The latest edition of Humanitas, a column focused on the arts and humanities at Yale, presents spring offerings from the Yale Film Archive, a new novel resulting from an experiment in collaborative translation, and an anniversary celebration at the Whitney Humanities Center. Also in this edition: documentarian Ken Burns presents the keynote at the upcoming “First America” conference, and a new publication from the Yale Center for Collaborative Arts and Media.
For more, please visit an archive of all arts and humanities coverage at Yale News.
In two film series, America in song and a Kubrick retrospective
In an era of ever-shrinking personal screens, the Yale Film Archive regularly invites the public to watch classic movies as they were meant to be seen: on a big screen, with a full audience. In addition to “Treasures from The Yale Film Archive,” an ongoing, year-round series of classic and contemporary films screened in their original 35mm format, the archive regularly curates shorter series focused on specific themes.
This spring, two series offer, respectively, a deep dive into the work of a perfectionist auteur and a toe-tapping tribute to America’s semiquincentennial.
“Kubrick’s Maze,” which began earlier this year, is a full retrospective of the work of the late American director Stanley Kubrick, including the satirical period piece “Barry Lyndon” (1975); horror classic “The Shining” (1980); Kubrick’s posthumously released collaboration with Steven Spielberg, “A.I.: Artificial Intelligence” (2001); and others. The series culminates with his 1968 sci-fi epic, “2001: A Space Odyssey,” on Friday, April 17.
From “The Shining” (Stanley Kubrick, 1980).
“American Tunes,” a series of films that investigate the meaning of America through song, kicks off on Sunday, March 29, with the stage-musical adaptation “1776” (Peter Hunt, 1972). Other films include Robert Altman’s sprawling ensemble comedy “Nashville” (1975) and Hal Ashby’s Woody Guthrie biopic, “Bound For Glory” (1976).
All screenings are free and open to the public.
From “Yankee Doodle Dandy” (Michael Curtiz, 1942).
A novel translation
In 2019, Amara Lakhous, a professor in the practice in the Department of Italian Studies, in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), published a novel in Arabic called “Ta’ir al’lail,” or “The Night Bird.” The first book in a planned trilogy, the story centers on Colonel Karim Soltani, the head of an anti-terrorism unit, as he conducts a criminal investigation into the murder of a high-profile Algerian power broker. The novel was longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2021.
For the past two years, Lakhous has been collaborating with three translators to produce versions of the novel in French, Italian, and just last month, English, in an edition titled “The Fertility of Evil” (Other Press).
“The Fertility of Evil” by Amara Lakhous
For that experimental project, known as the Translingual Collective Translation, Lakhous worked closely with translators Alexander Elinson (English), Francesco Leggio (Italian), and Lotfi Nia (French). The group worked together, Lakhous explained last year, “to exchange ideas, confront each other, and confirm that languages are like mirrors: the more mirrors we have at our disposal, the better we can see ourselves.” The group will discuss their work at a special event on Wednesday, April 1 at 5 p.m. in room 136 of the Humanities Quadrangle.
Lakhous, a bilingual novelist who writes in Arabic and Italian, intends to cover 60 years of modern history in his native Algeria in the trilogy.
Celebrating 45 years of the Whitney Humanities Center
On April 16–17, the Whitney Humanities Center — a campus hub for humanities research and collaboration — will celebrate its 45th anniversary with a two-day conference. “The Humanities, the University, and the World” will feature lectures, panel discussions, and performances that celebrate Yale talent and scholarship, examine the role of universities in society today, and reflect on the importance of the humanities in shaping that purpose.
“From its inception in 1981, the Whitney Humanities Center was imagined as a place where people could think beyond disciplinary boundaries and learn together in a truly open exchange,” said director Cajetan Iheka, who is also a professor of English in FAS. “This 45th anniversary conference carries that spirit forward on a global scale… It is a celebration of the humanities as a shared practice — one that deepens our understanding of the world and our place in it.”
The conference, to be held in the lower level of the Humanities Quadrangle, 320 York St., is free and open to the public. Find more information and a schedule of events for day one and day two.
‘First America’
“Yòh (Four)” (2022) by Silvermoon Mars LaRose.
From March 26 to 28, “First America: The Legacies of the Declaration of Independence for Native Nations” will bring scholars, public intellectuals, native filmmakers, and tribal museum leaders to the Yale campus for a series of panels, open to the public, that aim to explore the complex effects of the American Revolution, with a focus on Northeastern Native nations. The conference is hosted by the Yale Group for the Study of Native America (YGSNA) and the New York University-Yale American Indian Sovereignty Project.
“Recognition of Native peoples as central actors in the Revolution’s history has only recently become accepted — but it has yet to be commonplace,” said Ned Blackhawk, the Howard R. Lamar Professor of History and of ethnicity, race, and migration, in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), and faculty coordinator for YGSNA.
“Our conference aims to locate Native peoples and nations within, rather than outside, American history,” Blackhawk added, noting that the 250th anniversary of America’s founding this year “offers real opportunities to bring people together in new, and hopefully lasting, ways.”
While registration for the conference’s keynote event — a conversation between filmmakers Ken Burns, Colin Calloway, and David Schmidt, the creators of PBS’s 2025 documentary “The American Revolution,” and Maggie Blackhawk, professor of law at New York University — is now full, all other events are open to the public with no registration required.
The conference is sponsored by the NYU-Yale American Indian Sovereignty project, the New Haven America 250 Commission, America 250 | CT Commission, CT Humanities, the Howard R. Lamar Center for the Study of Frontiers and Borders, and the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration.
Thinking through uncertainty
The Yale Center for Collaborative Arts and Media (CCAM) just released the fourth edition of Maquette, a publication that serves as an illustrated archive of the interdisciplinary projects, research, and dialogues the center has cultivated.
The theme of this edition is “Chaos + Control.” Within that motif, each contributor and interview subject, “whether an artist, scientist, writer, or technologist, confronts the unknown,” said Alex Zafiris, the writer in residence at CCAM and editor of Maquette. “They grapple with absurdity, rage, and uncertainty with great sensitivity, curiosity, and humor.”
Cover of Maquette issue four, “Chaos + Control”; cover illustration by Julie Curtiss
The publication is available both online and in print, and includes contributions from faculty, students, and guests. It also includes in-depth conversations with theoretical astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan, the Joseph S. and Sophia S. Fruton Professor of Astronomy and professor of physics in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and the French-Vietnamese painter Julie Curtiss.
Zafiris founded Maquette (the word for a preliminary model for a larger piece of art) in 2019 with Dana Karwas, the director of CCAM. Last year it was inducted into the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library collections.
Play time
Two plays by Yale alumna on stage in New York both received glowing reviews last month in The New York Times.
A revival of “You Got Older,” the 2014 play by Clare Barron ’08, is currently running at the Cherry Lane Theater, and stars Alia Shawkat and Peter Friedman. The Times praised the play, which won an Obie for playwriting in 2015, as a “gorgeously precise” drama.
A new play by Lauren Yee ’07, “Mother Russia,” is on stage at the Signature Theater through March 29. The play, which stars Steven Boyer and Adam Chanler-Berat, is “as funny as it is smart,” according to the Times’ review. Separately, the Times also profiled Yee, who lives in Manhattan.
Lisa Prevost, Peter Cunningham, and Jessica Liu contributed to this column.
