‘Silence’ theme of Society for the Humanities Fall presentations

Who decides whose story is told, and how? What are the ethics of giving voice to the voiceless? These and other questions on the theme of Silence are being explored by this year’s Society for the Humanities fellows.

Six fellows from a broad swath of humanities fields will present their projects in progress during the annual Fall Fellows’ conference, on Friday, Oct. 25, from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the A.D. White House. The event is free and open to the public, and refreshments will be served throughout the day, with coffee starting at 9:30 a.m. and dinner at 5 p.m.

Featured presenters from outside Cornell include Society fellows Angelica Allen, assistant professor and director of Africana Studies at Chapman University, and Dawn LaValle Norman, scholar of classics and senior research fellow at Australian Catholic University’s Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry.

Cornell faculty presenters from the College of Arts and Sciences include fellows Andrew Campana, assistant professor of Asian studies, and Sara Warner, associate professor of performing and media arts. The Society’s Mellon Graduate Fellows, Bianca Waked (philosophy) and Brian Sengdala (performing & media arts), will also present. Each fellow will have fifteen minutes at the podium, followed by Q&A from invited faculty respondents and audience members.

The conference kicks off with an opening panel featuring Allen. Her presentation, she said, will “delve into the lived experiences of a community in the Philippines who are known as the Black Amerasians, (a population born from the unions of Black military men and Filipina women). It will provide an overview of the silent history as it pertains to this community and discuss what it means to narrate the lives of Afro-Amerasians in the Philippines—as a sub-group within a sub-group, whose experiences are often overlooked.” Entitled “Narrating the Lives of Afro-Amerasians in the Philippines,” Allen’s project is informed by her personal experience growing up in the Philippines, she said, “as someone who is both a member of and a scholar to this community’s experiences.”

LaValle Norman, who will also speak during the morning panel, is using her fellowship year at Cornell looking at the rhythms between speech and silence in the genre of the philosophical dialogue in Greek and Latin.

“As a scholar of women in the ancient world, I often work with silences. But there are ways to speak from within silence,” said LaValle Norman. “The opportunity to present my work in this interdisciplinary context is fantastic. I’m particularly grateful to have a respondent from the Cornell faculty, associate professor of classics Athena Kirk, engage with my work.” LaValle Norman said her conference presentation, entitled “Blushing, Speech and Silence in Late Ancient Philosophical Dialogues,” explores “the bodily communication of facial expression in ancient dialogues, and in particular, the blush. Does blushing stop speech, or can it accompany it? Does the blush say any one thing, or many? Are there different patterns for male and female academic blushers?”

In addition to LaValle Norman and Allen, the opening panel will feature a discussion about the memory work of survivors of the Khmer Rouge’s genocidal regime in Cambodia (1975–1979) by Brian Sengdala, a graduate student fellow from the department of performing and media arts (A&S).

A mid-day keynote lecture, “The Afterlives of Indeterminacy,” will be delivered by Cornell’s Benjamin Piekut, professor and chair of music (A&S). Piekut’s talk will address power and improvisation in the middle-period work of John Cage, composer of the silent “4'33."

The afternoon conference panel includes presentations on the queer archives of Black playwright Lorraine Hansberry; intersections between Deaf and disability activism, poetry, and digital media in Japan; and the oppression of Deaf people of color in the United States.

The full conference schedule is available on the Cornell Events Calendar.

These six scholars represent a portion of the Silence cohort; the remaining fellows will present at a second conference planned for April 24-25, 2025. The full list of 2024-25 Society Fellows with links to descriptions of individual research projects is online.

Julie McLean is the program manager for the Society for the Humanities.