Research Groups

Transnational Studies Working Group
Transnational Studies responds to a new consensus among a growing number of academics that the categories used to study social practices, identity construction (racial, queer, or otherwise) and historical causation need to be reconsidered and revised.  Learn more >

CHAT Spring 2012 Events

Printable Spring 2012 Calendar (PDF)

All events are free and open to the Tufts community

February

Tuesday, Feb. 28, 5:30 pm
Coolidge Room, Ballou Hall
*Q&A and Reception to follow

Distinguished Writer's Series: Martin Amis
Martin Amis is the author of more than twenty books including the novels Money (1984), London Fields (1989), The Information (1995) and, most recently, The Pregnant Widow (2010), an autobiography Experience (2000), three collections of short stories, three books of essays and a meditation on Stalin Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million (2002).

March

Book Into Film and Documentary Film Week:
Monday, March 5 – Thursday, March 8
*Q&A and Reception to follow all events

Monday, March 5, 6:00 pm
Cabot Intercultural Center Auditorium

Tom Perrotta and Albert Berger
Moderated by Professor Julie Dobrow

Tom Perrotta is the author of seven novels, including Election and Little Children both of which were made into critically acclaimed, Academy Award® nominated films. Albert Berger produced the Academy Award® nominated films Little Miss Sunshine (2006) and Little Children (2006). His film credits also include King of the Hill (1993), Election (1999), The Wood (1999), Cold Mountain (2003), and the award-winning documentary Crumb (1994). He is a Tufts alumnus, class of 1979.

Tuesday, March 6, 5:30 pm
Barnum Hall, Room 008

Wham! Bam! Islam!
Isaac Solotaroff and Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa

Isaac Solotaroff is a documentary film director, producer and editor. His film Wham! Bam! Islam! follows Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa as he establishes THE 99 comic book series. Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa is the Founder and CEO of Teshkeel Media Group, for whom he created THE 99, the first group of comic superheroes born of an Islamic archetype. THE 99 has received positive attention from the world's media.

Wednesday, March 7, 5:30 pm
Tisch Library, Room 304
"Documenting the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict"

A Visual Clash
Yael Hersonski

Yael Hersonski is an Israeli director and editor whose new documentary in progress, A Visual Clash, uses archival material relating to the March 2012 Gaza Freedom Flotilla to explore the gap between the unrepeatable event itself and the virtual media event that followed.

Degrees of Incarceration
Amahl Bishara and Nidal Al-Azraq

Amahl Bishara is an assistant professor of anthropology at Tufts University, and her husband Nidal Al-Azraq teaches Arabic in Boston and is a long-time activist with youth in Aida Refugee Camp, Bethlehem. Their documentary, Degrees of Incarceration, examines how Palestinian refugees manage the heavy toll political prison takes on young and old under Israeli occupation.

Thursday, March 8, 7 pm
Barnum Hall, Room 104

My Perestroika
Robin Hessman

Robin Hessman's feature-length documentary directing debut, My Perestroika, which focuses on five young Russians coming of age in the shifting political landscape of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival as part of the US Documentary competition and was screened in New York as part of the prestigious film series, New Directors/New Films, curated by MoMA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Tuesday, March 27, 5:30 pm
Coolidge Room, Ballou Hall
*Q&A and Reception to follow

Distinguished Writer's Series: Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith is the author of three novels, White Teeth (2000), which won the Guardian First Book Award, the Whitbread First Novel Award, the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and the Orange Prize for Fiction; The Autograph Man (2002); and On Beauty (2005). Her essays, collected in Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays (2009), have appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Guardian, Harpers, and The Believer. Co-Sponsored by the Toupin-Bolwell Fund and the Diversity Fund.

New Russian-American Writing
(In Conjunction with Wellesley College)

Reading at Wellesley College
Wednesday, March 28, 4:30 pm
Newhouse Center, Green Hall
Moderated by Professor Anna Wexler-Katsnelson, Princeton University

Panel and Discussion at Tufts
Thursday, March 29, 4 pm
Coolidge Room, Ballou Hall
Moderated by Professor Adrian J. Wanner, Penn State
*Q&A and Reception to follow

David Bezmozgis, Anya Ulinich, and Lara Vapnyar
Anya Ulinich is the author of Petropolis (2008). She was awarded the Goldberg Prize for Emerging Writers of Jewish Fiction (2008), named a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature Finalist (2008), and included in the National Book Foundation's "5 under 35" (2007).

