From the beauty and euphoria of math research to American Yiddishkayt—and lots of subjects in between—six professors participating in the Faculty Lecture Series will share their research over the course of six Thursdays from February through April.

Williams has launched its annual Faculty Lecture Series, which runs each Thursday from Feb. 23 through April 13. The series aims to present big ideas beyond disciplinary boundaries. The lectures, which start at 4:15 p.m., are free and open to the public in the Thompson Chemistry building’s Wege Auditorium. View the entire 2023 lecture playlist on YouTube.

The speakers are:

Feb. 23: Leo Goldmakher, associate professor of mathematics, presents “Primes I have enjoy’d.”

View Goldmakher’s lecture on YouTube

March 2: Julie Cassiday, the Willcox B. and Harriet M. Adsit Professor of Russian, presents “Julie Cassiday on Russian Style, or What Twerking Air Cadets and ‘Gay’ Propaganda Tell Us About Putin’s War in Ukraine.”

View Cassiday’s lecture on YouTube.

March 9: Greg Mitchell, chair and associate professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies, presents “Panics without Borders: How Global Sporting Events Drive Myths about Sex Trafficking.”

View Mitchell’s lecture on YouTube.

March 16: Brahim El Guabli, assistant professor of Arabic studies and comparative literature, presents “Saharanism: Genealogies and Manifestations of a Desert-Focused Imaginary.”

View El Guabli’s lecture on YouTube.

April 6: Charlie Doret, associate professor of physics, presents “Learning Something from Measuring Nothing: Probing the Deepest Puzzles of the Universe, One Atom at a Time.”

          View Doret’s lecture on YouTube.

April 13: Jeff Israel, associate professor of religion and Jewish studies, presents “American Yiddishkayt: The Good, the True, and the Beautiful.”

View Israel’s lecture on YouTube.

Organized by the faculty members of the Lecture Committee, the Faculty Lecture Series was founded in 1911 by Catherine Mariotti Pratt, the spouse of a faculty member who wanted to “relieve the tedium of long New England winters with an opportunity to hear Williams professors talk about issues that really mattered to them.”

From these humble and lighthearted beginnings, the Faculty Lecture Series has grown to become an important forum for tenured professors to share their latest research with the larger intellectual community of the college.

Published February 16, 2023

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