Student Report: Student Presentations of October 8

Reported by Maya Peak, Class of 2026 

During the Ciencia y Caridad, Humanities Fall Conference held in Barcelona by DKU’s Humanities Research Center, multiple student presentations were held. Projects ranged from Art and Humanities to Data and Policy, tying in themes of the intersections of research and charity, stressing the humanity in humanities. Below are the summaries of the presentations that took place on Saturday, the eighth, along with photos from Shuyuan Zhou’s presentation.

My Great Grandmother, My Grand Aunt, My Grandmother, My Mother, and I: A Family Album, presented by Shuyuan Zhou

Shuyuan Zhou presented, My Great Grandmother, My Grand Aunt, My Grandmother, My Mother, and I: A Family Album, a series which collected, questioned, and answered on the intergenerational female experience. Through images of her and her family along with some of the storytelling ability of objects in the collection, Zhou shared to us the beauty and suffering in femininity across time.

The Feminine Fabulation: Chinese Women’s Taking In and Spitting Out Bitterness presented by Meixuan Wang Continue reading “Student Report: Student Presentations of October 8”

Student Report: Student Seminar with Isabel Durán Giménez-Rico

Reported by Soumya Lahoti, Class of 2025

October 7, 2022, 15:00-16:30
This lecture was part of the 2022 Humanities Fall Conference: Ciencia y Caridad.

Isabel Duran Gimenez-Rico, professor at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, welcomed everyone warmly and had an introduction round. She started by explained why we should read sad stories. They are a way of combating sexism and many other societal vices. Humanities have grown as a way of making people aware of how others suffer; literature opens our eyes to women’s, homosexuals, and old-age people’s struggles. They work as they are all intensely sad narratives. They make us, the reader feel a sense of discomfort. Continue reading “Student Report: Student Seminar with Isabel Durán Giménez-Rico”

Student Report: Keynote Lecture of Isabel Durán Giménez-Rico

Reported by Soumya Lahoti, Class of 2025

October 7, 2022, 12:30-14:00
This lecture was part of the 2022 Humanities Fall Conference: Ciencia y Caridad.

Isabel Durán Giménez-Rico is a Professor of English Philology at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She based her keynote lecture on revisiting medical conditions through a gendered lens. She focused on an intriguing gender swap in translating literature to visual or medical media. She spoke about the male gaze and the female gaze in medical media and the subtle differences in which they’re dealt with in a way that speaks to both genders. She spoke at length about Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen (1993), which was adapted into the 1999 film of the same name by James Mangold, and The Dying Animal by Philip Roth (2001) was adopted by Spanish filmmaker Isabel Coixet into Elegy (2008). Continue reading “Student Report: Keynote Lecture of Isabel Durán Giménez-Rico”

Student Report: Picasso and His Times

Reported by Soumya Lahoti, Class of 2025

October 7, 2022, 18:00 – 18:30
This lecture was part of the 2022 Humanities Fall Conference: Ciencia y Caridad.

Patricia Leighten presented an excellent commentary on the depths of Picasso’s psyche, live from Canada. Picasso has been called the most important artist of the last century. He was particularly influential on subsequent and contemporary art practices.

Leighten walks us through the stages of Picasso’s life, from his early works, to where he practiced art in Barcelona and Paris, his Blue and Rose periods, Cubism, and Surrealism. We also learn about how Picasso’s art responded in radical ways to the social and political forces of his times, as well as to the philosophical and aesthetic issues of the rapidly changing period that were spanned by his life and his work. Continue reading “Student Report: Picasso and His Times”

Student Report on Weakening Strategies: Vattimo and Chinese Thought

Reported by Mateja Bokan, Class of 2026

Organized by the DKU Humanities Research Center in cooperation with the Vattimo Archive and Center at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), the Weakening Strategies: Vattimo and Chinese Thought (September 30, 2022) was a one-day symposium that aimed to advance comparative understanding of the concept of weakness, in conversation with the Vattimo’s philosophy and Chinese thought. Panel two was chaired by DKU Humanities Research Center’s co-director James Miller and featured East China Normal University’s Professor of Philosophy Liangjian Liu, University of Turin’s Research fellow Erica Onnis, and Loyola University Andalusia’s Associate Professor of Philosophy Mario Wenning. Each of the speakers brought their own perspectives and interpretations into how Daoist theories work with Vattimo’s thought and work. Continue reading “Student Report on Weakening Strategies: Vattimo and Chinese Thought”

Student Report: The Analysis of Effective Interaction in the Virtual Classroom – A Research Talk with Layla Shelmerdine

Reported by Vicky Yongkun Wu, Class of 2026

This research talk is part of the Third Space Lab brown bag lunch research talk presented by the Humanities Research Center. The program is broadly associated with research projects related to languages, cultures, and intercultural communication.

