In Conversation with Great Minds
Ann Dowd

Wednesday, October 10, 2018
DePaul Student Center, room 120
2250 N Sheffield Avenue, Chicago

7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.	Special Screening
8:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.	Conversation with Ann Dowd

Emmy Award-winning actress, Ann Dowd, returns to her alma mater to talk about her career and her art. Known to many for her recent appearances in The Handmaid’s Tale and The Leftovers, Dowd’s work from television to film to Broadway has earned her a reputation as a master of her craft, someone who disappears into a role—large or small—and inhabits that character with such skill and ease that “acting” doesn’t even seem like the right verb. Come celebrate the illustrious career and incomparable talent of Ann Dowd as the DHC screens some of her work and invites her into conversation in an evening dedicated to exploring the craft of acting and the far-reaching import of her art.​​​​

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In Conversation with Great Minds
Akram Khan

Monday, February 25, 2019
DePaul Student Center, room 120
2250 N Sheffield Avenue, Chicago

7:00 - 8:00 p.m.	Screening of the film The Six Seasons
8:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.	Akram Khan in Conversation with DHC Director, H. Peter Steeves

Akram Khan is one of the most innovative, creative, acclaimed dancer-choreographers in the world. Trained in the classical South Asian dance, Kathak, as well as contemporary dance, Khan is celebrated for producing work that imaginatively erases traditional boundaries, thoughtfully incorporates unexpected collaborations, effortlessly fuses seemingly disparate traditions, and ingeniously pushes against the norms and expectations of dance and society in order to fashion something that is so inventively meaningful that it changes how we view ourselves as well as our expectations of dance. An inspired and inspiring artist, Khan’s work never fails to show just what dance is capable of as an art form—on both an individual and a cultural scale.​​​​

Less than a week before Harris Theater's U.S.-exclusive presentation of English National Ballet performing Khan's first full-length choreographed ballet—a reimagining of the 1841 classic Giselle that, in Khan's hands, now updates the setting, reimagines the stakes, and unabashedly takes on the issues of sex, gender, race, and class—Akram Khan visits the DePaul Humanities Center to talk about Giselle, dance, his life's work, and why the stakes have always truly been high in the arts and humanities.

(This program is presented in partnership with The Joan W. and Irving B. Harris Theater for Music and Dance.)

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Filth 1
"Lovely Filth"

Wednesday, October 17, 2018
DePaul Student Center, room 120
2250 N Sheffield Avenue, Chicago

7:00 - 9:00 p.m.

In this year of the 200th anniversary of "Frankenstein," we will be looking at the ways in which something mainstream culture might regard as dirty, grotesque, or generally unworthy actually deserves celebration. From feminist epistemology and "manufactured uncertainty," to the challenges (as well as rewards) of being gay and aging, to the role of spoilage in making delicious cheese, The DHC kicks off its "Year of Filth" series with a night of lectures, performances, and a free exotic cheese tasting for the first 100 audience members in attendance!

Featuring:
Lorraine Code, Distinguished Research Professor Emerita in Philosophy, York University, Toronto
Dustin Goltz, DHC Fellow, Professor, College of Communication, DePaul University
Liz Thorpe, author of The Book of Cheese​

(This program is presented in partnership with The Joan W. and Irving B. Harris Theater for Music and Dance.)

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Filth 2
"Atomic Waste(s)"

**THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED**
Rescheduled for: Monday, September 16, 2019
DePaul Student Center, room 120
2250 N Sheffield Ave, Chicago

6:30 - 7:00 p.m.	The Atomic Gallery interactive exhibit
7:00 - 9:00 p.m.	Lectures and Performances

An investigation of the ethical, political, and literal filth of living in the atomic age, this evening examines the legacy of the bomb and the atomic age in general—featuring lectures on radiation and discrimination in Hiroshima and Fukushima; how Italy’s literary and artistic landscape has changed due to the atomic age over the last eight decades; the storage of atomic waste on sacred Native American Indian lands; and the general philosophical and ethical implications of living in a world where the atom itself is the object of technology—complete with live Butoh dance and musical performances as well as an interactive gallery/museum before the event where audience members can learn about the history of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, view artifacts from the U.S military personnel involved with the dropping of the bombs in Japan, learn about the science and the ethics of “splitting the atom,” and use a Geiger counter to test the radiation levels of several items on display.

Featuring:

Yuki Miyamoto, DHC Fellow, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, DePaul University

Maria Anna Mariani, DHC Visiting Fellow, Assistant Professor of Modern Italian Literature, University of Chicago

Oguri, dancer​

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Filth 3
"XXX: Love and Life in a Post-Porn World"

Wednesday, February 13, 2019
DePaul Student Center, room 120
2250 N Sheffield Ave, Chicago

7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.

On Valentine’s Day Eve, the DHC ushers in a discussion about the end of pornography featuring some of the nation’s preeminent scholars working in the field.  The evening will be an investigation of the arguments against pornography, an analysis of how patriarchy (and thus misogyny) as well as white supremacy fuel the pornography industry, and an imagining of how love and empathy might prosper in a society without pornography.  With free special Valentine’s Day candy for the audience!

