Event: Swimming Back to Trout River: A Conversation with Novelist Linda Rui Feng

Date and Time: Thursday, December 8, 2022, 6 - 7:30 p.m.

Location: Richland Library, Main Branch Auditorium

Please join us for a conversation with Linda Rui Feng about her highly acclaimed novel, Swimming Back to Trout River, which Garth Greenwell called “one of the most beautiful debuts I have read in years.”

Linda Rui Feng is a cultural historian at the University of Toronto. Her research takes her to books from the ninth century, maps of the early modern era and, more recently, the history of scent and aromatics. She is the author of the novel Swimming Back to Trout River, which was a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and was longlisted for the Giller Prize, the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and the Aspen Words Literary Prize.

Sponsored by: Transpacific Intercultural Collaboration Research Group, USC Humanities Collaborative, Center for Asian Studies, Walker Institute of International and Area Studies, and Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures

Event: Bag & Board

Date and Time: Wednesday, December 7, 2022, 10 a.m. - 4 p.m.

Location: Hollings Library, Program Room

Join us for a super time. Help preserve comic book history, learn about obscure titles and characters, and vote for your favorite cover art.

Event: Games and the Meaning of Life

Speaker: Thi Nguyen, University of Utah

Date and Time: Wednesday, November 30, 2022, at 6 p.m.

Location: Davis, Room 209

We can become obsessed with the score and with winning in two very different places in our life. Sometimes we do it with games: we become entirely obsessed with victory in the terms specified by the game. Sometimes we do it in our real lives: we become entirely obsessed with success, as measured by the rankings and metrics of our technology’s institutional environment.

These two phenomena look superficially similar, but they’re spiritual opposites. At its best, game-playing is done for its own sake. It helps us find our way into a rich, brilliant, fulfilling activity. In game-playing, we choose our scoring systems because we like the actions they shape. At their worst, rankings are a tool for warping our values, forcing us into hollow, empty activity for the sake of somebody else’s interests. Real play is the heart of a meaningful life; an obsession with rankings and metrics can rob our life of vivid meaning.

Presented by: Humanities Collaborative

Event: The Life and Times of the Zealy Daguerreotypes

Speaker: Gregg Hecimovich, Professor of English at Furman University

Date and Time: Wednesday, November 23, 2022, 6 - 7 p.m.

Location: Karen J. Williams Courtroom, University of South Carolina School of Law

Admission: Free and open to the public

In March 1850, five men and two women were photographed partially naked in the studio of the Columbia, South Carolina artist Joseph T. Zealy. After their rediscovery in 1976, these images became the best-known visual record of enslaved Americans before the Civil War. Gregg Hecimovich shared his detective work uncovering the lives and times of seven enslaved Americans as part of his current ensemble biography project.

Presented by: Humanities Collaborative Lecture Series

Event: An evening of 16mm films, videos and in-process slide projections by Jason Livingston

Date and Time: Thursday, November 10, 2022, at 7 p.m.

Location: 214 McMaster, University of South Carolina

Presented by: Southern Gauge

Event: Jason Mott

Date: Monday, November 7, 2022

Co-sponsored by: Southern Studies

Event: Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution

Speakers: Woody Holton and Bakari Sellers

Date and Time: Tuesday, November 1, 2022, 6 - 8 p.m.

Location: Chappelle Auditorium, Allen University

A conversation with author Woody Holton and Bakari Sellers, CNN political analyst and former South Carolina state legislator.

Sponsored by: History Center, Humanities Collaborative and Allen University

Event: Boubacar Ndiaye

Date and Time: Tuesday, October 25, 2022, at 7 p.m.

Location: Columbia Museum of Art Theatre

Co-sponsored by: Francophone Studies Program and LLC

Event: (In)Visibility: Aesthetic Dimensions of Perception

Format: Poster and artmaking session

Date and Time: Wednesday, October 19, 2022, noon - 4 p.m.

Location: Russell House Ballroom, Section B

Participants were invited to drop in at any time for this poster and artmaking session.

Sponsored by: (In)Visibility Research Group and Humanities Collaborative

Event: Oceans, Gardens, and Jungles: Worldviews and the Planet

Speaker: Prasenjit Duara, Oscar Tang Chair of East Asian Studies at Duke University

Date and Time: Tuesday, October 11, 2022, at 4 p.m.

Location: McKissick Museum Theater

Prasenjit Duara discussed contemporary world politics, nation-states, Enlightenment modernity and alternative cosmologies for imagining a post-Enlightenment planetary future.

Co-sponsors: Walker Institute, History Center, Department of History, Transpacific Intercultural Collaboration Research Group and Humanities Collaborative

Event: Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance

Speaker: Mia Bay

Date and Time: Thursday, October 6, 2022, 6 - 8 p.m.

Location: University of South Carolina School of Law, Karen J. Williams Courtroom

Mia Bay discussed her prize-winning book, a riveting account of racial segregation in America that reveals how central travel restrictions were to the creation of Jim Crow laws and why “traveling Black” has been at the heart of the quest for racial justice.

