Fall 2025 - Spring 2026 Calendar of Events -- Life/Support

“Life/Support” may immediately suggest emergency measures undertaken to prevent death: an apt metaphor for the present condition of our democratic institutions. Yet life as we would wish it is more than just not dying. Rather, to support life is to provide the basis for its thriving. Life/Support invokes both crisis thinking and utopian thinking, bare minimums and luxuriant flourishing, just hanging on and making things better. It thus stands for everything that makes our lives possible—air and food and water; everything that makes our lives meaningful—learning and healthcare and civil rights; and everything that makes meaningful lives sustainable—public investment, self-governance, and a shared sense of purpose. These are ideals which "Life/Support" aims to uphold, improve, and champion.

All events are 5:00-6:30 pm in Humanities Rm 1008 unless otherwise noted. Dates and times of HISB events are subject to change. Please continue to check our website for updates and detailed event information, registration for specific Zoom events, and  how to log in.

Spring 2026

Date	Event
February 18	Faculty Fellows Lecture by Mohamad Ballan/HIS, The Politics of Pandemic: Rethinking the Black Death in Nasrid Granada.
February 26	Soundtrack for Black Childhood, featuring Kyra D. Gaunt/ University at Albany; Bettina L. Love/Columbia Teachers College; and Jazmen Moore/AFS. Moderated by Kevin C. Holt/MUS. Registration required for Zoom participation.  Register here.
March 2	Navigating the Job Market-Humanities GPD Session for Grad Students,12:30-1:50 PM. Hosted by HISB in Partnership with the Departments of English, Hispanic Languages and Literature, History, Philosophy, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Writing and Rhetoric.
March 2	CAS Sir Run Run Shaw lecture, Aziza Ahmed/N. Neal Pike Scholar, Boston University, Risk and Resistance: How Feminists Transformed the Law and Science of AIDS. Co-sponsored by WGSS.
March 4	CAS Sir Run Run Shaw lecture by Peter Beinart/political commentor and faculty at the CUNY Graduate Center. Title TBD. Co-sponsored by the Center for Changing Systems of Power, Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies; and the Humanities Institute at Stony Brook.
March 5	Elisabetta Scirocco/Bibliotheca Hertziana at The Max Planck Institute for Art History-Rome, Art and Catastrophes: Heritage and Natural Dangers, from Spanish Italy to the Present,3:30-4:50 PM. Sponsored by HLL. Co-sponsored by HISB.
March 9	Grant Writing and Fellowships - Humanities GPD Session for Grad Students, 12:30-1:50 PM. Hosted by HISB in Partnership with the Departments of English, Hispanic Languages and Literature, History, Philosophy, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Writing and Rhetoric.
March 10	Faculty Book lecture by Patrice Nganang/AFS, Scale Boy: An African Childhood, with D. Vance Smith/Princeton University, respondent.
March 11	Lecture by Richard McKay/University of Cambridge, The Chef: A Microhistory of Sodomy, Syphilis, and Eugenics in Early-Twentieth-Century New York. Sponsored by CAS, the Program in Public Health, HIS, WGSS, AFS, CCSP and HISB.
March 12	Discussion featuring Richard McKay/ University of Cambridge joined by researchers from Hudson Link for Higher Education in Prison, Roundtable Carceral Sickness: Towards Inclusive Research with New York State Correctional Facility Records. Sponsored by CAS, the Program in Public Health, HIS, WGSS, AFS, CCSP and HISB.
