The Intellectual in a Time of Crisis | 2026 Spring Celebration
Schedule
Thu May 21 2026 at 04:00 pm to 06:00 pm
UTC-07:00Location
The Stanford Humanities Center | Stanford, CA
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By vocation scholars are motivated to bring clarity out of confusion, light out of darkness. Social justice, the rule of law, climate change, the impact of technology—all of these issues and many more are addressed by humanities scholars now. Even in a time of crisis, however, the work of ideas is sometimes slow, circuitous, and inconvenient. While it always belongs to the present as part of the remaking of knowledge that happens generation by generation, such work may manifest its relevance to the current moment in ways that are visible or only latent, perhaps obscure.How do scholars conceive the relation of their intellectual work to the present moment? How does research in the humanities make a difference in society, in the broader culture, or over the longer term? And especially now, as we experience one crisis after another in the world, what brings one back to the practice of interpretation, argument, and analysis?
Please join us for brief responses to these questions by current fellows, followed by a general discussion with Q&A moderated by SHC Director Roland Greene.
About the Speakers:
Amanda Joyce Hall is an assistant professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is a scholar of global anti-apartheid, Black internationalism, and twentieth-century Black world social movements. She earned her doctorate in history and African American Studies from Yale University where she won Fulbright, Ford Foundation, and Newcombe Foundation fellowships to assist her research.
Jesuseyi Osundeko is a PhD Candidate in English at Stanford University. She holds a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation investigates practices of self-mourning in women through African and Black diasporic literature. Other areas of interest include postcolonial feminism and creative writing.
Timothy Pantoja is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer at the Department of African and African American Studies at Stanford. He is a minister and scholar of literature whose research is invested in exploring the ways Black art and literature render the social, relational, and emotional conditions upon which theories and performances of art rely.
Mudit Trivedi, assistant professor of Anthropology at Stanford, is an archaeologist with interests in religious subjectivity, materiality, craft and historical anthropology. His first book project, An Archaeology of Virtue, considers the archaeology of conversion to Islam through the results of an ongoing long-term archaeological project he has co-directed at the site of Indor in Rajasthan, North India. This research bridges archaeological and anthropological conceptualizations of tradition.
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Where is it happening?
The Stanford Humanities Center, 424 Santa Teresa St, Stanford, CA 94305-4003, United StatesEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
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