April 22, 2026 
Johanné Gómez Terrero: A Conversation with the Director 
Hosted by El Instituto and co-sponsored by the Spanish Program. 
Join a conversation with director Johanné Gómez Terrero in conjunction with the film Sugar Island, now screening online via the Homer Babbidge Library. This event offers an opportunity to engage with the filmmaker and explore the themes, creative process, and contexts surrounding the film. 

April 10, 2026 
Reframing Evidence from the Commons: Indigeneity, Land, Water, Justice 
Re/presentare architects Sergio Beltrán and Elis Mendoza examine the challenging realities of true communal work in which diverse interests and visions of justice intersect. By exploring what constitutes “evidence” for communities operating outside of Western juridical frameworks, they discuss how these perspectives open possibilities for human rights through the mediation of investigative arts. 

January 28, 2026 
Democracy & Modern Art in 1940s Cuba: Discussion with Dr. Alejandro Anreus 
Co-sponsored by El Instituto, the Department of Art & Art History, and the John N. Plank Lecture Series.   
Between 1940 and the 1952 coup by Fulgencio Batista, Cuba experienced a democratic system of government as well as a vibrant cultural renaissance, particularly in the visual arts. Cuba scholar and art historian Alejandro Anreus explores how Cuban artists collaborated to create distinct visual languages that reflected postwar hemispheric solidarity and cultural exchange between democracies. 

November 20, 2025 
Mapping Militancy: Geospatial Analysis of Post-Dictatorship Memorialization Projects in Argentina 
Co-sponsored by El Instituto: Institute of Latina/o, Caribbean, and Latin American Studies. 
How can mapping reveal the hidden traces of history? Join Jennifer Schaefer in exploring Argentina’s historical dictatorship period, its aftermath, and memorialization through the lens of geospatial analysis. 

March 12, 2025
Woven Futures: The Fabric of Restorative Design
In collaboration with the School of Fine Arts, the Department of Art & Art History, and the Department of Industrial Design.
Designer, researcher, and educator Omari Souza’s work bridges design, culture, and social justice. As the author of An Anthology of Blackness: The State of Black Design and founder of the State of Black Design Conference, Souza shared insights from his acclaimed publications, restorative design research, and collaborations with major brands, offering a powerful vision for more empathetic and inclusive creative practice.

March 11, 2025 
Central America in the Crosshairs of War 
In collaboration with El Instituto, the Department of Journalism, the Humanities Institute, and UConn’s Global Affairs.
Associate Professor Scott Wallace argues that U.S. policies championing military solutions over diplomacy and human rights in Central America in the 1980s led to the regional upheaval that continues to drive waves of immigration to the U.S. southern border.

February 26, 2025 
Reservoirs of the Imaginary 
Join us for a talk with artist Liam Gillick as he explores his work, from historical figures to modern media, and how post-WWII efforts to reshape human relationships have influenced his art.

November 21, 2024 
Representing the Holocaust: Prussian Blue 
In partnership with the William Benton Museum of Art and the Contemporary Art Galleries.
Join us for a panel that delves into the power of art in the face of genocide, focusing on Yishai Jusidman’s Prussian Blue exhibition currently on display at UConn, and its use of visual imagery to process Holocaust memory and ethical reflection.

November 20, 2024 
Theatre & Human Rights: The Politics of Dramatic Form 
Stage director, designer, and Distinguished Professor of Drama Gary English introduces his newly released book which examines how dramatic form and structure can interrogate theoretical and practical questions in human rights.

April 4, 2024 
‘Künü: A Space for Dialogue’ with Filmmaker Francisco Huichaqueo Pérez 
Co-sponsored by Global Health & Human Rights, the Buen Vivir & Collective Healings Initiative, El Instituto, the Department of Anthropology, the Department of Digital Media & Design, the Department of Native American & Indigenous Studies, and the Department of Native American Cultural Programs. 
Francisco Huichaqueo joins the Research Program on Global Health & Human Rights for a screening of Künü, a documentary that captures the collaborative efforts of 80 Mapuche communities to reclaim part of their ancestral lands from a large transnational forestry company in Chile.

March 25, 2024 
‘Sama in the Forest’ with Coralynn V. Davis 
Co-sponsored by Human Rights Film & Digital Media and the Department of Art & Art History.
Join the Human Rights Film+ Series for a screening of Sama in the Forest with film producer and academic Coralynn V. Davis. This community-based production delves into the subversive role women’s folktales can play in a patriarchal society. Set in the region of Mithila, in India, Sama in the Forest explores the power of stories to shape, challenge, and change our understanding of the world.

February 16, 2024 
An Inventory and Index for Political Apologies: Memorial Architecture as Moral Transformation? 
Nicholas Smith, Professor of Philosophy and Justice Studies, University of New Hampshire, joins the Research Program on Arts & Human Rights for a talk on the question “How do examples of memorial architecture score on metrics for political apologies?”

February 16, 2024
Berlin: The Guilt Environment
Valentina Rozas-Krause, Assistant Professor of Design & Architecture at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez and a Harvard University Radcliffe Fellow, discusses Berlin’s built environment with a focus on its postwar memorials. In memorials, she finds a ‘cult of apology’ embedded within the cityscape, offering insights into the role memorials play in symbolic and material reparation after political conflict.

November 30, 2023
Artist’s talk: Odette England, “Woman Wearing Ring Shields Face From Flash”
Co-hosted by Contemporary Art Galleries.
Odette England discusses her current photograph exhibition which illustrates a complex relationship between guns, cameras, and violence against women.

