Scholars Lecture Series 2023-24
The Scholars Lecture Series is designed to encourage and promote the exchange of ideas among our faculty and students in the College of Arts and Science. The lecture series enhances the intellectual experience and social consciousness of the NYU community.
Date: Wednesday, October 4
Lecturer: Emily Balcetis, Associate Professor of Psychology
Lecture: Seeing a More Diverse Leadership
Leadership has historically and continues to fail to reflect the diversity of our country. Why is that and how can we change that? Join Professor Balcetis for a conversation on how social circumstances, access to role models, political climates, and other factors change the beliefs people have about who can and should lead society.
Fall Break Monday, Oct 9
Date: Tuesday, October 17
Lecturer: Alex Barnard, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Lecture: Conservatorship: Inside California's System of Coercion and Care for Mental Illness
Is involuntary psychiatric treatment the solution to the intertwined crises of untreated mental illness, homelessness, and addiction? In recent years, politicians and advocates in states like California and New York have sought to expand the use of conservatorships, a legal tool used to force someone deemed “gravely disabled,” or unable to meet their needs for food, clothing, or shelter as a result of mental illness, to take medication and be placed in a locked facility. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with professionals, policy makers, families, and conservators, this talk examines California's conservatorship system, tracing the conservatorship process from the streets where police encounter homeless people in crisis, the locked wards where people receiving treatment are confined, and the courtrooms where judges decide on conservatorship petitions. Professor Barnard will argue that California’s state government has abdicated authority over this system, leaving the question of who receives compassionate care and who faces coercion dependent on the financial incentives of for-profit facilities, the constraints of under resourced clinicians, and the desperate struggles of families to obtain treatment for their loved ones.
Date: Monday, October 30
Lecturer: Zeb Tortorici, Associate Professor of Spanish
Lecture: Erotic Archival Entanglements: Memory Projects and Erasures of the “Obscene” in Mexico
This talk theorizes the notion of erotic archival entanglements in Mexico by tracing connections between the categories of the “obscene” and the “pornographic” across time, from the eighteenth century to the present. Focusing first on the now-absent confiscated artifacts from the archives of the eighteenth-century Mexican Inquisition—explicit clocks, statues, and alms boxes—it looks at how such objects entered and exited multiple hands, collections, and (temporary) resting places. It then shows how such movements resonate with how historical erotica and pornography today circulate among flea markets, bookshops, private collections, and historical archives. Focusing in part on the Mexico City-based grassroots archival initiative, Archivo El Insulto, it argues for sustained dialog between booksellers, antiques vendors, researchers, artists, and archivists to work collaboratively toward the historical preservation and digital display of vintage erotica and pornography to interconnected scholarly and activist ends.
Fall Break Wednesday Nov 22 Thanksgiving Recess, Nov 23 & 24
Date: Tuesday, November 28th
Lecturer: Pamela Newkirk, Professor of Journalism
Lecture: Exalted: African Americans in the City of Light
For more than a century Paris has been a haven for a Who’s Who list of African Americans who’ve basked in the warm embrace long denied them at home. Like Ernest Hemingway and the other members of the so-called Lost Generation, a long line of African American artists, writers, musicians, and intellectuals – from Henry O. Tanner, Josephine Baker, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Lois Malliou Jones to Eartha Kitt, Gordon Parks, Quincy Jones, and Virgil Abloh – have achieved global recognition in a city where many were able to transcend the racial barriers and social customs in America that had stifled their dreams. This lecture will examine why Paris continues to excite the African American imagination.
Date: Wednesday, November 29
Lecturer: Lerrel Pinto, Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Lecture: A Constructivist’s Guide to Robot Learning
Over the last decade, a variety of paradigms have sought to teach robots complex and dexterous behaviors in real-world environments. On one end of the spectrum we have nativist approaches that bake in fundamental human knowledge through physics models, simulators and knowledge graphs, while on the other end of the spectrum we have tabula-rasa approaches that teach robots from scratch. In this talk Professor Pinto will argue for the need for better constructivist approaches to robotics, i.e. techniques that take guidance from humans while allowing robots to continuously adapt in changing scenarios. The constructivist guide Professor Pinto proposes will focus on three elements: first, creating physical interfaces to allow humans to provide robots with rich and dexterous data; second, developing adaptive learning mechanisms to allow robots to continually fine-tune in their environments; third, architecting models that allow robots to learn from un-curated play. Applications of such a learning paradigm will be demonstrated on mobile manipulators in home environments, industrial robots on precision tasks, and multi-fingered hands on dexterous manipulation.
Date: Tuesday, December 5
Lecturer: Corina Boar, Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics
Lecture: Market Power, Taxes and Inequality
This lecture is based on work that seeks to understand the macroeconomic, distributional and welfare implications of various policies aimed at curbing inequality. In recent decades, the United States has experienced a sharp increase in income and wealth inequality, with the income share accruing to the richest 1% increasing from 10% in the 1980s to 20% today. Wealth inequality is even more pronounced: the wealthiest 1% in the United States hold more than 40% of all the wealth. There is a lively ongoing debate as to what may have caused these trends, but three explanations have emerged as particularly noteworthy. The first is that technological innovation and international trade have disproportionately impacted low-skilled workers; the second is the decline in top income tax rates; and the third is an increase in product market concentration and monopoly power. This increase in inequality has led to numerous policy proposals for redistribution by increasing marginal income taxes at the top, introducing a wealth tax and implementing product market policies aimed at curbing the increase in product market concentration and markups. The goal of the work this lecture is based on is to understand the macroeconomic, distributional and welfare implications of these proposals so as to determine their effectiveness and help inform future policy decisions.
