Whitney Humanities Center at Yale

What better way to open a conference called The Humanities, the University, and the World than with a celebration of the art of the humanities?

Day One was everything we could have hoped for and more. Shades of Yale set the tone with a moving performance that was full of spirit and warmth. Then six remarkable Yale faculty brought their literary worlds into the room—plays, poetry, novels, and more—reminding us why this work matters so deeply. Before her reading, Rachel Kauder Nalebuff reflected on what rooms like these make possible: spaces where, in her words, “the humanities are intrinsically valued and the work can speak for itself.” That’s precisely what we strive for.

Day Two photos coming soon. ✨

📸: Katerina Matta ’29

Poetry. Theater. Music. Ideas. It all starts today.

This is how the Whitney Humanities Center marks 45 years: two days of readings and critical conversations on the humanities, the university, and the world.

Today (Thursday, Apr 16 • 4:30–6:00 pm, with a reception to follow): The Art of the Humanities—a showcase featuring readings by Peter Cole, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Alice Kaplan, Amara Lakhous, Julian Lucas, Rachel Kauder Nalebuff, and Meghan O'Rourke, plus a performance by Shades of Yale.

Tomorrow (Friday, Apr 17 • 9:15–5:00 pm): Leading thinkers and public intellectuals—including Wendy Brown, Amitav Ghosh, Roosevelt Montás, Claudia Rankine, and more—gather to ask what makes the humanities and the university essential today.

Both events are free and open to all. Humanities Quadrangle (320 York Street), lower level.

“What we won was never enough—they were compromised ideals already. Now that they’re being taken away, let’s return to the more radical vision of what we actually wanted.” — Farah Jasmine Griffin

“We’ve got to be very, very jazz-like. We’ve got to be improvisational—not respond to whatever label someone calls themselves, but the context of who they are, what they are doing, and their courage.” — Cornel West

“I tell my students all the time: the space to ask your questions is really fragile—questions about what it means to live a decent life, to be true.” — Brandon Terry

Last Thursday, the Whitney Humanities Center spent a full day with Brandon Terry’s Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope: A Tragic Vision of the Civil Rights Movement—and the questions it raises about how the narratives we use to remember the civil rights movement shape what we think is possible now.

The daylong symposium brought together scholars from Brown, Vanderbilt, Boston College, the University of Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, and Yale. By evening, the conversation had moved to Battell Chapel with Terry, Farah Jasmine Griffin, and Cornel West, moderated by Robert Gooding-Williams.

Cornel West said the day was good for his heart, his mind, and his soul. We felt the same way.

📸 1–3: Mara Lavitt
📸 4–5: Katerina Matta ’29

After civil rights, after Obama, after Black Lives Matter—what now for Black politics?

“Black Politics in Dark Times: After Civil Rights, After Obama, After Black Lives Matter” brings together Brandon Terry (Harvard), Farah Jasmine Griffin (Columbia), and Cornel West (Union Theological Seminary) for a public conversation on race, democracy, and political philosophy, moderated by Yale’s Robert Gooding-Williams.

Free and open to all. Worth the trip to Yale if you’re close.

https://events.yale.edu/event/black-politics-in-dark-times

Last week's Tanner Lectures had us thinking about everything from The Terminator to the Constitution.

In two talks hosted by the Whitney Humanities Center, historian Jill Lepore asked what we mean—and what we’re doing—when we give up liberal democracy for rule by automation. Tracing the rise of the tech- and data-driven “Artificial State,” she reckoned with its costs to the natural world and imagined its possible fall.

The conversation carried into a lively breakfast panel with Beverly Gage, Lisa Messeri, and John Durham Peters, where one urgent question recurred: Where does the university stand in relation to the Artificial State?

📷 Mara Lavitt (Photos 1, 2, and 5)

Cold night. Great film. ❄️ 🎬

Join us this evening for PIÈCES D’IDENTITÉS (Identity Pieces), a film that’s well worth bundling up for.

“A drama with aspects of a detective comedy, offering an African perspective on Europe.”
— Centre for Fine Arts (BOZAR), Brussels

Blending fairy tale, comedy, and social critique, this award‑winning film follows a king’s journey through Belgium in search of his daughter, depicting the nuances of the Black diaspora in a European society that discriminates against and devalues immigrants.

📍 Humanities Quadrangle, Alice Cinema
🕖 Tonight | 7:00–9:00 PM
🎞 French with English subtitles

Bundle up, bring a friend, and join us tonight.

https://events.yale.edu/event/film-pieces-didentites-identity-pieces

Join Harvard historian and The New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore for the 2026 Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Yale University.

📆 February 4 and February 5 at 4:30 pm in Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall (SSS 114) at 1 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT.

Free & open to all!

Welcome back, Yale! We have two powerful screenings coming up as part of the Films Crossing Borders series.

🎬 N**O MIXTECO (Mixtecan Knot)
Friday, January 16 • 7:00–9:00 PM
Humanities Quadrangle, Alice Cinema

🎬 PURPLE SEA
Thursday, January 22 • 7:00–8:30 PM
Humanities Quadrangle, Alice Cinema

Films Crossing Borders presents migration stories that traverse diverse and shifting boundaries, from the geopolitical and material to the social and conceptual. Across five nights, the series follows Mixtec women navigating painful returns, Syrian refugees filming survival at sea, and other journeys that ask: What does it mean to cross borders—seen and unseen?

Series curated by Alexa De La Fuente and Zoe Guiney

Films Crossing Borders In a small village in the Mixtec region of Oaxaca, three intertwined stories of return unfold. María, Esteban, and Toña each encounter pain upon confronting the world they had left behind. María arrives to bury her mother but finds herself ostracized by her family. Esteban’s homecoming exposes ...

Scenes from our third annual Humanities Faculty Book Party 📚✨

During his toast, Dean of Humanities Marc Robinson captured the spirit of the evening:
“This gathering, like the various book launches and symposia I’ve been lucky to attend, reminds me why I got into this line of work in the first place. Those all aren’t just writing-focused events, but, more precisely, writer-focused. At them, we take a moment to come together to honor the many hours and years we each spent alone, trying to put words together into shapely sentences, and sentences together into persuasive paragraphs.”

A toast to every writer we celebrated—and everyone still drafting their next chapter. 🥂📚

📷 : Sabrina Soriano ’26

“Cinema is not just entertainment. It makes an intervention in the world. It changes the outcome.”

Earlier this month, we had the pleasure of hosting the inimitable Joan Copjec for a lecture on the cinema of Kiarostami and a screening of his film TASTE OF CHERRY.

In a Q&A following the film, ’s own Professor Omnia El Shakry praised Copjec’s latest book for its blend of “dense philosophical insight and little kernels of cinematic genius.”

Together, they spoke about psychoanalysis, the cinematic art of subtraction, and the question that runs through Kiarostami’s oeuvre: What is an image?

📷 : Sabrina Soriano ’26