This lecture on the sixteenth-century Spanish historian Fernando González de Oviedo’s seminal work sheds new light on the centrality of Spanish and Portuguese scientific inquiry in the history of science in the Americas as well as in the rival European transatlantic and transpacific empires of the early colonial period.

Koestenbaum—a poet, critic, fiction-writer, artist, filmmaker, and performer—has published 22 books and received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature in 2020. He is a Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature at the City University of New York Graduate Center.

In this lecture, Professor Nick Rees-Roberts of the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, mobilizes failure as a critical tool to unpack the structural fault lines of an industry invested in the promotion of success and celebrity in which no one can afford to fail.

Xizhen Cai, Williams College

Faculty members are invited to a lunch discussion on community-based learning opportunities supported by the Community-Engaged Intensives in the Humanities (CEIH) initiative. Please RSVP by October 26.

Join us for our 20- to 30-minute lunchtime recital series by members of the Vassar College Chamber Music Program. Thursdays, October 27 and November 3, 10, & 17 at 12 noon.

The 16th Annual Steven and Susan Hirsch Disability Awareness Lecture features David Flink, founder of the national ADHD/LD mentoring program Eye to Eye.

Dr. Square is Assistant Professor at Parsons School of Design and a fellow in the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He will speak about his present research, which explores connections between histories of enslavement and the fashion system.

In 2015-2016 over one million people from Syria and other countries fled violence in their homelands to Turkey, where they crossed the Aegean Sea to Greek islands. In this talk, Thompson speaks as a sociologist and poet, drawing upon her years meeting rafts, walking with people, and teaching poetry in refugee centers on the Greek mainland and in Lesvos.

Molly Shanley, Professor Emerita of Political Science, will discuss educational initiatives at the Dutchess County Jail with which she has been involved—including a women’s writing group.

Blake’s work explores play, eroticism, and the subjective experiences of desire, power, and loss. Inspired by feminist theory and queer subcultures, they address the contradictions of representation in sculptures, drawings, performances, and videos, particularly as it relates to their own identity as a nonbinary multiracial artist.

Vassar students, along with area college and high school AP chemistry students, are invited to form teams to participate in a fun chemistry game based on the old TV show “College Bowl.”

People talk a lot about freedom. But unfreedom is what faces us. A Bard College assistant professor of philosophy will describe the problem and how it might be addressed.

An exploration of individual and collective history as viewed through multiple lenses, proposing alternatives to the systemic representations ordered by colonial narratives. Gallery talk & opening reception: October 28, 2022, 5:00–7:00 p.m.

Join us as we kick off Vassar’s next comprehensive campaign. In addition to the official announcement, there will be panels, faculty presentations, and more.

Director/producer Michael Dwyer made this 20-minute film featuring Tomiko Morimoto West, a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima who taught Japanese language courses at Vassar for a decade until she retired in 1994. Both will be available for a Q&A session after the screening.

Art historian Dora Apel considers the dynamic nature of memory, how it can be mobilized for social justice, and how memory is embodied, including through her own experience as a daughter of Holocaust survivors and a cancer survivor. A reception for Dora Apel and artist Buzz Spector will precede the lecture.

An exhibition in the Vassar College Art Library.

Dr. Janet Sheung from W. M. Keck Science Department, The Claremont Colleges, will discuss her current research.

Eduardo Navega, conductor

This is an in-person event that will also be streamed live