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Sterling McMurrin Lecture on Religion and Culture with Father Gregory Boyle, Homeboy Industries
The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness
Father Gregory Boyle will share what he has learned in three decades working with marginalized populations at Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, Calif. — that love is the answer, community is the context, and tenderness is the connective tissue. Tenderness reflects the foundational notion that there are no us and them, only us. Homeboy seeks to be what the world is invited to become. Kinship cannot happen without tenderness.
Alternate Location: Salt Lake City Public Library Auditorium. Cost: Free. Contact Name: Beth James. Contact Phone: 8015818473. Contact Email: beth.james@utah.edu. Campus Wide Event: Yes.
Wednesday, January 21, 2026, 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM.
For more info visit tanner.utah.edu. Work in Progress Talk with Professor David Bresnahan, Department of History
The Bombay Africans and the Exploration of East Africa
David P. Bresnahan is an assistant professor of history at the University of Utah. His research focuses on East Africa’s historical connections to the Indian Ocean world during periods spanning the first millennium to the nineteenth century. He is the author of Inland from Mombasa: East Africa and the Making of the Indian Ocean World (University of California Press, 2025). He has published essays in the Journal of World History, the International Journal of African Historical Studies, and the Journal of Eastern African Studies, as well as public-facing venues like Edge Effects and World History Commons.
Campus Locations: Tanner Irish Humanities Building - Carolyn (CTIHB). Cost: Free. Contact Name: Beth James. Contact Phone: 8015818473. Contact Email: beth.james@utah.edu. Campus Wide Event: Yes.
Thursday, January 22, 2026, 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM.
For more info visit tanner.utah.edu. Work in Progress Talk with LuMing Mao, Department of Writing & Rhetoric Studies
Mapping a World: Accommodation, Acculturation, Colonization
LuMing Mao is Professor in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric Studies and Asian Center Faculty Affiliate at the University of Utah. A scholar in comparative and global rhetoric, Asian/Asian American rhetoric, Chinese rhetoric, and histories of rhetoric, Mao was named a Distinguished Scholar by Miami University in 2015 and served as the Peter and Margaret D'Angelo Endowed Chair in the Humanities at St. John's University and the Thomas R. Watson Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Louisville. Mao is the author of Reading Chinese Fortune Cookie: The Making of Chinese American Rhetoric and a Chinese edition with a new introduction published by Fudan University Press. He edited Comparative Rhetoric: Traversing Rhetorical Times, Places, and Spaces and co-edited Representations: Doing Asian American Rhetoric. He was also editor or co-editor of many special issues and symposia in journals, including College Composition and…
Campus Locations: Tanner Irish Humanities Building - Carolyn (CTIHB). Cost: Free. Contact Name: Beth James. Contact Phone: 8015818473. Contact Email: beth.james@utah.edu. Campus Wide Event: Yes.
Thursday, January 29, 2026, 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM.
For more info visit tanner.utah.edu. The Gordon B. Hinckley Lecture in British Studies - "The Fate of the Foundling, or, being undocumented in Twentieth-century Britain" by Nadja Durbach
The Fate of the Foundling, or, being undocumented in Twentieth-century Britain
by Nadja Durbach, Professor
Co-Editor, Journal of British Studies
Department of History, College of Humanities
University of Utah
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the foundling—an abandoned newborn baby found alive whose parentage was unknown—frequently appeared in British debates about motherhood and the family; poverty and the economy; morality, respectability, and sexuality; nation and empire; and the proper relationship between charities and the state. Scholars of British culture, however, have tended to lose interest in the foundling once the 1926 Adoption Act provided a legal means to absorb abandoned children into new families. Yet it was in the twentieth century that the plight of the foundling was magnified and took on new importance precisely because unadopted foundlings, and older abandoned children, were often undocumented. That they had either never been registered at birth, or their records could not be…
Event Categories: Lectures. Campus Locations: Alumni House - Eccles (ALUMNI). Cost: Free. Transportation / Parking: Union Parking Lot. Contact Name: John Boyack. Contact Phone: 801-587-7351. Contact Email: john.boyack@utah.edu. Campus Wide Event: Yes.
Thursday, January 29, 2026, 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM.
For more info visit british-studies.utah.edu. Tanner Conversation with Professor C. Thi Nguyen, Department of Philosophy
Professor C. Thi Nguyen discusses his new book, The Scoree: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game.
Campus Locations: Dumke Auditorium (UMFA). Cost: Free. Contact Name: Beth James. Contact Phone: 8015818473. Contact Email: beth.james@utah.edu. Campus Wide Event: Yes.
Wednesday, February 4, 2026, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM.
Work in Progress Talk with Professor Blake Gutt, World Languages and Cultures
The Trans Middle Ages
Dr. Blake Gutt (Ph.D. University of Cambridge) is an assistant professor of French at the University of Utah, where he teaches literature surveys as well as classes on medieval saints and their veneration, marvels and miracles, and the Holy Grail. His research addresses thirteenth- and fourteenth-century French and Occitan secular literature, hagiography, visual culture, and queer and trans theory. With Alicia Spencer-Hall, Blake co-edited Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography (Amsterdam University Press, 2021), which was a 2022 Lambda Literary Awards finalist. He is a general editor, alongside Greta LaFleur and Emily Skidmore, of the forthcoming six-volume series A Cultural History of Trans Lives (Bloomsbury, 2028). Blake’s work on the trans Middle Ages has been published in Exemplaria, Medieval Feminist Forum, and postmedieval, and is forthcoming in Speculum. The working title of his monograph-in-progress is The Trans Middle Ages.