Book signing and reception followed.

Sponsored by: History Center, Institute for Southern Studies, African American Studies Program, Humanities Collaborative and Women’s and Gender Studies Program

Event: Conversations on the American South: The Inaugural Conversation

Topic: Race, Gender and the Civil War Era

Speaker: Thavolia Glymph, Peabody Family Distinguished Professor of History at Duke University

Date and Time: Monday, May 2, 2022, at 6 p.m.

Location: Karen J. Williams Courtroom, University of South Carolina School of Law

Conversations on the American South are live podcast interviews with distinguished scholars, teachers and students of the American South. They are recorded in front of an audience and broadcast on the Take on the South podcast.

Reception and book signing followed.

Presented by: Institute for Southern Studies

Co-sponsored by: History Center, Department of History, African American Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, Institute for African American Research and Humanities Collaborative

Event: Book talk on The Teaching Archive: A New History for Literary Study

Speakers: Rachel Sagner Buurma and Laura Heffernan

Date: Friday, April 22, 2022

Event: Justice Rising: Robert Kennedy’s America in Black and White

Speakers: Patricia Sullivan and U.S. District Court Judge Richard Gergel

Date and Time: Tuesday, April 19, 2022, at 6 p.m.

Location: University of South Carolina School of Law, Karen J. Williams Courtroom

A conversation with author Patricia Sullivan and U.S. District Court Judge Richard Gergel. Book signing and reception followed.

Sponsored by: College of Arts and Sciences History Center, Historic Columbia, Humanities Collaborative and University of South Carolina School of Law

Event: Language and Conflict: Looking Back on Four Decades of Field Research

Speaker: Dr. Daniel Everett, Trustee Professor of Cognitive Sciences at Bentley University

Date and Time: Monday, April 11, 2022, at 6 p.m.

Location: Hollings Room, Thomas Cooper Library

Dr. Everett spoke about his 40-plus years of field research in the Amazon, beginning in 1977. He discussed Brazil’s efforts to eliminate Indigenous languages and linguistic conflicts throughout the region.

Everett is the author of 11 books, including Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes and How Language Began. A reception and book signing followed the talk. Books were available for purchase.

Admission: Free and open to the public

Sponsored by: Humanities Collaborative in the College of Arts and Sciences, Office of the Vice President of Research, Thomas Cooper Library, Linguistics Program, Department of Political Science, Department of Anthropology, Department of English Language and Literature, and the Richard L. Walker Institute of International Studies

Event: A Conversation with Actor and Director Clark Johnson

Speaker: Clark Johnson

Moderator: Dr. Todd Shaw

Date and Time: Tuesday, April 5, 2022, noon - 1 p.m.

Location: Gambrell 245B

Clark Johnson was a director and cast member of The Wire, a sweeping look at the city of Baltimore, from its drug dealers to the city’s police department, schools and print media. Johnson also directed the Peabody Award-winning film Boycott, based on the Montgomery bus boycott.

Sponsored by: History Center, South Carolina Honors College and Humanities Collaborative

Event: Systemic Inequality in South Carolina Schools

Format: Dinner and panel discussion

Date and Time: Tuesday, April 5, 2022, 6 - 8:30 p.m.

Buffet dinner followed by discussion led by Dr. Bobby Donaldson with a panel featuring local educators, civil rights activists and university faculty to discuss historical and contemporary inequities in South Carolina schools.

Admission: This event was free, but registration was required.

Sponsored by: Humanities Collaborative, Center for Civil Rights History and Research, Department of Anthropology, and Education Foundations and Inquiry Program

Funding note: Partially funded by University of South Carolina Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’s Diversity and Inclusive Excellence Grant Fund

Event: Kashmir: The Personal Is Political

Speaker: Dr. Nitasha Kaul, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Westminster in London

Date and Time: Monday, April 4, 2022, at 4:30 p.m.

Location: Gambrell Hall, Room 152

Dr. Kaul is a Kashmiri novelist, academic, poet, economist and artist. Her talk addressed the politics of identity across nation-state borders and explored the connections between the personal and the political in the lives and memories of the Kashmiri people, both inside and outside of Kashmir. She also included a reading from her latest novel, Future Tense.

Sponsored by: College of Arts and Sciences Humanities Collaborative, Walker Institute and Women’s and Gender Studies Program

Event: On These Grounds

Format: Film screening followed by Q&A with activist Vivian Anderson

Date and Time: Monday, April 4, 2022, 4 - 7 p.m.

Location: Russell House Theater

A viral video shows a white policeman throwing a Black teenager from her school desk. One woman helps the girl, faces the officer and dismantles the system.

