2025 Annual Meeting Program

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All events will take place in Goethe Hall of the Harnack House (Ihnestraße 16-20, 14195 Berlin, Germany), unless otherwise indicated. All events are listed in local Middle European Time.

Monday, June 23 | Tuesday, June 24 | Wednesday, June 25 | Thursday, June 26

Monday, June 23

All events will take place in Goethe Hall of the Harnack House (Ihnestraße 16-20, 14195 Berlin, Germany), unless otherwise indicated.

  • 5:00pm | Registration table open | We recommend arriving by 5:30pm in order to check in and sit down for the welcoming address.

  • 5:45pm - 6:00pm | Welcoming Address | Stephen Best, CHCI President

  • 6:00pm - 7:00pm | Opening Plenary: International Networks and Collaboration in the Humanities | This plenary brings together leaders of major US and European humanities organizations to take stock of rapidly evolving challenges facing international collaboration in higher education and the humanities. In response to this new context, panelists will highlight the role of networks for resilience and resistance, and, together with the audience, will focus on imagining innovative strategies for cross-border cooperation and collective action. The session will prioritize open dialogue about emerging needs, recent experiences, and concrete, novel approaches to building a more connected and adaptable humanities community.

    • Christina Garsten (Network of European Institutes for Advanced Study, NetIAS)
    • Paula Krebs (Modern Language Association, MLA)
    • Frederik Van Dam (European Consortium of Humanities Institutes and Centers, ECHIC)
  • 7:00pm - 8:30pm | Opening Reception | Planck Lobby | Draft beer, wine, and hors d'oeuvres

Tuesday, June 24

All events will take place in Goethe Hall of the Harnack House (Ihnestraße 16-20, 14195 Berlin, Germany), unless otherwise indicated.

  • 8:00am - 9:00am | Breakfast Conversations | Full schedule and descriptions | Einstein Lounge | Light breakfast provided

    • Towards Gender Equality: Transforming Leadership in Higher Education | There are major gender disparities in the leadership of higher education. Women make up only 19% of the Presidents of the top 200 universities globally, with a recent UNESCO report on higher education (2021) concluding that inequalities run deep and glass ceilings remain high. Concerns are growing too about the future of diversity, equality and inclusion programmes across many countries, which may further impede progress. This Breakfast Conversation will explore the barriers and facilitators of women’s leadership in higher education, with a specific focus on the arts, humanities and social sciences. Following short introductory remarks from the facilitators, the aim is to open up a conversation with attendees on experiences of career development, structural and cultural barriers to advancement, and what steps can be taken now to promote positive change. The facilitators, all directors of institutes/centres of advanced studies, are involved in a comparative network project, funded by the RSE (Edinburgh), exploring women’s leadership across three sectors: politics, industry and higher education.
      • Rosinka Chaudhuri (Centre for Studies in Social Science, Kolkata),
      • Grace Diabah (University of Ghana)
      • Lesley McAra (University of Edinburgh)
  • 9:00am - 10:30am | Membership Plenary

    • 9:00am - 9:15am | A State of the Consortium | A brief report from CHCI staff
    • 9:15am - 10:30am | Directors Meeting | A member-led dialogue on leading a humanities center or institute. All attendees, particularly those leading centers and institutes, are welcome to attend this session.
      • Stephanie Kirk (Washington University in St. Louis)
      • Kimberly Marshall (University of Oklahoma)
  • 10:30am - 10:45am | Coffee Break | Planck Lobby

  • 10:45am - 12:30pm | The Battle Ahead for Critical Theory: A Discussion | Moderated by CHCI President Stephen Best (UC Berkeley) and Paul Fleming (Cornell) | Brief required readings | This session presents an opportunity for us to speak with one another–candidly and in solidarity–about the future of critical theory. Our topic will be the appropriation of critical theory by right-wing intellectual and political movements and the challenge of maintaining intellectual commitment to certain strains of critical thought within this (increasingly authoritarian) context. All conference attendees are invited to participate actively in this collaborative exchange. The discussion will be grounded in the three short readings below, encouraging shared inquiry and open conversation. The conversation intends to equip attendees with fresh perspectives on critical theory's role as a tool for intellectual and pragmatic engagement across global contexts, charting a path forward for the humanities.

  • 12:30pm - 2:00pm | Lunch | Restaurant

  • 2:00pm - 3:00pm | CHCI Health and Medical Humanities Network | Resentment in Healthcare: Deny, Delay, Defend | In this panel, we will explore resentment as a global phenomenon to better understand the roots of anger and frustration that build up towards healthcare systems and providers around the world. Healthcare is a field that is not immune to emotionally charged settings, exhaustion, burnout, doubt, and cynicism. This panel invites discussions about how resentment manifests in the field as it is experienced by patients, healthcare professionals, carers, families, and communities. We aim to explore how we ethically pursue and undertake this research in critical health and medical humanities studies.

