2024 Annual Meeting Program

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From May 28-June 1, 2024, the Townsend Center for the Humanities at UC Berkeley will host the next Annual Meeting of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI). We are thrilled to offer free registration for select sessions for UC Berkeley affiliated students, staff, and faculty, as well as local residents. We ask you to please register ahead of time for the sessions that you wish to attend so that we can monitor the capacity of our venue.

Virtual Attendance / Session Recordings
While we are not offering virtual registration for this conference, we will make available recordings of nearly all sessions after the conference.

All events will take place at Pauley Ballroom (3rd floor, Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union, 2495 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA 94720), unless otherwise indicated. All events are listed in Pacific Daylight Time (PDT).

*Register today!*

Tuesday, May 28 | Wednesday, May 29 | Thursday, May 30 | Friday, May 31 | Saturday, June 1

Tuesday, May 28

  • 6:00pm - 7:30pm | Opening Keynote, David Brower Center, 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA 94704

Wednesday, May 29

All events will take place at Pauley Ballroom (3rd floor, Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union, 2495 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA 94720).

  • 11:15am - 12:45pm | What is a Scholar at Risk?

    • Chair: Damon Young (UC Berkeley)
    • Gil Anidjar (Columbia)
    • Deborah Feldman, participating remotely
    • Jane Newman (UC Irvine), participating remotely
    • Renée Nicholson (WVU Humanities Center)
  • 3:00pm - 4:30pm | Borders, Citizenship, Statelessness | Full bios

    • Chair: Kader Konuk (Academy in Exile)
    • Fonna Forman (UC San Diego)
    • Asli Igsiz (New York University)
    • Nando Sigona (University of Birmingham)

Thursday, May 30

All events will take place at Pauley Ballroom (3rd floor, Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union, 2495 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA 94720).

  • 9:00am - 10:30am | At Home / In Exile

    • Chair: Mario Telò (UC Berkeley)
    • Prathama Banerjee (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies)
    • Thomas Keenan (Bard)
    • Debarati Sanyal (UC Berkeley)
  • 2:30pm - 3:45pm | California at Risk: Regional Responses to Global Challenges

    • Chair: Susan Derwin (UC Santa Barbara)
    • Scholars at Risk: Christina Lux (UC Merced)
    • The Humanities & AI: Pranav Anand (UC Santa Cruz)
    • Environmental Humanities: Julia Lupton (UC Humanities Research Institute) and Amanda Swain (UC Irvine)
  • 4:00pm - 5:30pm | Keynote: Judith Butler, Academic Freedom in a Time of Destruction: Reconsidering Extra-Mural Speech (UC Berkeley) | Please arrive on time for this event, especially as the building closes at 5:00pm.

Friday, May 31

All events will take place at Pauley Ballroom (3rd floor, Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union, 2495 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA 94720).

  • 11:15am - 12:45pm | Psychic Precarity | Recommended reading (PDF): Avgi Saketopoulou, “Erotics of the Terribly Beautiful”

    • Chair: Ranjana Khanna (Duke)
    • Avgi Saketopoulou
  • 3:30pm - 5:00pm | Srinivas Aravamudan Memorial Lecture: Robin D.G. Kelley (UCLA), ”Black Studies vs Fascism: The longue durée” | The current attacks of multicultural education, critical race theory, and on virtually all critical scholars has put many of us in the academy on the defensive. Again. […] While my talk acknowledges the latest wave of attacks, I will argue that Black Studies has a long history of being “under attack” precisely because it emerged as an offensive against fascism. | Full description