The Humanities Friday Lunch and Lecture program offers informal opportunities to learn about the work of members of the UW-Madison humanities faculty. A buffet lunch is provided at no charge thanks to the University Club and the Bertha and Rawson J. Pickard Fund of the University of Wisconsin Foundation.

Due to restrictions built into the funding source for this program, the Humanities Friday Lunch series is open only to members of the UW-Madison faculty, graduate students, and academic staff, including library staff. Additionally, visiting scholars, fellows, or guests with academic or staff affiliations at other universities are also welcome to attend. All other members of the University community who are interested in being invited to a particular Friday lunch are welcome, and should contact the Center for the Humanities to let us know so that we can include your name on the invited list.

Attendance is by reservation only, and space is limited. To reserve space at one of the following programs, please send an email including your UW-Madison affiliation and daytime phone number to info@humanities.wisc.edu. The reservation deadline for each program is NOON on the Tuesday prior to the event.

• The Nuremberg Trials and the Making of the USSR as an International Power
• Francine Hirsch
• Associate Professor, Department of History, UW-Madison
• The talk will focus on the emergence or making of the USSR as a "superpower" through the learning experience of Nuremberg--and about how the USSR's internal policies and practices made it difficult for it to grow into its new role on the international stage. The focus will be on the USSR's informal foreign relations apparatus--Soviet legal experts, journalists, and so on who were thrust into the world of foreign affairs as the USSR became an international actor. I'l talk in large part about a critical archival find that forms an important backbone of this part of the project--a treasure trove of correspondence between "Moscow" and Soviet personnel abroad (Nuremberg and London) that documents the course of negotiations about the trials, the trials themselves, life in Nuremberg, and the large and small triumphs and failures of the Soviet delegation.
• September 12, 2008 @ 12:00 pm
• Banquet Room, University Club

• Paul Rowe
• Professor of Voice, UW-Madison
• October 10, 2008
• Banquet Room, University Club

• Rob Howard
• Assistant Professor, Department of Communication Arts, UW-Madison
• November 7, 2008
• Banquet Room, University Club

• Richard Goodkin
• Professor of French and Italian, UW-Madison
• April 10, 2009 @ 12:00 pm
• Banquet Room, University Club

Past Events

• On Corpulence: Body Size, Power, and Prestige in African Political Cartoons
• Teju Olaniyan
• Louise Durham Mead Professor of English and Department of African Language and Literature, UW-Madison
• Political cartoonists portray figures who are bodily large nearly always as critical commentary on wealth and power relations. But in contexts where ampleness of body is commonly accepted as evidence of both health and social wellness, cartoonists face special problems of style, communication, and meaning-encoding. The line, for instance, between caricaturing normative ampleness and an abnormal one is often blurry and ambiguous. Plus, the conventional equation between corpulent men and power is far easier to make than a similar logic for women. No, there are no corpulent women, only fat and powerless ones...
• April 4, 2008 @ 12:00 pm
• Banquet Room, University Club

• Violence over the Land: Lessons from the Early American West
• Ned Blackhawk
• Associate Professor, Department of History, UW-Madison
• 
  In his award-winning study of the early American West, Ned Blackhawk charts the changing forms and relations of violence that accompanied the expansion of European settlements in first New Mexico and later the American territories of Colorado, Utah, and Nevada. Locating various Shoshone, Ute, and Paiute Indian communities at the center of his narrative, Blackhawk uncovers uncommon and previously under-recognized forms of indigenous adaptation and resistance to European colonization. His talk will examine aspects of this dramatic narrative, examining in particular the early territorial histories of New Mexico and Colorado as well as the impact of the Civil War in the American West.
• February 8, 2008 @ 12:00 pm
• Banquet Room, University Club