Past Events

A person sitting on a bench wearing a black shirt, a leopard print jacket with an arm on top of the bench and hand on head. Trees are in the background.
Nov. 14, 2024, 5:30–6:30 p.m.

Author Elyssa Maxx Goodman will speak about her book Glitter and Concrete: A Cultural History of Drag in New York City and discuss drag’s effects on the culture of the city and the U.S. overall.

Book cover for "Squanto: A Native Odyssey" by Andrew Lipman, winner of the Bancroft Prize. The cover shows squares with a part of an image inside including a ship, castle, bird, plants and a fish.
Nov. 12, 2024, 5:30–6:30 p.m.

A book talk by Andrew Lipman ’01 in conversation with James H. Merrell, Professor Emeritus of History. This event is open to the public.

Dr. Andrea McDonnell, a person with long brown hair and a black coat, stands in front of a wall with diplomas and a painting hung on it.

Andrea McDonnell is a media scholar and author whose work examines the production, content, and audience reception of popular media and American celebrity culture. Her research seeks to understand the ways in which audiences engage, take pleasure in, and make sense of celebrity gossip across media platforms, including print, television, and social media.

Campus community only, please.

Photo of artist Edgar Heap of Birds standing in front of one of his text-based works.

Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds (Cheyenne and Arapaho Nation) is an acclaimed multidisciplinary artist whose work has long advocated for recognition of historic and ongoing forms of oppression of Indigenous peoples in the US and globally. 

A diagram of a woman’s reproductive system is collaged on paper, surrounded by hues of red, black, and grey watercolor and organic plant forms.
Oct. 3, 2024, Reception begins 4:00 p.m.; Conversation at 5:30pm in Taylor 102

This exhibition of contemporary art explores the psychological, physical, and emotional realities encountered by women and people assigned female at birth in the years leading up to, during, and after fertility. Artists Krista Franklin and Joanne Leonard will be in conversation with exhibition curators Karen Irvine and Kristin Taylor.

A black and white drawing depicting a scene from Shakespear's Othello, in which Othello, holding a pillow, tries to smother his wife, Desdemona, who cowers in bed.

Professor Miles P. Grier (Queens College, CUNY and CUNY Graduate Center) offers a lecture based on his research on the transatlantic performance history of Shakespeare’s Othello, Shakespeare and early modern science, and Black Atlantic responses from Wheatley to Toni Morrison.

Campus community only, please.

Black and white photo of Amber Starks aka Melanin Mvskoke wearing a striped shirt and long, dangle earrings.

A radical, dynamic, and engaging conversation with Amber Starks about Black and Native solidarity and kinship as Black, Native, and Afro-Indigenous kin move from survivance to thrivance and futurity.

Cover of a book designed to look like grid of spiral notebooks with the title “Letters to a Writer of Color,” Edited by Deepa Anappara and Taymour Soomro,” and a blurb from Laila Lalami that says, “Electric essays that speak to the experience of writing from the periphery…a guide, a comfort, and a call all at once.”
Apr. 18, 2023, 6:00 p.m.–8:00 p.m.

Deepa Anappara and Taymour Soomro, editors of the new essay collection Letters to a Writer of Color, will talk about race and craft with a multidisciplinary panel of Vassar faculty.