Videos | National Humanities Center

Videos

%customfield(subject)%

Keynote Address: “Regressing to Eugenics? Technologies and Histories of Recognition”

In her keynote address, Wendy Chun discusses how artificial intelligence reproduces and exacerbates ideologies about identity and contributes to the increasingly fractious politics of the twenty-first century. A leading thinker on the influence of new technologies, Chun is the Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media at Simon Fraser University. She also leads the university’s Digital Democracies Institute, whose purpose is to integrate research in the humanities and data sciences to address questions of equality and social justice in order to combat the proliferation of online “echo chambers,” abusive language, discriminatory algorithms and mis/disinformation.

%customfield(subject)%

Panel Discussion: Can Artificial Intelligence Create, and What Is the Role of the Artist?

With the prevalence of artificial intelligence in our daily lives, it’s natural to ask, “What will be the future of art in an AI-driven society?” This question becomes even more relevant as AI increasingly appears in the creative domain. Across human history, artists have always integrated new technologies into their practice—from oil paint and printmaking in the Renaissance to photography, motion pictures, and computer animation in the modern era. In this panel discussion, artists Ahmed Elgammal and Carla Gannis talk about their work, created with AI technologies, and how their relationships with AI inform their creative processes.

%customfield(subject)%

Between Teacher and Student: The Obligations of Mentorship

What are the reasonable boundaries and expectations that students should expect from their mentors? And what obligations are owed to those who share their knowledge and experience? Looking at traditions from the ancient world to the modern era, these three scholars will discuss the nature of mentorship in different cultural contexts and how the concept of mentorship continues to resonate in contemporary classrooms.

%customfield(subject)%

NHC Virtual Book Talk: Performance and the Afterlives of Injustice

Catherine M. Cole reveals how the voices and visions of artists in South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo can help us see what otherwise evades perception from the injustices produced by apartheid and colonialism. Examining works by contemporary performing artists Brett Bailey, Faustin Linyekula, Gregory Maqoma, and others, Cole demonstrates how the arts are “helping to conjure, anticipate, and dream a world that is otherwise.”

%customfield(subject)%

NHC Virtual Book Talk: A Legal History of the Civil War and Reconstruction

Laura F. Edwards’s compelling book considers the sweeping transformation of American law produced in the wake of the Civil War. Through her analysis of constitutional amendments, Supreme Court decisions, and legal claims espoused by everyone from national politicians to everyday citizens, Edwards demonstrates how the notion of rights became so integral in post-Civil War America, especially in the lives of African Americans, women, and organized laborers.

%customfield(subject)%

NHC Virtual Book Talk: The Life of Roman Republicanism

Joy Connolly argues in her most recent book, The Life of Roman Republicanism that “Cicero, Sallust, and Horace inspire fresh thinking about central concerns of contemporary political thought and action” including the role conflict plays in the political community, the conditions needed to promote an equal and just society, citizens’ interdependence on one another for senses of selfhood, and the uses and dangers of self-sovereignty and fantasy.

%customfield(subject)%

NHC Virtual Book Talk Series: Conflict and Resolution

February 3–24, 2021 | For centuries, the importance of civility to the health of republics has been widely recognized. Peaceful resolution of conflicts, open debate, and the nurturing of an engaged citizenry are essential to maintaining governments in which power is held by the people. Yet, civility remains elusive. The scholars in this series help us think about ways of encouraging, preserving, and restoring civility—through political and creative expression, in the courts, on the page, and on the screen—from the classical period to the modern era.

%customfield(subject)%

Scholar-to-Scholar Talk: “The Price of Injustice”

Reckoning with the centuries-long toll of treating African Americans as less than their fellow citizens is a challenging task, requiring us to consider not only what has been extracted from and denied the mistreated but the costs borne by all of us. Though these three scholars focus on different periods and places in this country's history with quite different sources, approaches, and questions, their work illuminates the myriad ways that racism and systemic injustice affect us all.

%customfield(subject)%

NHC Virtual Book Talk: The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War

By awakening northerners to the true nature of slavery, and by enraging southerners who demanded the return of their human "property," fugitive slaves forced the nation to confront the truth about itself, and led inexorably to civil war. Andrew Delbanco's masterful examination of the fugitive slave story illuminates what brought us to war with ourselves and the terrible legacies of slavery that are with us still.