a few foundational questions about the concept: Are we living in a post-truth world, where "alternative facts" replace actual facts and feelings have more weight than evidence? If so, how did we get here? And what can we do about it?

McIntyre's book sets the stage for a year of rich conversation, and he joined us on October 3 to present his defense of truth, "From Post-Truth to the Scientific Attitude."

As part of an ongoing campaign of fact and truth denial in this "post-truth" era, McIntyre asserted in this talk, science is under attack. On topics such as vaccines, evolution, and climate change, the forces of ideology, cognitive bias, media confusion, and outright ignorance have conspired to spread disinformation and legitimize doubt about even the most well-settled empirical questions. This contrasts sharply with the attitude taken by scientists, which is based on respect for evidence and the flexibility of mind to change one's beliefs based on new evidence. McIntyre suggested that by embracing the scientific attitude, we may discover not only what is most essential about science, but how to fight back against science deniers, pseudoscientists, and others who do not understand that uncertainty and doubt are a strength rather than a weakness of empirical reasoning.

McIntyre is a research fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and lecturer in ethics at Harvard Extension School. He has taught philosophy at Colgate University, Boston University, Tufts Experimental College and Simmons College. He is the author of Post-Truth and The Scientific Attitude: Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience. His popular essays have appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, The Boston Globe, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Scientific American, The Humanist, and The Times Higher Education Supplement.

The event was co-sponsored by the Department of Philosophy and the Johnson Fund.

 

Banu Subramaniam: "Science & Hindu Nationalism"

September 26, 2019

The Humanities Studio welcomed feminist and biologist Banu Subramaniam to kick off our annual speakers series — this year tracing the theme "post/truth" — with her talk "Making Postcolonial Biologies: Tales from an 'Other' Enlightenment."

In this talk, Subramaniam explored how science and religion come together in contemporary Hindu nationalism to create a very particular and powerful biopolitical imaginary. Religious nationalists have selectively, and strategically, used rhetoric from both science and Hinduism, modernity and orthodoxy, western and eastern thought, she argued, to build a powerful but potentially dangerous vision of a Hindu nation. With aspirations for a global and modern Hinduism, scientific and religious practices in contemporary India are inextricably interconnected and result in fluid processes and practices of both institutions. The case of India reminds us about both the transnational stakes of science as well as the local instantiations that challenge enlightenment narratives of reason and unreason. Ultimately to understand contemporary technoscience in India, do we need new epistemological and methodological tools, and story-making practices to make visible the many phantasmagoric natural and cultural worlds within?

Banu Subramaniam is Professor of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Trained as a plant evolutionary biologist, her work engages the feminist studies of science in the practices of experimental biology. She is author of Holy Science: The Biopolitics or Hindu Nationalism and Ghost Stories for Darwin: The Science of Variation and the Politics of Diversity and coeditor of Feminist Science Studies: A New Generation and Making Threats: Biofears and Environmental Anxieties. Her current work focuses on decolonizing botany.

The event was co-sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies.

 

Christina Sharpe: "Wake. Seed. Soil."

April 18, 2019

Christina Sharpe, professor of humanities at York University, visited Pomona to present “Wake. Seed. Soil.” — the final lecture in our yearlong “Fail Better” Speakers Series.

In this talk, Sharpe thought about wakes, about plantations and memorials, about soil, seeds, and ash. In order to do this, she turned to, among other things, two films, several images, The Whitney Plantation in Edgard, Louisiana, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and the Legacy Museum from Slavery to Mass Incarceration in Montgomery, Alabama.

Sharpe is known as one of the most important contemporary scholars in Black Diaspora thought and cultures. She is the author of Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects and In the Wake: On Blackness and Being.

The event was co-sponsored by the American Studies Program, the Gender and Women’s Studies Program, the International Relations Program, and the Departments of English and History.

 

Hua Hsu: "Cultural Criticism & Its Metaphors of Smallness"

April 4, 2019

Hua Hsu, associate professor of English and director of American Studies at Vassar College, presented “Of Fleas, Pests, and Termites: Cultural Criticism and its Metaphors of Smallness” — the penultimate lecture in our 2018-19 “Fail Better” Speakers Series.

To the cultural critic, failure has always seemed inevitable. There’s a romance to lost causes, to championing the obscure artist or the overshadowed author. But what happens when popular culture no longer orbits a stable center — when there’s no longer a boring monoculture to build your identity against, and our tastes and desires grow fragmented beyond imagination? What does it mean to seek out the lost and forgotten in this moment of historical amnesia? Hua Hsu, a critic at The New Yorker​, sketched out an alternative lineage of culture and criticism that prizes the minuscule, the underground, and the stubborn — as well as his own obsession with a “pest” he found in the archives.

