Past Events

Feb
08
The Glow of the Sun King: Artisans and the Ascendancy of Louis XIV (Lecture)
Monday, February 8, 2016 - 6:00pm
Carnegie Museum of Art Theater

This lecture from Chandra Mukerji (Communication and Science Studies, UC-San Diego) is part of a spring 2016 lecture series, Versailles: Space, Power, Memory, organized by the Architectural Studies Program and the Department of French and Italian Languages and Literatures at the University of Pittsburgh.

Feb
09
The Melody Lingers On: A Celebration of the Great American Songbook
Tuesday, February 9, 2016 to Tuesday, February 23, 2016

This activity will involve three events: “The Music of World War II”; “The Music of Cole Porter,” and “Fred Astaire and the Hollywood Dance Musical.” Each presentation—of about forty-five minutes—will involve a musical PowerPoint consisting of extensive musical excerpts and film clips, vintage sheet music, album covers and photographs. The presentations will be followed by Q & A and/or discussion.

Feb
09
#FergusonSyllabus: Using Social Media to Bring the Humanities into Public Debate
Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - 5:00pm
Humanities Center, 602 Cathedral of Learning

Dr. Marcia Chatelain, Associate Professor of History at Georgetown University, has been involved in multiple initiatives to bring academic voices and knowledge into public debates over race, policing, and violence. This talk will focus on her experiences with scholarly outreach via social media and other platforms.

Feb
10
Lime Kiln Field Day: A Silent Film with Donald Sosin on piano
Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - 2:00pm
William Pitt Union Assembly Room

A public screening of the 1913 silent film Lime Kiln Field Day, presented with live music by pianist Donald Sosin, one of America’s foremost composers and performers of silent film scores. A light-hearted work starring Bert Williams, Lime Kiln Field Day is one of the earliest movies ever to feature an all-black cast and joyful, realistic depictions of daily life for turn-of-the-century African-Americans; as such, it stands in powerful contrast to the more well-known, nakedly racist Birth of a Nation that was produced during the same period.

Feb
11
Setting Plato Straight (Book Release)
Thursday, February 11, 2016 - 4:00pm
402 Cathedral of Learning

In Setting Plato Straight, Todd W. Reeser undertakes the first sustained and comprehensive study of Renaissance textual responses to Platonic same-sex sexuality. Reeser mines an expansive collection of translations, commentaries, and literary sources to study how Renaissance translators transformed ancient eros into nonerotic, non-homosexual relations.

Feb
15
Reception and Appropriations of Versailles and French Formal Gardens in the 20th and 21st Centuries (Lecture)
Monday, February 15, 2016 - 6:00pm
Carnegie Museum of Art Theater

This lecture by Georges Farhat (Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto) is part of a spring 2016 lecture series, Versailles: Space, Power, Memory, organized by the Architectural Studies Program and the Department of French and Italian Languages and Literatures at the University of Pittsburgh. The series is designed to investigate how the intensive study of the history and physical configuration of sites contributes to our understanding of what it means to be human.

Feb
17
What Does it Mean to Be Curious?---Can Tools Enable Curiosity?
Wednesday, February 17, 2016

The third conversation in the "What Does it Mean to be Curious?" series, this conversation will focus on whether tools--digital or otherwise--can foster creativity.

Feb
18
The Craft of XML (Dr. Wendell Piez Lecture)
Thursday, February 18, 2016 - 11:30am
Ferguson Theater, Smith Hall

This talk will be given by Dr. Wendell Piez, a prominent public-sector digital humanist. The lecture is a Pitt-Greensburg Academic Village Presentation, and is part of a series of events taking place on the Greensburg and Oakland campuses.

Feb
18
Leonardo's Disasters (Gerard Passannante Lecture)
Thursday, February 18, 2016 - 5:00pm
Humanities Center, 602 Cathedral of Learning

Dr. Passannante (English, University of Maryland) will discuss Leonardo da Vinci’s lifelong fascination with images of natural catastrophe—men and women swept up in hurricanes, cities demolished in a single violent stroke, the earth rendered a mere speck of dust by a sudden shift of scale. Moving from the artist’s instructions on how to paint a deluge (which would capture the imagination of filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein) to his astonishing late sketches of the flood, Passannante will consider the philosophical questions that haunted Leonardo as he pictured scenes of destruction.

Feb
19
Frankenstein's Skeleton (Dr. Wendell Piez Lecture)
Friday, February 19, 2016 - 4:00pm
Humanities Center, 602 Cathedral of Learning

This talk will be given by Dr. Wendell Piez, a prominent public-sector digital humanist.

Pages