March 23	Digital Humanities Research - Humanities GPD Session for Grad Students,12:30-1:50 PM. Hosted by HISB in Partnership with the Departments of English, Hispanic Languages and Literature, History, Philosophy, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Writing and Rhetoric.
March 25	Joseph Pierce/HLL on his book, Speculative Relations: Indigenous Worlding and Repair and Jodi A. Byrd/Univerity of Chicago on their book, Indigenomicon: American Indians, Video Games, and the Structures of Dispossession, 12:30-1:50 PM.
March 26	Global Waterways: Between the Natural World and the Built Environment,  2:00-6:00 PM. Sponsored by HLL and HISB.
March 27	Global Waterways: Between the Natural World and the Built Environment,  10:00 AM - 6:00 PM. Sponsored by HLL and HISB.
March 30	"Sound Studies Series" lecture by Agustina Checa/Lehman College-CUNY, From Capitalist Realism to Realistic Utopianism. Imagining and Enacting Alternative Capitalisms Through Cassettes in Argentina,12:30-1:50 PM. Sponsored by by HIS, LACS and HISB.
March 30	A Conversation with Rafal Syska/Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland and Miroslaw Przylipiak/Gdansk University, Gdansk, Poland, 3:30-4:50 PM. Part of the "Pressing Matters" lecture series.
March 31	Faculty Fellows lecture by Lena Burgos-Lafuente/HLL, Cosmopolitanism and its Limits: The Caribbean Communist Left.
April 2	A Conversation with Dr. Leo Douglas/New York University, Reimagining “Nanny” with Leo Douglas, Narrative Agency and Identity (Re)positioning Through Film, 11:00 AM-12:20 PM. Part of the "Pressing Matters" lecture series.
April 6	Panel disucssion, The Books that Made Us, and collaborative art installation, moderated by Caden Deshommes/ALT+CTL+Create Undergraduate Intern, 12:30-1:50 PM. Part of the Undergraduate Takeover Week at HISB.
April 7	TURMOIL! A DIY Zine-Making Workshop, lead by Hannah Waterman/HISB GA and MUS PhD candidate, 12:30-1:50 PM. Co-sponsored by EGL. Part of the Undergraduate Takeover Week at HISB.
April 8	Panel discussion, Who Changed My Mind, moderated by Erika Honisch/HISB and MUS, 12:30-1:50 PM. Part of the Undergraduate Takeover Week at HISB.
April 14	Faculty Book lecture by Michael Rubenstein/HISB. Katherine Sugg/Central Connecticut State University, respondent.
April 15	Presentation by Beatriz Solla-Vilas/PhD candidate in HLL, on her public humanities project creating and implementing a Spanish-language memoir writing program for incarcerated and system-impacted individuals. Title TBD, 12:30-1:50 PM. Funding provided by The Graduate School at Stony Brook University with support from Herstory Writers Network. Sponsored by HISB.
April 16	Fiction Lab 1.0: Building a Transdisciplinary, Transmedial, Transcultural Study of Fictionality. Sponsored by EGL. Co-sponsored by HISB. Time TBD.
April 21	Faculty Book lecture by S.N. Sridhar/AAAS, The Sanskrit Hegemon and Regional Language Assertion: Creativity in the Kannada Mahabharata.
April 22	A Conversation with Manuela Ceballos/University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Blood, Purity, and Power in the Sixteenth-century Western Mediterranean,  9:30-10:50 AM. Part of the "Pressing Matters" lecture series. Co-Sponsored by HLL.
April 22	Poema suelto: Publication in Non-traditional Formats. Moderated by Nicole Cecilia Delgado and Amanda Hernandez (La Impresora). Sponsored ny HLL.

 

