This event is now cancelled. Beirut was the artistic and intellectual hub of the Arab world in the 1950s and ’60s. In this talk, Robyn Creswell, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Yale University, will situate Beiruti modernism within a wider landscape of Cold War politics, aesthetic abstraction, and Arab intellectual history.

After 1945, abstract art exploded in the Arab world, announcing a new cultural renaissance. In this talk, Pepe Karmel, Associate Professor of Art History, NYU, will link the different varieties of Arab abstraction to their counterparts in the broader Middle East and in Europe—and discuss how these varieties served as vehicles for competing visions of Arab modernity rooted in histories and experiences unique to each nation. 

Exploring the social and political quagmire of getting dressed, Callen Zimmerman, who teaches Fashion and Art History at City Tech and York College, CUNY, will examine the discursive practices, nuanced modes, and slight twists that fashion undergoes in the hands of queer people.

Jedediah Purdy, Professor of Law, Duke University, will discuss: How did a ‘War on Coal’ come to stand for an existential fight among Americans, and between different ideas of the country? How did we move from a band of self-styled ‘patriots’ occupying a wildlife refuge in Oregon in 2015 to the President stripping protection from national […]