Hsu is the author of A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure across the Pacific.

 

Film Screening: "The Disaster Artist" and Q&A with Greg Sestero

March 27, 2019

The theme for the Humanities Studio's annual year of programming is "Fail Better." Tommy Wiseau’s auteurist masterpiece The Room (2003), “the greatest bad movie of all time,” is an irresistible topic given that theme. Never one to leave well enough (or bad enough) alone, in 2017 James Franco—trying to “fail better”?—made a film about the making of The Room. That film is called The Disaster Artist.

In partnership with Intercollegiate Media Studies at Pitzer College, the Humanities Studio hosted a screening of The Disaster Artist, a meditation on failure, friendship, and redemption, followed by a Q&A with Greg Sestero — “Mark” from The Room (“Oh hi, Mark”), and author of the memoir that inspired Franco’s film.

 

Rostam Performs Debut Solo Album "Half-Light"

March 13, 2019

Rostam (formerly of acclaimed indie band Vampire Weekend) visited Pomona College to perform from his debut solo album, Half-Light.

A Grammy Award-winning songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer, Rostam produced Vampire Weekend's self-titled debut while he was a student at Columbia University. That album, along with Contra and Modern Vampires in the City, became gold records for the band with Rostam as producer. Rostam announced his departure from Vampire Weekend in early 2016. His solo debut Half-Light is a kaleidoscopic work featuring 15 songs written, produced and performed by Rostam in his Los Angeles home studio.

The event was part of the College's Art of a Revolution series, co-sponsored by the Department of History, to celebrate Persian New Year and commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the Iranian Revolution.

 

Scott A. Sandage: "Loser! How Trump's Favorite Insult Became Our Hugest Fear"

March 7, 2019

A cultural historian and the author of Born Losers: A History of Failure in America, Scott A. Sandage presented an illustrated lecture about how an eighteenth-century business term—loser—became a personal fear and a public insult. Why does “Loser!” wield such power to hurt and to provoke, whether on the school bus or in the White House? Tracing fundamental changes in the meanings of failure in a culture framed around success, Sandage reflected on his own failures—and invited guests to reconsider our own.

Sandage joined us from Carnegie Mellon University. He is a consultant to the Smithsonian Institution, the National Archives, and the National Park Service. His writing has appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post.

 

Celebration of Nowruz (the vernal equinox and Persian New Year)

March 7, 2019

The Oldenborg Center and the Department of History presented a celebration of Persian New Year (Nowruz), featuring Persian cuisine, classical Persian poetry presented by students of the College's Persian language program, and a live set of Persian classical music performed by the Taak Ensemble. The celebration was part of the Art of a Revolution Series, celebrating Persian New Year and commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the Iranian Revolution.

 

Film Screening: "No Land's Song"

March 5, 2019

Professor Anthony Shay introduced this screening of the film No Land’s Song – a documentary about a young composer who organizes a concert for females solo singers in Iran after the 1979 regime forbids women to sing publicly as soloists. The event was part of the Art of a Revolution Series, celebrating Persian New Year and commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the Iranian Revolution.

 

Film Screening: "Close-Up"

February 28, 2019

Professor Arash Khazeni introduced this screening of the film Close-Up – named by a Sight & Sound poll as one of the "Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time." The event was part of the Art of a Revolution Series, celebrating Persian New Year and commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the Iranian Revolution.

 

Film Screening: "The White Meadows"

February 27, 2019

Professor Jonathan Lethem introduced this screening of the film The White Meadows – hailed as a masterpiece of the Iranian New Wave movement of cinema. The event was part of the Art of a Revolution Series, celebrating Persian New Year and commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the Iranian Revolution.

 

Austin Walker: "Failure as an Engine for Meaning-Making"

February 14, 2019

Austin Walker, editor-in-chief of Waypoint, VICE magazine's channel for gaming culture, and a writer on the intersection of games, culture, labor, and community, spoke about the benefits of failure in the gaming world.

“You pull back your bow string and let loose the arrow. It sails through the air, until it shatters, useless against the scaled sheen of the dragon’s hide. What do you do?” In our daily lives, scenarios like these are empty fantasy, but for those familiar with Dungeons and Dragons and other roleplaying games, a sequence like this is not only normal, but potent. With every new bit of narration and each roll of the dice, players weave together heroic stories of success and failure—and it is the latter, not the former, that provides a catalyst for future action, necessary context for characterization, and a clear marker of plot stakes.

