humanities

“It’s in our best interest to make sense of the US and Mexico as places that receive and places that send—that goes for both countries,” says associate professor of history Ruben Flores, who will host acclaimed writer Valeria Luiselli in the latest Humanities Center Public Lecture Series.

This tiny book was acquired by the Smithsonian in 1925. It’s made up of 147 folios of parchment, or treated animal hide, stitched together. The “over text”—the visible text—is of an Armenian prayer book, suspected to date from the 15th century. But there is also an “under text”—a work that was erased to recycle the parchment for the over text. The Smithsonian has turned to University of Rochester professor Gregory Heyworth and his Lazarus Project to help solve the mystery of what that long-ago effaced text might be.

Peter Christensen, an associate professor of art and art history at the University of Rochester, has a new role as a juror advising the United Nations in its work designating UNESCO World Heritage sites.

Journalist and activist Masha Gessen will discuss marginalization during this year’s Humanities Center Public Lecture Series. But the subject is also central to the work of several Rochester scholars.

Kate Eminger—a director and filmmaker based in New York—is visiting guest director of the International Theatre Program's production of The Grown-Up, a play that, as she says, “captures this idea that there’s magic in everyday life.”

Seniors Melissa Wen, Nathan Nickerson, and Jarrod Young are this year's winners of the Wells Award, given each year to high-achieving students in the Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences who also excel in the humanities.

Construction is scheduled to begin in November on the Sloan Performing Arts Center, a 29,000-square-foot facility on the River Campus that will provide new space for theatrical programs, dance programs, concerts, and other activities.

The University’s Institute for Popular Music and the Eastman School of Music host “Come Together: Fifty Years of Abbey Road,” a three-day symposium to commemorate the Beatles’ landmark work.

In her highly visual, multi-year project “Fertile Ground,” cultural anthropologist Kathryn Mariner is researching placemaking in the city of Rochester, and her focus on how community is formed is shared by this year’s Humanities Center lectures.

We ask a few University participants in this year’s KeyBank Rochester Fringe Festival what draws them to the Fringe, and what—besides their own shows—they recommend attending.