On May 7, the PhD Program in Architecture and Landscape Architecture hosts a keynote lecture titled “Hippies Please Leave” by Hi’ilei Julia Hobart (Native and Indigenous Studies, Yale) as part of the doctoral symposium “Creativity in Modern Heritage.”
Hobart is author of Cooling the Tropics: Ice, Indigeneity, and Hawaiian Refreshment (Duke University Press, 2022). The lecture takes place in Plym Auditorium, Temple Hoyne Buell Hall, with a reception following in the atrium and exterior patio.
Co-sponsors: Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, Environmental Humanities Research Cluster, American Indian Studies Program, and Sawyer Seminar UIUC.
Note: the lecture/symposium occurs on Reading day, so attendance to the lecture cannot be mandatory or part of any class obligation.
Book Talk: The Permanence of Anti-Roma Racism. (Un)uttered Sentences April 3rd at 3 pm, 422 Levis Center
This lecture will examine the underpinnings, legacies, and continuities of anti-Roma racism in Europe. It will trace its origins, including racialized slavery in Moldavia and Wallachia, and expulsions, entry bans, and killings across Europe. The lecture will also situate anti-Roma racism within global frameworks of caste, racism, and racialization, highlighting its links to other oppressions.
Margareta Matache,PhD, is a Harvard Lecturer, co-founder, and Director of the Roma Program at Harvard University. Matache is the co-editor of Time for Reparations: A Global Perspective (2021) and Realizing Roma Rights (2017). Her book, The Permanence of Anti-Roma Racism: (Un)uttered Sentences (Routledge), which examines anti-Roma racism and links to other oppressions, will be released in December 2025.
The Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies will be hosting a book launch for Ethan Madarieta’s first book, Land’s Language: On Mapuche Memory, Translation, and the Territorial Aporia.
Ethan, who earned his Ph.D. in Comparative and World Literature at UIUC, is an assistant professor of English at Syracuse University, where he is on faculty in Native American and Indigenous studies, Latin American and Caribbean studies, and more.
Cosponsored by the Department of Comparative and World Literature, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS), the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, and the Center for Advanced Study
Technocracy Conference
March 5–6 | Levis Faculty Center
Speakers:
Soumya Dasgupta (Architecture, UIUC) • Taisuke L. Wakabayashi (Landscape Architecture, UIUC) • Chris Wiley (Information Science, UIUC) • Theodore Dreyfus Ledford (Information Science, UIUC)
Michelle N. Huang (English, Northwestern University) • Brian Jordan Jefferson (Geography, UIUC) • Jeffrey S. Nesbit (Architecture, Temple University) • Anita Say Chan (Information Science, UIUC) • Swati Srivastava (Political Science, Purdue University) • Isak Ladegaard (Sociology, University of Hong Kong) • Brett Zehner (Communication, University of Exeter)
Keynote: Fred Turner (Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication, Stanford)
Hosted by the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory at the a university of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
On February 19, Carlos Alberto Torres, Distinguished Professor at UCLA and former director of UCLA’s Latin American Center, will give a lecture celebrating the extraordinary humanitarian career of Paulo Freire, author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, in which he analyzed the analogous relationship of colonizer and colonized to that of teacher and student. Torres is the leading expert on Paulo Freire, Brazilian educator and philosopher of ethics in education. The lecture will take place at 5:15 PM at the Plym Auditorium in Temple Buell Hall. A reception will follow the lecture.
John Levi Barnard (English, UIUC) and Pollyanna Rhee (Landscape Architecture, UIUC) will deliver a lecture on the topic of Environmental Humanities as the conclusion of the Fall 2025 Modern Critical Theory Lecture Series. We look forward to seeing you there!
Julian Go (Sociology, University of Chicago) will deliver a lecture on the topic of postcolonial theory as part of the Fall 2025 Modern Critical Theory Lecture Series. We look forward to seeing you there!
Stephen M. Best (English, University of California, Berkeley) will deliver a lecture titled “The Limits of Racial Critique,” as part of the Fall 2025 Modern Critical Theory Lecture Series. We look forward to seeing you there.
Ciro Incoronato (Italian, UIUC) will deliver a lecture on Biopolitics, as part of the Fall 2025 Modern Critical Theory Lecture Series. We look forward to seeing you there.
Timothy McCarthy (Education, Harvard University) will deliver a lecture on Queer Theory, titled “Queer Theory in an Age of Urgency” as part of the Fall 2025 Modern Critical Theory Lecture Series. We look forward to seeing you there.
Sofía Zaragocín (Geography & GIS, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) will deliver a lecture on feminism (Latin America/Latinx Feminist Geographies). We look forward to seeing you there.
François Proulx (French & Italian, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) will deliver lecture on Post-structuralism as part of the Fall 2025 Modern Critical Theory Lecture Series. We look forward to seeing you there!
