Alumni Events

Thursday, April 9, 2026
7:00 – 8:30 pm EDT

A question many ask with great urgency these days is, “What can we learn from history?” Marci Shore, an intellectual historian focusing on Central and Eastern Europe, has engaged with this question in her academic career and increasingly as a public intellectual. In her dialogue and cooperation with Eastern and Central European intellectuals, Shore herself has become entangled in the region’s politics, most notably in her defense of Ukrainian independence but also of democracy more widely. This engagement is also no longer limited to Europe. Shore comments frequently on the state of politics in the United States.

In conversation with Sarah Lawrence History faculty member Philipp Nielsen, Shore will explore what it means to be an engaged historian, what we can learn from history, and how it matters to ourselves, to our societies, and to international relations.

Marci Shore began a position as Chair in European Intellectual History at the Munk School at the University of Toronto in 2025. She was previously professor of history at Yale University; she is also a regular visiting fellow at the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna. In spring 2025 she guest curated, together with Oksana Forostyna, the Kyiv Book Arsenal with the theme “Everything is Translation.” She is the translator of Michał Głowiński's The Black Seasons and the author of Caviar and Ashes: A Warsaw Generation's Life and Death in Marxism, 1918-1968  and The Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe. A new edition of her book The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution was published in 2024. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for her forthcoming book about phenomenology in East-Central Europe In Pursuit of a Certain Truth: The Lives and Loves of a Central European Idea.

 This event is free and open to the public. Guests are invited to join the college community on campus or join via Zoom. 

Thursday, April 16, 2026
6:30 – 8:00 pm EDT

Join fellow Sarah Lawrence alums for Faculty on Tap — an informal evening where great conversation meets your favorite beverage. We're bringing the seminar experience out of the classroom and into the real world, where a beloved SLC faculty member will lead an hour-long talk, followed by open Q&A and casual conversation.

For our inaugural event, we welcome Anthropology faculty member Bob Desjarlais to speak on ‘Haunting and Spectrality’, learn more below:

“The future belongs to the ghosts,” remarked the philosopher Jacques Derrida in 1996. As his interlocutor Bernard Stiegler phrases the main idea behind this statement, “Modern technology, contrary to appearances, increases tenfold the power of ghosts.” With the advent of the Internet, various forms of social media, and the ubiquity of filmic images in our lives, Derrida's observations have proven to be quite prophetic, such that they call for a new field of study—one that requires less an ontology of being and the real and more a “hauntology” of the spectral, the phantasmic, the imaginary, and the recurrent revenant. In this Faculty on Tap lecture, we will give thought to the ways in which the past and present are haunted by ghosts, and the phenomenal force of specters and apparitions in the contemporary world.

Your ticket includes two drink tickets and light bites. Hosted at Lot 15 (inside the famous Black Tap bar) in Midtown, this is a class you won’t want to miss!

This event is open to recent graduates (Classes of 2015 - 2025) only.

We are grateful to The Edith Ingalls Vignos '45 Faculty on the Road Program in helping make this event possible. 

Saturday, April 18, 2026
12:00 – 2:00 pm EDT

We're happy to announce that we have rescheduled the Washington, DC Ring in the New Year event!

Reconnect with fellow alums at the home of Rachel Tillman '90. Join this special gathering filled with lively conversation and good cheer.

Address will be shared a week before the event.

Wednesday, April 22, 2026
7:00 – 8:00 pm EDT

Alchemy in Fourteenth Century England: Insights from Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales with Colin Abernethy, Chemistry Faculty

“The work of the Alchemist is the great secret of the world, the mystery of mysteries” Geoffrey Chaucer, The Cannon’s Yeoman’s Tale

The ancient art of alchemy is a mixture of philosophy, mythology and experimental science. Driven by their desire to understand and master the material world (and to gain wealth and long life), the alchemists laid the foundations of the modern science of chemistry.

Unfortunately, understanding the knowledge and beliefs of the alchemists is difficult as they used a cryptic combination of myth and allegory to describe their work. However, contemporary literature can give us valuable insights into the alchemists, their work, and how they were viewed by wider society.

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343 – 1400) was the most important English poet and author of the medieval period; his The Canterbury Tales is still regarded as one of the greatest literary achievements. One of The Canterbury Tales, The Cannon’s Yeoman’s Tale, is a satirical story of a fraudulent alchemist and his assistant.

In this seminar we will examine The Cannon’s Yeoman’s Tale to discover the extent of Chaucer’s own alchemical knowledge, and how alchemy was regarded in late fourteenth century England.

Funding for this event is provided by The Edith Ingalls Vignos '45 Faculty on the Road Program.

A Zoom link with be provided via email 24 hours before the event.

Thursday, June 4, 2026
3:00 – 12:00 pm EDT

Join us on campus for Reunion 2026 from Thursday, June 4, through Sunday, June 7 for a fantastic weekend that celebrates the extraordinary education and lasting friendships that characterize the Sarah Lawrence experience.