Campus Locations: Tanner Irish Humanities Building - Carolyn (CTIHB). Cost: Free. Contact Name: Beth James. Contact Phone: 8015818473. Contact Email: beth.james@utah.edu. Campus Wide Event: Yes.
Thursday, February 5, 2026, 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM.
For more info visit tanner.utah.edu. Work in Progress Talk with Emma Heflin, Department of Philosophy
The Aesthetics of Simone Weil
Emma Heflin is a PhD candidate in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Utah. She has presented her research on Simone Weil’s aesthetics at the American Society for Aesthetics in 2022, 2023, and 2024, where she has won awards such as Graduate Student Best Paper. Most recently, she received a fellowship to pursue humanities professionalization at the National Humanities Center Graduate Student Summer Residency program. She looks forward to using her time at the Tanner Humanities center to submit her research for publication.
Campus Locations: Tanner Irish Humanities Building - Carolyn (CTIHB). Cost: Free. Contact Name: Beth James. Contact Phone: 8015818473. Contact Email: beth.james@utah.edu. Campus Wide Event: Yes.
Thursday, February 12, 2026, 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM.
For more info visit tanner.utah.edu. Work in Progress Talk with Ataya Cesspooch, Annie Clark Tanner Fellow in Environmental Humanities
Making Power: Oil and Gas, Land Relations, and Indigenous Sovereignty on the Northern Ute Reservation
Ataya is an enrolled citizen of the Fort Peck Sioux and Assiniboine Tribes and a descendant of the northern Ute Tribe from the Uintah and Ouray Reservation in northeastern Utah.Prior to starting her PhD at Berkeley, Ataya worked for the Ute Tribe and later the Bureau of Indian Affairs as an environmental protection specialist. In this position she reviewed agency NEPA documents assessing the environmental impacts from proposed oil and gas wells cited on Tribal lands. During the five years she spent doing this work, she identified tensions between Tribal sovereignty and federal environmental oversight, particularly around air quality regulation. Her research seeks to better understand these dynamics and address the resulting public health concerns. Ataya is passionate about revitalizing the Ute language and is pursuing a designated emphasis in Indigenous Language Revitalization to strengthen her community's…
Campus Locations: Tanner Irish Humanities Building - Carolyn (CTIHB). Cost: Free. Contact Name: Beth James. Contact Phone: 8015818473. Contact Email: beth.james@utah.edu. Campus Wide Event: Yes.
Tuesday, February 17, 2026, 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM.
For more info visit tanner.utah.edu. Tanner Talk with Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow, author of Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It.
Campus Locations: Dumke Auditorium (UMFA). Cost: Free. Contact Name: Beth James. Contact Phone: 8015818473. Contact Email: beth.james@utah.edu. Campus Wide Event: Yes.
Wednesday, February 18, 2026, 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM.
For more info visit tanner.utah.edu. National Theatre Live, The Fifth Step
The Fifth Step
by David Ireland
directed by Finn den Hertog
Olivier Award-winner Jack Lowden (Slow Horses, Dunkirk) is joined by Emmy and BAFTA-winner
Martin Freeman (The Hobbit, The Responder) in the critically acclaimed and subversively funny new
play by David Ireland.
After years in the 12-step programme of Alcoholics Anonymous, James becomes a sponsor to newcomer Luka. The pair bond over black coffee, trade stories and build a fragile friendship out of their shared experiences. But as Luka approaches step five – the moment of confession – dangerous truths emerge, threatening the trust on which both of their recoveries depend. Finn den Hertog directs the provocative and entertaining production filmed live from @sohoplace on London’s West End.
Alternate Location: Broadway Centre Cinemas, 111 E. Broadway. Cost: $15. Ticket URL: https://slfstix.org/. Contact Name: Beth James. Contact Phone: 8015818473. Contact Email: beth.james@utah.edu. Campus Wide Event: Yes.
Saturday, February 21, 2026, 12:00 PM – 3:00 PM.
Work in Progress Talk with Professor Steven Marsh, University of Chicago
The Portuguese Revolution as Geo-Filmic Event
Steven Marsh is Professor of Iberian studies and film at the University of Illinois, Chicago. He is the author of two monographs: Popular Film Under Franco: Comedy and the Weakening of the State (Palgrave 2006); and Spanish Film Against Itself: Cosmopolitanism, Experimentation, Militancy (Indiana University Press, 2020), translated into Spanish as El cine español contra sí mismo: Cosmopolitismo, experimentación, militancia (Cátedra, 2022). He has published many articles on Spanish film and politics. He is a member of the Editorial Collective of The Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies.
Campus Locations: Tanner Irish Humanities Building - Carolyn (CTIHB). Cost: Free. Contact Name: Beth James. Contact Phone: 8015818473. Contact Email: beth.james@utah.edu. Campus Wide Event: Yes.
Thursday, February 26, 2026, 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM.
For more info visit tanner.utah.edu.