Colloquium Series

Spring 2018 Schedule

Economies of Surface in Nineteenth-Century Print Culture

Wednesday, March 7, 4:30 p.m.
Juliet Sperling, Ph.D, Candidate, University of Pennsylvania
Fried Hemenway Auditorium, Martha Miller Center

This paper examines a group of objects that failed to successfully circulate and argues
that looking closely at such interrupted prints — the unsold, manipulated and recycled — makes visible a wider spectrum of encounters with visual culture in the early 19th century.

Co-sponsor: Art and Art History

Why March Madness Matters: Reflections on a Popular Sporting Event's Forgotten History

Wednesday, March 28, 7 p.m.
Professor Chad Carlson, Kinesiology Department
Fried Hemenway Auditorium, Martha Miller Center

The history of college basketball's post-season tournaments is not well known. Most historians interested in sport gravitate towards baseball, football or the Olympics — the three most popular enterprises in the American sporting landscape during the first half of the 20th century. In my book, Making March Madness, I have tried to not only fill a gap in the literature but also describe the ways in which college basketball's post-season tournaments began and grew through and alongside inauspicious national conditions. In this presentation, I will reflect on exploring the implications of the tournaments' conception during the Great Depression, their birth amid escalating international tensions, their survival during World War II and their growth during the post-war boom. 

Historic Graffiti: The Interaction Between the Person and the Place

Monday, April 9, 4 p.m. 
Crystal Hollis
Fried Hemenway Auditorium, Martha Miller Center

Ships, faces, protective marks and lines of text are hidden in plain sight on the walls of many of England's churches. Previously considered to be illicit, these inscriptions tell the story of the everyday people in one of their most frequented social spaces — the church. Looking at the context of these informal images and texts as well as the meaning of the graffiti itself allows us to see more personally into the lives of parishioners.