Brian Leech, American Popular Coal-ture: Mining Movies and Sad Songs in the American Imagination
Working Groups
The Consortium invites scholars to join our topical working groups for challenging and collegial discussion of interesting publications in their fields and of each others’ works-in-progress.
Each group meets monthly. All interested scholars are welcome to participate via online video conferencing.
To join a group:
- Log in, or create an account
- Click on a group below
- Click on the "Request Membership" link
Upcoming Meetings
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Monday, March 16, 2026, 10:30 am - 12:00 pm EDT
Divya Kumar-Dumas (University of Maryland)
Metal, Matter, and Meaning: Toward a Textual and Scientific History of the Sumhuram Yakṣī
Tuesday, March 17, 2026, 2:00 - 3:30 pm EDT
Aijie Shi, University of Wisconsin-Madison, “The Life History of Laminaria japonica in the Northwest Pacific”
Wednesday, March 18, 2026, 12:00 - 1:30 pm EDT
Speaker: Ryan A. Kashanipour, University of Arizona
Title: Epidemics and Epistemologies: Experiencing Illness in Colonial Yucatán
Wednesday, March 25, 2026, 10:00 - 11:30 am EDT
Rajarshi Sengupta (IIT Kanpur)
Thursday, April 2, 2026, 11:00 am - 12:30 pm EDT
Speaker: Camille-Mary Sharp
Postdoctoral Associate, Department of Visual Arts /Center for Sustainable Curating, Western University -- https://cmsharp.ca/
Session title: Petro-museologies
Thursday, April 2, 2026, 2:00 - 3:30 pm EDT
Manon Raffard, "'We may perhaps avoid the plague, but die from phenol': Phenol disinfection in French cities during the 1884 cholera epidemic"
Friday, April 3, 2026, 12:00 - 1:30 pm EDT
Al Coppola (John Jay College, CUNY)/Anita Guerrini (Oregon State University)
Wednesday, April 8, 2026, 12:00 - 1:30 pm EDT
Color in antiquity through recent archaelogy
Nuance: TBA
Organizer: Giulia
Friday, April 10, 2026, 12:30 - 2:00 pm EDT
Remi Gandoin, “Windpower Siting in Denmark”
Friday, April 17, 2026, 11:00 am - 12:30 pm EDT
*Note Special Date*
"How to Draw the Buddha and Dissect a Corpse: Iconometry and Anatomy in Early-Modern Tibet"
Briana Brightly (Harvard University)
Commentator: TBC
Monday, April 20, 2026, 10:30 am - 12:00 pm EDT
Jan Gerris (University of Ghent)
Tandulaveyāliya - An ancient Jain philosophical reflection on life
Wednesday, April 22, 2026, 10:00 - 11:30 am EDT
Mackenzie Cooley (Hamilton College)
Monday, May 4, 2026, 2:00 - 3:30 pm EDT
Seminar on The Authorities of Cosmetic Knowledge with Montserrat Cabré (University of Cantabria) and Mónica Durán (University of Granada)
Thursday, May 7, 2026, 2:00 - 3:30 pm EDT
Guy Erez, "Catching and Curing the Plague in the Multispecies City"
Friday, May 8, 2026, 11:00 am - 12:30 pm EDT
"Medicine at the Mines in Seventeenth-Century Sumatra"
Brief abstract:
In the late seventeenth century, the Dutch East India Company launched intensive mining operations on the west coast of Sumatra. Medical practitioners played crucial roles at the mining sites. This paper examines how these European practitioners understood diseases, managed the health of the labor force, and experimented with mineral medicine at the mines.
Wenrui Zhao (University of Utah)
Commentator: TBC
Tuesday, May 12, 2026, 9:00 - 10:30 am EDT
Amanda Harris (Sydney)
Archived Sound and Creative Engagements with Papua New Guinean Cultural Heritage in Australia
Wednesday, May 13, 2026, 12:00 - 1:30 pm EDT
Suzanne Karr Schmidt on 'Color, Cloth, Collation: Previewing "Premodern Printing on Fabric"'