chr 500-0bCHR Dark Textchr 500-0bchr 500-0b
  • About
    • Centre for Humanities Research
    • DSI-NRF Flagship
    • Partnerships
    • Funders
    • Reports
    • Staff
  • Iyatsiba Lab
    • LoKO
    • Sound Working Group
    • Documentary film
  • New Archival Visions
  • Research Platforms
    • Aesthetics and Politics
      • Factory of the Arts
        • About the Factory of the Arts
        • Convening the Factory of the Arts
        • Artists in Residence
      • Research Projects
    • Becoming Technical of the Human
      • Laboratory of Kinetic Objects
      • Research Projects
    • Migrating Violence
      • Research Projects
        • Political Theory and Philosophy
        • Trans-formative Consitutionalism
  • Research Chairs
    • NRF SARChI Chair in Visual History and Theory
      • Postgraduate bursaries and postdoctoral fellowships in Visual History & Theory
      • Postgraduate Module In Visual History, 2023 (HIS 735/835)
    • Charlotte Maxeke-Mary Robinson Research Chair
    • UK-SA Bilateral Digital humanities chair in culture and technics
  • Fellowship Programme
    • Fellows
    • Winter School
    • Visiting Scholars
    • Seminar Programme
  • Publications & Archive
    • Publications & Creative Outputs
    • Galleries
    • Video
    • Film
    • Podcast
  • News
    • Workshops
    • Conferences
    • Lectures
    • Special Meetings
    • Colloquia
    • Seminars
    • Arts Events
  • Contact
✕ When autocomplete results are available use up and down arrows to review and enter to go to the desired page. Touch device users, explore by touch or with swipe gestures.
No results See all results

Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) annual meeting: …At Risk

From May 28-June 1, 2024, the Townsend Center for the Humanities at UC Berkeley will host the CHCI’s Annual Meeting. On 30 May, the CHR’s Professor Maurits van Bever Donker will chair a discussion on ‘Humanities at Risk’.

The panel, which includes Jack Chen, (Director, Institute of the Humanities & Global Cultures, University of Virginia), Kader Konuk (Director, Academy in Exile, Institut für Turkistik, University of Duisburg-Essen), Ato Quayson, (Chair Professor of English and of African and African American Studies, Stanford University), and Mario Telo, (Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature, UC Berkeley), coalesces around:

the concept of a wager, a risk, the potential that what is endeavoured may well produce something unexpected. The anti-fascist philosopher, Walter Benjamin, referred to this wager (in his quasi-theological language) as “messianic time”, while warning against the simple sense that this might equal a positive hope. Rather, this arrival, l’avenir, carries with it a radical hope, one whose form of arrival cannot be anticipated and yet requires that we keep watch, that we prepare ourselves to be adequate to what might arrive. In this framing, what does it mean to convene/hold/curate Critical Humanities Spaces? Does it help us to think of the humanities, as such, as a wager? And what might this look like in a time that is defined by precarity, risk, and being at risk? The future of the human has been the humanities’ abiding concern, and the possibility of producing this, its wager. At the same time, when we do the humanities – when we read, write, produce, translate – this activity itself is in the form of a wager, a risking of the unknown, a risking of the self; a welcoming, perhaps, of the stranger. And then in practical terms, perhaps, humanities centres and Institutes are, themselves, a wager within the higher education landscape, one which University executives no doubt read differently to the people that occupy these spaces. Our session will seek to abide by and interrogate these questions, asking what it means to hold the critical humanities space as a site of and for, wager/risk.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Share
1

Related posts

October 6, 2025

Dublin Short: A Little Approach to Big History


Read more
October 3, 2025

In Black Women’s Hands: A History of Gestures in Photography and Textile


Read more
October 3, 2025

An Archive and Forms of Sight: Gestures of Madness


Read more
September 19, 2025

Artists Forum: ASH: Art-Science-Humanities Research


Read more

Search

✕ When autocomplete results are available use up and down arrows to review and enter to go to the desired page. Touch device users, explore by touch or with swipe gestures.

Sign Up to our newsletter


Stay up to date with the latest news and developments from the Centre for Humanities Research.




Recent Media

  • ENGAGE/REFLECT/CREATE: The CHR-Encounters Documentary Series
    August 19, 2025
  • Holding a Thought – The puppetry of Ukwanda
    July 18, 2025
  • In Defence of the Ontological Category of Ubuqaba
    May 28, 2025
Centre for Humanities Research

2 weeks ago

Centre for Humanities Research
We are pleased to announce that Premesh Lalu 's Undoing Apartheid has been translated into Turkic and published as part of the Afrika Vakfi Yayinlan series... ... See MoreSee Less

Photo

View on Facebook
· Share

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email

Centre for Humanities Research

3 weeks ago

Centre for Humanities Research
Our fifth announcement of the Artist Forum is themed: Art Science Humanities Research Date: Thurs 25th Sept 2025Time: 11:00 am - 13:00pmVenue: The CHR's Iyatsiba Lab,66 Greatmore Street, Woodstock (enter via Regent St) ... See MoreSee Less

Photo

View on Facebook
· Share

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email

Centre for Humanities Research

3 weeks ago

Centre for Humanities Research
Please join us for the next Humanities in Session Seminar, 'Lessons from Rwanda 30 years after Genocide." Aiden Erasmus will lead the Q&A response.Date: Thurs 18th Sept 2025 Time: 10:30am - 12:30pmVenue: The CHR’s Iyatsiba Lab ... See MoreSee Less

Photo

View on Facebook
· Share

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email

Centre for Humanities Research

4 weeks ago

Centre for Humanities Research
Forthcoming events at Iyatsiba !Please join us ... ... See MoreSee Less

Photo

View on Facebook
· Share

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email

Centre for Humanities Research

4 weeks ago

Centre for Humanities Research
The New Archival Visions (NAV) programme is offering fellowships for the remainder of 2025. Funding support comes from the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET).Deadline 26 September 2025Applications are open for students and postdoctoral candidates for these grant and fellowship opportunities to promote new research that is oriented towards the UWC archives. These archives include the UWC-Robben Island Museum-Mayibuye Archives, along with specialized collections focused on research, activism, multimedia, and art. These collections encompass histories of the liberation struggle and various forms of activism and art in southern Africa. The NAV initiative encourages diverse explorations of the histories, objects, and media within these collections, resulting in research papers, publications, theses, performances, films, and curated works. Successful applicants will become fellows at the CHR and participate in its programmes. ... See MoreSee Less

Photo

View on Facebook
· Share

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email

Research Platforms

  • NRF SARChI Chair in Visual History and Theory
  • Andrew W. Mellon Chair of Aesthetic Theory and Material Performance
  • Factory of the Arts
  • Laboratory of Kinetic Objects
  • Seminar Programme
  • Publications

Recently Added

  • Dublin Short: A Little Approach to Big History
    October 6, 2025
  • In Black Women’s Hands: A History of Gestures in Photography and Textile
    October 3, 2025
  • An Archive and Forms of Sight: Gestures of Madness
    October 3, 2025
✕ When autocomplete results are available use up and down arrows to review and enter to go to the desired page. Touch device users, explore by touch or with swipe gestures.

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER


Stay up to date with the latest news and developments from the Centre for Humanities Research.



© 2025 UWC | The Centre for Humanities Research. All Rights Reserved. Designed By Spotkolours Design
No results See all results