Annual Lectures
Iris Marion Young Distinguished Faculty Lecture
Each year, CSGS hosts the Iris Marion Young Distinguished Faculty Lecture featuring University of Chicago faculty doing innovative interdisciplinary work. On Thursday, January 19 at 5:00pm, Waldo E. Johnson, Jr., Professor, Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy and Practice and Vice Provost, delivered the 2023 lecture, "Dismantling Social Difference for Advancing Justice":
In his lecture “Dismantling Social Difference for Advancing Justice”, Professor Johnson explores Iris Young’s theory of social difference, which posits that society is divided into groups based on various forms of oppression and privilege. Social difference is a lens for examining how social, economic, and political factors impact urban black males' lives and lived experiences and their various justice experiences over the life course. Race, gender, class, and social identities are considered as intersectional, uniquely shaping the life course positioning and outcomes of urban black males.
A recording of Professor Johnson's talk is available on our YouTube channel.
As part of its tenth anniversary celebration in 2006, the Center renamed this annual lecture to honor Iris Marion Young. Young was a professor of political science at the University of Chicago and was affiliated with the Center and the Human Rights program. She was a widely known and well-respected contemporary political and feminist social theorist, concerned with normative analysis of public policy. Learn more about Iris Marion Young.
Past speakers include: Rochona Majumdar (South Asian Languages and Civilizations and Cinema and Media Studies), Martha Feldman (Music), Jennifer Wild (Cinema and Media Studies and Romance Languages and Literatures), Linda Zerilli (Political Science), Daisy Delogu (Romance Languages & Literatures), Martha Nussbaum (Law/Philosophy), Jennifer Cole (Comparative Human Development), Deborah Nelson (English), Susan Gal (Anthropology), Leora Auslander (History), Cathy J. Cohen (Political Science), Mary Anne Case (Law), Lauren Berlant (English), Christine Stansell (History), Martha McClintock (Psychology/Comparative Human Development), Jean Comaroff (Anthropology), Amy Hollywood (Divinity), George Chauncey (History), Wendy Doniger (Divinity), Jacqueline Bhabha (Human Rights), and Saba Mahmood (Anthropology).
Lauren Berlant Memorial Lecture
To honor Prof. Lauren Berlant’s intellectual legacy, the Department of English and the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality propose a joint annual lecture series to start in Spring 2023. This annual lecture takes its form and inspiration from the Worlding, Writing project that Lauren ran for several years through 3CT and CSGS. The purpose of this project was, in Lauren’s words, “to explore new modes of writing and reading - not in an effort to affirm expertise but to imagine productive idioms for critical engagement and to assemble novel ways of attending to socio-political phenomena.” The invited speaker will be someone whose work draws on Lauren’s intellectual legacy, and/or who is pushing the boundaries of writing and reading in ways that resonate with the Worlding, Writing project. The speaker can be an academic, an artist, or an activist.
On Thursday, April 13 at 5:00pm, Paul Lisicky (Associate Professor, MFA Program in Creative Writing and English Department, Rutgers University and author of Later: My Life at the Edge of the World) will deliver the inaugural Lauren Berlant Memorial Lecture, “Later And Sooner: The Long Legacy Of HIV.” Paul Lisicky will be reading selections from his 2020 memoir, Later, and his memoir-in-progress, Sooner.
Distinguished Alumnae/i Lectures
Each Spring, the CSGS welcomes a UChicago alumnae/i working in the field of gender and sexuality back to present their work.
On Monday, May 8 at 5:00pm, Moon Duchin (PhD, Mathematics, 2005; Professor of Mathematics at Tufts University and founder of the MGGG Redistricting Lab) will deliver the 2023 Distinguished Alumni Lecture, “Majority Rules?: Thinking About Representation”:
Representative democracy means that we designate people to govern for us; but what kind of reflection do we seek? From Untouchables in India to Hungarian speakers in Slovenia to Maori electorates in New Zealand to regional apportionment schemes and gender quotas around the world, democracies have developed many mechanisms for adjusting representation to be more representative. In this talk I will look at elections as systems and ask about the alignment of our mechanisms with our ideals.