Events

Taft Reads

The Taft Research Center is committed to fostering interdisciplinary collaboration on topics and themes of broad interest. Taft Reads are discussion groups organized by faculty from Taft member units that are open to all. Groups receive $300 per year (for up to three years). Proposals for new groups are accepted on a rolling basis. 

 

Religious Studies 

Organizer: Jenny Caplan, caplanjr@ucmail.uc.edu

While UC has no Department of Religious Studies, the College of Arts and Sciences includes faculty from a variety of disciplines who study religion. These faculty teach courses in the Religious Studies or Biblical Studies certificate programs but otherwise have few opportunities to engage as scholars on topics of mutual interest. The Religious Studies Reading Group creates an interdisciplinary forum for conversations and collaborative projects pertinent to all of us working at UC within or even at the margins of the field. Rather than replicating (in an ersatz way) a traditional religious studies program, with its specialists in distinct religious traditions, the Religious Studies Reading Group operates as a kind of lab for the study of significant issues that in one way or another touch upon religious histories, texts, traditions, cultures, and communities. 

Global Pre-Modern Studies, ca. 600–1700

Organizers: Joanna Huh, English and Christopher Platts, School of Art 
Contact: Susan Longfield Karr, at karrsn@ucmail.uc.edu

Knowledge of the pre-modern past offers stimulating ways of understanding how cultural ideas and traditions are constructed by and disseminated among different agents and regions, helping us contextualize contemporary debates about identity, community, politics, culture, and the humanities. The Taft Reading Group Global Pre-modern Studies (ca. 600 –1700) encourages multidisciplinary scholarship that reflects the rich array of areas of study offered at UC, including medieval and early modern religious traditions, cross-cultural trade and exchange, science and technology, literary and cultural studies, gender and race studies, political and legal structures, and material and visual cultures. 

This group aims to create a diverse community of colleagues—current and emeritus faculty, graduate students, and staff from various departments and colleges as well as scholars and curators in the greater Cincinnati area—to exchange ideas, share work-in-progress, participate in research roundtables, and foster collaboration in research, teaching, and public engagement.

Critical Pedagogy & Writing Pedagogy 

Organizer: Alecia Beymer, beymeraa@ucmail.uc.edu

This group provides a learning community to faculty and graduate students who teach or are interesting in forms of pedagogy, to deconstruct and address issues of power and privilege in pedagogical endeavors and to invite a stronger and more detailed understanding of what it means to invite critical, culturally sustaining – responsive, and inclusive writing practices in all disciplines. This group is open to graduate students and faculty across disciplines.

Critical Theory Reading Group

Organizer: Alecia Beymer, beymeraa@ucmail.uc.edu

This group invites an informal approach to engaging with and reading critical theory across discipline areas. The group would meet biweekly and is open to graduate students and faculty. In our meetings, we discuss a text and work to demystify the art of crafting and interpreting theory. The discussion would center on past and contemporary forms of critical theory alongside our own work.