During the Society for the Humanities’ theme of Silence this past year, the 2024-25 cohort of Fellows were encouraged “to attend to what is not there: the absences, the elisions in our sources, our stories, our histories.” Seven Society for the Humanities’ Fellows will present their projects in progress during the annual Spring Fellows’ conference, highlighting the various ways that the theme of silence has been explored – from investigating avian absences, to outlining the legacies of silenced histories of disabled communities, to tracing the presence of the dead in Jewish culture and religion. 

The conference will be held Friday, April 25, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the A.D. White House. The event will close with a keynote address, entitled “Re-storying Silence: Mad, Deaf, and Disability Histories” to be given by Susan Burch (American Studies, Middlebury College), on Friday, April 25 at 3:15 p.m. The conference is free and open to the public, and refreshments will be served throughout the day, with coffee starting at 9:30 a.m. and a reception at 5 p.m.

A pre-conference sound and photo installation will kick off the program on Thursday, April 24 from 5 – 7 p.m. “The Elephants of Dzanga Bai,” installation features the photos of Ivonne Kienast, affiliate researcher with the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics, and a sound installation by Annie Lewandowski, senior lecturer of music in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S). 

“When Ivonne first shared her incredible photographs with me, I thought it would be fantastic to exhibit them in the acoustic space of the Dzanga Bai elephants,” Lewandowski wrote. “[Now], we bring that space to you within the A.D. White House, in a setting where you can both hear and feel the elephants’ calls.” The recordings used in the installation are from the Elephant Listening Project archive. 

Chloe Wray is the Event Coordinator and Administrative Assistant for the Society for the Humanities. 

Read the full story on the College of Arts and Sciences website.