Reunion 2026 Schedule of Events

Victoria (Torie) Reed ’96, Bettina Burr Chair for Provenance, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

6–8:30 p.m.
Heimbold Visual Arts Center

Provenance — the life story of a work of art, tracing its ownership from creation to the present day — has become one of the most consequential fields in the modern art world. Over the past three decades, provenance research has evolved from a niche scholarly pursuit into an essential tool for uncovering theft, looting, and forcible sale, and for restoring what was wrongfully taken.

In this talk, Torie will share case studies from her work at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where she has served as one of the country’s first full-time provenance researchers since 2003. Through these stories, she will explore the detective work behind uncovering an artwork’s past and reflect on the important role Sarah Lawrence played in shaping her academic interests and professional path.

8:30 a.m.–7 p.m.
Barbara Walters Campus Center

8:30–10 a.m.
Barbara Walters Campus Center

9:30–11 a.m.

From Silence To Sound with Michael Cramer, Film History
The introduction of sound to cinema represented far more than just a technological transformation: for many filmmakers, it marked the end of one art form and the beginning of another, which was often met with skepticism if not outright hostility. This seminar will examine early uses of sound in cinema in conjunction with filmmakers' and critics' writings on the "proper" use of sound and the aesthetic pitfalls it was thought to present. 

The Middle East And The Politics Of Collective Memory with Matthew Ellis, Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation Chair in Middle Eastern Studies and International Affairs
This seminar will explore the important role that memory plays in the public life of nations. While individual memory is typically seen to be a matter best left to the psychologists, in recent decades the theme of “collective memory” has become a major object of study by historians. Using a variety of examples from the Middle East, the seminar takes up this rich subject of “collective memory” by asking a number of big questions: How do societies come to understand the past? How do different groups, or nations, interpret important historical events and make them meaningful? How and why is public knowledge about the past shaped and propagated? What is the role of museums and monuments in shaping our collective memory? What happens when different collective memories of the same event collide?

The Pregnancy Plot: Conception And Misconceptions with Emily Bloom, Literature
One might think that representations of pregnancy would be everywhere in literature, considering that gestation is a necessary stage of human life. And yet, before 1950, there are remarkably few detailed or first-hand literary representations of pregnancy. From the rise of the novel to early modernism, fictional pregnancies tend to be either discreet, taking place off the pages of the book, or tragic, offering a moralistic dénouement for a character’s sexual choices. In poetry, though first-hand accounts of pregnancy are also rare, there are some important exceptions, among them an eighteenth-century poem by Anna Laetitia Barbauld called "To a Little Invisible Being Who is Expected Soon to Become Visible" and Gwendolyn Brooks's 1945 poem titled "the mother." Separated by hundreds of years and written on different continents, what do these two works share in common and how do they differ? How has our understanding of pregnancy changed over time with developments in scientific knowledge? How do both poems, in focusing on the tentative nature of pregnancy, complicate conventional narratives about motherhood? And what do they reveal about the unique challenges and opportunities of representing a pregnancy in verse?

11:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m.

50th Reunion Lunch with President Cristle Collins Judd
Class of ’76
The President’s House

Reunion Lunch
All other classes
Barbara Walters Campus Center

1:30–4 p.m.
Departing from the Barbara Walters Campus Center

Tour of the Sarah Lawrence College Center for the Urban River at Beczak (CURB)
Explore the College’s academic research facility on the banks of the Hudson River at Habirshaw Park. The center features a welcoming riverfront lawn, an easily accessible tidal marsh and a beach used for river exploration and seining. SLC CURB provides a broad educational platform, establishes a Hudson River research program, and incorporates service learning and citizen science projects in the Yonkers community.

2–3:30 p.m.

Urban Ecology with Michelle Hersh, Biology
Ecologists study interactions between living organisms and their environments, as well as processes governing how species are distributed, how they interact, and how nutrients and energy cycle through ecosystems. Although we may think of these processes occurring in “natural” areas with little to no human development, all of these processes still take place in environments heavily modified by humans, like cities. In this seminar, we will talk about some fundamental concepts in ecology and then further explore how these patterns and processes are altered (sometimes dramatically) in urban environments. We will use examples from our local environment—the New York City metropolitan area—to understand ecological concepts in light of urbanization.