Lara Vapnyar emigrated from Russia to New York in 1994. She is the critically-acclaimed author of the novel Memoirs of a Muse (2006), and two short-story collections, Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love (2008) and There Are Jews in My House (2004) and She teaches creative writing at New York University.

Thursday, March 29, 4 pm
Alumnae Lounge, Aidekman Arts Center
Moderated by Rosemary Hicks, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
*Q&A and Reception to follow

Religion and Politics in the USA
This two-hour panel discussion features experts on evangelicals in office, American-Israeli politics, State Department outreach programs to Muslims abroad, and the internal politics within American Muslim, Jewish, and Christian communities over gender, sexuality, and foreign policy. Speakers include Hishaam Aidi, Lecturer in Discipline of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University; Juliane Hammer, Assistant Professor, Kenan Rifai Fellow in Islamic Studies at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Laura Levitt, Professor of Religion, Jewish Studies and Gender at Temple University; Darnell L. Moore, Visiting Scholar at New York University, Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality; Josef Sorett, Assistant Professor of Religion and African-American Studies at Columbia University; and David Harrington Watt, Associate Professor of History at Temple University.

Thursday, March 29, 6:30 pm
Coolidge Room, Ballou Hall

Distinguished Writer's Series: David Bezmozgis
David Bezmozgis is an award-winning writer and filmmaker whose stories have appeared in numerous publications including The New Yorker, Harpers, Zoetrope All-Story, and The Walrus. His first book, Natasha and Other Stories, was published in 2004 in the US and Canada and was translated into fifteen languages. In 2006, he developed his first feature film, Victoria Day.

Friday, March 30, 5 pm
Cabot Intercultural Center Auditorium
*Q&A to follow

Distinguished Writer's Series: Gary Shteyngart
Gary Shteyngart is the author of The Russian Debutante's Handbook (2002), Absurdistan (2006), and Super Sad True Love Story (2010). His writing has been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Granta, and Slate. He is the winner of the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction, the Book-of-the-Month Club First Fiction Award, the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction, and the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Literature. Shteyngart teaches in the graduate writing program at Columbia University.

April

Wednesday, April 18, 4 - 7 pm
Center for the Humanities at Tufts (CHAT)
Fung House- 48 Professors Row

CHAT Open House: Music, Poetry, and Refreshments
The Center for the Humanities at Tufts (CHAT) is celebrating its 5th anniversary with an afternoon of music, poetry, and refreshments.
Our Open House will allow you to meet our accomplished faculty and staff, and explore how our Center promotes innovative, collaborative study in the humanities and arts.

Wednesday, April 18, 7 pm
Coolidge Room, Ballou Hall

Points East
Events Co-Sponsored by the Center for the Humanities at Tufts (CHAT)

Wednesday, March 7, 4:30 pm
Rabb Room, Lincoln Filene Center

A Mixture of Pure Waters: Thoreau Reads the Gita at Walden Pond
Richard Davis
Bard College, Professor and Chair of Religion and Asian Studies

Wednesday, April 4, 12 pm
Center for the Humanities
Fung House – 48 Professors Row

The Ottoman Self-Image: Multi-Culturalism and the Photograph in Les Costumes Populaires de la Turquie en 1873
Erin Hyde Nolan
Boston University, History of Photography
Tufts Alumna

Tuesday, April 17, 6 pm
The Granoff Family Hillel Center, Room 002
220 Packard Ave.

Second Person Singular
Sayed Kashua

Sayed Kashua, a Palestinian Arab living in Jerusalem, is an author and journalist and the creator of the critically acclaimed TV series Arab Labor. His weekly column in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz satirically describes the challenges faced by Israeli Arabs, who navigate between two worlds. He is the author of Dancing Arabs (2002), Let it Be Morning (2006), and Second Person Singular (2012). Sayed Kashua has received the Grinzane Cavour Award for First Novel 2004 (Italy), The Prime Minister's Prize 2005 (Israel) and the Lessing Prize for Critic 2006 (Germany). SFJFF Freedom of Expression Award winner in 2010 (USA). Co-Sponsored by CHAT, The Diversity Fund, Fares Center, GRALL, Tufts Hillel, Hebrew Program, International Relations Program, Judaic Studies Program, and Middle Eastern Studies Program.

Previous Themes / Events:

Fall 2011  |  Spring 2011  |  Fall 2010  |  Spring 2010  |  Fall 2009  |  Spring 2009  |  Fall 2008  |  Spring 2008