Taft Research Center Events

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Cincinnati, OH — Eastern Time

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Write Now! Fall 2026 Graduate Student Writing Accountability Group (GSWAG)

Join us for a structured writing session designed to help you make progress on seminar papers, theses, dissertations, creative writing or other projects! We’ll provide quiet work time, free food and a supportive community. Just bring a writing goal and something to write with.Participants are welcome to drop in or stay for the full session. Open to all graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. Free to attend & lunch provided! Presented in partnership with the Academic Writing Center and Graduate College. Register via GetInvolvedUC. Audience: Graduate. Cost: Free. Event Type: Taft Writes. Thursday, September 24, 2026, 11:00 AM – 4:00 PM. Bearcat Promise Career Studio TUC room 310.

"Pull Yourself Up by Your What Now?" an interactive talk on counter-narratives with Elissa Yancey

Some sentences run our lives. We've repeated them so often we forget somebody made them up — and that a few of them started as jokes. This talk hands those sentences back to you and adds blanks for you to fill. Elissa Yancey—award-winning journalist and founder of the Cincinnati nonprofit A Picture's Worth—leads the room in taking apart five dominant narratives and building what belongs in their place. Come ready to share one silly word, then write a true one. You'll leave with a card and a promise. Elissa Yancey, MSEd, was born and raised in Norwood, Ohio, the daughter of an Appalachian migrant who was a masterful storyteller. She has spent more than three decades listening to and sharing people’s stories. She co-founded and now serves and Executive and Creative Director of A Picture’s Worth, a nonprofit that builds community power through story. Elissa is a system disruptor who blends her expertise as an educator with her passion for story, community-building and justice. Audience: Faculty & Staff. Public. Graduate. Undergraduate. Cost: Free. Event Type: Thematic Lectures. Thursday, September 24, 2026, 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM. Taft Research Center Edwards 1, Suite 1100 47 W Corry Blvd Cincinnati, OH 45219. For more info visit www.uc.edu.

Taft Faculty Write: Fall Friday Retreats

Faculty at any rank and from all colleges are invited to join us for four writing sessions during fall semester! Join for a full or half day; attend all four or only what your schedule allows. Participants will work on independent writing projects alongside one another. In addition to writing, we’ll take short breaks to set goals, report progress, and move around. The Faculty Enrichment Center will provide light refreshments during each session. Come write with us in person or join on Zoom. Register via Faculty Development OneStop. Please register for each session separately. Online Location: Register for Zoom Link. Audience: Faculty & Staff. Cost: Free. Event Type: Taft Writes. Friday, September 25, 2026, 10:00 AM – 3:00 PM. Faculty Enrichment Center (FEC) Conference Room 540 F/G 2911 Woodside Dr Cincinnati, OH 45211. For more info visit ce.uc.edu.

Worlding: Finding a Way in Broken Times, a reading and conversation with Kathleen Stewart

Worlding: Finding a Way in Broken Times Reading and Conversation with Kathleen Stewart This talk will be a reading from Kathleen Stewart’s forthcoming book, Worlding: Finding a Way in Broken Times. Worlding is a series of tryouts or improvs learning to approach a new ordinary long unfolding in the United States since the 1950s. Its pieces move like a flip book trying to get down with worldly bits and pieces of immanent potential in aesthetic, affective, material modes of being. It suggests a creative-critical propositional practice of knowing otherwise that might sustain the complexity of reals that shift, settle, or falter on thresholds. Katie Stewart is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the University of Texas, Austin. Working to theorize in the resonance of forces coming into their own, she writes on affect, the ordinary, and modes of attunement from a speculative curiosity. A Space on the Side of the Road: Cultural Poetics in an `Other’ America(Princeton, 1996) thinks with the textured sensations… Audience: Faculty & Staff. Graduate. Public. Undergraduate. Cost: Free. Event Type: Lectures. Thematic Lectures. Tuesday, October 6, 2026, 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM. Elliston Poetry Room 646 Langsam Library. For more info visit www.uc.edu.

