humanities Archives

Dive Deep at the 41 North Film Festival, November 6-9, 2025

Published October 7, 2025

deep sea organism seen in documentary How Deep Is Your Love at the 41 North Film Festival

This year’s 41 North Film Festival invites audiences to engage with a slate of over 20 creative and thought-provoking films that explore the complexities of contemporary life—from the depths of the natural world to the heights of human resilience. The festival features a diverse lineup of acclaimed and emerging filmmakers whose work takes up urgent social questions through compassionate, sometimes fierce, and always artful storytelling. Panels and guests will offer context and perspectives on many of the films. The festival will be held November 6-9 in the Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts, with additional films screening in Fisher 135 in partnership with MTU Film Board. All films are free and open to the public. Donations and volunteers are appreciated and welcome.

Folktales documentary at the 41 North Film Festival

The festival opens Thursday, 11/6, with Folktales (Ewing/Grady, 2025), which follows teenagers at a Norwegian folk school in the Arctic as they navigate the path to adulthood (with a little help from each other and their sled dogs). Balancing the generational scales is Cat Town, USA (Napolitino, 2025), the story of an elderly couple who run a retirement home for senior cats (Friday, 11/7).

Bradley Garrett in Underland at the 41 North Film Festival

Our featured presentation on Friday evening is Underland (Petit, 2025), loosely based on Robert Macfarlane’s bestseller of the same name. A poetic meditation on what lies beneath the earth, the film weaves together three stories of underground exploration. A discussion with featured social geographer and urban explorer, Dr. Bradley Garrett, will follow.

On Saturday, 11/8, How Deep Is Your Love (Mortimer, 2025) takes us on a voyage with scientists who study and catalog deep-sea species in ocean territories that may soon be mined. In the evening, the festival presents Natchez (Herbert, 2025), which examines questions of historic preservation in a town defined by and dependent on its conflicted antebellum past.

Adaptive Mountain Bikers in Best Day Ever at the 41 North Film Festival

Sunday afternoon, 11/9, the rocky terrain of disability advocacy and accessibility is traversed by two films. Best Day Ever (Knight/Berne, 2025) highlights adaptive mountain biking, and the lessons learned when a Vermont community builds an adaptive mountain biking trail system. Following is Reid Davenport’s new film, Life After, which examines the implications of Medical Aid In Dying (MAID) legislation for disabled people, who may suffer pressure to end their lives rather than receive the necessary support to live them.

The festival’s final two films take us back to the animal kingdom with Flow (Zilbalodis, 2024), the Oscar-winning animated feature. This lyrical and hypnotic film tells a completely wordless story about a cat who must work with other species to survive a great flood. Closing out the festival on Sunday evening is the hilarious and educational documentary, Listers: A Glimpse into Extreme Birdwatching (Reiser, 2025).

Albert Birney in OBEX at the 41 North Film Festival

Film Board will partner again with the festival and screen two films in Fisher 135: Rian Johnson’s 2006 neo-noir film, Brick, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and OBEX (Birney, 2025), a fantasy film set in pre-Internet 1987, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last January.

Sponsored by the department of humanities, the department of visual and performing arts, the Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts, and the College of Sciences and Arts. For more information, check the festival website or contact Erin Smith, ersmith@mtu.edu.

What Are Humans For? Stuart Kendall, Visiting Scholar Oct. 2-3

Published September 24, 2025

By Samantha Canevez

What Are Humans For? Visiting Scholar Stuart Kendall

The Department of Humanities, together with the College of Sciences and Arts, are pleased to welcome Dr. Stuart Kendall to campus on October 2nd and 3rd for a series of presentations, classroom visits, and scholarly discussions related to interdisciplinary scholarship.

Dr. Kendall’s keynote presentation, titled What Are Humans For? will take place on Friday, October 3rd, at 4:00pm in the U. J. Noblet Forestry Building Atrium. The talk will focus on the present and future of interdisciplinary study, examining the strategies of several exemplary interdisciplinary thinkers. This public talk is free and open to all.

Leading up to this presentation, Dr. Kendall will be joined by Institute of Computing and Cybersystems guest, Dr. Ian Bogost, for a Scholar Lunch discussion on Thursday, October 2nd, at 12:15pm in the Library East Reading Room*. All are welcome.

Next we invite graduate students and faculty of the Colleges of Sciences and Arts and Computing, and across campus, to a presentation by Dr. Kendall titled We Scholars, which aims to center the human within interdisciplinary study and research. This talk will take place on Thursday, October 2nd, at 3:00pm in the U. J. Noblet Forestry Building Atrium.

Abstract for What Are Humans For?