Featuring:

Rebecca Whisnant, Professor and Chair, Department of Philosophy, University of Dayton, and co-editor of Not for Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography

Meghan Murphy, Founder and Editor, Feminist Current

Robert Jensen, Professor Emeritus, School of Journalism, University of Texas at Austin, and author of Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity

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Filth 4
"Bourgeois Disgust: Cleanliness and Its Discontents"

Wednesday, April 10, 2019
DePaul Student Center, room 120
2250 N Sheffield Ave, Chicago

5:30 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.	Screening of The Gleaners and I (Les glaneurs et la glaneuse, dir. Agnès Varda, 2000)
7:00 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.	Lectures and Performances
8:30 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.	The Gallery of the Gross interactive exhibit featuring the Bach and Beethoven Experience

How are the conceptions of “clean” and "disgust" related to class, race, sex and other power structures philosophically and historically?  The DHC looks at the arts’ and humanities’ encounter with the obscene, with revulsion, and—in an evening of performances and lectures—asks if our notion of cleanliness is hopelessly bourgeois. The event begins with a screening of Agnès Varda’s film, “The Gleaners and I” (Les glaneurs et la glaneuse, 2000) and concludes with “The Gallery of the Gross” in which audience members will, among other things, be able to make mud pies and generally “get their hands dirty” during a live performance by the Bach and Beethoven Experience. Free one-of-a-kind “bourgeois cleanliness” take-home gift to the first 100 audience members in attendance!

Featuring:

Pascale-Anne Brault, Professor of French, Department of Modern Languages, DePaul University

Ben Kinsinger

Tamara Ketabgian, Professor of English, Beloit College​

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Filth 5
"Pure Being"

Monday, April 29, 2019
DePaul Student Center, room 120
2250 N Sheffield Ave, Chicago

7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.

The DHC concludes its "Year of Filth" series by investigating the idea of filth's putative opposite: purity. From questions concerning what it means to adapt a work of art from an "original" to the relation between religious ecstasy and narcotic euphoria, from wondering if you are most yourself hen in a psychologically dissociative state to whether the self can even interrogate itself, we problematize the false notion that it is possible for anything to go untouched by what is other and celebrate our impure purity together through the arts.

Featuring:

Greg Scott, DHC Fellow, Professor of Sociology, DePaul University

Melissa Lorraine, DHC Visiting Fellow, artistic director of Theatre Y

Maryse Meijer, author of Heartbreaker and Rag

Sunshine Boys (Freda Love Smith, Dag Juhlin, and Jaqueline Schimmel)​

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The Horror of the Humanities VI
The Witch

Monday, October 29, 2018
DePaul Student Center, room 120
2250 N Sheffield Avenue, Chicago

6:00 p.m. - 6:30 p.m.	"Haunted House" Interactive Halloween Exhibit
6:30 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.	Screening of The Witch (dir. Robert Eggers, 2015)
8:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.	Conversation with Robert Eggers

The DePaul Humanities Center’s sixth annual Halloween event begins, as always, with an avant-garde “haunted house” featuring multimedia and interactive displays, installation art, and exhibits pointing to the horror of everyday life as well as the relationship between horror and the history of the humanities; continues with a screening of a contemporary masterpiece of Americana horror, The Witch; and concludes with a talk and Q&A with the film’s director, Robert Eggers.  Have your tarot cards read; take a selfie with Frankenstein while pondering the senses in which you might be the monster; meet Human the Clown; get a custom horrific poem on the topic of your choosing written for you while you wait; take home a free silhouette portrait of your shadow self by Nina Nightingale; dare to confront The Haunted Fax Machine; listen to the terrifying story of "The Googled Raven"; learn about the horrors of literacy, childhood, and your job; discover the terrifying evil that connects school grades and shoe size; and encounter the witch as surprises abound on Halloween-Eve Eve at the DHC!​

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The Biblical Humanities
"Why Do You Stand Outside?":
Hospitality and the Stranger

Wednesday, January 16, 2019
St. Vincent de Paul Parish
1010 West Webster Ave, Chicago

7:00 – 9:00 p.m.	Lectures and Performances
9:00 – 9:30 p.m.	Wine and cheese reception sponsored by Saint Vincent de Paul Parish

With a series of lectures and live musical performances by the parish chorale, the DHC continues its annual collaboration with the St Vincent de Paul Parish in an investigation of what it means to welcome the stranger. From an analysis of the ambivalent role played by three biblical strangers who also happen to be the only three women mentioned in the genealogy of Christ, to providing “deep access” to those in our community who are differently abled, to pondering the ways in which the portrait in the history of art might offer an access to empathy, we will think together about the religious, philosophical, artistic, and ethical-political conceptions of strangers, refugees, foreigners, immigrants, and neighbors—and what it means to offer sincere hospitality.

Featuring:

Robert Beatty and the Saint Vincent de Paul Chamber Chorale

Christina M. Gschwandtner, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Fordham University

Thomas E. Reynolds, Vice-Principal and Associate Professor of Theology, Emmanuel College of Victoria University in the University of Toronto

Amy M. Mooney, Associate Professor of Art History, Columbia College, Chicago ​

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The Scholar's Game Night
The Scholar's Improv III: Revenge of the Sith Prof

Wednesday, April 3, 2019
DePaul Student Center, room 120
2250 N Sheffield Ave, Chicago

7:00 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.

Join us as five DePaul professors and a troupe of professional Chicago comedians go toe-to-toe, as the comedians perform improv and the professors are challenged to lecture extemporaneously on surprise topics. Led by improv comic Pete Parsons, the comedians will present six improvised scenes, showcasing their talent, quick minds, and artistry. These moments will be interspersed with five mini-lectures by DePaul professors, each accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation in his or her field but which he or she has never seen before, thus forcing the professor to construct a lecture based on the PowerPoint on the spot.

Featuring:

Heidi Nast, International Studies
Ted Anton, English
Fr. James Halstead, Religious Studies
Martha Martinez-Firestone, Sociology
Rick Lee, Philosophy​

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