Counting the Uncountable: Ancient Greek Migrants, Annual MetaClassics Lecture with Naomi Campa

Counting the Uncountable: Ancient Greek Migrants Annual MetaClassics Lecture with Naomi Campa Migration is an ever-growing topic of interest both in the evening news and in academic disciplines as varied as political science and anthropology. Why do people move? How do host states react? What is the effect on the migrants, the receiving population, and the sending population? Are there patterns? Migrants traversed the ancient Greek world no less than migrants do now. While the case of migration in the ancient Mediterranean has much to add to our understanding of migration in its context, there is no systematized way of comparing ancient migrants with their modern counterparts, nor an accessible and centralized way to find information about ancient migrants. Counting and accounting for them is difficult to say the least. In this talk, I would like to propose the possibility of a formal typology for ancient Greek migration and an attendant digital database cataloguing instances of migration. A case study will… Online Location: https://ucincinnati.zoom.us/meeting/register/lujPpaZtR8GiKtHYLfCxnA. Audience: Faculty & Staff. Graduate. Public. Undergraduate. Cost: Free. Event Type: Taft &. Lectures. Thematic Lectures. Thursday, October 8, 2026, 12:30 PM – 2:30 PM. Taft Research Center Edwards 1, Suite 1100 47 W Corry Blvd Cincinnati, OH 45219. For more info visit www.uc.edu.

2026-31 Taft Distinguished Professor Inaugural Event: Erynn Masi de Casanova

2026-31 Taft Distinguished Professor Inaugural Event, Nothing Compares: The Value and Process of Comparison in Qualitative Research, an interdisciplinary panel discussion, Erynn Masi de Casanova in conversation with William García-Medina, Oneya Okuwobi, and Angela Potochnik Across disciplines, researchers use comparison to analyze and understand. But why and how do we compare, and how do we decide what to compare? This event brings together scholars to discuss comparative research design, case selection, and methodology, and how these practices shape the claims that we make. The Taft Professorship program is designed to reward our most outstanding faculty with a title, platform, and dedicated research line to conduct and share their work broadly. Audience: Faculty & Staff. Graduate. Public. Undergraduate. Cost: Free. Event Type: Taft Professor Lecture. Friday, October 9, 2026, 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM. Valentine Overlook Room 5280 Clifton Court Hall UC West Campus. For more info visit www.uc.edu.

Write Now! Fall 2026 Graduate Student Writing Accountability Group (GSWAG)

Join us on Zoom for a structured, virtual writing session designed to help you make progress on seminar papers, theses, dissertations, creative writing or other projects! We’ll provide quiet work time and a supportive community. Just bring a writing goal and something to write with. Participants are welcome to drop in or stay for the full session. Open to all graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. Presented in partnership with the Academic Writing Center and Graduate College. Register via GetInvolvedUC. Online Location: Register for Zoom Link. Audience: Graduate. Cost: Free. Event Type: Taft Writes. Friday, October 16, 2026, 9:30 AM – 12:00 PM.

Methods for Urban Encounters: Sound

Methods for Urban Encounters: Sound The Esquire Theatre 320 Ludlow Avenue Wednesday, October 21 7–8:30pm / Doors open at 6:45pm Presented in partnership with the Niehoff Center for Film and Media Studies, this three-part screening series offers new ways of understanding urban life through counternarratives and counterimages of the city. Highlighting what official city metrics, demographics, and maps cannot, each program focuses on a different method of encounter: observational documentary (September 9), sound (October 21), and mapping (November 4). , In Pursuit of Silence Patrick Shen 2015 / 81 minutes In a world of relentless noise, filmmaker Patrick Shen travels the globe in search of what we've lost - the quiet. Opening with an homage to John Cage's legendary silent composition 4'33" the film moves from the hushed rituals of a Kyoto tea ceremony to the deafening chaos of Mumbai at festival peak. It builds a meditative, almost wordless case for why silence matters. Less argument than immersion, it… Audience: Faculty & Staff. Graduate. Public. Undergraduate. Cost: Free. Event Type: Lectures. Thematic Lectures. Performances. Wednesday, October 21, 2026, 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM. Esquire Theatre 320 Ludlow Avenue Cincinnati, OH 45220.

Taft Faculty Write: Fall Friday Retreats

Faculty at any rank and from all colleges are invited to join us for four writing sessions during fall semester! Join for a full or half day; attend all four or only what your schedule allows. Participants will work on independent writing projects alongside one another. In addition to writing, we’ll take short breaks to set goals, report progress, and move around. The Faculty Enrichment Center will provide light refreshments during each session. Come write with us in person or join on Zoom. Register via Faculty Development OneStop. Please register for each session separately. Online Location: Register for Zoom Link. Audience: Faculty & Staff. Cost: Free. Event Type: Taft Writes. Friday, October 23, 2026, 10:00 AM – 3:00 PM. Faculty Enrichment Center (FEC) Conference Room 540 F/G 2911 Woodside Dr Cincinnati, OH 45211. For more info visit ce.uc.edu.

