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 leon.hedstrom@northwestern.edu.
2025-2026 Kaplan Conversations
Fall 2025
October 1 - Welcome KC
October 15 – Faculty Fellow
Sculpting Whiteness in Eighteenth-Century France: Sugar, Porcelain, Marble
Alicia Caticha (Assistant Professor, Department of Art History)
October 29 – Faculty Fellow
Cultures of Threat
Corey Byrnes (Associate Professor, Department of Asian Languages and Cultures and Program in Comparative Literary Studies)
November 12 – Faculty Fellow
Unbinding Prometheus: Theater and Theology in Fifth-Century BCE Athens
Marianne Hopman (Associate Professor, Department of Classics and Program in Comparative Literary Studies)
November 19 – Faculty Fellow
Adherence and Addiction. HIV in the Times of Chronification
Miguel Caballero (Assistant Professor, Department of Spanish and Portuguese)
Winter 2026
January 14 - Faculty FellowTowards a More Global History of Religious Toleration: The View from Mughal India
Rajeev Kinra (Associate Professor, Department of History and Programs in Comparative Literary Studies and Middle East and North African Studies)
January 28 - Faculty Fellow
The Corset: A Critical Anatomy from Latin America Fin-de-Siècle
Nathalie Bouzaglo (Associate Professor, Department of Spanish and Portuguese)
February 11 – Faculty Fellow
Techno-Fiction: Science Fiction and the Reinvention of Writing in South Korea’s Informatization Era
Dahye Kim (Assistant Professor, Department of Asian Languages and Cultures)
February 25 – Faculty Fellow
Leisure and Pleasure in Mandate Palestine: Everyday Life and the Politics of Culture
Maayan Hilel (Assistant Professor of Instruction and Assistant Director of the Crown Family Center for Jewish and Israel Studies)
March 4 - Library Fellow
The Business of Isolationism: Robert R. McCormick’s Tribune Experimental Farm, 1928-1953
Benn Joseph (Head of Collections Services, McCormick Library of Special Collections and University Archives)
Spring 2026
April 8 - Faculty Fellow
Value Is Real
Claire Kirwin (Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy)
April 15 - Faculty FellowA History of the Algorithmic Individuation of Music
Daniel Shanahan (Associate Professor of Music Theory and Cognition, Bienen School of Music)
April 29 - Faculty Fellow
Hormonal Ethnography: Hysterical Hormones, Hormonal Havrutas
Shira E. Schwartz (Assistant Professor, Department of Religious Studies)
May 1 (Friday) – Future Directions Forum
Presentation of Franke Fellows' research; event is 9am to 3pm
Previous Years
Click here to view past Kaplan Conversations.