Events

This special screening of Sankofa will be followed by a panel discussion moderated by Dr. Kishauna Soljour, history faculty.

This in-person Zoom viewing gathering is open to current students, faculty, and staff. Other members of the SLC community are welcome to view the event on Zoom by registering here.

Patricia Lockwood is the author of four books, including the 2021 novel No One Is Talking About This, an international bestseller, finalist for the Booker Prize and the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and translated into 20 languages. Her 2017 memoir Priestdaddy won the Thurber Prize for American Humor and was named one of the Guardian's 100 best books of the 21st century. She also has two poetry collections, Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals (2014) and Balloon Pop Outlaw Black (2012). Lockwood's work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and the London Review of Books, where she is a contributing editor. She lives in Savannah, Georgia. Purchase Patricia Lockwood’s work here. 

This in-person Zoom viewing gathering is open to current students, faculty, and staff. Other members of the SLC community are welcome to view the event on Zoom by registering here.

Patricia Lockwood is the author of four books, including the 2021 novel "No One Is Talking About This," an international bestseller, finalist for the Booker Prize and the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and translated into 20 languages. Her 2017 memoir "Priestdaddy" won the Thurber Prize for American Humor and was named one of the Guardian's 100 best books of the 21st century. She also has two poetry collections, "Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals" (2014) and "Balloon Pop Outlaw Black" (2012). Lockwood's work has appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, and the London Review of Books, where she is a contributing editor. She lives in Savannah, Georgia.

Join Jada Benn Torres, Associate Professor of Anthropology and the director for the Laboratory of Genetic Anthropology and Biocultural Studies at Vanderbilt University, and Gabriel Torres Colón, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Vanderbilt University, for a discussion centered on genetic ancestry, “mangrove politics,” and birthing Afro-Puerto Rican futures.

Nestled in the northeastern coastline of Puerto Rico and within one of the most extensive mangrove forests in the Caribbean, most of the people of Piñones—or, piñoneros—are descendants of both formerly enslaved and self-liberated African peoples. Since 2017, the “Genetic Ancestry and Cultural Identity” project in Puerto Rico has yielded a collaborative effort utilizing genetic technology and ethnographic research to buttress the foundation for Afro-Puerto Rican recognition, autonomy, and political action.

In this presentation, Dr. Benn Torres and Dr. Torres Colon will first relate a story of how community-based research shaped the scientific agenda and design for their genetic and cultural ancestry project. They’ll share genetic ancestry results that illustrate a unique complexity of the genetic legacies of African and Indigenous peoples within contemporary piñoneros. Then, the focus of the discussion will shift to “mangrove politics,” or how genetic ancestry has been repurposed as a tool for building diaspora and environmental autonomy. Finally, Dr. Ben Torres and Dr. Torres Colon will discuss how the ways in which Afro-Puerto Ricans experience race, practice environmental conservation of their ancestral mangrove forest, and seek to effect change in governmental politics are tools for not only resisting structural racism but for imagining a future where they can flourish as equal members of society.

This event is free and open to all; register here.  

This talk recalls the animals who appeared in my books, or nearby, as I was writing them. An index of these animals, encountered or tracked in jungles, oceans, on streets and hillsides, or at home, might include: Lion, wolf, bear, chimp, shark, monkey, panther, eagle, dog, badger, cobra and owl. At the limit of this index is an humanimal presence, an entity that might be described as monstrous in the context of this curation. Can I tell you thirteen tiny stories in the time that it takes to give this talk? Some of the stories are ancestral. Some of the stories are horror stories. Some of the stories helped me to think about the politics of sanctuary. Some of the stories can't be shared with others. Some of the stories spiked my blood with so much adrenalin, I did not need to write my books in a café at midnight.

Bhanu Kapil is a poet and Fellow of Churchill College. She is the author of six books, most recently How To Wash A Heart (Pavilion Poetry), which won the TS Eliot Prize.  Bhanu is also the recipient of a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors, and a Windham-Campbell Prize from Yale University. Forthcoming work includes a revised edition of Incubation: a space for monsters (Kelsey Street Press).

This event is sponsored by The Laura Kirchman Manuelidis '63 Science and Literary Arts Endowment Fund.

Click here to register for this event.

This in-person Zoom viewing gathering is open to current students, faculty, and staff. Other members of the SLC community are welcome to view the event on Zoom by registering here.

There are so many good poems. There are, however, very few perfect poems. While we understand perfection is subjective and unachievable, why is Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s “Song” a favorite, a perfect poem among poets? This craft talk examines “Song,” its leaps, sounds, images, digressions, syntax and embellishments, eight years in the making. Understanding the forces behind this beloved poem can give us strategies for writing our very own perfect poem.

Born in St. Thomas, U.S.V.I. and raised in Apopka, Florida, Nicole Sealey is the author of Ordinary Beast, finalist for the PEN Open Book and Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards, and The Animal After Whom Other Animals Are Named, winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize. Her honors include the 2021 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem, the 2021 Granum Foundation Prize, a Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, the Stanley Kunitz Memorial and Poetry International Prizes, as well as fellowships from the Bogliasco Foundation, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, CantoMundo, Cave Canem, The Hermitage Artist Retreat, MacDowell, the National Endowment and New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Poetry Project. Her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry 2018 and 2021. She is a visiting professor at Boston University and teaches in the MFA Writers Workshop in Paris program at New York University.

In November 2017, Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi was sold in New York for what remains the highest amount ever paid for a work of art. Since then, popular media has been filled with tales, some outlandish, about the painting’s history, conservation, ownership, and authorship. Join art historian and art dealer Robert Simon, one of the original discoverers of the painting, as he recounts the story of the painting's journey from anonymity to fame, and from £45 to $450,000,000. Robert Simon specializes in Old Master Paintings. He received his doctorate in art history from Columbia University and wrote his doctoral thesis on Bronzino’s portraits of Cosimo I de’ Medici. He has published and lectured on both art-historical matters and on broader concerns relating to the authenticity of works of art. Most recently, he co-authored “Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi & The Collecting of Leonardo in the Stuart Courts”, published by Oxford University Press. This lecture is in honor of Joseph Forte, Art History faculty, and is sponsored by the Dr. Lee MacCormick Edwards Charitable Foundation. A Zoom link will be sent to registrants within 24 hours of the event or email events@sarahlawrence.edu.

Members of the public are invited to attend this event virtually. Please register here. A Zoom link will be sent to registrants within 24 hours of the event or email events@sarahlawrence.edu.

Join the Grads in the Performance Lab as they explore the difference between reenactment and simulation.

Guests can attend in person or can watch the livestream here. 

This in-person Zoom viewing gathering is open to current students, faculty, and staff. Other members of the SLC community are welcome to view the event on Zoom by registering here.

Alex Dimitrov MFA '19 is the author of three books of poetry including, Love and Other Poems, Together and by Ourselves, Begging for It, and the chapbook American Boys. His poems have been published in The New Yorker, the New York Times, The Paris Review, and Poetry. He has taught writing at Princeton University, Columbia University, and New York University, among other institutions. Previously, he was the Senior Content Editor at the Academy of American Poets, where he edited the popular series Poem-a-Day and American Poets magazine. Dimitrov also founded the queer poetry salon Wilde Boys (2009-13), which brought together emerging and established writers in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. He is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from the American Poetry Review. On Twitter he writes an endless poem called “Love” in real time, one tweet a day. With Dorothea Lasky he co-founded Astro Poets and is the co-author of Astro Poets: Your Guides to the Zodiac. He was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, and lives in New York, where he’s working on a novel.