Mat Fournier, Associate Professor of French, Ithaca College

"The chorus seems to suggest that life is hardly worth living, and that old age is a curse best relieved by death. However, Sophocles also offers us reflections on aging, agency, and hospitality."

"Return" is a central notion for thinking about the diasporic condition (W. Safran). Yala Kisukidi will examine the ambivalences of this notion, drawing specifically on twentieth-century African and Black diasporic imaginaries and on contemporary European migration policies.

Jessica Ruffin will unpack the broad function of religious horror, the film’s engagement with filicide taboos and class inheritance, as well as its unique metaphysics of evil, from women and dogs to the photographic image.

In 1910, Gustav Klimt painted a young woman, then painted over her portrait. The painting was stolen in 1997 and unexpectedly resurfaced two decades later. Camille de Peretti uses this intriguing chapter in art history to imagine the woman behind the painting and the generations that follow her.

Join National Book Award winner Elisa Shua Dusapin for a conversation about The Old Fire, her acclaimed new novel about two estranged sisters, a childhood home, and all that remains unspoken between them.