In conjunction with the Wolf Humanities Center’s 2024–2025 Forum on Keywords, this symposium engages mobile concepts and their genealogies, histories, structures of meaning, translations, and adaptations across time and space. In three panels curated around the Raymond Williams keywords of “Aesthetics,” “Imperialism,” and “Humanity,” we focus on themes that drive cultural and social concepts and inspire global interlocution across languages, perspectives, and temporalities. 

As we gear up to celebrate the anniversary of Williams’ foundational book "Keywords," we will reflect on how generative the use of keywords remains while also adding to and challenging the original vocabulary. We hope to make Williams’ process applicable for the twenty-first century and fruitful for the questions scholarship is grappling with today.

Join us as scholars from the social sciences, the humanities, and the arts expand upon—and challenge—some of Williams’ categories.

Symposium Agenda

9:15 am–10:00 am
Breakfast

10:00 am–10:15 am
Welcome Remarks

• Jamal J. Elias, Director, Wolf Humanities Center; Walter H. Annenberg Professor of the Humanities; Professor of Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania
• Lisa Mitchell, Topic Director, Forum on Keywords, Wolf Humanities Center; Chair and Professor of anthropology and history, Department of South Asia Studies, University of Pennsylvania

10:15 am–11:45 am
Imperialism
Moderator: Paniz Musawi Natanzi, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Wolf Humanities Center

• Mariam Durrani, Professorial Lecturer, Peace, Human Rights & Cultural Relations, American University
• Hafsa Kanjwal, Associate Professor, South Asian History, Lafayette College
• Anna Storti, Assistant Professor, Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies, Duke University

1:00 pm–2:30 pm
Humanity
Moderator: Jacob Myers, Doctoral Fellow, Wolf Humanities Center; Ph.D. Candidate, English, University of Pennsylvania

• Steven Weitzman, Abraham M. Ellis Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages and Literatures, Ella Darivoff Director of the Katz Center of Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania
• Manu Chander, Associate Professor, English, Georgetown University
• Gabrielle Cornish, Assistant Professor, Musicology, Mead Witter School of Music, University of Wisconsin

2:45 pm–4:30 pm
Aesthetics
Moderators: Lama Elsharif, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Wolf Humanities Center and Jeremy Steinberg, Doctoral Fellow, Wolf Humanities Center; Ph.D. Candidate, English, University of Pennsylvania

• Sa'ed Atshan, Associate Professor, Peace and Conflict Studies and Anthropology, Swarthmore University
• Stephanie Langin-Hooper, Associate Professor, Art History, Karl Kilinksi II Endowed Chair in Hellenic Visual Culture, Southern Methodist University
• Sonal Khullar, W. Norman Brown Associate Professor of South Asian Studies, Art History, University of Pennsylvania

4:30 pm
Closing Remarks

• Angelina Eimannsberger, Research Associate, Wolf Humanities Center; Ph.D. Candidate, Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, University of Pennsylvania

5:00 pm–6:30 pm
Keynote
Moderated by Maryam Athari, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Wolf Humanities Center

Redefining the Political: Persianate Sociability and its States

• Mana Kia, Associate Professor, Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, Columbia University

6:30 pm–7:30 pm
Reception