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The Center for the Humanities holds probably the most regular lecture series on campus, with lectures by faculty fellows, who teach only one class during their semester at the Center, but attend all the lectures and colloquia as well as presenting their own work; research fellows, who come from other institutions for the semester; visiting lecturers; and the Mellon fellow, who stays at the Center for the whole year, teaching one course during that time. There are also three or four student fellows a semester, all seniors doing work related to the semester's theme. Juniors should already have gotten a mailing about this; if your work is even sort of applicable, I encourage you to apply. It's not only educational, it's actually kind of fun.
Each semester the series has a theme, such as Culture and the Market, Producing the Past, Cultural History and Cultural Studies, and, this semester, Culture and Visual Representation. Although the Center's cultural studies focus does mean that very few scientists speak, it is otherwise resolutely interdisciplinary. Last semester, for instance, speakers came from English, history, anthropology, philosophy, american studies, and science, technology & society departments.
While I haven't become an expert on the subject of any of the lectures I've been to, I have gotten a sense of the ways that people from different disciplines might approach the same topic and of the incredible range of subjects that can be productively studied. This has informed just about every class I've taken at Wesleyan (though I'll admit that this might be less true if I were a physics major). The Center for the Humanities has therefore been an incredibly important paret of my education; perhaps it could be the same for you. (Now isn't that a tantalizing notion?) -Laura Clawson
| Note: All lectures are on Mondays at 8 PM in the russell House. they are followed by colloquia (discussion sessions with speaker and others) at the Center for the Humanities (Pearl Street) at 10:30 AM on Tuesday. |