2025-2026

Mellon Research Seminar

  • September 9, 2025

    Welcome and Introductions

  • September 16, 2025

    Julia Verkholantsev

    The Etymological Method and Historical Proof: The Case of the Roman Theory of Lithuania's Origins

    Respondent: Ada Kuskowski

  • September 23, 2025

    Victor Sierra Matute

    My Word as Law: Truth, Sound, and the Contest of Knowledge in Colonial Latin America/Abya Yala

    Respondent: Emily Ng

  • September 30, 2025

    Ege Yumusak

    The Epistemology of Everyday Political Conflict

    Respondent: Caitlyn Olson

  • October 7, 2025

    Group discussion: Books, articles, and films about Truth

  • October 14, 2025

    Samuel Driver

    Rethinking the 'Lie': Image Manipulation and Truth Claims from Stalin to Putin

    Respondent: Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano

  • October 21, 2025

    Ketaki Jaywant

    Secularizing Caste: The Anti-Caste Discourse of the Truth Seekers in Nineteenth-century Western India

    Respondent: Ana Lolua

  • October 28, 2025

    Caitlyn Olson

    Managing Theological Truth in Early Modern Morocco

    Respondent: Delbar Khakzad

  • November 11, 2025

    Austin Svedjan

    TruTrans?: Trans Autobiography, Sexological Paratext, and Medical "Truth"

    Respondent: Jennifer Sierra

  • November 18, 2025

    Spencer Small

    The Ethical Pact in Russophone Wartime Writing

    Respondent: Julia Alekseyeva

  • December 2, 2025

    Emily Ng

    Religious Sensoria, Psyche, and Post/Secular Truth in Contemporary China

    Respondent: Caitlin Adkins

  • January 20, 2026

    Caitlin Adkins

    Manufacturing Truths for Trial: Spectacles of a Japanese Woman in Leftwing Politics

    Respondent: Christine Woody

  • January 27, 2026

    Ada Kuskowski

    Legal Truth: A History of Law and Uncertainty

    Respondent: Tiffany Nguyen

  • February 3, 2026

    Eleanor Webb

    Between Studium and Accademia: Education, Science, and Censorship in Early Modern Italy

    Respondent: Chris Halsted

  • February 10, 2026

    Julia Alekseyeva

    Cinema-Truth and its Discontents: Prehistories and Afterlives

    Respondent: Samuel Driver

  • February 17, 2026

    Priyamvada Nambrath

    Constructed and Structural Impartialities: On Truth Claims around Medieval Kerala Mathematics

    Respondent: Victor Sierra Matute

  • February 24, 2026

    Jennifer Sierra

    Bateria Keyotai Kaman ('Til the Battery Dies): The (Im)Possible Digital Life of Shipibo-Konibos in the Peruvian Amazon

    Respondent: Hardeep Dhillon

  • March 3, 2026

    Ana Lolua

    Between Imperial and Anti-Imperial: The Case of the Georgian State Museum from the Early Bolshevik Period to Perestroika

    Respondent: Austin Svedjan

  • March 17, 2026

    Chris Halsted

    Imagining a World Gone Wrong: Truth, Identity, and Fear in Early Medieval Europe

    Respondent: Julia Verkholantsev

  • March 24, 2026

    Tiffany Nguyen

    The Choice of Clemency: Nero's Tyranny in On Mercy

    Respondent: Ege Yumusak

  • March 31, 2026

    Hardeep Dhillon

    America's Children and the History of Immigration

    Respondent: Eleanor Webb

  • April 7, 2026

    Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano

    A Sea of Gossip: Truth and Imagination in the Early Modern Mediterranean

    Respondent: Spencer Small

  • April 14, 2026

    Delbar Khakzad

    The Celestial Language: The Search for Esoteric Universal Truth and the Enchantment of Modern Science in 19th-Century Iran

    Respondent: Priyamvada Nambrath

  • April 21, 2026

    Christine Woody

    Publishing Personality: Romantic Periodicals and the Paradox of Living Authorship

    Respondent: Ketaki Jaywant

  • April 28, 2026

    Closing Discussion