Dr. Layla Shelmerdine’s research on effective interaction in the virtual classroom is inspired by the increasingly online learning trend during the pandemic. It is vital to develop better practices to promote learning in virtual spaces. During the research talk, the audience and Dr. Shelmerdine agreed that in addition to the content, online interaction also greatly affects the quality of online classes. Continue reading “Student Report: The Analysis of Effective Interaction in the Virtual Classroom – A Research Talk with Layla Shelmerdine”

Student Report: Religion and Politics – An Interdisciplinary Conversation

This Interdisciplinary Conversation was part of “Religion and Politics,” presented by the Humanities Research Center and the Division of Arts and Humanities, in collaboration with the Undergraduate Studies program.

Reported by Mateja Bokan, Class of 2026

The Religion and Politics lecture and discussion were the first opportunity for DKU students in Barcelona to experience the offerings of the University and the Humanities Research Center. Divided into two parts, the guest lecture and a live discussion, students were able to apply, reevaluate, and extend their knowledge on secularization using Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan as an example of how politics and religion work together in our society. Continue reading “Student Report: Religion and Politics – An Interdisciplinary Conversation”

Student Report: Robert Yelle – Thomas Hobbes’s Radical Path to Secularization

This special lecture was part of “Religion and Politics” presented by the Humanities Research Center and the Division of Arts and Humanities, in collaboration with the Undergraduate Studies program.

Reported by Cody Schmidt, Class of 2025

Photographed by Jesse Campbell, Class of 2025

Professor Robert Yelle, chair of religious studies at Ludwig-Maximillian University in Munich, Germany joined Duke Kunshan professors Rasoul Namazi and James Miller on September 26 to present a lecture based on his writing “Hobbes the Egyptian: The Return to Pharaoh, or the Ancient Roots of Secular Politics.” A question-and-answer session was held after the presentation. The lecture was the first of a two-part series hosted by Yelle, Namazi, and Miller titled Religion and Politics, with its follow-up being held later that afternoon.

In his lecture, he examined Hobbes’s ideas of secularization and the story of Pharaoh from the Bible. Yelle began with the frontispiece for Leviathan. The “Mortal God,” a ruler physically made of his subjects and holding a bishop’s staff in one hand and a sword in the other, is depicted as standing over his country, wielding the powers of church and state. Yelle argues that this “Mortal God” is a representation of the book’s namesake, the Leviathan, a sea monster that aided in Pharaoh’s oppression of the Hebrews.

“The Leviathan was armed with the many bodies of the citizens, their heads here appearing [in the frontispiece] as scales. [This] had become an appropriate epithet for a king or a leader of an army… Hobbes meant to invoke Pharoah and, in fact, if you just look at the Hebrew Bible, there are various places where a clear identification is made between Pharoah and the sea monster.”

During Hobbes’s time of the English Civil War, this religious image of the oppressive Leviathan and Pharaoh would be used to justify the revolutionary acts occurring, using the Exodus as parallel imagery for their war. Hobbes provides a critique and reversal of this justification, which Yelle explains was to reject such religious political revolution and embrace the philosophy of social contract theory with a ruling sovereign power.

Continue reading “Student Report: Robert Yelle – Thomas Hobbes’s Radical Path to Secularization”

Student Report: Ascension 登楼叹 Q&A Session & Interview

Q&A session with Maggie Li
Reported by Zishuo Wu, Class of 2024

Tonight’s first screening in the 2022 academic year, Ascension (Kingdon, 2021) is an Oscar-nominated American documentary depicting class inequality in China. After screening the splendid realistic observational documentary, the producer of Ascension, Maggie Li, was invited to the Question & Answer session hosted by DKU Humanities Research Center.

Maggie began this session by introducing her contribution to the documentary. “There exist two kinds of producers,” said Maggie, “the first kind invests money and contributes nothing else; the other kind works on every part of the production.” As a producer of the second kind, Maggie made sure everything in the movie was working — communicating with organizations, companies, and individuals about their appearance in the documentary, and proofreading the translation and edits made to the film. The production took four years in total. With almost everything done by only a team of three people, the success of the documentary is unbelievable. She also shared that she was majoring in nano-science, though ended up working in filming industries.

Below is the Q&A session with Maggie Li:  Continue reading “Student Report: Ascension 登楼叹 Q&A Session & Interview”

Student Report: _ao_ao_ing (老妖精) Working Wonders on DKU Campus

Reported by Yongkun (Vicky) Wu, Class of 2026

Established in 2018, _ao_ao_ing (老妖精) is a Shanghai-based performance ensemble that is continuously morphing and finding its shape. With six core members from different disciplines and backgrounds, the ensemble uses contemporary experimental theatre as their main medium, but their creation also includes participatory performances, city walks, workshops, online interactive programs, and happenings, which revolve around strong action. _ao_ao_ing makes performances that juggles the line between theatre and everyday life and create real happenings that cannot be replicated. Continue reading “Student Report: _ao_ao_ing (老妖精) Working Wonders on DKU Campus”