Tuesday, January 31, 2023 at 5:30pm at 49 Main St. (next to Gallery 51)
This talk explores sanctioned forms of anti-Blackness and violence in Icelandic society
through a novel by Guðbergur Bergsson, alongside work by US southern writers William
Faulkner and Jean Toomer. Dr. Sciuto exposes the complex impacts of colonial histories,
such as the far-flung webs of racialized violence, as represented in literature from
these diverse regions not typically considered together.
Jenna Grace Sciuto is Associate Professor of Global Anglophone Literature at MCLA. Her first book, Policing Intimacy: Law, Sexuality, and the Color Line in Twentieth-Century Hemispheric
American Literature, was published by the University Press of Mississippi in 2021. She is currently at
work on her second book on Icelandic and US Southern literatures (under contract).
Thursday, February 9, 2023 at 12pm in Murdock 218
The flipped classroom and peer instruction are two complementary pedagogical methods
that foster active student engagement. In this lecture, Dr. Ward shares research about
a study to quantitatively measure the effectiveness of these approaches against international
benchmarks using the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) diagnostic in three first-year
physics courses at Nelson Mandela University.
Kebra Ward is Associate Professor of Physics at MCLA. Dr. Ward received her BS in astronomy from
the University of Southern California, and MS and PhD in physics from Lehigh University.
She was a Peace Corps volunteer in Mozambique, and recently received a Fulbright Scholarship
to study physics education in South Africa. She has taught at MCLA since 2015.
Thursday, March 2, 2023 at 12pm in Murdock 218
William Sharman Crawford was a wealthy Irish landlord, but he became a politician
dedicated to expanding voting rights for the English working class. In this talk,
Dr. Daly shares part of an article draft that uses material from a research trip to
Ireland to understand William Sharman Crawford, his motivations, and his impact.
Anthony Daly is a Professor of History at MCLA. He holds a BA from the University of Toronto and
an MA and Ph.D. from Boston College. His research interests center on Britain and
Ireland in the nineteenth century, especially radical activity in areas such as voting
rights, religion, and nationalism.
Thursday, March 30, 2023 at 5:30pm at 49 Main St. (next to Gallery 51)
World War I defined modern American culture, giving rise simultaneously to modern
U.S. foreign policy and Hollywood. In this talk, Dr. Hepworth argues that D.W. Griffith
was at the forefront of this transformation, teaching Americans to engage war primarily
through cinema, and conditioning them to accept U.S. war-making as fundamentally altruistic.
Mariah Hepworth is Assistant Professor of History at MCLA. Dr. Hepworth received her B.A. in history
from Seattle University and M.A. and Ph.D. in American history from Northwestern University.
Her research and teaching interests center on the ways in which popular culture shapes
mainstream understandings of American politics. At MCLA, she teaches courses in American
military, cultural and social history.
Monday, April 10, 2023 at 5:30pm in the CSI Atrium
The western literary and philosophical tradition has preponderantly described knowledge
in terms of vision, but how can a blind person participate in that tradition in a
meaningful and authentic way? Using Paradise Lost — which John Milton famously composed after losing his sight — as a case study, this
lecture presents Milton’s idiosyncratic strategies for grappling with the nature of
knowledge.
J. Antonio Templanza is Assistant Professor of English at MCLA, where he teaches Renaissance English literature. His work examines how the discursive fluidity of seventeenth-century intellectual culture allowed its authors to expand, contest, and reformulate the various philosophical frameworks surrounding them in the face of an emerging rhetoric of scientific objectivity.
Tuesday, April 18, 2023 at 5:30pm in the CSI Atrium
This lecture traces the rise of the Hindutva state in India which claims an anti-colonial
mantle yet relies on an imperial form of nationalism. Dr. Junaid shows how rightwing
Hindu nationalism asserts a discourse of indigenous sovereignty while promoting settler
colonial practices, raising conceptual questions about contemporary theories of decoloniality.
Mohamad Junaid is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at MCLA. He has a Ph.D. from the Graduate
Center CUNY, with research on violence, youth activists, and political subjectivity
in Kashmir. His book project, titled Rebel Dreams: Postcolonial Empire and Political Subjectivity in Kashmir, is a historical and ethnographic account of the aspiration of freedom and the political
movement against the occupation in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
