In conjunction with the Wolf Humanities Center’s 2024–2025 Forum on Keywords, this symposium engages mobile concepts and their genealogies, histories, structures of meaning, translations, and adaptations across time and space. In three panels curated around the Raymond Williams keywords of “Aesthetics,” “Imperialism,” and “Humanity,” we focus on themes that drive cultural and social concepts and inspire global interlocution across languages, perspectives, and temporalities.
As we gear up to celebrate the anniversary of Williams’ foundational book "Keywords," we will reflect on how generative the use of keywords remains while also adding to and challenging the original vocabulary. We hope to make Williams’ process applicable for the twenty-first century and fruitful for the questions scholarship is grappling with today.
Join us as scholars from the social sciences, the humanities, and the arts expand upon—and challenge—some of Williams’ categories.
Time: 10 a.m. - 6:30 p.m.
Place: Class of 1978 Orrery Pavilion
Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts
6th floor, Van Pelt Library, 3420 Walnut Street
https://wolfhumanities.upenn.edu/events/keywords-symposium