Spring 2024
Date: Thursday, February 1
Lecturer: Alex Williams, Assistant Professor of Neural Science
Lecture: Modern Analysis Methods for Neuroscience Data
Due to a series of advances over the past two decades, it is now routine for experimental neuroscientists to record the activity of hundreds to thousands of neurons simultaneously in behaving animals. The exponentially growing scale of these recordings (doubling roughly every 5 years) continues to spur new data-driven perspectives and approaches to neuroscience research. Professor Williams will highlight several recent examples that demonstrate the impact of statistical modeling and machine learning infrastructure on the field, including ongoing research in his lab at NYU.
Date: Monday, February 12
Lecturer: Becca Franks, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies
Lecture: A Systems Approach to Wild Animal Welfare
Wild animals face mounting threats from a variety of human-driven crises: climate extremes, habitat loss, habitat fragmentation, and pollution. While conservation biology has a strong track record of protecting animal populations and species, individual animal welfare is generally understood to be outside the scope of its historical mandate. In this talk, Professor Franks will discuss the newly emerging field of wild animal welfare, focusing on some of the work she and her collaborators and have conducted, including projects ranging from (i) estimating the welfare implications of shark tourism in the US to (ii) international efforts to bring animal voices into decision-making spaces
President’s Day Monday, Feb 19
Date: Wednesday, February 28
Lecturer: John Shovlin, Associate Professor of History
Lecture: The Geopolitics of Capitalism
Capitalism and geopolitics have been intertwined since capitalism first emerged centuries ago. Many of the most significant transformations in world politics, both in the past and today, cannot be understood separate from the pressures and possibilities of a capitalist system. This is true of the construction of vast overseas empires by European powers from the 16th century to the early 20th, and of their subsequent collapse. Capitalism also drove the emergence of a new geopolitical order after 1945 presided over by the United States, and the rise of China in the last three decades. Conversely, we cannot adequately understand the history of capitalism—the social and economic system under which we all live—without understanding the role geopolitics has played in its emergence, evolution, and transformation.
Date: Tuesday, March 5
Lecturer: Paul J. Edwards, Assistant Professor of English and Dramatic Literature
Lecture: The Harlem Renaissance on the Berlin Stage
Between 1925 and 1931, Black performers toured Berlin, bringing the sights and sounds of Harlem to German audiences. Yet more than bringing entertainment to Weimar nightlight, these performers provoked new social and political considerations of what culture meant in the interwar period. In particular, this talk demonstrates that a division emerged between cultural renewal through Black performance practices and the fascist fear of Black integration into the German arts.
Date: Thursday, March 14
Lecturer: Emilie Boone, Assistant Professor of Art History
Lecture: A Nimble Arc: James Van Der Zee and Photography
This lecture dovetails with Professor Boone’s recent publication of A Nimble Arc: James Van Der Zee and Photography, the first book on the celebrated twentieth century African American photographer in more than thirty years. Through a reconsideration of Van Der Zee’s expansive oeuvre, she challenges distinctions between art photography and the kind of output common to commercial photography studios. Such an approach recasts our understanding not only of this canonical figure but of photography’s central role within the arc of quotidian Black life of the Harlem Renaissance era and beyond.
Spring Break March 18-24
Date: Thursday, March 28
Lecturer: Duncan Smith, Associate Professor of Biology and Deputy Director, Center for Genomics and Systems Biology
Lecture: Conflicts between DNA replication and gene expression
DNA is the genetic blueprint of the cell: it must be faithfully replicated before each cell division, while simultaneously serving as the template for transcription of RNA as the first step in gene expression. Collisions between molecular machines that mediate replication and transcription can lead to DNA damage and mutation, yet appear to occur frequently. Professor Smith will discuss his lab’s recent progress investigating how replication-transcription conflicts are prevented, mitigated and resolved.
Date: Monday, April 8
Lecturer: Melissa Schwartzberg, Silver Professor of Politics
Lecture: What Do Jurors Know?
Why retain a jury system? After all, professional judges could render reliable and impartial judgments, and most citizens dread the prospect of jury service. In this lecture, Professor Schwartzberg argues that the value of the jury is usually misunderstood: lay jurors provide crucial local knowledge. Historically, because the information gleaned from jurors may have value to elites, citizens have sometimes used their knowledge to improve their standing; in other circumstances, they have become vulnerable to coercion. Focus on the jury sheds light not merely on the nature of fair trials, but on the fragile role of ordinary citizens as bearers of knowledge in democratic communities.
Irving H. Jurow Lecture Hall
Silver Center for Arts and Science
31 Washington Place, Rm 101
All lectures are scheduled from 5:00–6:00 PM (Eastern)
Useful Links
- Scholars Lecture 2022-23 Edition
- Scholars Lecture 2021-2022 Edition
- Scholars Lecture 2020-2021 Edition
- Scholars Lecture 2019-2020 Edition
- Honors Programs