Events
Each academic year the Office of the Provost and Dean of the Faculty offers a variety of lectures, luncheons and faculty development workshops that feature Smith faculty and visiting professors.
Liberal Arts Luncheons
Liberal Arts Luncheons are sponsored by the Provost and Dean of the Faculty. LALs will be held on Thursdays in the Neilson Browsing Room, unless otherwise noted. Talks begin at approximately 12:10 p.m., and a complimentary lunch is offered for the first 40 attendees (first come, first served).
Date |
Talk |
Presenter |
|---|---|---|
Postponed to Fall 2025 |
POSTPONED TO FALL 2025 |
Ileana Vasu, Senior Lecturer in Mathematical Sciences |
February 13 |
Transforming the Strange, Infusing the Modern: Wang Zengqi’s (1920-1997) rewriting of Strange Tales from Liaozhai (ca. 1670-1714) |
Jessica Moyer, Associate Professor of Chinese Language & Literature |
February 27 |
What Our Pronouns Tell Us: A Sanskrit Philosopher on the Meaning of "I" |
Malcolm Keating, Associate Professor of Philosophy |
March 6 |
NO LUNCHEON TALK |
|
March 13 |
Oversight of Trump 2.0 |
Claire Leavitt, Assistant Professor of Government |
March 27 |
Black Entertainment and the Periodical Press in Nineteenth-Century New York |
Magdalena Zapędowska, Writing Instructor & Writing Studies Specialist; Lecturer in English Language & Literature |
April 3 |
Critical Consciousness: An Antidote to Oppression? |
Esther Burson, Assistant Professor of Psychology |
April 10 |
Elevating and Amplifying Women's Voices: The Meridians Project at Smith |
Ginetta E.B. Candelario ’90, Professor of Sociology and of Latin American & Latino/a Studies |
April 17 |
Collaborative and experiential learning: Designing from phenomenology and descriptive inquiry |
Cristina Valencia Mazzanti, Assistant Professor of Education & Child Study and colleagues |
April 24 |
The brGDGT Paleotemperature Proxy - can we make it to the Plateau of Productivity? |
Greg de Wet, Assistant Professor of Geosciences |
May 1 |
When does life begin? Is that even the right question? Developmental Biology and Abortion Policy |
Michael Barresi, Professor of Biological Sciences |
Sigma Xi Luncheons
Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society, meets regularly for talks and a complimentary lunch throughout the year. Talks are open to all faculty, staff and students.
Talks begin at approximately 12:10 p.m. in McConnell Auditorium. A complimentary lunch is offered in McConnell Foyer. Please visit the Sigma Xi website for the schedule.
Faculty Development Events
The Office of the Provost offers a variety of faculty development workshops and events throughout the year. Please visit the office’s Faculty Development webpage for the schedule.
Lectures
Eszter Hargittai ’96
Neilson Professorship
The Neilson Professorship was established in honor of the college’s third president to enable the college to have a distinguished scholar visit the community and share their current research with faculty and students.
Valerie Traub
Ruth and Clarence Kennedy Visiting Professor
Spring 2025
Valerie Traub is the Adrienne Rich Distinguished University Professor Emerita of English and women’s and gender studies at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Thinking Sex with the Early Moderns (2015), The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England (2002), and Desire & Anxiety: Circulations of Sexuality in Shakespearean Drama (1992, reissued 2014). Both Thinking Sex and The Renaissance of Lesbianism won the Best Book award from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women. In addition, she has edited several collections, including The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Embodiment (2016), which received the Ronald H. Bainton Prize for Best Reference Work in 2016. Her latest co-edited collection is Ovidian Transversions: Iphis and Ianthe, 1350–1650, while forthcoming is another co-edited collection, Reproductive Justice After Roe: Lessons from the Premodern Classroom. Her current project is Mapping Humanity in the Early Modern West: Classification, Norms, Biopolitics, which examines how gender, race, and sexuality in cartographic and anatomical illustration comprise a prehistory of the concept of the normal.
The Engel Lectureship is granted annually to a Smith faculty member who has made a significant contribution to his or her field. The lecture was established in 1958 by the National Council of Jewish women in honor of Engel, its onetime president and a 1920 Smith graduate. The 2025 Engel Lecturer will be Mary Harrington.
