The Wolf Humanities Center’s 2018-2019 Forum on Stuff focuses on the madeness and the physicality of cultural lives. Topic Director Julie Nelson Davis, professor of history of art, asks: “Has the rise of digital and virtual culture fundamentally altered our thinking about materiality, or just given us more stuff to think about? Could a more concerted effort to understand our relations to stuff assist us in a time of political turmoil, increasing scarcity of resources and escalating environmental dangers, when the sheer volume of stuff we make, consume and discard threatens the very ecosystems that sustain us? Can we solve what George Carlin said was the great problem of contemporary life, that of finding a place for our stuff?”

In partnership with the American Sign Language Program in Penn’s Department of Linguistics and the Deaf Hearing Communication Centre, the Wolf Humanities Center will provide ASL interpretation at many of the live events in the 2018-2019 Forum on Stuff, and in their online counterparts.

Visit www.wolfhumanities.upenn.edu for more information, event location and registration information and a listing of 2019 events.

    The following are the 2018 events in the Forum on Stuff:

    September 26, 5-6:30 p.m.; Dr. S.T. Lee Distinguished Lecture in the Humanities, Acts, Facts, and Artifacts: The Stuff of Black Culture; Kevin Young, Herman Beavers

    October 10, 5-6:30 p.m.; Design and the Stuff of Everyday Life, Ilse Crawford

    October 14, 2 p.m.; Random Acts of Legacy; Film Screening

    October 17, 5-6:30 p.m.; Segregation: The Stuff Social Media is Made Of, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun

    October 24, 5-6:30 p.m.; Buried in Treasures: When Stuff Takes Over, Gail Steketee

    November 8, 5-6:30 p.m.; Think Me Nuthing? Raising Awareness of the Black Deaf Community, Ritchie Bryant

    November 11, 2 p.m.; Poi E: The Story of Our Song, Film Screening

    November 14, 5-6:30 p.m.; Repatriating Tribal Objects in the Digital Age, Eric Hollinger

    November 28, 5-6:30 p.m.; Re-Stuffing Theory, Re-Thinking Assemblage, Bill Brown