As the computer, the printing press, or the quill pen was to the book culture of other eras, slavery was to ancient Rome. From the Late Republic through the High Empire, members of Rome's literate elite made use of enslaved research assistants and stenographers to write books, enslaved copyists and binders to make new copies and maintain old ones, and enslaved readers to read aloud for convenience or in social settings. This talk will examine enslaved reading in Rome, situate that practice in histories of reading and of slavery, and look at how the questions this practice raises relate to the current moment of interest in generative AI.

Today, the figure of the guide dog has become a ubiquitous cultural symbol signifying blindness perhaps best shown by the fact that guide dog emojis commonly appear alongside those for wheelchairs and prosthetics. This talk will explore the role of popular culture in reshaping public responses to the figure of the guide dog and the human handler.

Using Congolese philosopher V.Y Mudimbe’s concept of the invention of Africa as a point of departure, Moses E. Ochonu explores the ways in which African Americans, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, invented, and reinvented ideas, semiotics, and tropes of Africa to respond to evolving circumstances, challenges, and aspirations in America and beyond.

The long months between the Munich Crisis of fall 1938 and the spring 1940 end of the eight-month period at the start of World War Two, in which there were few armed engagements, has been called the Phoney War. The battlefields were psychological and imagined as much as they were physical and material. This talk will consider a variety of sources that reveal visceral experience and allow us to explore the internal and internalized history of the War.

This talk explores the story of the official American expedition to Japan in 1852-54 to “open” the far-flung country to trade and a western-based diplomatic order. It also argues for the need to reassess the importance of the mission in the context of U.S. foreign policy and history, and to highlight it as one of the earliest, most significant, and in many respects successful, exercises in American imperialism.