    • Chairs: Hester Oberman (University of Arizona) and Chisomo Kalinga (University of Edinburgh)
    • Robin McCrary (University of Waterloo): “Teaching Relational Care Ethics Beyond Tuskegee"
    • Aimee Mepham (Wake Forest University): “We are not ‘The Baddies’: The Angry Patient and Medical Drama"
    • Noah Mullens (University of Florida): “Gratitude and the Politics of Vulnerability: A Humanist Approach to Healthcare and Children’s Rights”
  • 3:00pm - 3:15pm | Coffee Break | Planck Lobby

  • 3:15pm - 5:00pm | Srinivas Aravamudan Memorial Lecture: Shalini Randeria (Central European University) | “The Mimicry of Marginality: How Soft-Authoritarianism Mobilizes Resentment”

    • Introduction: Sara Guyer (University of California, Berkeley)
  • 6:00pm - 9:00pm | Membership Dinner (Optional) | BBQ Buffet | Restaurant and Terrace

    • Pre-registration required. $100/person.

Wednesday, June 25

All events will take place in Goethe Hall of the Harnack House (Ihnestraße 16-20, 14195 Berlin, Germany), unless otherwise indicated.

  • 8:00am - 9:00am | Breakfast Conversation | Full schedule and descriptions | Einstein Lounge | Light breakfast provided

    • Public Humanities and Contemporary Challenges, CHCI Public Humanities Network | What do we want from a public humanities? This is an open conversation where we want to hear from attendees their challenges, concerns, and solutions. We will discuss models for a public humanities, core capacity building, and moving between public service and public humanities. And, importantly, how can the CHCI Public Humanities Network help you and your center or institute? The network’s steering committee members will also provide an update on our plans for the next academic year, including our growing partnership with the Public Humanities Journal, the third year of the Public Humanities Award for Leadership in Practice and Community, and plans for virtual gatherings.
  • 9:00am - 10:30am | CHCI Initiative: Human Craft in the Age of Digital Technologies | Open to all conference attendees, this session will begin with presentations from leaders of CHCI member-led projects participating in the Initiative on “Human Craft in the Age of Digital Technologies.” They will showcase humanities center-supported research and activities related to the impact of digital technologies on creative and intellectual life, cultural production, and human agency. The session will also provide a platform for presenters and attendees to share strategies for addressing challenges to cross-disciplinary research as well as international research, in the context of AI, data, and digital systems. Participants will explore ways to make research accessible and engage broader audiences, as well as methods to publicize and amplify the impact of humanities research. They will also consider the role of the humanities in addressing global challenges presented by the development and deployment of digital technologies.

    • Chair: Kathleen Woodward (University of Washington)
    • Holly Case (Brown University): “Models-Scale-Context: AI and the Humanities”
    • Jennifer Johung (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee) & Russ Castronovo (University of Wisconsin, Madison): “Aesthetics, Art, and AI”
    • Ned Rossiter (Western Sydney University) & Joyce C.H. Liu (National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University): “Critical Reorientation in the Age of Digital Technology”
    • Erin McElroy (Washington): “Political Software: Mapping Digital Worlds From Below”
    • Sara Černe (University of California, Irvine): “The AI Paradigm: Between Personhood and Power”
    • Laurent Tilton (University of Richmond): “Center for Liberal Arts and AI”
  • Other Initiatives participants representing projects in the discussion:

    • Megan Ward and Alicia Patterson (Oregon State University): “Public Trust in Data in the Age of Generative AI”
    • Anna Mae Duane (University of Connecticut): "Reading Between the Lines: An Interdisciplinary Glossary for Human-Centered AI"
    • Ryan Shirey (Wake Forest University): "Language Theory & Artificial Intelligence Seminar and Symposium"
  • 10:30am - 10:45am | Coffee Break | Planck Lobby

  • 10:45am - 12:30pm | Best Practices for Humanities Centers | Exploring current challenges and opportunities in operating and sustaining humanities centers, such as issues with limited staff capacity, funding, program evaluation, campus and community engagement, strategic planning, among other topics of interest. This session will be conducted in small group discussions.

    • Moderator: Irena Polić (University of California, Santa Cruz)
  • 12:30pm - 2:00pm | Lunch | Restaurant

  • 2:00pm - 3:00pm | Critical Humanities Spaces Network | Resentment: Interventions in the Present | This panel starts from the premise that resentment is not something to be overcome. Seeking to distance ourselves from the notion of resentment as a problem lending itself either to populist manipulation or to a liberal politics of condescension, the panel will consider resentment as a politics of social transformation. We invite a critical interrogation of its emergence in response to structural injustice (indignation in the face of inequality or sustained humiliation); its forms of consciousness and knowledge (ways of perceiving, thinking, and questioning power relations, reflexivity that reveals what subordinates, estrangement that questions facticity and institutionality); and its temporalities (unpostponable demand in the present, memory that intensifies and collectivises rapidly). The role of humour as a tool of desacralization and as a recognition of contingency in the face of fatality will also be considered.

