Skip to main content

Kaplan Conversations

Ninety minutes of interdisciplinary discussion of research by Kaplan Institute associates.

Kaplan Conversations are held on Wednesdays, 12 noon - 1:30 pm CST. If you are interested in attending a Kaplan Conversation lunch seminar, please email thomas.burke@northwestern.edu.

2024-2025 Kaplan Conversations

Fall 2024

October 2 - Welcome KC

October 16 - Faculty Fellow
Pens and Needles: Toni Morrison, Quilts, and Community
Tracy Vaughn-Manley (Assistant Professor, Department of Black Studies; Charles Deering McCormick Distinguished University Professor of Instruction)

November 6 - Postdoctoral FellowMoving On: Houselessness in Victorian Literature
Trish Bredar
(Postdoctoral Fellow in Public Humanities, Kaplan Humanities Institute)


November 20 - Faculty FellowBluster: Bourgeois Anxiety and Expository Style in Late Nineteenth-Century Germany
Erica Weitzman (Associate Professor, Department of German)

Winter 2025

January 15 - Faculty FellowMadea’s Baby, Tyler’s Maybe: Tyler Perry on Stage and in Film, 1997-2019
Miriam Petty
(Associate Professor, Department of Radio/Television/Film; Associate Dean for Academic Programs, The Graduate School)


January 29 - Library Fellow
Understanding the Roots of Political Music: The Political Themes of the Music of Max Cavalera
Michael Perry (Head of Assessment and Planning, Northwestern University Libraries)

February 12 – Faculty Fellow
Conditions of Meaning: An Ethnography of Mind-Body Illness
Rebecca Seligman
(Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology and Program in Global Health Studies)

February 19
– Faculty Fellow
An Ethics of Love: Iris Murdoch's Moral Philosophy 
Kyla Ebels-Duggan
(Professor, Department of Philosophy; Director of the Brady Program in Ethics and Civic Life)

 

Spring 2025

April 23 – Faculty Fellow
In the Frame: Organizing and Delimiting the Moving Image from Virtual Reality to Cinema
Ariel Rogers (Associate Professor, Department of Radio/Television/Film)

April 30 – Faculty Fellow
Feeling Like the Global South: Recoding Digital Bahdala in the MENA
Heather Jaber (Assistant Professor in Residence, Communication and Liberal Arts Programs, Northwestern Qatar)

May 2 (Friday) – Future Directions Forum
Presentation of Franke Fellows' research; event is 9am to 3pm

May 7 – Faculty Fellow
Dear Whiteness: Poems 
Charif Shanahan (Assistant Professor, Department of English)


Previous Years

Click here to view past Kaplan Conversations.