Recent and profound technological and environmental changes have brought about a paradigm-shift in the production, consumption, and legitimation of both knowledge and know-how. These changes have in turn challenged many of our social institutions and traditional disciplines. Rather than reiterating proposals made from the perspective of a specialized discipline, this lecture will examine the strategies of several exemplary interdisciplinary thinkers whose modes of thought sought to embrace exploration and change: Ivan Illich, Vilém Flusser, and Gregory Bateson, among others. One goal will be to relocate questions of art and technics, as well as those of disciplines and institutions, in models of human experience. In response to challenge and change, the lecture pursues an interdisciplinary inquiry into human experience in order to open a methodological toolbox of strategies and tactics for conviviality.

About Stuart Kendall

Stuart Kendall is an historian of thought and media and design theorist. As a writer, editor, and translator, his books include a critical biography of Georges Bataille, The Ends of Art and Design, Gilgamesh, and a number of edited and translated volumes. He has lectured and run workshops at colleges, universities, conferences, and colloquia nationally and internationally. Teaching appointments have included the California College of the Arts, Stanford University, Boston University, and SUNY Stony Brook. As an academic leader, he created new majors, coursework concentrations, and assessment tools in interdisciplinary humanities, environmental and animal studies, and media and design history, theory, and criticism. His core interests include problems in ecological consciousness, embodiment, and communications media.

*if the East Reading room is unavailable due to ongoing classroom renovations, Scholar Lunch will take place in the U. J. Noblet Forestry Building Atrium

Brown Bag Talk: Vamp & Godmother? Contradictions of Theda Bara and Gendered War Work

Published April 7, 2025

By Samantha Canevez

Colloquium Series

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Abstract:

This talk focuses on the peculiar case of Theda Bara, a Hollywood actress who became famous for her ethnic-Other “vamp” movie character and public persona. In 1918, Bara was appointed “Godmother” to the 158^th Infantry Regiment from Arizona. The practice of godmothering had started early in World War I but was prohibited in France and Britain after 1915 due to suspicions of sexual misconduct between women and their “godsons,” as well as fears about its potential for espionage. When the U.S. intervened in 1917, godmothering was discouraged by the Department of War, with exceptions made for female screen idols who offered government officials a useful mechanism by which to help promote troop morale and the will to fight. Bara’s promiscuous, even adulterous persona, however, ostensibly threatened conventional morality among men and women, and the “wholesome” model of “soldier-citizen” the camps aimed to cultivate among the men. Accordingly, her films were banned in the training camps. I explore the logic of Bara as godmother through an analysis of Hollywood’s star system in the 1910s and how its discursive construction of stardom intersects with Foucault’s discussion of discourse and sexuality.

Who:

Presented by Sue Collins, Associate Professor of Communication, Culture, and Media.

All are welcome to attend!

When:

Friday, April 11 2025

Where:

Petersen Library, Walker Arts & Humanities Center

Brown Bag Talk: “Beauty, Excess, and the Grotesque in the Late-Capitalism Critique of Lauren Greenfield”, Emma Johnson

Published March 21, 2025

By Samantha Canevez

Colloquium Series

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Abstract:

Embracing slow cinema and focusing on women are both underappreciated approaches to filmmaking when it comes to representing the financial crisis. One filmmaker who explores the financial crisis through these underused techniques is Lauren Greenfield. In this paper, I will explore three of Greenfield’s films through the lens of theorists Jill Godmilow and Nicholas Mirzoeff to show how alternative ways of looking provide a new critique of capitalism. Typically, films on financial crises are fast paced. Juliette Feyel and Clémence Fourton’s 2019 article “Post-2008 Films: The Financial Crisis in Fictions and Documentaries” argues that 2008-crisis films are represented in specific structures and patterns. Clichéd quick cuts show phone calls, graphs, and skyscrapers. These visual depictions are limiting, often excluding how crisis affects daily life and women. An alternative approach is found in the work of Greenfield, including the films The Queen of Versailles (2012), Generation Wealth (2018), and The Kingmaker (2019). I argue that Greenfield uses beauty, excess, and the grotesque to critique late capitalism. Greenfield favors mundane daily life with long shots of mansions with neglected pools, motivational posters in a vacated office, and dog poop left on the carpet after the nannies are laid off. She pays attention to women in a sub-genre where women are largely absent and uses slow-cinema techniques in a sub-genre that mostly embraces fast-paced narratives. Interviewees who would typically be depicted in quick clips are given screen time to humanize themselves. Greenfield juxtaposes excess with relatable reasons for its pursuit, drawing attention away from subjects and toward the system that creates it, coming close to accomplishing what Godmilow terms postreal filmmaking and Mirzoeff Visuality 2. Ultimately, Greenfield invites the audience to sit with her subjects, identify with them, and begin to imagine an alternative world.