    • Susanne Leeb (University of Lüneburg)
    • Peter Tirop Simatei (Moi University)
    • Andrés Claro (University of Chile)
  • 3:00pm - 3:15pm | Coffee Break | Planck Lobby

  • 3:15pm - 5:00pm | Keynote: Moira Weigel (Harvard University) | The Politics of Platforms

    • Introduction: Wendy Chun (Simon Fraser University)

Thursday, June 26

All events will take place in Goethe Hall of the Harnack House (Ihnestraße 16-20, 14195 Berlin, Germany), unless otherwise indicated.

  • 9:00am - 10:30am | CHCI Initiative: Global Justice and Humanities Practices | This session will open with a sample of the humanities-center-based projects participating in the CHCI Initiative on "Global Justice and Humanities Practices." Project leaders will present their research and activities related to contemporary struggles for justice, equity, and collective memory. On the basis of this work, presenters and conference attendees will exchange and reflect on practical strategies for sustaining engaged humanities work in the face of challenges that particularly affect work on diversity and social justice. Participants will explore opportunities for international collaboration, community engagement, and advocacy for humanities research and various groups or agencies. The session will also address how to operate in a period of isolationism and build strategies to ensure that humanistic inquiry remains central to addressing pressing global issues.

    • Chair: Guillaume Ratel (CHCI)
    • Dorothy Kim (Brandeis University): “Alex Storytellers Hub: Community Pedagogy”
    • Kim Vaz-Deville (Dillard University) and Anupama Rao (Columbia University): “Global Racisms, Cold War Humanism, and the Imagination of Just Futures”
    • Ron Broglio (Arizona State University): “Water Commons: The Living Legacy of the Colorado River”
    • Luis Martín-Estudillo (University of Iowa): “Mass Migrations, Personal Voices: Latin American Women Migrants Write Their Stories”
    • Vanessa Agnew (TU Dortmund): “Displaced Scholars in Residence: A Collaboration Between U-M’s Institute for the Humanities and the Academy in Exile”
  • Other Initiatives participants represented in the discussion:

    • Nicholas Allen (University of Georgia): “Culture and Community at the Penn Center National Historic Landmark District”
    • Tatyana Bakhmetyeva (University of Rochester): "Just and Inclusive Climate Havens and the Humanities"
    • Ellen McClure (University of Illinois at Chicago): "Carceral Liberalism in an Age of Fascism"
    • Patricia Parker (UNC-Chapel Hill), Maurits van Bever Donker (University of the Western Cape), and Rosinka Chaudhuri (Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta): "Aesthetics and the Technologies of ‘Repair’"
  • 10:30am - 10:45am | Coffee Break | Planck Lobby

  • 10:45am - 12:30pm | Resilience: Practical Strategies for Navigating Global Challenges | In an era marked by political, financial, and ideological upheavals, the humanities face unprecedented challenges. This session will focus on how to navigate these turbulent times, by addressing themes such as academic freedom, funding, data and personal security, and international collaboration.

    • Moderator: Ranjana Khanna (Duke University)
    • Jane Newman (University of California, Irvine)
    • Rachel M. Sailor (University of Wyoming)
    • Cristina Stanciu (Virginia Commonwealth University)
  • 12:30pm - 2:00pm | Lunch | Restaurant

  • 2:00pm - 3:00pm | Transit Asia Research Network | Wired Tianxia, Wounded Borders: Ressentiment, Firewalls, Migrant Bodies, and Aesthetic Interventions | What unfolds when Tianxia— “All-Under-Heaven”—is digitally interwoven into a global Großraum? Can such a wired realm nurture harmony as kin within a planetary household? Unlikely. Ressentiment festers beneath the surface, shaped by geo-historical legacies and geopolitical anxieties. Apparatuses like Germany’s proposed digital Brandmauer or China’s Great Firewall are merely the architectural facades of deeper affective fortifications. These sentiments, displaced onto racialized others, migrants, and outsiders, manifest as localized xenophobia and structural precarity—and echo through contemporary artistic expression. This panel examines these entanglements across Europe and Asia while envisioning ethical and intellectual interventions against the repressive currents of our digital zeitgeist.

  • 3:00pm - 3:15pm | Coffee Break | Planck Lobby

  • 3:15pm - 4:45pm | Techno-Fascism and Democracy | This panel examines the complex relationship between technology and anti-democratic movements, both historical and contemporary. Discussions will draw parallels to historical precedents such as Italian fascism's embrace of technology. The panel will also address the rise of AI and tensions between machine learning and traditionalist ideologies.

    • Moderator: Wendy Chun (Simon Fraser University)
    • Alberto Toscano (Simon Fraser University)
    • Zahid R. Chaudhary (Princeton University)
    • Roland Meyer (Universität Zürich / Zürcher Hochschule der Künste)
    • Paul Feigelfeld (Universität Mozarteum, Salzburg)
  • 4:45p - 5:00pm | Closing Remarks