Conversations & Cocktails
When continuing education is fun!
“Conversations & Cocktails” is a free public lecture and discussion series that showcases the original research of our distinguished UT arts and humanities faculty. Our monthly get-togethers give you the opportunity to hear about fascinating work in the arts and in such fields as philosophy, history, and literature studies.
Join us as we feature groundbreaking work exploring a wide range of topics. Presentations are 30–40 minutes long, are held as webinars on Zoom, and are designed for the general public. A spirited question-and-answer discussion follows each presentation.
You can check the Zoom Help Center to learn more about setting up an account and joining a meeting. Contact us if you have any questions at humanitiesctr@utk.edu or 865-974-4222!
Schedule for Fall 2023
2023-2024 Series Details
October 5, 2023
Eleni Palis, “The Reparative Remake in Contemporary American Cinema“
Time: 7:00 pm ET
Register here for the Zoom link
Speaker: Eleni Palis, Assistant Professor of English and Cinema Studies
Talk Title: “The Reparative Remake in Contemporary American Cinema”
Reparations and reparative justice become increasingly common buzz words in American public life. These ideas extend from law, legal proceedings, and theories of justice to education, public memory, and literary theory. They also build on a much longer history of Black, Indigenous, immigrant, and other minoritized intellectuals’ advocacy and activism. When it comes to contemporary American media, how might reparations or reparative justice manifest on-screen? In this talk, cinema studies expert Eleni Palis discusses how film remakes—films that reboot or re-imagine a preexisting film—offer “re-visions” of film history, using Nia DaCosta’s Candyman (2021) as an example of a recent “reparative remake.”
About the Speaker:
Eleni Palis is an assistant professor of English and Cinema Studies at the University of Tennessee. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of the book Classical Projections: The Practice and Politics of Film Quotation (Oxford University Press, 2022). Her work has also appeared in Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies, Screen, The Journal of Cinema and Media Studies (Cinema Journal), and [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies. An article on Jordan Peele’s film authorship is forthcoming from Film Quarterly.
November 2, 2023
Ernest Freeberg, “Inventing Our Golden Years”
Time: 7:00 pm ET
Register here for the Zoom link
Speaker: Ernest Freeberg, Professor of History
Talk Title: “Inventing Our Golden Years”
Sixty years ago, Americans began to invent a new phase of life, those years between
work and old age dependency that we call “retirement.” So entrenched in our culture has this
idea become that we often consider this a natural part of the life span, but the modern
experience of retirement is actually a post-World War Two creation. Reviewing the history of
how Americans have come to understand and live their retirement years, this talk will explore
our ambivalent and evolving relationship to our jobs, our culture of leisure, and our anxieties
about aging. Starting in the mid-20 th century, the search many Americans embarked upon for a
“good retirement” has been a search for meaning; and so, the origin and evolution of
retirement provides a vantage point from which we can reflect on what we think constitutes a
life well and fully lived.
About the Speaker:
Ernest Freeberg’s teaching and research interests center on the cultural and intellectual history of the
United States in the 19th and 20th centuries. His books have examined the history of disability, the origin of
civil liberties and free speech doctrine in America, the impact of technology and invention on American
life, and the founding of the movement to protect animal rights.
November 30, 2023
Justin Arft, “The Hidden Dimensions of Greek Heroes and Myth”
Time: 7:00 pm ET
Register here for the Zoom link
Speaker: Justin Arft, Assistant Professor of Classics
Talk Title: “The Hidden Dimensions of Greek Heroes and Myth”
While Greek mythology still captures our attention and invites constant reinvention, there are
“hidden” dimensions to these stories that are not apparent when we just read them in
translation, namely their ancient performance as oral, verbal art and Greek culture’s
engagement with heroes in cult. This Conversations & Cocktails will introduce you to how
mythology was performed in the ancient world and how the Greeks envisioned their heroes as
powerful, troubled figures from a doomed era of mortals but ones who also survived as
powerful, sometimes helpful figures in cult practice. The heroes of myth were defined by their
ability to suffer and cause suffering, making the performances of their stories opportunities for
reflection on culture, meaning, and mortality. For the Greeks, performance of myth was a
communal way to remember a past alien to their own experience, but one still useful for
defining and differentiating their own culture.
About the Speaker:
Justin Arft is an associate professor of Classical Studies whose main research focus is on ancient
Greek poetry and comparative oral epic. Arft has authored articles on the technical
dimensions of Homeric poetry with an eye to comparative examples of how other cultures
perform oral epic, and his recent book, Arete and the Odyssey’s Poetics of Interrogation (Oxford
2022), applies interdisciplinary methods to address a long-standing problem in Homeric studies,
namely the role of Arete, the Phaeacian queen, in the Odyssey. By analyzing an Indo-European
interrogation formula seen across many bodies of literature and in Greek funerary texts, Arft
argues that Arete serves as a gatekeeper for Odysseus’ journey and the epic’s own quest to
define him as a hero of homecoming. His future projects will focus on the broader role of
Greek heroes in ancient epic and how the Greeks used marginalized and non-heroic characters
in these stories to critique them.
February 29, 2024
Nicole Eggers, Department of History
Time: 7:00 pm ET
Registration: Coming soon
Nicole Eggers, Assistant Professor of History
Talk Title: Coming soon
April 4, 2024
Daniel Magilow, Department of World Languages & Cultures
Time: 7:00 pm ET
Registration: Coming soon
Daniel Magilow, Professor of German (Dept. of World Languages & Cultures)
Talk Title: Coming soon
April 25, 2024
Kelli Wood, Department of Art History
Time: 7:00 pm ET
Registration: Coming soon
Kelli Wood, Assistant Professor of Art History
Talk Title: Coming soon
“Investing in the Humanities Center is investing in our entire campus and our entire academic community.”
—Joshua Ortiz Baco
Digital Scholarship Librarian, UT Libraries
Cutting-edge intellectuals brought to the public with lectures, discussion, symposia & conferences.
The center shares the study of the humanities with the public and, in so doing, brings new perspectives and valuable insights to important topics that affect every person. The Public Humanities at UT are made available through programming like the Distinguished Lecture Series, Conversations & Cocktails, and conferences and symposia.
