Graduate students from across the varied departments in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (HASS) are coming together to host a speaker whose areas of expertise will resonate throughout HASS and the larger Rensselaer community.
Peter Galison
Peter Galison, the Pellegrino University Professor in History of Science and Physics at Harvard University, has varied and wide-ranging areas of expertise. From security—he co-directed the documentary Secrecy, which explores government secrecy and its implications on both security and democracy—to the intersection of art and science, to his recent research into how society deals with nuclear waste, Galison’s body of work touches on every department in HASS.
Heather Dewey-Hagborg, a doctoral student in the arts department, is a member of the graduate student committee organizing the event. The committee accepted speaker nominations from all HASS graduate students and Galison was a top choice.
This is the first time graduate students across the HASS departments have come together to host a colloquium. Dewey-Hagborg said the interdisciplinary nature of Galison’s work was a natural fit for the endeavor. “The goal was to create some form of graduate community because we are so dispersed,” she said. “We want to get everyone together for a conversation that touches on all of us.”
The lecture will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. Monday, March 24, in the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center. The event is free and open to the public.