The Humanities Without Boundaries Lecture Series held its first event on Wednesday at Helen C. White Hall.
The lecture series brings distinguished scholars to Madison whose work constitutes the best in the field of humanities, according to the series’ website. Currently, there are four more speakers scheduled for this school year.
Julia Stern lead the way Wednesday night as the first speaker in the lecture series. Stern is the Henry Sandborn Noyes Professor of Literature and the Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence at Northwestern University, where she has taught in the English Department since 1991.
Stern’s talk, titled “Love and Work Are the Cornerstones of Our Humanity,” reflects on the importance of work and love, as well as on her academic career over the last 30 years. Stern describes how questions she raised about the world’s inequality as a child shaped the career and scholarly interests she has today.
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“I was wondering why the world was organized in ways that made little sense to me,” Stern said during her talk. “Why did leaders get murdered in convertibles in parades, or in motels? Why did people become terrorists?”
Stern said that a large part of her academic career to classic Hollywood cinema, specifically the films of actress Bette Davis. Her book Bette Davis Black and White was released Nov. 26, 2021.
“She proved remarkably compelling even in her darkest pictures,” Stern said in the lecture. “Bette Davis made being a powerful woman delectable.”
Stern is interested in the significance of race in American culture, and she teaches different courses on American and African American women writers. Stern is the author of two other scholarly books, “The Plight of Feeling: Sympathy and Dissent in the Early American Novel” (1997), and “Mary Chesnut’s Civil War Epic” (2010).
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The Humanities Without Boundaries lecture series brings distinguished scholars to Madison whose work constitutes the best in the field of humanities.
Regina Rini will speak next at the second Humanities Without Boundaries scheduled for Sept. 20, according to their site. Rini will give a talk titled “The Trauma Echo: Science and Public Uncertainty in the Data Century.”