Yet only in the last decade have the creators of these games begun to actively leverage the power of failure as a storytelling device, moving away from competitive models of play and towards exercises in collaborative fiction. Unsurprisingly, this shift comes alongside a broadening of “the roleplaying game” as a category, as independent, alternative, and small-press games have emerged to challenge the hegemonic vision of play presented by Dungeons and Dragons. Now, queer creators, designers of color, and other marginalized game makers are creating their own fantasy sandboxes, and they’re contesting the boundaries of “failure” along the way.

Drawing on the work contemporary game designers like Avery Alder and Brendan Conway, along with the critical work of Judith Halberstam and Walter Benjamin, Walker explored the function of failure in storytelling—whether those stories are about slaying dragons, developing one’s own identity, or building a sustainable community in a hostile world.

 

Drury Sherrod: "How Narratives Shape Jury Verdicts"

February 12, 2019

Drury Sherrod is the author of a social psychology textbook and more than thirty articles on psychology, jury behavior, attribution theory, and the effects of environmental stress on human behavior.

 

Geeta Dayal: "Brian Eno, the Oblique Strategies, and Building Tools for Creativity"

January 31, 2019

Music writer Geeta Dayal discussed systems and strategies of creativity devised in the 20th century—including pioneering musician Brian Eno's "Oblique Strategies"—and how they might help us today.

The Oblique Strategies, a card deck of “over 100 worthwhile dilemmas,” was originally released by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt in 1975. The Strategies have had impressive cultural traction in the four decades since. Many of Eno’s high-profile friends and collaborators—from David Bowie to The Edge to David Byrne—have used the cards to get around creative impasses and make music in new ways.

Many artists used special decks of cards or card-like systems in the 20th century, but few of them crossed over into popular culture with as much success as the Oblique Strategies. Fluxus had their “Fluxboxes” or “Fluxkits” in the 1960s. In 1969, Marshall McLuhan released a series of aphorisms, printed on regular poker cards, known as the “Distant Early Warning” cards. John Cage famously used the I Ching, the ancient Chinese divination system based on 64 hexagrams—not a straightforward card deck, per se, but a complex system that he deployed in many different ways.

Dayal is a prolific writer, covering electronic music for magazines such as Bookforum, Wired, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, the Wire, The New York Times, and the Village Voice. She is the author of Brian Eno: Another Green World in the 33 1/3 series.

 

Brian Keating: "Losing the Nobel Prize"

December 6, 2018

Brian Keating, cosmologist and inventor, spoke about his book Losing the Nobel Prize: A Cosmological Memoir. In the book, Keating shares the inside story of the experiment that brought him to the cusp of Nobel glory, and of the mesmerizing discovery and the scientific drama that ensued. He provocatively argues that the Nobel Prize, instead of advancing scientific progress, may actually hamper it, encouraging speed and greed while punishing collaboration and bold innovation. In a thoughtful reappraisal of the wishes of Alfred Nobel, Keating offers practical solutions for reforming the prize, providing a vision of a scientific future in which cosmologists may, finally, be able to see all the way back to the very beginning.

Keating is a professor of physics at the Center for Astrophysics & Space Sciences (CASS) in the Department of Physics at the University of California, San Diego. He is a public speaker, inventor, and an expert in the study of the universe’s oldest light, using it to learn about the origin and evolution of the universe. He is a pioneer in the search for the earliest physical evidence of the inflationary epoch, the theorized period of expansion of space in the early universe directly after the Big Bang.

The event was co-sponsored by the Pomona College Department of Physics.

 

Sarah Lewis: "Creativity, the Gift of Failure and the Search for Mastery"

November 15, 2018

Sarah Lewis, assistant professor of art and architecture and African and African-American studies at Harvard University and author of The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure and the Search for Mastery, spoke about where new innovations, new ideas, spring from and offered her perspective on what enables creative endeavors. What really drives iconic, transformational change on both a personal and an organizational level? From Nobel Prize–winning discoveries to new inventions to works of art, many of our creative triumphs are not achievements but are conversions, corrections after failed attempts.

Drawing on figures such as Frederick Douglass, Angela Duckworth, J. K. Rowling, and others, Lewis revealed the importance of play, grit, surrender, often ignored ideas, and the necessary experiments and follow-up attempts that lead to true breakthroughs. The path to success, Lewis noted, is often more surprising than we expect.

