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Events

Intellectual collaborations thrive in environments where ideas are shared, freely and respectfully, among people representing different backgrounds and perspectives. Many of society’s most urgent challenges can only be addressed by enlisting the public as partners. This is why the Neubauer Collegium regularly opens its inquiries and conversations to the public.

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Moving Lives

Workshop

Moving Lives

Participants at this interactive workshop will “write” their autobiographies through movement.

Participants at this interactive workshop – organized by dancer, educator, and creative director Meredith Dincolo and historian and Neubauer Collegium Faculty Director Tara Zahra – will “write” their autobiographies through movement. Through guided exercises, reflection, and creative exploration, participants will investigate how memory, experience, and embodied knowledge shape who we are and how we understand our pasts. Together, we will discover how movement can serve as a form of storytelling, a source of historical insight, and a way of uncovering new knowledge about ourselves and our communities.

This event is jointly organized by the Neubauer Collegium and Arts + Public Life at the University of Chicago.

Arts Incubator

Participants at this interactive workshop will “write” their autobiographies through movement.

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Opening Reception for Pierre Bismuth's Love Bless America

Flag with yellow, green, and white stars and stripes
Exhibition Opening

Opening Reception for Pierre Bismuth's Love Bless America

This exhibition features new works by the French artist and filmmaker Pierre Bismuth.

This exhibition features new works by the French artist and filmmaker Pierre Bismuth. The centerpiece is a long-form meditative film documenting a creative collaboration between Joshua Abrams and Sharon Udoh, two leading figures from Chicago’s jazz and improvised music scene. Bismuth tasked them with composing a 21st-century spiritual based on a lyrical hymn he wrote for the project. The film traces the magic and workaday practice of “inspiration,” taking the traditions of religious music as a point of departure for a multi-layered reflection on love, music, and the divine. In addition to this new film, Bismuth will present a series of digital images resembling American flags emblazoned with lyrics from the hymn.

The opening reception, presented as part of the 20th annual Hyde Park Jazz Festival, will include a live performance by Abrams and Udoh of the piece they composed together, starting at 2:15.

The Neubauer Collegium Gallery is supported by the Neubauer Family Foundation and the Brenda Mulmed Shapiro Fund. Additional support for this exhibition was provided by Bernard Friedman, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, and the France Chicago Center at the University of Chicago.

Neubauer Collegium

This exhibition features new works by the French artist and filmmaker Pierre Bismuth.

Register

"Orientalism" Is Not a Theoretical Machine

Lecture

"Orientalism" Is Not a Theoretical Machine

This lecture by Fadi A. Bardawil will consider Edward Said’s "reckoning with difference."

Lecture by Fadi A. Bardawil on Edward Said’s "reckoning with difference"

This event is presented by Revolutionary Disappointment and Recalibration, a 2026–2027 Neubauer Collegium research project organized in partnership with the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory (3CT).


ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Fadi A. Bardawil’s work investigates the traditions of critical intellectual inquiry and modalities of political engagement of contemporary Arab thinkers at home and in the diaspora. At its heart, his work is animated by the necessity to rethink the multiple genealogies of critical theory to reckon with questions of power, emancipation, and difference in an increasingly interconnected yet fragmented world. Bardawil is the author of Revolution and Disenchantment: Arab Marxism and the Binds of Emancipation (Duke UP, 2020). Some of his Arabic and English writings have appeared in Megaphone; American Ethnologist, boundary2; CSAAME; The Journal for Palestine Studies (Arabic edition); al-Jumhuriyya; The Immanent Frame; POLAR Online; South Atlantic Quarterly; Ma3azef, Allegra Lab, Notices of the American Mathematical Society, and World Records Journal. He has recently taught at the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University, the Arab Council for Social Sciences, Princeton University, and the University of Tokyo. He is an Associate Professor of Contemporary Arab Cultures in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University.

Neubauer Collegium

This lecture by Fadi A. Bardawil will consider Edward Said’s "reckoning with difference."

Register

Highways of Collective Action

People linking arms on the side of the road during Lebanon's October 17 protests.
Lecture

Highways of Collective Action

This lecture by Hiba Bou Akar will examine the improvised protest spaces that shaped Lebanon’s October 17 uprising.

This talk examines Lebanon’s October 17 uprising through two charged infrastructures: Beirut’s Ring Road and the Khalde Triangle. Drawing on participant observation, interviews, and archival research, Hiba Bou Akar shows how protesters transformed roads, overpasses, and roundabouts into spaces of gathering, debate, care, mourning, and political refusal. The talk asks what these improvised protest spaces reveal about public life in cities shaped by sectarian fragmentation, privatized space, and unequal infrastructures.

This event is presented by Revolutionary Disappointment and Recalibration, a 2026–2027 Neubauer Collegium research project organized in partnership with the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory (3CT).


ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Hiba Bou Akar is an Associate Professor in the Urban Planning program at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University, and leads Columbia’s Post-Conflict Cities Lab. Her research focuses on planning in conflict and post-conflict cities, the question of urban violence, and the role of religious political organizations in the making of cities. Bou Akar is the author of the award-winning book For the War Yet to Come: Planning Beirut’s Frontiers (2018), and she is currently working on a book manuscript entitled The Afterlives of Dead Futures. Bou Akar also worked as an architect and planner and as a research consultant with local NGOs and international UN organizations in the Middle East.

Neubauer Collegium

This lecture by Hiba Bou Akar will examine the improvised protest spaces that shaped Lebanon’s October 17 uprising.

Register