2018 Tucson Humanities Festival
If knowledge is power, how powerful are secrets? Throughout history, valuable information has been withheld, protected and obscured. Hidden identities, mysterious escapes and encoded meanings have reverberated across time and around the world. How have marginalized people used clandestine means to keep their culture alive?
What different power can information have when it’s concealed? How have closely guarded secrets influenced human cultures? Join us for the 2018 Tucson Humanities Festival: Secrets, a series of FREE topical lectures, panel discussions, events and special guests, presented by the UA College of Humanities.
2018 Tucson Humanities Festival Videos
SURPRISING VERMEER: An Artist In Delft, Delft In The World
Presenter: Timothy Brooks - University of British Columbia
Description
We are all so familiar with Vermeer’s paintings—crystalline visions of domestic life in the 17th century—that we hardly notice them any more.
But he can still surprise us if we pause and connect him to the world in which he lived. Far from being sequestered in his studio in Delft, Vermeer was hugely aware of Delft’s connections to the world and drew on those links endlessly to craft his paintings. Join a China historian as he looks at Vermeer from a global perspective.
TO SPEAK OR NOT TO SPEAK? Women, Secrets And Sexual Violence
Presenter: Martine Delvaux - Université du Québec à Montréal
Description
How do women choose to speak or not speak about personal experiences of sexual violence?
Rape culture silences victims of sexual violence, and while social movements such as #Beenrapedneverreported (2014) and #Metoo (2018) have worked to undo this silencing, they have succeeded by both facilitating collective speech and acknowledging women’s right to keep secrets. If doubt is a common response to speaking out, then for women, speaking cannot be presented as the only solution. Acknowledging that speaking does not necessarily cure, Martine Delvaux explores how women navigate secrecy, in order to think about secrets as a radical feminist tool.
Sponsored by Martha Durkin and YWCA Southern Arizona
TRANSPARENCY & TRUST: How Open Diplomacy Advances Democracy
Presenter: Andre Goodfriend, Director, U.S. Office of eDiplomacy & COH Alumnus of the Year
Description
Andre Goodfriend’s 30-year career in diplomacy has taken him to Tel Aviv, New Dehli, Moscow, Frankfurt, London, Damascus and Budapest.
Much of his work has revolved around the role of information technology in managing consular operations and streamlining the services and safety provided to American citizens abroad.
Goodfriend is the 2018 College of Humanities Alumnus of the Year. A 1979 UA graduate, he earned degrees in French, Greek, Philosophy and Radio-TV.