Humanities Hub events feature writers from Rolling Stone and Wired magazine, other guest speakers

CLEMSON — This fall, the Humanities Hub is bringing high-profile guests to Clemson University to discuss teens and music, the preservation of wildlife and the power of computer programmers.

The talks will feature pop music journalist Brittany Spanos of Rolling Stone, technology writer Clive Thompson of Wired Magazine and legal historian Paul Finkelman. Several Clemson faculty members also will present public programs.

All of these Humanities Hub events are free and open to the public.

Music conference

Friday, Oct. 11: “Teenage Dream: Music and Adolescence” is a conference organized by English professor Will Stockton and featuring Clemson faculty, guest scholars and journalists. All talks will be held in in Lee 2-301:

• 9-10:30 a.m.: D. Gilson, “Oops! … I Did it Again: Britney and Nostalgia.” Gilson and Will Stockton are the co–authors of “Jesus Freak (33 1/3)” (Bloomsbury, 2018). Gilson also wrote the forthcoming “Notes from an Evangelical Boyhood (University of Georgia Press, 2019).
• 10:45 a.m.-12:15 p.m.: Walter Biggins, “Sleep’s Cousin: Pop Music as Dream State, or, How Breakbeats and Sloppy Songs Taught a Black Boy to Embrace the Surreal and Adulthood — or Maybe They’re One and the Same.” Biggins is an executive editor at the University of Georgia Press.
• 12:15-1:30 p.m.: Lunch
• 1:30-3:30 p.m.: Clemson Faculty Panel:
  • Nic Brown, “Here Lies Jared Falcon.”
  • Amy Monaghan, “Girls to the Front!”
  • Tiffany D. Creegan Miller, “Kixajo’, yojch’o’n pa qach’ab’äl: Youth-Driven Language Revitalization Initiatives in Hip Hop and Rap in Mayan Languages in the Guatemalan Highlands.”
• 3:45-5:15 p.m.: Brittany Spanos, “Nowhere Men: Exploring Masculinity and Coming of Age Through Teen Male Idols.” Spanos covers pop music and teen culture for Rolling Stone.

Sponsors of “Teenage Dream” include the Humanities Hub; the English and Performing Arts departments; the Pearce Center for Professional Communication; and the College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities, all at Clemson University.

Iron Curtain series

Oct. 22-Nov. 6: “The Fall of the Iron Curtain” film and discussion series continues with three events, all at 6 p.m. in the Academic Success Center, Room 118.

Oct. 22: Harris King, a senior lecturer in the department of languages, will speak on the topic of “Dancing in the Death Strip: How Techno Reunited Germany.”

Oct. 29: Lucian Ghita, a senior lecturer in the department of English, will introduce “The Paper Will Be Blue,” a film by Radu Muntean set in Bucharest, Romania, on the night of Dec. 22-23, 1989, after the fall of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

Nov. 6: Gabriela Stoicea, an assistant professor in the department of languages, will introduce “The Lives of Others,” a German film by Florian Henckel about the Stasi (secret police) monitoring residents of East Berlin.

The series is sponsored by the History and Languages departments, the World Cinema program and the Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design program.

Other public talks

Oct. 23: Clive Thompson, a technology writer for Wired and The New York Times, will speak at 7:30 p.m. in the Watt Family Innovation Center Auditorium about his latest book, “Coders” (Penguin Press, 2019), which explores what he calls the most quietly powerful people on the planet today, computer programmers. Thompson points out that we live in a world in which computer programmers play a critical role in everything from self-driving cars to Facebook algorithms and personal and financial privacy. “Coders” looks at the morality and politics of code, including its implications for civic life and the economy.

Oct. 30: Paul Finkelman, a legal historian and president of Gratz College, will speak at 5:30 p.m. in Hardin Hall, Room 100, on “Supreme Injustice: How the Supreme Court Protected Slavery and Supreme Court Justices Protected Their Own Investments in Slaves.”

Oct. 31: Paul Finkelman will offer a second public lecture at 3:30 p.m. in the Great Hall of the Honors Academic Activities Center at Core Campus, “Substituting the Electric Chair for the Lynch Mob: Legalized Murder by the State of South Carolina, and the Posthumous Pardon of Tom Joyner’s Great Uncles.”

Nov. 21: Drew Lanham and John Lane will discuss preservation and the environment at 5 p.m. in Riggs Hall, Room 227. Lanham is the Alumni Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology and a professor of English at Clemson, while Lane is a professor of English and director of environmental studies at Wofford College. Lane is the author of “Neighborhood Hawks: A Year Following Wild Birds” (University of Georgia Press, 2019).

Dec. 5: Gordon Hutner, editor of American Literary History (published by Oxford University), will offer a public presentation at 4 p.m. in the Pearce Center for Professional Communication. During his visit, he also will meet privately with Clemson faculty.

The Humanities Hub
The Humanities Hub was created in 2016 with the aim of advancing outreach, scholarship and teaching of the humanities at Clemson University. More information and scheduling updates are posted on the Humanities Hub website and Facebook page.