Sponsored by: Humanities Collaborative, Center for Civil Rights History and Research, Department of Anthropology, and Education Foundations and Inquiry Program

Funding note: Partially funded by University of South Carolina Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’s Diversity and Inclusive Excellence Grant Fund

Event: Presentation on NEH and NEA Grants for the Humanities

Date: Friday, April 1, 2022

Event: SC Black Press Institute Symposium

Date: Thursday, March 31, 2022

Location: Chappelle Auditorium, Allen University

This symposium brought together scholars, journalists and activists for a day of networking and learning focused on the past, present and future of media promoting issues important to African American people and communities.

Featured speakers: Cecil Williams, Sid Bedingfield, Bakari Sellers, Mika Gadsden, Crush Rush, Preach Jacobs and Wendy Brawley

Funding note: Funding for this event was provided by the National Park Service African American Civil Rights History Grant Program.

Event: The Life and Times of the Zealy Daguerreotypes

Speaker: Gregg Hecimovich, Professor of English at Furman University

Date and Time: Wednesday, March 23, 2022, 6 - 7 p.m.

Location: Karen J. Williams Courtroom, University of South Carolina School of Law

Admission: Free and open to the public

In March 1850, five men and two women were photographed partially naked in the studio of the Columbia, South Carolina artist Joseph T. Zealy. After their rediscovery in 1976, these images became the best-known visual record of enslaved Americans before the Civil War. Gregg Hecimovich shared his detective work uncovering the lives and times of seven enslaved Americans as part of his current ensemble biography project.

Presented by: Humanities Collaborative Lecture Series

Event: Extracting Accountability: Engineers and Corporate Social Responsibility

Speaker: Dr. Jessica Smith

Date and Time: Monday, March 21, 2022, at 4:50 p.m.

Location: Currell, Room 204

Dr. Smith is an Associate Professor in the Engineering, Design and Society Department at the Colorado School of Mines, where she also directs the Humanitarian Engineering and Science graduate program.

Dr. Smith is an anthropologist and science and technology studies scholar whose research centers on energy, engineering and public accountability.

Sponsored by: Critical Ecologies Lab of Humanities Collaborative, College of Arts and Sciences

Event: 2022 Carolinas Conflict Consortium

Date: Thursday-Friday, March 3-4, 2022

Location: Close-Hipp Building, University of South Carolina

Keynote speaker: Dr. Sam Whitt, High Point University

Presenters: Sanghoon Park, David Muchlinski, Ben Goldsmith, Sarah Lischer, Kyle Beardsley, Hye-Sung Kim, Hannah Switzer, Christopher Jackson, Jeff Carter, Scott Wolford, Konstantin Ash, Miroslav Shapovalov, Andrew Rosenberg and Hannah Alarian

Presented by: Humanities Collaborative

Event: Films for One to Eight Projectors: A Multiple-Projector Performance by Roger Beebe

Date and Time: Wednesday, March 2, 2022, at 7 p.m.

Location: if ART Gallery, 1223 Lincoln St., Columbia, SC 29201

Admission: $5 suggested donation

Roger Beebe returned to the road with a program of touring multi-projector performances. The program featured several newer works made during the last few years.

Event: Humanities Collaborative Lecture Series with Imani Perry

Speaker: Imani Perry, Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University

Date and Time: Tuesday, February 22, 2022, 6 - 7 p.m.

Location: Booker T. Washington Auditorium

Admission: Free and open to the public

Critically acclaimed author Imani Perry discussed her book, South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation, a narrative journey through the American South, positioning it as the heart of the American experiment for better and worse.

Presented by: Humanities Collaborative Lecture Series and the African American Studies Program

Event: Justice Deferred

Date and Time: Wednesday, February 16, 2022, 6 - 8 p.m.

Location: Karen J. Williams Courtroom, University of South Carolina School of Law

Barbara Phillips, formerly an attorney with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, interviewed attorney Armand Derfner and Dr. Vernon Burton about their book, Justice Deferred: Race and the Supreme Court.

Reception and book signing followed.

Sponsored by: University of South Carolina History Center, Department of History and Humanities Collaborative

Event: Easy to Love: An Alternative Valentine’s Day Event

Speaker: Briallen Hopper

Date: Saturday, February 12, 2022

Location: Odd Bird Books

Admission: Free and open to the public

This event celebrated friendship, singledom, queerness, spinsterhood and family. It featured a reading and discussion with Briallen Hopper, author of Hard to Love: Essays and Confessions, with musical accompaniment by The Collective at USC.

Brought to you by: Humanities Collaborative, Women’s and Gender Studies Program, School of Visual Art and Design, and School of Music’s Bridging Our Distances

Event: Literature in a Time of Crisis

Speaker: Phil Klay

Date and Time: Monday, February 7, 2022, 6 - 7 p.m.

Location: Karen J. Williams Courtroom, University of South Carolina School of Law

In this talk, novelist, journalist and Iraq War veteran Phil Klay asked how literature can help Americans understand their citizenship, and their humanity, in relation to the killing done in their name.

Presented by: Humanities Collaborative Lecture Series