The latest edition of Humanitas, a column focused on the arts and humanities at Yale, presents an exhibition devoted to the century-long history of what is now David Geffen School of Drama at Yale, a new course on 1900 Vienna, and a roundup of faculty publications that made some “best of 2025” lists. Also in this edition: the Terra String Quartet’s recent competition win, findings from the latest Yale Youth Poll, and the release of the second edition of the Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School’s publication, The Notebook.
For more, please visit an archive of all arts and humanities coverage at Yale News.
‘A Century on Stage’
In 1925, Yale enrolled its first students in a “Department of Drama” — what became, 30 years later, a separate professional school. Now known as David Geffen School of Drama at Yale, it has since grown into one of the world’s foremost theater conservatories.
“A Century on Stage,” an exhibition on view at the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library, offers an overview of this history — no simple feat, as Catherine Sheehy, a professor of dramaturgy and criticism at Geffen School of Drama, explained at a recent opening reception.
“We teach and toil in an ephemeral art form that, cherishing liveness, seeks to make its home in its audience’s memory rather than in stone, on canvas, on paper, or even on film,” Sheehy said.
The late set designer Ming Cho Lee’s scenic models for the 1969 Broadway production of “La Strada.” Lee, who taught at Yale from 1969 to 2017, “helped redefine American stage design,” the New York Times wrote in 2020.
The objects on display include sketches, drafts, props, and costumes from past Geffen School productions and faculty members’ work, including the late, influential set designer Ming Cho Lee’s scenic models for the 1969 Broadway production of “La Strada.”
The reception concluded with an abridged student performance of “Indecent” by American playwright Paula Vogel, which was developed and had its world premiere at Yale in 2015 — itself a dramatization of theatrical history. It centers on the staging of “God of Vengeance,” a 1906 play by Sholem Asch that was the target of a notorious 1923 obscenity trial in New York.
“A Century on Stage” is on view through May 31.
Students from David Geffen School of Drama at Yale perform an abridged version of "Indecent" by playwright Paula Vogel, which was developed and has its world premiere at Yale in 2015, at the Robert B. Haas Arts Library.
A “Zeitreise” to 1900 Vienna
A new course in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures this spring invites students to take a Zeitreise, or a trip back in time, to the city of Vienna around the turn of the last century. The course is being taught by Sophie Schweiger, an assistant professor in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences who grew up in Vienna.
The idea for the course grew out of her conversations with students in her role as the department’s director of undergraduate studies. She heard repeated requests for course offerings that combine art history with the study of the German language.
“I took that seriously and thought of what I could offer in my own repertoire of art history, and that’s where I came up with 1900 Vienna,” she said. “I grew up around the museums of Vienna and I love the artists Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt.”
Detail from “Beethoven Frieze,” by Gustav Klimt
The period around 1900 is particularly worthy of study, she said, as the city was undergoing a political transition and becoming a flourishing hub for artists, composers, musicians, intellectuals, scientists and writers. The course will explore how culture, the arts, and science responded to the political upheaval.
The course is being taught entirely in German. Schweiger will incorporate resources from Yale’s archives, including Klimt drawings held at the Yale University Art Gallery and original manuscripts at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
“Best of” lists promote Yale faculty
Published works by faculty members in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences earned spots on several high-profile, year-end lists rounding up the best creative work of 2025.
“Spent” (HarperCollins), a work of autofiction by Alison Bechdel, a professor in the practice of English and film and media studies, was listed on both The Guardian’s and The New York Times’ roundups of best graphic novels. “Spent” features a zany, alternate version of Bechdel: she’s both a cartoonist and the leader of a Vermont pygmy goat sanctuary who is navigating fresh fame after her first graphic memoir is adapted for TV — a fictionalization of the acclaim Bechdel earned for her earlier graphic novel “Fun Home” (HarperCollins, 2006).
Emily Skillings, lecturer in English, won praise on the Times’ list of the best poetry in 2025 for “Tantrums in Air” (The Song Cave), her second collection of poems, which deftly weave humor, honesty, and bold, evocative imagery.
The Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2025 featured “Heartwood” (Simon & Schuster), by Amity Gaige, lecturer in English. Gaige’s fifth novel, “Heartwood” is a thriller centered on the disappearance of a hiker on the Appalachian Trail.
And “Lunar Eclipse,” a play by Donald Margulies, a professor in the practice of English and theater studies, centering a couple that has drifted apart after years of marriage, made The Wall Street Journal’s list of the best theater of 2025.
Terra String Quartet wins celebrated chamber music award
The Terra String Quartet, the Yale School of Music’s fellowship ensemble-in-residence, won first prize in the prestigious Naumburg Chamber Music Competition, held in December in New York City. The prize — which includes $15,000, recitals at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Carnegie Hall, and a recording of a commissioned work — follows the group’s second-place wins at both the 2025 Bordeaux and Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competitions in France and the U.K., respectively.
At Yale, the Terra String Quartet — made up of violinists Harriet Langley and Amelia Dietrich, violist Chih-Ta Chen, and cellist Audrey Chen — performs public concerts, teaches undergraduates, and refines its craft under the mentorship of YSM’s ensemble-in-residence, the Brentano String Quartet.
The group will play a free concert in Morse Recital Hall on March 31. Watch a recording of their performance at the Bordeaux competition last May:
The Yale Youth Poll
The 2025 Yale Youth Poll, a student-run polling project, recently released its latest findings. The survey, which sampled 3,426 registered voters from the United States, is aimed at understanding the views of the American electorate.
The 15 undergraduates who ran this year’s poll, led by economics major and Yale College senior Milan Singh, partnered with the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism (YPSA) to include questions related to antisemitism, along with questions about politics and gender attitudes.
The findings corroborated what many other recent polls have concluded, according to Linda Maizels, managing director of the YPSA, who said the poll showed that younger people among American registered voters are more susceptible to antisemitic views than older generations.
The poll also helped fulfill one of Maizels’ goals as director — to get more undergrads involved with YPSA. She came away impressed with the “really smart, interesting questions” the students came up with, especially since it was a subject few of them had studied before.
The findings will inform her own work and will no doubt be of use to other researchers, she said. In her next meeting with the students, they will discuss whether their spring poll might “dig deeper into the data.”
The Yale Youth Poll is supported by the Institution for Social and Policy Studies’ Democratic Innovations Program.
Art from beyond academia
The Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School recently released volume two of The Notebook, a digital publication that combines discussions about how to build a more just legal system with original works of art, poetry, and personal memoir.
The Collaboratory is an interdisciplinary network of scholars from across the country who are combining their expertise to find ways to build a more effective and democratic criminal legal system. The first edition of The Notebook was published in 2024.
“We wanted to create a non-academic magazine that includes the voices of academia but also the voices of those who have been impacted by the justice systems, and then be able to engage audiences beyond academia,” said Caroline Nobo, the Collaboratory’s executive director.
The theme of this edition is “solidarities,” meaning “the connections we build, the collective actions we take, and the communities we nurture,” Nobo said.
Hector Rodriguez, a formerly incarcerated man who attended the Yale Prison Education Initiative’s College to Career program, created the colorful cover art for the publication.
The Justice Collaboratory will hold a series of webinars, starting Feb. 26, highlighting various works in The Notebook. Register for events and find more information on their website.
Lisa Prevost, Peter Cunningham, and Jessica Liu contributed to this column.