Write Now! Fall 2026 Graduate Student Writing Accountability Group (GSWAG)

Join us for a structured writing session designed to help you make progress on seminar papers, theses, dissertations, creative writing or other projects! We’ll provide quiet work time, free food and a supportive community. Just bring a writing goal and something to write with.Participants are welcome to drop in or stay for the full session. Open to all graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. Free to attend & lunch provided! Presented in partnership with the Academic Writing Center and Graduate College. Register via GetInvolvedUC. Audience: Graduate. Cost: Free. Event Type: Taft Writes. Thursday, October 29, 2026, 11:00 AM – 4:00 PM. Langsam Library 462.

Methods for Urban Encounters: Mapping

Methods for Urban Encounters: Mapping The Esquire Theatre 320 Ludlow Avenue Wednesday, November 4 7–8:30pm / Doors open at 6:45pm Presented in partnership with the Niehoff Center for Film and Media Studies, this three-part screening series offers new ways of understanding urban life through counternarratives and counterimages of the city. Highlighting what official city metrics, demographics, and maps cannot, each program focuses on a different method of encounter: observational documentary (September 9), sound (October 21), and mapping (November 4). Kaïros Jennifer Alleyn, 2026 / minutes 91 minutes After a year of filming abroad, Manu, a once prominent actor, returns to his hometown of Montreal. But getting back into the business isn’t as easy as he thought. Against all odds, he lands a job hosting a nighttime call-in radio show. His listeners are mainly newcomers, refugees and exiles with varied life experiences, working graveyard shifts. Manu gradually appropriates this space to launch… Audience: Faculty & Staff. Graduate. Public. Undergraduate. Cost: Free. Event Type: Lectures. Thematic Lectures. Performances. Wednesday, November 4, 2026, 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM. Esquire Theatre 320 Ludlow Avenue Cincinnati, OH 45220.

2026-31 Taft Distinguished Professor Inaugural Event: Muhammad U. Faruque

2026-31 Taft Distinguished Professor Inaugural Event, Beyond Technical Fixes: Climate Change and the Future of Humanity Muhammad U. Faruque This lecture investigates why the climate crisis cannot be solved through technology and policy alone. Drawing on the environmental humanities, Sufism, and ecological economics, the lecture argues that climate change is ultimately a crisis of values and meaning, calling for a new way of understanding the relationship between human beings, the climate, and the more-than-human world. The Taft Professorship program is designed to reward our most outstanding faculty with a title, platform, and dedicated research line to conduct and share their work broadly. Audience: Faculty & Staff. Graduate. Public. Undergraduate. Cost: Free. Event Type: Taft Professor Lecture. Friday, November 6, 2026, 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM. 1170 Clifton Court Hall UC West Campus. For more info visit www.uc.edu.

Good Enough Art: The Missing Middle of Culture with Anna Kornbluh

The recent surge of “mid” as an aesthetic judgment paradoxically discloses the missing middle in contemporary cultural arts: a decline of midbudget cinema, midlist fiction, and other just fine commodity aesthetic forms. Amid a historic eviction of the middle class, cultural study of the middlebrow can no longer rely upon traditional sociological methods. Briefly considering architecture, photography, fiction, and television, this talk experiments with a formalist approach to "good enough art.”. Audience: Faculty & Staff. Public. Graduate. Undergraduate. Cost: Free. Event Type: Thematic Lectures. Thursday, November 12, 2026, 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM. Valentine Overlook 5280 Clifton Court Hall.

Write Now! Fall 2026 Graduate Student Writing Accountability Group (GSWAG)

Join us for a structured writing session designed to help you make progress on seminar papers, theses, dissertations, creative writing or other projects! We’ll provide quiet work time, free food and a supportive community. Just bring a writing goal and something to write with. Participants are welcome to drop in or stay for the full session. Open to all graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. Free to attend & lunch provided! Presented in partnership with the Academic Writing Center and Graduate College. Register via GetInvolvedUC. Audience: Graduate. Cost: Free. Event Type: Taft Writes. Thursday, November 19, 2026, 11:00 AM – 4:00 PM. Langsam Library 462.

Taft Faculty Write: Fall Friday Retreats

Faculty at any rank and from all colleges are invited to join us for four writing sessions during fall semester! Join for a full or half day; attend all four or only what your schedule allows. Participants will work on independent writing projects alongside one another. In addition to writing, we’ll take short breaks to set goals, report progress, and move around. The Faculty Enrichment Center will provide light refreshments during each session. Come write with us in person or join on Zoom. Register via Faculty Development OneStop. Please register for each session separately. Online Location: Register for Zoom Link. Audience: Faculty & Staff. Cost: Free. Event Type: Taft Writes. Friday, November 20, 2026, 10:00 AM – 3:00 PM. Faculty Enrichment Center (FEC) Conference Room 540 F/G 2911 Woodside Dr Cincinnati, OH 45211. For more info visit ce.uc.edu.