Humanities Center

Humanities Center

Events for 2023-2024


A Celebration of Scholarship with Dr. Hannah Burdette (LANC) and Dr. Hope Munro (MTAD)

Thursday, April 4th

5:30 PM, PAC 134

 black women singing into microphone and indigenous women covered in second panel

Dr. Burdette and Dr. Munro will read excerpts from their recent monographs, followed by a
conversation with the audience. Dr. Burdette is an Associate Professor in the Department of
Languages and Cultures, and her book, Revealing Rebellion in Abiayala: The Insurgent Poetics
of Contemporary Indigenous Literature
, was published with the University of Arizona Press. Dr.
Hope Munro is an Associate Professor in the Department of Music, Theatre, and Dance, and her
book, What She Go Do: Women in Afro-Trinidadian Music, was published with the Caribbean
Studies Series at the University of Mississippi Press.

Hannah Burdette is a 2023 recipient of the Lantis University Chair Award. She holds a PhD in
Latin American Literature, an MA in Spanish from Vanderbilt University and a BA in Spanish
from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Her teaching and research interests include
Indigenous literature and social movements, inter-American studies, speculative fiction, and
translation. She is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively titled Speculative
Uncommons: Worldbuilding Stories Across Abiayala
, which looks at how authors from different
backgrounds across the Americas draw on Indigenous stories to imagine worlds otherwise.

Her first book, Revealing Rebellion in Abiayala, explores the intersections between Indigenous
literature and social movements over the past thirty years through the lens of insurgent poetics.
Burdette is interested in how Indigenous literature and social movements are intertwined and
why these phenomena arise almost simultaneously in disparate contexts across the Americas. She
argues that literature constitutes a key weapon in political struggles as it provides a means to
render subjugated knowledge visible and to envision alternatives to modernity and coloniality.

Dr. Hope Munro is an associate professor of music at California State University, Chico where
she teaches courses in world music and music history. She earned her PhD in ethnomusicology
from the University of Texas at Austin. Her book What She Go Do: Women in Afro-Trinidadian
Music
, was published in 2016 as part of the Caribbean Studies Series of the University Press of
Mississippi. An avid steel pan player, Dr. Munro is the musical director of the steel pan
ensemble at Chico State.

Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork conducted by the author in Trinidad and Tobago, What
She Go Do
demonstrates how the increased access and agency of women through folk and
popular musical expressions has improved intergender relations and representation of gender in
this nation. This is the first study to integrate all of the popular music expressions associated with
Carnival—calypso, soca, and steelband music—within a single volume. The book includes
interviews with popular musicians and detailed observation of musical performances, rehearsals,
and recording sessions, as well as analysis of reception and use of popular music through
informal exchanges with audiences (from the University of Mississippi Press).


Works-In-Progress:  Robin Averbeck, "William F. Buckley Was A Good Man: And Other Liberal Myths."

Friday, April 5th

12:00 PM, Humanities Center, PAC 113

Middle Ages wall painting with king holding gold sphere 

Several liberal myths about political culture and change are so entrenched that they are rarely identified as myths. At this talk, historian and author Robin Marie Averbeck will discuss her current work-in-progress, a collection of essays which tackle some of the most powerful of liberal myths that continue to frustrate political progress in the United States. Topics will include the concept of a "marketplace of ideas," the fetishization of complexity, and the mistake of prioritizing civility over solidarity. 


The Last Wave

Tuesday, April 9th

6 PM, Ayres 106

The Last Wave

(Australia, 1977) 106 minutes. Directed by Peter Weir.   

Introduced by Dr. Nathaniel Heggins Bryant (English).

A landmark film in the Australian New Wave film movement,  The Last Wave is a supernatural thriller and follow-up to famed director Peter Weir’s 1975  Picnic at Hanging Rock.  The Last Wave follows the increasingly disturbing encounters and apocalyptic visions of a white lawyer tasked with representing four Australian Aboriginal men accused of murder. Featuring famous Australian Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil (of the Mandjalpingu clan), the film delves deeply into the tensions between white settler society and Aboriginal beliefs in 1970s Australia.

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Works-In-Progress:  Sinwoo Lee, "Unlawful Occupations of Commoners' Houses: Social Status, Migration, and the Housing Crisis in Eighteenth-Century Seoul"

Friday, May 3rd

12:00 PM, Humanities Center, PAC 113

Middle Ages wall painting with king holding gold sphere 

“Seoul Republic” is a satirical term used to describe the phenomenon where all aspects of South Korea, including politics, economy, society, and culture, are excessively concentrated in Seoul, the capital city of South Korea. The centrality of Seoul in the country emerged as early as the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries during the Chosŏn Dynasty (1392–1910). This talk will discuss legal cases, changes in law, and court discussions of the unlawful occupation of commoners’ houses by the yangban elites (yŏga t’arip) in the intersection of rural-urban migration, social status, and the housing crisis in Eighteenth-Century Seoul.


2023-2024 Theme: Water

Water is at once both simple and complex.  A vital life element, essential to any species’ survival, water is threatened by human activity. Water is at the heart of politics and culture, news and information, science, and technology. We seek it; we fight over it; we yearn for it. It is an eternal inspiration for writers and artists. Whether it is drought or receding glaciers, atmospheric rivers or massive flooding, water is everywhere.

The Humanities Center is the interdisciplinary heart of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts. Our purpose is to create and nurture a culture of ideas at Chico State and to engage our diverse intellectual community through public events.  During the 2023-24 year, the Humanities Center will host a series of lectures and films exploring our human relationships with water. 

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