Skip to main content

Beyond the Theologico-Political: Hannah Arendt and the Principle of Beginning

Presenter: Facundo Vega, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez  Description: What can and should be the promise of politics today? How does politics begin anew? In his talk, political philosopher Facundo Vega examines the strengths and limitations of Hannah Arendt’s account of “beginnings”. Vega shows how Arendt’s reflections on “the beginning” attempt to avoid theories of pure spontaneity, great-event history, and historical […]

The African Heritage of Latinx and Caribbean Literature

Prof. SARAH M. QUESADA, Duke University
Friday, October 27, 4pm
Gilman 476

THE AFRICAN HERITAGE OF LATINX AND CARIBBEAN LITERATURE

Sarah M. Quesada’s book illustrates a “Latin-African” history: an untold story that challenges dominant narratives in world literature and transatlantic studies that ignore Africa's impact in broader Latin American culture. A book that defies the separation of fields according to colonial languages, Quesada shows how themes such as the 19th century Belgian “scramble for the Congo,” the decolonizing war in Angola, and the neoliberal turn in Nigeria are embedded in some of the most noted authors of Latin American decent in the last fifty years. This is also the first book-length project to address the African colonial and imperial inheritance of Latinx literature.

Environmental Humanities Research Initiative Autumn Panel

Gilman 108

Visualizing Human and Ecological Loss in Latin America (Gisela Heffes, Modern Languages and Literatures) Beeing and Time: Toward a Literary Entomology (Christiane Frey, Modern Languages and Literatures) Modified: Colonial Limits and Plant Life Relations in Transgenics Research (Nicole Labruto, Program in Medicine, Science, and the Humanities; Anthropology) Organized and Moderated by: Jennifer Gosetti-Ferencei, Modern Languages […]

Voices from Mozambique

The Program in Spanish and Portuguese and in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies Present VOICES FROM MOZAMBIQUE: NOVELIST PAULINA CHIZIANE AND SAXOPHONIST MOREIRA CHONGUIÇA February 26, Monday, 10am to Noon HODSON 313The Program in Spanish and Portuguese and in Latin American, Caribbean, and LatinxStudies invite you to participate in a session to discuss Paulina […]

Christine Lehleiter, “Shape Shifters: Transformation & Natural Form in Goethe’s Narrative Prose”

Gilman 479

Christine Lehleiter, Associate Professor of German at the University of Toronto, focuses on 18th- and 19th-century German literary and scientific cultures, and her books include Romanticism, Origins, and the History of Heredity. Bucknell University Press, 2014 and Fact and Fiction: Literary and Scientific Cultures in Germany and Britain (ed.). University of Toronto Press, 2016. Other publications inlcude articles […]

Moving Words: Literature, Memory, and Migration in Berlin by Andrew Brandel 

Please join the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures for a discussion of Moving Words: Literature, Memory, and Migration in Berlin by Andrew Brandel (U Chicago) with comments from Johns Hopkins faculty members Naveeda Khan (Anthropology), Sabine Mohamed (Anthropology), Aamir R. Mufti (English), and Samuel Spinner (MLL). The event is co-sponsored by MLL, Anthropology, and […]

Biblical Violence and the Virtues of a (Very) Plain Sense

Confronted by ethically troubling texts and themes in the Hebrew Bible, modern and contemporary Jewish commentators have developed an array of strategies for addressing and "repairing" the plain meaning of such passages. This talk argues that these reparative attempts have their own consequences, drawing out the ethical, political, and philosophical virtues of a renewed insistence […]

Thinking from the Hole: Latinidad on the Edge

Please join us for Maia Gil’Adí's job talk on Wednesday, March 13th, in Gilman 479 at 5pm. “Thinking from the Hole: Latinidad on the Edge”  Drawing on her current book project, Maia Gil’Adí examines representations of violence—from the sweeping scale of global imperialism to the close intimacy of domestic violence—in Latinx literature. Putting portrayals of destruction and […]

Sounds Matters in Brazilian Concrete Poetry

Popcretos, 1964-1966: Sound Matters in Brazilian Concrete Poetry Marcelo Nogueira (The Johns Hopkins University) March 27, 5:00 pm Gilman Hall 479 The lecture investigates the dynamic relationship between sound and visual elements in Brazilian concrete poetry, drawing on sonic and literary theory. Emerging in the mid-1950s, concrete poetry marks a pivotal moment in the constructivist […]