Current Reading Groups

The following faculty and graduate student reading groups meet regularly throughout the year and may organize public events on topics of interest to a broad range of disciplines.

Please contact the reading group organizers (listed below) directly for more information about the groups and their activities.

Alain Badiou's Being and Event Trilogy

Michael Uhall , Political Science, Civil and Environmental Engineering at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and Political Philosophy at Indiana University East

Alain Badiou is one of the most important French philosophers of the past half century. Perennial themes in his work involve explorations of what constitutes events, subjects, and truths. We will be closely reading selected excerpts from his seminal Being and Event (1988/2005), Logics of Worlds (2006/2009), and The Immanence of Truths (2018/2022). Additional readings in the philosophy of mathematics, political theory, or psychoanalysis may be added on as needed basis. French is useful, but not required. Meetings may be in-person or online.

Post-Pandemic Pedagogies

Alaina Pincus, Assistant Director for Education and Outreach, HRI

Michelle Awad, Visiting Odyssey Project Advisor and Instructor, HRI

This reading group explores pedagogical adaptations in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath. Readings will address issues such as bandwidth recovery, the student mental-health crisis, and restorative justice as central to innovations in humanities teaching practices. Participants will meet monthly to discuss selected readings.