Bill Hirst, recently appointed Malcolm B. Smith Professor of Psychology, delivered the NSSR general seminar in November 2015 on his research on collective memory. Hirst is a prominent scholar of memory, and in recent years, his research has focused on how people remember public events, how social interactions shape these memories, and how communities come to share memories. Hirst has been at the forefront of the effort to find a place for psychology in discussions of collective memory, and to underscore the relationship between memory and the ways in which societies address past grievances and actions.

Earlier this year, Hirst received an honorary doctorate from the Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium, for his contribution as one of the world leaders in the field of collective memory and social remembering, and for being the first cognitive psychologist to study the social aspects of memory.

Listen to Hirst’s general seminar lecture below.

Bio | Hirst received his PhD from Cornell University. Hirst has published over 140 scholarly articles and edited four books and four special journal issues. Between 2010 and 2014 alone, he was author or co-author on 46 articles; this included articles in Psychological Science, the most influential journal in psychology, The Journal of Trauma and Stress, Social Cognition, and the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. He recently published “A Ten-Year Follow-Up of a Study of Memory for the Attack of September 11, 2001: Flashbulb Memories and Memories for Flashbulb Events” (Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2015) and “Social Identity and Socially Shared Retrieval-Induced Forgetting: The Effects of Group Membership” (Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2015). Additionally, his work on memory of 9/11 was featured in Time Magazine.

Choose a publication below to learn more.

William Hirst et al. (2015) – Social Identity and Socially Shared Retrieval-Induced Forgetting: The Effects of Group Membership

'

William Hirst et al. (2015) — A Ten-Year Follow-Up of a Study of Memory for the Attack of September 11, 2001: Flashbulb Memories and Memories for Flashbulb Events

'

Banu Bargu, Associate Professor of Politics, presented a keynote lecture at SOAS University of London in October 2015 called “Why did Bouazizi Burn Himself? Fatal Politics and the Politics of Fate.”

Her book, Starve and Immolate: The Politics of Human Weapons (Columbia University Press, 2014), was awarded the 2015 First Book Award from the Foundations of Political Theory Section of the American Political Science Association, she has also recently published two articles: one on self-destructive protest (Angelaki: Journal of the Humanities, 2014) and another on enforced disappearances (Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences, 2014).

Listen to the keynote below.

Bio | Bargu received her PhD from Cornell University in 2008. Her main area of specialization is political theory, especially modern and contemporary political thought, with a thematic focus on theories of sovereignty, resistance, and biopolitics. Since publishing the book Starve and Immolate: The Politics of Human Weapons, Bargu is currently working on a book-length manuscript on rethinking the materialist tradition, especially in light of the posthumous publication of Louis Althusser’s work on the aleatory. 

Choose a publication to learn more.

Banu Bargu (2014) — Starve and Immolate: The Politics of Human Weapons

'

Banu Bargu (2014) — Sovereignty and Sacrifice in Hunger and the Dialectic of Enlightenment

'

Banu Bargu (2014) — Sovereignty as Erasure: Rethinking Enforced Disappearances

'

Miriam Ticktin, Associate Professor of Anthropology and co-director of the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility, delivered the annual Elizabeth Colson lecture in June 2015 at the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford, England. In the talk titled “Innocence: Understanding a Political Concept,” Ticktin explored the idea of innocence in the context of humanitarianism, and the roles of “the child, the trafficked victim, the migrant, asylum seeker, the enemy combatant and the animal.” Ticktin has also been awarded a one-year fellowship at Princeton University’s Institute for Advanced Study for this academic year.

Listen to Ticktin’s full lecture below.

Bio | Ticktin received her PhD in Anthropology at Stanford University and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, France, and an MA in English Literature from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.  Professor Ticktin works at the intersections of the anthropology of medicine and science, law, and transnational and postcolonial feminist theory. She is co-editor of the journal Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism and Development. Her most recent book, Casualties of Care: Immigration and the Politics of Humanitarianism in France (University of California Press, 2011), was awarded one of two 2012 William A. Douglass Prizes in Europeanist Anthropology by Society for the Anthropology of Europe. Recent publications include “Transnational Humanitarianism“ (Annual Review of Anthropology, 2014), “Cross-species craziness: Animals, Anthropomorphism and Mental Illness” (Books Forum, Biosocieties, 2014) and “Humanitarianism as Planetary Politics” in At the Limits of Justice: Women of Colour on Terror (University of Toronto Press, 2014).

Miriam Ticktin (2015) — La souffrance animale à distance: des vétérinaires dans l’action humanitaire

'

Miriam Ticktin (2014)— Transnational Humanitarianism

'

Miriam Ticktin (2014)— Cross-Species Craziness: Animals, Anthropomorphism and Mental illness

'

Miriam Ticktin (2011) — Casualties of Care: Immigration and the Politics of Humanitarianism in France

'

Nancy Fraser,  Henry Loeb Professor of Philosophy and Politics, was recently awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Liège, Belgium. The other honorees included Judith Butler (UC Berkeley) and Caryl Phillips (Yale University). Fraser joined Phillips for a conversation at University of Liège in October, which can be viewed here.

Below is a brief overview produced by University of Liège about this year’s recipients of the honorary doctorate.

No Title

A l’occasion de la Rentrée Académique 2015-2016, qui avait pour thème “Repenser notre modèle de société”, l’Université de Liège remettait les insignes de Docteur Honoris Causa à Judith Butler, Nancy Fraser et Caryl Phillips. Plus d’infos : http://www.ulg.ac.be

Bio | Fraser received her Ph.D. in philosophy from City University of New York in 1980. She specializes in the areas of social and political theory, feminist theory, 19th and 20th century European thought, and philosophy of social science. Fraser has received five honorary doctorates since 2006. Fraser has published fourteen books, and over 80 scholarly articles, book chapters, and essays. In 2013, Fraser published the book Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis (Verso Books). Her scholarship is the subject of several edited volumes, from the 2007 book, (Mis)recognition, Social Inequality and Social Justice: Nancy Fraser and Pierre Bourdieu (Routledge) to the forthcoming Justice, Criticism, and Politics in the 21st Century (UNSAM, Argentina).

Choose a publication below to learn more.

Nancy Fraser et al. (2014) — Transnationalizing the Public Sphere

'

Nancy Fraser (2013) – Fortunes of Feminism

'

Nancy Fraser’s (2013) “New Frontiers of the Left”

'