The event was presented in partnership with the Departments of History and Art History and the American Studies Program.

 

James Miller: "Can Democracy Work?"

November 8, 2018

Today, democracy is the world's only broadly accepted political system, and yet it has become synonymous with disappointment and crisis. How did it come to this? In his book Can Democracy Work? A Short History of a Radical Idea from Ancient Athens to Our World, Pomona alumnus James Miller offered a lively, surprising, and urgent history of the democratic idea from its first stirrings to the present.

Miller is a professor of politics and liberal studies at the New School for Social Research. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Examined Lives: From Socrates to Nietzsche; Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1947-1977; and Democracy in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago.

The event was co-sponsored by the Department of Politics.

 

Kenneth Lonergan in Conversation with Jonathan Lethem

November 1, 2018

The Humanities Studio welcomed award-winning film director, playwright and screenwriter Kenneth Lonergan to Claremont as the third guest in our Studio Speakers Series. Screenings of two acclaimed Lonergan films, Margaret and Manchester by the Sea, were followed by a conversation and Q&A session with Lonergan hosted by Jonathan Lethem.

Lonergan is perhaps best known for his 2016 film Manchester by the Sea, which he wrote and directed, and for which he won the Academy and BAFTA awards for best original screenplay. He wrote and directed You Can Count on Me (2000) and Margaret (2011), and has written or co-written a number of other screenplays including Analyze This (1999) and Gangs of New York (2002). He has also written frequently for the stage, including The Waverly Gallery (2000), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and Lobby Hero (2001).

Jonathan Lethem is the Roy Edward Disney ‘51 Professor of Creative Writing and Professor of English at Pomona College and the author of eleven novels including, most recently, The Feral Detective.

The event was presented in partnership with the Departments of Philosophy and History and the American Studies Program.

 

Film Screening: "Rebirth of a Nation" with DJ Spooky

October 12, 2018

The Humanities Studio and Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky presented a screening of Miller's Rebirth of a Nation — a film project the artist describes as a "remix" of D. W. Griffith's infamous 1915 film Birth of a Nation. The film was commissioned in 2004 as the artist's first large-scale multimedia performance piece and has been performed in venues around the world. The DVD version of the performance, presented at this screening, was released in 2008.

Of Miller's work, collaborator Yoko Ono said, “DJ Spooky cannot be called just a DJ. He is a very accomplished composer. But these days, DJs are the ones who are bringing fresh sounds to the music world. In fact, they are creating a new spatial music. They are the space transformers of the universe.”

 

Jennifer Fay: "Virtuosic Failure & Environmental Design: Buster Keaton"

October 11, 2018

Following a screening of the Buster Keaton film Steamboat Bill Jr., supported by a live set by DJ Spooky, film scholar Jennifer Fay considered Keaton’s “climatography” as a fable for our contemporary environmental crisis.

Fay is associate professor of film and English at Vanderbilt University and director of Vanderbilt's program in Cinema and Media Arts. She is the author of Theaters of Occupation: Hollywood and the Reeducation of Postwar Germany and co-author of Film Noir: Hard-Boiled Modernity and the Cultures of Globalization. Her most recent book, Inhospitable World: Cinema in the Time of the Anthropocene, was published in March 2018.

DJ Spooky a.k.a. Paul D. Miller is the executive editor of ORIGIN Magazine and is a composer, multimedia artist, editor and author. He has produced and composed work for Yoko Ono, Thurston Moore, and scores of artists and award-winning films, in addition to writing award-winning books, holding an artist's residency at Stanford University, and creating the mega-popular DJ MIXER iPad app.

 

Cage@Claremont

September 24–28, 2018

A week of performances and presentations regarding the work, influence, and life of American composer and thinker John Cage (1912–1992), Pomona Class of 1932.

 

Greil Marcus: "How Failure Makes History"

September 13, 2018

An editor and critic over the past five decades for Rolling Stone, Creem and the Village Voice, Greil Marcus is the author of Mystery Train: Images of American in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music; Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century; Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads; and nearly two dozen other books. Bruce Springsteen said that Mystery Train “gets as close to the heart and soul of America and American music as the best of rock ‘n’ roll”; about his work, the New Yorker wrote “Greil Marcus developed an ability to discern an art movement, or an entire country, lurking inside a song.”

Marcus spoke on “How Failure Makes History,” followed by a book signing.

The event was co-sponsored by the American Studies Program, the Department of History, and the Joseph Horsfall Johnson Public Event Fund.