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
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 4 - Guest event with Lisa Corrin (Executive Director, Northwestern's Block Museum of Art)
A conversation to seed generative connections between the museum and humanities faculty, sharing projects, expertise, and scholarly areas our faculty are working on and opportunities for faculty teaching support from the Block.
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
Past - 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)
Previous Years
Click here to view past Kaplan Conversations.