
News & Events

What’s Happening at the Kahn
The stories and updates formerly featured in our printed newsletter, the Kahn Chronicle, are now featured on this News & Events webpage. Check back regularly to read profiles of students and faculty, notes from the Kahn staff, and to learn more about Kahn projects and events.
Indigenous and State Politics in Latin America: The Mapuche People and the Chilean Constitutional Assembly
Hauntings from A Eugenic Past: Race, Gender, and the Practice of Science, by Banu Subramaniam
Sex(ually Transmitted Diseases) and the City: Syphilis Control in Tokyo, 1868–1912, by Susan L. Burns
A Desire to Cure, Not to Punish: Women Physicians and Eugenics in the American West, 1900–1930 by Jacqueline D. Antonovich
Kahn Student Fellows Presentation Showcase
The Third Founding: The Struggle for Multiracial Democracy—and the Authoritarian Reaction Against it, by Steven Levitsky, co-author of How Democracies Die
Voices, Visibility and Versatile Artistic Praxis: Asian/Asian Americans at Smith College
Starbucks, Amazon and How Labor Unions Lift Workers and Strengthen Our Democracy, by NYT Journalist Steven Greenhouse
Steven Greenhouse, award-winning author and long-time New York Times reporter on labor and the workplace, will speak on "Starbucks, Amazon and How Labor Unions Lift Workers and Strengthen Our Democracy" as part of an event sponsored by the Kahn Institute, Journalism Concentration, Provost's Office and the departments of Sociology and Education.
Whistleblowers: Heroes or Traitors? by Jesselyn Radack
Neilson Professor Lecture III: "A Focus on the Environment as a Source for the Recuperation of Memory"
Neilson Professor Lecture II: "Surviving Stories"
The Data Will Not Save Us: Afropessimism and Racial Antimatter in the COVID-19 Pandemic, by Anthony Ryan Hatch
Thursday, March 3, 5 p.m., Online
Anthony Ryan Hatch, Chair of the Science in Society Program at Wesleyan University, will give an online lecture, "The Data Will Not Save Us: Afropessimism and Racial Antimatter in the COVID-19 Pandemic." An analysis of how the COVID-19 pandemic joins an already ongoing racial spectacle and system of structural gaslighting organized around “racial health disparities” in the United States and globally. View the lecture video.
Submerged Stories, Neilson Professor Lecture I, Miguel Angel Rosales (transcript)
In the long history of Spanish colonial domination, there is an element virtually ignored by historians: the decisive role that the Spanish and Portuguese Empires played in the African slave trade, dispersing millions of Africans across the shores of the Atlantic.
Director's Note: Democracy as Making Hope
Spring Visiting Speakers at the Kahn
The Kahn Institute will host several speakers, both online and in person, this spring in conjunction with current long-term and short-term projects, as follows. Next up: Anthony Hatch, Chair of the Science in Society Program at Wesleyan University, on "The Data Will Not Save Us: Afropessimism and Racial Antimatter in the COVID-19 Pandemic," on Thursday, March 3, 5 p.m., online (register to attend) as part of the short-term project Democratizing Health II.
The Afrodiaspora in Spanish Culture
Neilson Professor Lecture I: "Submerged Stories"
Health Policy, Structural Racism, and Democracy
Jamila Michener, associate professor of government, Cornell University, will lecture on "Health Policy, Structural Racism, and Democracy," as part of the Kahn yearlong project Coping with Democratic Precarity and the Prospects for Democratic Renewal.
Presentation by Boston Multimedia Artist Yu-Wen Wu
Kahn Student Fellows for 2021-22 Yearlong Projects
Focus on Fellowship: Zoe Birnhak ’21
Not THOSE Birds and Bees
Director’s Note (Spring 2021)
Alex Keller, Director, Kahn Institute
We’re fully into many kinds of spring. We have sprung forward, there’s a spring in our step, things that sprang to mind now spring to life beyond it.
Focus on Fellowship: Espy Thomson ’21
Espy Thomson ’21, a fellow in Technophilia/Technoskepticism, has spent much of her final spring semester at Smith researching the reproductive technology industry, including interviews with some of her 65 half-siblings.
Focus on Fellowship: Amanda Jiang ’20
Amanda Jiang ’20 has been working on a new protocol to explore the efficacy of an alternative-based intervention to reduce stress and improve the quality of life for COVID-19 healthcare workers.
Spring Short-Term Projects at the Kahn
More than 150 Faculty Fellows participated in the following short-term projects.
Click on each project to read descriptions and see participants.
The Notorious RCG: Race, Class and Gender in STEM
Organized by Rob Dorit, Biological Sciences, and Mary Harrington, Neuroscience
March 10-12, 19
Curriculum: Protest and Process
Organized by Darcy Buerkle, History, and Frazer Ward, Art
April 9
Thinking Post-Nationally, Teaching Transnationally
Organized by Anna Botta, Italian Studies, and Joel Westerdale, German Studies
May 17-18
Is Inclusivity in My Classroom the Same as in Yours?
Organized by Alex Keller, Director, Kahn Institute, and Sara Pruss, Director, Sherrerd Center for Teaching and Learning
May 26
Excavating the Image, Part I: Isaac Julien's Lessons of the Hour (2019)
Organized by Emma Chubb, Charlotte Feng Ford '83 Curator of Contemporary Art, Smith College Museum of Art, and Alex Keller, Film and Media Studies and Director of the Kahn Institute.
June 2
Racialized Medicine, Past and Present: Teaching and Research in the Spaces Between STEM and the Humanities
Organized by Suzanne Gottschang, Anthropology, and Kathleen Pierce, Art
June 11 and 14
Kahn Past Events
Beyond Big Data: Communicating Climate Change Through Indigenous Voices & Art
An online conversation between Indigenous scientist/artist James Temte and special guest, Alaska native Ahtna Elder Wilson Justin. Temte, a member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe who leads the NSF Navigating the New Arctic Community Extension Office, will share a conversation with Ahtna elder Wilson Justin on the topic of Indigenous knowledge, connection to the land and the role of art in communicating the realities of climate change beyond the Arctic. This public conversation is presented as part of the Kahn Institute yearlong project Imagining Climate Change: From Slow Violence to Fast Hope.
WATCH THE EVENTOn Rising Together: Collective and Creative Responses to the Climate Crisis
Elizabeth Rush, award-winning author of Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore, speaks on her book and related themes as a guest of the Center for the Environment, Ecological Design, and Sustainability (CEEDS) and the Kahn Institute’s yearlong project Imagining Climate Change: From Slow Violence to Fast Hope. Rush's most recent book, Rising, a Pulitzer finalist, lyrically documents the transformation of shorelines around the United States as a result of climate change and rising seas.
WATCH THE EVENTReversing Knowledge Loss
What does it mean to regain knowledge and practice of lost technologies? Why do some successful technologies disappear? MacArthur Fellow Sven Haakanson, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Washington, works with the Alutiiq in Kodiak, Alaska, and other communities in preserving and relearning languages and cultural practices. Haakanson received a MacArthur Fellowship for his work reviving Alutiiq language and culture. He recently worked with Kodiak communities in relearning, building and using angyaaq again. He lectured as part of the yearlong project Technophilia/Technoskepticism.
WATCH THE LECTURE

In 2021–22, Smith College will host an ambitious set of programs and events under the organizing theme “Year on Democracies.” Everyone in the Smith community is invited to participate and collaborate in this collegewide initiative.
Kahn Chronicle Past Issues