Events

Announcements

Please join us on Friday, May 16th from 4-6pm in the Wallis Annenberg Conference Room (SSMS 4315) for Prof. Ato Quayson's delivery of the 2025 GCLR Distinguished Guest Lecture. Prof. Quayson's talk is entitled "Interdisciplinarity and Interpretation: A Comparative Method" and you can find a brief description for it below. We hope to see many of you at this exciting event! 

Different institutional arrangements have historically been devised to house and support what is described as interdisciplinary work, including in the form of entire universities, specific schools and departments, standalone institutes and centers, and survey courses firmly lodged within disciplinary curricula, to name just a few. At the core of the efforts at interdisciplinarity are two central principles: first, that of integrative epistemologies that might be applicable to all fields of learning, including the sciences, the social sciences, the humanities, and the arts. The second principle is that of unified or collaborative modes of knowledge that might be deployed for addressing real-world problems, such as environmental degradation, increasingly complex cities, water shortage and its management, public health crises, migration and refugees, international security, and the vagaries of globalization, to name just a few that have captured headlines since the Covid pandemic. While discussing these first ideas of interdisciplinarity, Prof. Quayson will be introducing a third aspect, namely, the protocols of proposition making that emerge from different disciplines and ground them as disciplines as such. Understanding the different protocols of proposition making that apply in different disciplines is fundamental to what we understand as comparative studies of different kinds, ranging from the literary, to the social, to the urban, etc. He will then spend some time elaborating a supple comparative method from this understanding.
 

Friends of the GCLR, 

Please join us on Thursday, May 15th from 10am-12:30pm in Phelps 6206C for a seminar with Prof. Ato Quayson (English, Stanford), the GCLR's annual Distinguished Visiting Scholar!

This seminar will focus on the concepts, pedagogical designs, and possible experiential outcomes for urban studies courses. We will draw on a summer course titled “Interdisciplinary Introduction to African Urban Studies,” which Prof. Quayson has taught in Accra for Stanford students for the past three years. The central principle underpinning the course is the ways in which any given city might be used to generate a toolkit of concepts and methods for understanding other cities, with Accra providing the experiential laboratory in this case. Cities to be referred to will include New York, London, San Francisco, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Johannesburg, among various others. We will also explore various literary and film texts that allow us to ground spatial principles.

You can RSVP for the event here.

Join us on Friday, May 23 from 2-3pm as Prof. Kevin B. Anderson, author of the acclaimed Marx at the Margins, presents his latest book entitled The Late Marx's Revolutionary Roads: Colonialism, Gender, Indigenous Communism. He will be joined in dialogue on these topics by Prof. Ricado Jacobs. A brief description of the book can be found below.
"In his late writings, Marx went beyond the boundaries of capital and class in the Western European and North American contexts. Kevin Anderson carries out a systematic analysis of Marx’s Ethnological Notebooks and related texts on Russia, India, Ireland, Algeria, Latin America, and ancient Rome. These texts, some of them only now being published, provide evidence for a change of perspective, away from Eurocentric worldviews or unilinear theories of development. As Anderson shows, the late Marx elaborated a truly global, multilinear theory of modern society and its revolutionary possibilities." 
Zoom attendance link here
This professional writing workshop is designed to equip graduate students with the skills necessary to craft compelling cover letters and persuasive grant proposals. Through targeted instruction and hands-on practice, students will learn to articulate their qualifications, research interests, and professional goals in clear, concise, and impactful ways. Emphasis will be placed on understanding audience expectations, aligning documents with institutional or funding priorities, and developing a confident professional voice
 
Cover letters and grant proposals are essential tools for academic and career advancement. Whether applying for jobs, fellowships, or research funding, graduate students, and early career scholars, must be able to present themselves and their work effectively. This workshop provides practical strategies to help students navigate these high-stakes writing genres with clarity and confidence.
 
Time: Monday May 12th, 2025
 
Place: Phelps 6206C
 
RSVP here!
Prof. Barker will be holding a workshop for faculty and graduate students who are interested in ethnographic film and filmmaking. She will discuss fieldwork on film culture in the former Yugoslavia, which includes following, participating in and organising filmmaking workshops at film clubs and other film camps in the region. She will also facilitate an interactive workshop on our own films in progress. Please see the attached flyer for more details. 
 
Time: Monday April 14th, 10am-12:30pm 
 
Place: HSSB 2001A
Please join us for this event in which prof. Barker will be discussing her recently published ethnography of childhood in Kazakhstan, Throw Your Voice.
 
Time: Monday, April 14, 2025 3-4:30PM
 

Place: HSSB 6020