Friday, November 15

1:00 – 2:00pm: Arrival/Registration – Quita Woodward Room, Old Library

2:00 – 4:00pm: Panel I – Status and Politics – Carpenter Library, B21

  • Chair: Olivia Hopewell
  • Wesley Hanson (University of Pennsylvania): “Sallust’s Nocturnal Challenge to Cicero’s Catilinarian Narrative”
  • Jenna Marvin (Yale University Art Gallery): “Spurious Subjects: Nadar’s Illumination of Death and Labor in the Paris Catacombs”
  • Claire Seidler (Emory University): “Umbra Loco Deerat…Umbra Loco Venit: Conceptions of the Shade in Ovid and Roman Egypt”
  • Zach Silvia (Bryn Mawr College): “Bel-Marduk’s Celestial Dais: The Importance of Lapis Lazuli in Mesopotamian Cosmic Order”

4:00 – 4:30pm: Welcome Tea – Quita Woodward Room, Old Library

4:30 – 6:00pm: Keynote Lecture – Carpenter Library, B21

Radcliffe Edmonds III, Bryn Mawr College

“First-Born of Night or Oozing from the Slime? Deviant Origins in Orphic Cosmogonies”

6:15pm: “The Illuminated Night” – Exhibition Opening – Floor 2, Canaday Library

Saturday, November 16

8:30 – 9:30am – Morning Refreshments – Quita Woodward Room, Old Library

9:30 – 11:00am: Panel II – Death and Mystery as Darkness – Old Library 110

  • Chair: Clare Rasmussen
  • Isabelle Martin (University of Chicago): “Fugitivity and Disavowal in Dawoud Bey’s Night Coming Tenderly, Black”
  • Jennie Waldow (Stanford University): “Midnight Wanderings: Issues of Performance Documentation in Bas Jan Ader’s In Search of the Miraculous (One Night in Los Angeles)”
  • Robert J. Barnes (Bryn Mawr College): “Let there be Night: Lightness and Darkness in Longinus’s On the Sublime”
  • Savannah Bishop (Brandeis University):  “Ancient Ceramic Oil Lamps: Shedding Light and Spilling Oil”

11:00 – 11:30am: A History of Darkfinding, a performance by Philadelphia artist Nishat Hossain – Carpenter B21

11:30am – 12:00pm: Curatorial Tour – Led by Matthew Jameson from B21 to Floor 2, Canada Library

12:00 – 1:30pm: Lunch – Quita Woodward Room, Old Library

1:30 – 3:00pm: Panel III – Dark Imposed by Artist/Author – Carpenter, Library, B21

  • Chair: Yusi Liu
  • Virginia Girard (Columbia University): “Touching Light and Hearing Shadows: Darkness, Disorientation, and the Diorama”
  • Taylor Hobson (Bryn Mawr College): “Douglas Gordon’s Between Darkness and Light and the Luminous Double Bind of Projection”
  • Emily Leifer (Bryn Mawr College): “Seeing with Darkness: Maria Nordman’s Saddleback Mountain (1973)
  • Muge Arseven (Columbia University): “Death Becomes Her: Following Medea into the Dark”

3:00 – 3:30pm: Coffee Break – Quita Woodward Room, Old Library

3:30 – 5:00pm: Panel IV – Modernization and Innovation – Carpenter Library, B21

  • Chair: Michelle Smiley
  • Genevieve Westerby (University of Delaware): “Monet and Nature at Night”
  • Jenna Sarchio (University of Chicago): “Noctes Elegiae? Love as Lucubratio in Roman Elegy”
  • Jenni Glaser (Bryn Mawr College): “Walking on Air and Scorning the Moon: Aerial Encounters in Aristophanes’ Clouds and Lucian’s Icaromenippus”
  • Benjamin Stolurow (Johns Hopkins University): “Obscene Lust”: Nationalism, Classicism, and the Ethics of Desire in Sebald Beham’s Die Nacht (1548)”

5:00 – 5:15: Break – Quita Woodward Room, Old Library

5:15 – 6:30pm – Closing Keynote Lecture – Carpenter Library, B21

Noam Elcott, Columbia University

“A Brief History of Artificial Darkness and Race”