Who:

Presented by RTC PhD student Emma Johnson.

All are welcome to attend!

When:

Friday, March 28 2025

Where:

Petersen Library, Walker Arts & Humanities Center

Humanities Names 2024 Departmental and Program Scholars

Published April 2, 2024

By Samantha Canevez

A hearty congratulations to our humanities departmental and program scholars! These awards recognize outstanding performance of one undergraduate student in each of our three programs, as well as the department as a whole.

Congratulations to Griffin Six, our English program scholar, Alli Churchwell, our communication, culture, and media program scholar, and Aracely Hernandez-Ramos, our scientific and technical communication program scholar! Each program scholar receives $100 from the department in recognition of their achievements.

Griffin Six has also been named our humanities departmental scholar! Griffin will receive an additional $200 from the department, as well as eligibility for the Provost’s Award for Scholarship, which awards an additional $800 to recipients.

Congratulations and excellent work to all of our amazing humanities scholars!

Victor Wiesen Awarded SURF Scholarship for Summer 2024

Published March 25, 2024

By Samantha Canevez

Congratulations to Victor Wiesen on a successful proposal for the SURF scholarship!

Victor is interested in examining the environmental impact of traditional practices of preparation and disposition of remains and comparing those impacts with “green” or “natural” burial practices. In this initial stage of research, Victor will utilize ethnographic research methodology to reveal attitudes and compare social and cultural practices and beliefs surrounding end-of-life disposition practices in Germany and the United States. When we understand the impediments to reducing the environmental impact of these cultural practices, we can more effectively map a pathway to preferable funereal practices. This research reflects a critical aspect of sustainability, especially when one considers that within one lifetime, 8 billion dispositions will take place. Through this type of research, we can potentially accomplish this with minimal impact on the planet.

Stephanie Rowe, Associate Teaching Professor in Humanities, is the faculty mentor for this research. Victor Wiesen is a first year ME student.

Laura Vidal-Chiesa Inducted into AAC&U Future Leaders Society

Published January 23, 2023

By Samantha Canevez

portrait of Laura — As a finalist for the K. Patricia Cross Award, Laura was recently inducted into the AAC&U Future Leaders Society.

Humanities PhD candidate Laura Vidal-Chiesa has been inducted into the American Association of Colleges and Universities Future Leaders Society, presented at the AAC&U Annual Meeting in San Francisco Jan 18-20 2023.

“First of all, I would like to thank Dr. Andy Fiss and Dr. Maria Bergstrom for the nomination to the K. Patricia Cross Award. While I wasn’t a winner, I was selected as one of the finalists, which means I have been inducted into the AAC&U Future Leaders Society. I’m very excited about all of the resources that come with it, and looking forward to bringing as many of those back into our department and sharing them with our instructors and faculty,” said Vidal-Chiesa.

According to AAC&U’s web site, “The Inductees into the AAC&U Future Leaders Society share a profound commitment to high-quality teaching and learning, equity, and community engagement.” Membership includes access to “unique, cross-disciplinary opportunities for professional development, networking, and mentorship” as well as training and development resources for future educators.

“The American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) is a global membership organization dedicated to advancing the democratic purposes of higher education by promoting equity, innovation, and excellence in liberal education. ”

Laura is a fourth-year PhD candidate in the Rhetoric, Theory, and Culture (RTC) Program, as well as the Assistant Director for the Composition Program. In addition to writing and composition, her research includes topics like emotional labor, organizational communication, feminism, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI.) She hopes to graduate this upcoming summer, 2023.

Congratulations, Laura!

Fiss Wins 2023 CCCC Technical or Scientific Communication Book Award

Published January 20, 2023

By Samantha Canevez

Humanities faculty member Andrew Fiss has been awarded Best Book in Technical or Scientific Communication by the Conference on College Composition and Communication for his 2020 book Performing Math: A History of Communication and Anxiety in the American Mathematics Classroom.

Performing Math discusses the history of mathematics education in nineteenth-century American colleges, the anxiety that surrounded (and still surrounds) the subject, and the often performative nature of mathematics teaching and learning. In a review for the book Amir Alexander, author of Proof! How the World Became Geometrical, said “Through an impressive array of evidence and historical accounts, Performing Math convincingly shows that mathematics education has often had a significant theatrical component. Without a doubt this book illuminates mathematics and its place in American culture in new and surprising ways.”

