Public racist stereotypes after the election of Barack Obama

On the photographs of torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the visual politics of power

On the work of Krzysztof Wodiczko

On looking at lynching photographs

The politics of Rivera’s RCA mural in New York City.

One of the most pressing challenges in the world today is access to clean water. This chapter explores the crises of contaminated water in Flint, water shutoffs in Detroit, and larger questions about the control of water by private corporations and the changing nature of urbanization. As neoliberal policies seek to privatize infrastructure and…[Read more]

Architecture Space and Society Research Centre, Birkbeck (University of London) Friday 1st March 2019
Keynes Library, School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square
Registration: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/conquest-and-construction-tickets-55022443610

Two-part interview about the book Beautiful Terrible Ruins

By depicting urban decay and ecological crisis, ruin imagery shows the people and places that capitalism left behind.

When it comes to Japanese literary heritage, why and how are we able to access it? The shape of what is preserved and available is driven by and in turn dictates the shape of our canon(s). Yet we often do not think of the labor and social networks behind the reprinting and digitizing that allows us to access literature in the first place, whether…[Read more]

On scholarly traditions, quantitative assessments and academic malpractices in Italy, and how these factors affect Italian scholarship in the history of science.

Subject of the study are intentional communities with a strong emphasis on sustainable development. The study explores ecovillages and other socio-ecological communities in their role as lifestyle avant-gardes and as pioneers of sustainable development. Main interest is both the sustainability and the innovation potential of such communities.…[Read more]

The purpose of this course is to introduce graduate students to the tools, methods, and history of sinology. Sinology refers to the study of China as performed in a philological manner. Philology refers to the historical study of language and literature in its fullest context. It is inherently interdisciplinary. It draws on the fields of…[Read more]

This presentation explains my undergrad/grad seminar “East Asian DH” (EALC111/511) at University of Pennsylvania in Spring 2018. I focus on the survey format of the seminar, as dictated by the challenge of trying to reach students working on many aspects of the un-discipline of East Asian studies, which encompasses a large region, at least three…[Read more]

Book review of the book by Marco Leonardi (“Renaissance Quarterly,” Volume 71, n. 4, 2018, pp. 1489-1491).

What role does destruction play in the continued existence of a historical monument? Is destruction an inevitable part of its identity? Huyssen in his 2003 book, Present Pasts, suggests that, “…the only monument that counts, is the one already imagined as ruin.” On the other hand, the creation of the monumental itself is led by a quest for immor…[Read more]

Addressing Walt Whitman’s reception in Iran, the present essay focuses on the front cover of a book-length translation of Whitman into Persian to study how Whitman’s image is visually translated for an Iranian audience. Among literary discourses of contemporary Iran, the one that associates poetry with mysticism plays the most significant role in…[Read more]