How To VJ with Angela Ferraiolo, Mary Griggs Burke Chair in Art and Art History
Have you ever wondered how the massive, reactive visuals at concerts and festivals come to life? Join visual art faculty Angela Ferraiolo for an immersive, hands-on look into the world of VJing (Video Jockeying). In this session, we’ll use TouchDesigner, the industry-leading platform for generative art, to build a basic "live audio" network from scratch. You'll see how a standard laptop can be transformed into a visual instrument, and how a pocket-sized MIDI controller allows for real-time manipulation of light, color, and motion. Whether you're a tech enthusiast, a music lover, or just curious about new media art, come see how we turn data into festival magic!

The Personal, The Political, The Artistic with Vijay Seshadri, Writing
In this session, we will do close and very close readings of two pieces of writing, one long and one short, by, respectively, Rachel Cohen and Vivian Gornick, both at onetime much-loved members of the Sarah Lawrence nonfiction writing faculty. Our theme will be the intersection of art, family, politics, need, and desire.

Games We Play: (Re)Thinking A Sociology Of Knowledge with Shahnaz Rouse, Sociology
Walter Benjamin famously did much of his writing in fragments. He provoked instead of providing solutions and/or answers. Sarah Lawrence’s pedagogy historically has similarly been focused on thinking on/through questions irregardless of the field on inquiry. In this talk/conversation, we will draw on these two traditions to address and think about sport, art, and politics. It is hoped that this exercise will allow us to think through, unravel, and re-examine practices of disciplining, resistance to disciplinary power, and the significance of un-disciplining materially and ideationally.

5–6 p.m.
Heimbold Visual Arts Center

The Sarah Lawrence community remembers alumni, trustees, faculty, and staff who passed away during the academic year.

6–8:45 p.m.

25th Reunion Dinner with President Judd
Class of ’01
The President’s House

Reunion Dinner and Drinks
All other classes
Bates Terrace

10:30 p.m.
Barbara Walters Campus Center Living Room

Enjoy drinks and snacks while watching this beloved classic!

9–10 a.m.
Barbara Walters Campus Center

11:15 a.m. –12:15 p.m.
Heimbold Visual Arts Center

At Reunion 2025, Joe Forte gave an exclusive preview of his forthcoming book on the architectural history of Sarah Lawrence, commemorating the College’s centennial. In Part II of this preview, Joe will focus on campus architecture under Charles DeCarlo and Alice Ilchman that reflected two successive architectural movements: Late Modernism and Post Modernism. Late Modernism in the Library and Slonim Woods took its inspiration from California and Scandinavia.  Post Modernism was inspired by American tract houses and casinos, rhetorical gestures of scale and “classic” decoration. Charles sponsored a series of interventions that, for the most part, successfully updated the campus in an apt Late Modern style (Warner Burn Toan & Lunde Architects.)  Alice dreamed of a romantic Post Modern campus, integrating the Campbell Sports Center (first design by Michael Graves), The Ilchman Science Center (Payette), and The Pub/Siegel Center (Buttrick, White & Burtis) with houses great  (Kober, Slonim and the President’s House) and small (Mead Way). We’ll examine the challenges, processes, and paradoxes involved in presidential efforts to create significant, functional architecture while integrating new buildings into a cohesive campus vision and navigating the concerns of a reluctant Lawrence Park West community and an often adversarial city of Yonkers.

12:30–2 p.m.
Barbara Walters Campus Center

Join us for the Annual Meeting of the Alumni Association, followed by a celebratory luncheon in honor of our remarkable Citation Award winners for Achievement and Service to the College. The luncheon will conclude with "A Year in Review" featuring President Cristle Collins Judd.

4–5 p.m.
Departing from the Barbara Walters Campus Center

5–6:30 p.m.
Heimbold Visual Arts Center

Celebrate the work of alumni artists during our 21st Annual Alumni Art Exhibit and Reception at Reunion.

6:30-11 p.m.

A century of memories, a night of celebration. Join us for cocktails, dancing, dinner, and a photo booth as we honor a hundred years of SLC. Let's make history together.

50th Reunion Cocktails and Dinner 
Class of ’76
Barbara Walters Campus Center, Second Floor

After dinner, join us for dancing on the lower level of the Barbara Walters Campus Center.

All other classes 
6:30–11 p.m. 
Barbara Walters Campus Center 

10 a.m.–12 noon
Barbara Walters Campus Center

Close the weekend with a delicious champagne brunch!

Michael Cramer, Film History

The introduction of sound to cinema represented far more than just a technological transformation: for many filmmakers, it marked the end of one art form and the beginning of another, which was often met with skepticism if not outright hostility. This seminar will examine early uses of sound in cinema in conjunction with filmmakers' and critics' writings on the "proper" use of sound and the aesthetic pitfalls it was thought to present.