Fall 2025

Date	Event
September 10	Panel Discussion - Immigration Detention Inc: The Big Business of Locking Up Migrants. With  Nancy Hiemstra/WGSS, Deirdre Conlon/University of Leeds, Ulla D. Berg/Rutgers University-New Brunswick, and Sarah Tosh/Rutgers University-Camden. In-person and via Zoom. Click here for Zoom registration. Registration deadline September 9.
September 16	Lecture by Michelle H. S. Ho/National University of Singapore – Emergent Genders: Living Otherwise in Tokyo's Pink Economies. Part of the Q/F/T* Series, a collaboration with the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department and HISB, 3:30-5:00 PM.  Co-sponsored the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department, the English Department, the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies, The Japan Center at Stony Brook, and HISB.
September 18	African Languages and the Test of Modernity: Writing Challenges, Teaching Strategies, Vision for the Future, a International Conference on African Languages, 9:00 AM - 4:00 PM.Click here to join the Zoom.
September 19	Philosophy and Gaza, with John Davenport/Fordham University, After Total War: How Gaza Could Become a Palestinian State, and Allegra de Laurentiis/PHI, After Total War: How Gaza Could Become a Palestinian State,  in 1006 Humanities. Sponsored by CCSP, HIS, PHI, and HISB.
September 23	Presenation by Julia Burkhardt/Ludwig Maximilians Universität, Munich – Femicide: Interdisciplinary Approaches to a Global Historical Phenomenon,  12:30-1:50 PM in Frey Hall 104. Part of the "Pressing Matters" lecture series. Co-sponsored by HIS, WGSS, HLL, the Center for Changing Sytems of Power, and HISB.
September 30	Lecture by Rita S. Nezami/DWR – The Rooftop: A Culture Specific Feminine Space in Morocco – Fez, Marrakech, and Meknes.
October 7	A Conversation with Holly Jean Buck/University at Buffalo. In-person and via Zoom, 11:00 AM-12:20 PM. Part of the "Pressing Matters" lecture series. Registration required for Zoom participation. Click here to register.
October 15	Film showing of Conscience Point with Treva Wurmfeld, award-winning documentary filmmaker and a meember of the Shinnecock Nation, 12:30-1:50 PM in 1006 Humanities. Part of the "Pressing Matters" lecture series.
October 15	A Conversation with Treva Wurmfeld, award-winning documentary filmmaker and a member of the Shinnecock Nation.  In-person and via Zoom, 2:00-3:30 PM. Part of the "Pressing Matters" lecture series. Registration required for Zoom participation. Click here to register.
October 16	HISB Faculty Fellows lecture by Jennifer L. Anderson/HIS – Transforming Hempstead Plains: The Demise of the “Public Commons” on Long Island.
October 20	Sir Run Run Shaw lecture – Presentation by the Shinnecock Kelp Farmers, From Seaweed to Sovereignty: Shinnecock Kelp Farmers and Indigenous-Led Climate Solutions, 12:30-1:50 PM in Staller Center Recital Hall. Presented by the Department of Art, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative, and HISB.
October 28	Faculty lecture by Richard H. Tomczak/HIS, Director of Faculty Engagement, Division of Undergraduate Education  – Workers of War & Empire from New France to British America, 1688-1783.
November 5	HISB Faculty Fellows lecture by Kristina Lucenko/DWR – Women Writing Race in the Seventeenth-Century English Atlantic: Civil Agents, in conversation with Jean E. Howard/Columbia University and Bernadette Andrea/University of California, Santa Barbara. Click here for Zoom registration. Registration deadline September 4.
November 7	On Call: June Jordan, Palestine, and the Black Radical Tradition, featuring authors Lena Khalaf Tuffaha and Alexis Pauline Gumbs. 10:00 AM-6:30 PM, in 2001 Humanities The Poetry Center. Funded by the SBU Fine Arts, Humanities, and (lettered) Social Sciences (FAHSS) Research and Interdisciplinary Initiatives Fund. Co-sponsored by The Lichtenstein Center, AFS, and HISB.
November 12	The Voices of Humanity Showcase -- "What Makes Us Human", 12:30–1:50 PM. Part of Undergraduate Takeover at HISB Fall 2025.
November 13	Faculty Fellows lecture by Cristina Khan/WGSS – Divine Dancers.

 

Events from previous theme, REMEDIATION (Spring 2024-Spring 2025)  can be found here.

Events from previous theme, "Healing: Survival and Resiliency in the Arts and Humanities(Fall 2019 - Spring 2023 )" can be found here.