In a press release for the award, the CCCC selection committee noted “Compelling, well-researched, and a very interesting read. Though Fiss’s book focuses on the historical instruction of math, his ideas about classroom performance can be translated to other fields.” And, “While it is historical, it covers a technical topic and anxiety in a way that provides some insight into the resistance seen with technology projects and tools. The takeaways from the book … can be applied broadly to pedagogy, workplace, and any other situation where anxiety exists.”

In light of the award, Fiss reflected on Performing Math, “…its first printing was in November 2020, so it wasn’t possible to acknowledge the COVID-19 pandemic or the changes in education as a result. Specifically, though I talk about written testing in math, I feel like the book does privilege oral, face-to-face communication (including in student songs and plays about math). What those historical stories mean for education has changed since 2020, as the general expectations of post-2020 education are still developing.”

Andy also expressed pride in being able to bring the award back to the Humanities department, and gratitude for the inspiration received from prior Humanities award recipients. Works like Bob Johnson‘s Romancing the Atom (which also won the TSC Best Book) and the multiple awards both won and inspired by the work of Beth Flynn all had an impact on Fiss. “It was so inspirational! I hope this news similarly helps other people along in their work.”

The award will be presented at the CCCC Annual Convention in Chicago on Friday, February 17. “The Conference on College Composition and Communication, with more than 4,000 members and subscribers, supports and promotes the teaching and study of composition, rhetoric, and communication skills at the college level, both in undergraduate and graduate programs.”

Summer Undergraduate Research Fellows Study Amtrak

Published June 7, 2022

By Erin Smith

STC Majors Lena Lukowski, Riley Powers, and Davi Prague.

Three Humanities undergraduates have been awarded Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURF) for 2022. All three will be carrying out their research in conjunction with the study-away program, “Amtrak Tourism: Trains, Cities, & Sustainability” led by Mark Rhodes, Assistant Professor of Geography in Michigan Tech’s Social Sciences department. Students in the Amtrak Tourism program travel on Amtrak for a three week tour of the western United States and study topics related to human geography, sustainability, and the urban environment along the way.

Lena Lukowski’s project, “Locating Tourism Rhetoric: A Comparative Study” pays attention to the connection between location and tourism rhetoric in different cities across the United States. She is interested in seeing how the way in which tourism is discussed changes with the landscape and location. Lukowski is pursuing a double degree in Mechanical Engineering and Scientific and Technical Communication.

Riley Powers’s project, “Public Tourism Infrastructure and Accessibility: Comparison of Metropolitan, Micropolitan, and Rural Structures” will focus on public tourism infrastructure accessibility design, with a particular focus on the infrastructure encountered by students participating in the Amtrak Tourism study-away program. Powers’ work includes consulting with those who plan and design infrastructure as well as those who are impacted by disparities in accessibility. Results of the study will be shared with stakeholders locally in the Houghton/Keweenaw area, with the aim of highlighting ways to improve accessibility for public tourism in our own community. Powers is a Scientific and Technical Communication major.

Davi Sprague’s project, “Understanding the Relationship Between Rail Communities and Rail Infrastructure” seeks to answer the question, how did rail and train stations influence the urbanization, industrialization, and deindustrialization of rail communities and how are these communities planning for the future? Sprague, a Scientific and Technical Communication major, will combine archival research with filmmaking to produce a short video documentary that features historical and contemporary sources as well as highlights from the study-away program itself.

The SURF fellowship program is administered by Michigan Tech’s Pavlis Honors College. Fellowship recipients conduct a research project under the guidance of a Michigan Tech faculty mentor during the summer semester and, at the conclusion of their work, present their research at the Michigan Tech Undergraduate Research Symposium, or at a professional conference in their field.

Modern Languages Film Series begins Thursday, 1/27

Published January 21, 2022

By Humanities Department

The 2022 Modern Languages Film Series kicks off Thursday, January 27th, with the German film, I’m Your Man (Ich Bin Dein Mensch, Shrader, 2021). Scientist Alma (Maren Eggert) has reluctantly agreed to live for three weeks with humanoid robot Tom (Dan Stevens), who has been created solely to make her happy. This contemplative comedy about love, longing, and what makes us human will screen at 7:00 PM in Fisher 135.

Other films presented in the series include Unbalanced (Desequilibrados, Balanda, 2021), screening February 24th, and Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Portrait de le Jeune Fille en Feu, Sciamma, 2019), screening March 24th. All films in the series will screen in Fisher 135 and are free and open to the public.

This film series is sponsored by the Modern Languages program in the Department of Humanities.

Tag: humanities

Abstract for What Are Humans For?

About Stuart Kendall

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