Matthew Ellis, Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation Chair in Middle Eastern Studies and International Affairs

This seminar will explore the important role that memory plays in the public life of nations. While individual memory is typically seen to be a matter best left to the psychologists, in recent decades the theme of “collective memory” has become a major object of study by historians. Using a variety of examples from the Middle East, the seminar takes up this rich subject of “collective memory” by asking a number of big questions: How do societies come to understand the past? How do different groups, or nations, interpret important historical events and make them meaningful? How and why is public knowledge about the past shaped and propagated? What is the role of museums and monuments in shaping our collective memory? What happens when different collective memories of the same event collide?

Emily Bloom, Literature

One might think that representations of pregnancy would be everywhere in literature, considering that gestation is a necessary stage of human life. And yet, before 1950, there are remarkably few detailed or first-hand literary representations of pregnancy. From the rise of the novel to early modernism, fictional pregnancies tend to be either discreet, taking place off the pages of the book, or tragic, offering a moralistic dénouement for a character’s sexual choices. In poetry, though first-hand accounts of pregnancy are also rare, there are some important exceptions, among them an eighteenth-century poem by Anna Laetitia Barbauld called "To a Little Invisible Being Who is Expected Soon to Become Visible" and Gwendolyn Brooks's 1945 poem titled "the mother." Separated by hundreds of years and written on different continents, what do these two works share in common and how do they differ? How has our understanding of pregnancy changed over time with developments in scientific knowledge? How do both poems, in focusing on the tentative nature of pregnancy, complicate conventional narratives about motherhood? And what do they reveal about the unique challenges and opportunities of representing a pregnancy in verse?

Michelle Hersh, Biology

Ecologists study interactions between living organisms and their environments, as well as processes governing how species are distributed, how they interact, and how nutrients and energy cycle through ecosystems. Although we may think of these processes occurring in “natural” areas with little to no human development, all of these processes still take place in environments heavily modified by humans, like cities. In this seminar, we will talk about some fundamental concepts in ecology and then further explore how these patterns and processes are altered (sometimes dramatically) in urban environments. We will use examples from our local environment—the New York City metropolitan area—to understand ecological concepts in light of urbanization.

Angela Ferraiolo, Mary Griggs Burke Chair in Art and Art History

Have you ever wondered how the massive, reactive visuals at concerts and festivals come to life? Join visual art faculty Angela Ferraiolo for an immersive, hands-on look into the world of VJing (Video Jockeying). In this session, we’ll use TouchDesigner, the industry-leading platform for generative art, to build a basic "live audio" network from scratch. You'll see how a standard laptop can be transformed into a visual instrument, and how a pocket-sized MIDI controller allows for real-time manipulation of light, color, and motion. Whether you're a tech enthusiast, a music lover, or just curious about new media art, come see how we turn data into festival magic!

Vijay Seshadri, Writing

In this session, we will do close and very close readings of two pieces of writing, one long and one short, by, respectively, Rachel Cohen and Vivian Gornick, both at onetime much-loved members of the Sarah Lawrence nonfiction writing faculty. Our theme will be the intersection of art, family, politics, need, and desire.

Shahnaz Rouse, Sociology

Walter Benjamin famously did much of his writing in fragments. He provoked instead of providing solutions and/or answers. Sarah Lawrence’s pedagogy historically has similarly been focused on thinking on/through questions irregardless of the field on inquiry. In this talk/conversation, we will draw on these two traditions to address and think about sport, art, and politics. It is hoped that this exercise will allow us to think through, unravel, and re-examine practices of disciplining, resistance to disciplinary power, and the significance of un-disciplining materially and ideationally.

Esther Raushenbush Library

In 2026, the College entered its second century — an opportunity to honor our community’s experiences and achievements over the past 100 years and to look ahead with energy and optimism to the next hundred. Reunion invites you to be part of that moment: to celebrate our shared history and help shape how it is remembered.

Explore “A Century in Conference,” a special exhibition curated by College Archivist Christina Kasman, showcasing the educational values on which the College was founded and highlighting generations of faculty and students whose conferences brought those values to life.

We invite you to reflect, remember, and contribute by adding your own chapter to the living history of Sarah Lawrence in the College Archives. Share your stories, memories, and perspectives in person after visiting the exhibition or online any time at slc.edu/timeless.