April 19, 2023 
Human Rights and Cultural Resistance Through Theatre 
Co-sponsored by Theatre Studies and Middle East Studies. 
Nabil Al-Raee, a prominent director and playwright from the West Bank joins us to present images, speak about several Palestinian productions, and facilitate a discussion on the cultural and political situation in the West Bank, the function of theatre as resistance, and the theatre methods and techniques used in theatre training within a conflict zone. 

April 19, 2023 
Stubborn Negativity: On Willy Retto’s Uchuraccay Massacre Last Image 
Prof. José Falconi will join us for a talk reflecting on the power of images to provide testimony of the past, while also resisting the linear progress of time. 

April 4, 2023 
The Fate of Human Beings: A Documentary Film Reframing the Narrative of Institutionalization through Mental Institution Gravesites 
Prof. Heather Cassano will join us to discuss her recent documentary titled “The Fate of Human Beings.” This talk will show work-in-progress scenes and discuss the research behind the project, including the first database to comprehensively catalog institution cemeteries in the United States. 

March 9, 2023 
Subverting Statues: Race, Space, Performance, and the Arab American National Museum 
Drawing on work at the Arab American National Museum, this talk examines the racial, political, and performative power of the museum’s geography in relation to Dearborn’s racist history and spatial politics, and considers what it means to understand cultural institutions of color as a subversion of white supremacy. 

February 1, 2023
Subverting Statues: Race, Space, Performance, and the Arab American National Museum 
Drawing on work at the Arab American National Museum, this talk examines the racial, political, and performative power of the museum’s geography in relation to Dearborn’s racist history and spatial politics, and considers what it means to understand cultural institutions of color as a subversion of white supremacy. 

February 1, 2023
Exhibition Closing Reception: Madeline Baird on ‘Embodied Borders’
Co-sponsored by the Department of Anthropology, El Instituto, the Department of Art & Art History, and the Puerto Rican/Latin American Cultural Center (PRLACC). 
Madeline Baird’s ‘Embodied Borders’ reveals the human toll of the exportation of U.S. border enforcement through a series of captivating photographs. 

November 30, 2022 
Ordinary Curators at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial 
This talk will draw on a companion article to Christine Sylvester’s recent book Curating and Re-Curating the American War in Vietnam and Iraq (Oxford, 2019). It challenges a field known for abstract theory to humanize its knowledge base by noticing ordinary civilians re-curating inherited versions of war. 

October 25, 2022 
The Shape of Justice: Spatializing Public Memory 
Members of MASS Design Group will speak on their transformative practice of “spatializing memory.” In projects such as The National Memorial for Peace and Justice (Alabama) and the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial (Boston), MASS Design explores new ways to shift narratives, serve as a catalyst for truth-telling, and advance collective healing through the built environment. 

June 26, 2022 
From Theory to Practice (and back): Lessons for the Arts in Contexts of Transitional Justice 
In collaboration with the Vienna Master of Arts in Applied Human Rights and the OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts, Bard College. 
De la teoría a la práctica (y viceversa): lecciones para las artes en contextos de justicia transicional is an event by lumbung members Instituto de Artivismo Hannah Arendt (INSTAR). Drawing from cases in which art has intervened effectively in transitional justice contexts, the participants in this workshop will be encouraged to envision and plan their own interventions.

June 25, 2022 
The Day After: The Art of Transitional Justice 
In collaboration with the Vienna Master of Arts in Applied Human Rights and the OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts, Bard College. 
How can art be useful in cases of transitional justice? At The day after: Transitional Justice and the Arts, an event by lumbung member Instituto de Artivismo Hannah Arendt, human rights experts and humanities scholars join in conversation about working at the intersection of legal and artistic approaches to address justice, victims’ rights, reparations, and non-repetition.

June 24, 2022 
Meeting Ground: The Intersection of Human Rights and The Arts 
In collaboration with the Vienna Master of Arts in Applied Human Rights and the OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts, Bard College. 
Human rights and the arts is a new field of study. lumbung member Instituto de Artivismo Hannah Arendt’s (INSTAR) Meeting ground: The intersection of human rights and the arts introduces programs pioneering this approach.

June 24-26, 2022 
Documenta 15 
Ruangrupa is the Artistic Direction of the fifteenth edition of documenta. The Jakarta-based artists’ collective has built the foundation of their documenta fifteen on the core values and ideas of lumbung (Indonesian term for a communal rice barn). lumbung as an artistic and economic model is rooted in principles such as collectivity, communal resource sharing, and equal allocation, and is embodied in all parts of the collaboration and the exhibition.

April 21, 2022 
Theatre and Human Rights: The Politics of Dramatic Form 
Join us for a presentation of research that develops a theoretical foundation and methodology for how theatre and human rights intersect, and demonstrates how various dramatic forms interrogate human rights questions from within the specific perspective of Theatre as a discipline. 

April 11, 2022 
Youth Seeking Refuge: U.S. Immigration Policy, Mobility Justice, and Children’s Rights
Co-sponsored by El Instituto and Skidmore College. 
Join us for the opening of an exhibit on children’s art created in the MPP camp of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. To mark the opening of the exhibit, a panel of faculty and activists will discuss the current situation of children in refugee camps created by the United States’ “Remain in Mexico” policy, as well as pressing concerns of youth who have arrived in CT. 

April 26, 2021
Transitional Justice & Memorialization: Architecture, Memory, Truth
A conversation with Robin Adéle Greeley from the Symbolic Reparations Project and Michael Orwicz from the Human Rights Institute. Sergio Beltrán-García spoke on the role of architecture in developing processes of memorialization for victims of mass human rights abuse.