Taft Research Center, University of Cincinnati

03/19/2026

03/11/2026

This weather won't stop our event-filled day! ☔️ Join us TODAY for a lecture at noon and a writing workshop at 4pm with USC faculty member, writer, and editor Sarah Mesle. Learn more and register for FREE at http://taft-uc.trumba.com/

Writing, Feeling, and the History of Flow
Wednesday, March 11, 12–1:30pm
Valentine Overlook
Clifton Court Hall 5280
FREE lunch provided to all attendees!

Openings, Audience, and the Everyday - a writing workshop
Wednesday, March 11, 4–6pm
Taft Research Center

02/27/2026

Taft's Spring 2026 Keynote Lecture with Tina Campt is less than one week away! FREE and open to the public, register here: taft.center/campt

Afterimages: Grieving in Fractured Time
Thursday, March 5, 6–7:30pm
The Mercantile Library
414 Walnut St., 11th Fl.
Cincinnati, OH 45202

Grief fundamentally fractures time. It situates us simultaneously in time and out of it. It is always deeply personal, yet it is also utterly universal. We experience it as individuals, yet it is also the great equalizer that summons us to face the limits of our mortality and the relationships that sustain us. In her talk, Tina Campt will present selections from her forthcoming book, Afterimages: Grieving in Fractured Time, which tells the story of how writing to art became a survival tactic that helped her grapple with intense experiences of personal grief during a period of pervasive social grievance. Focusing on what she describes as the exemplary psychic, temporal, and sensory structure of grief, the afterimage, her talk will explore how Black contemporary artists create artworks that speak beyond what we see and give expression to the absent presences that constitute some of the most palpable manifestations of grief and mourning.

02/20/2026

📣 We are a 2026-28 Taft Postdoctoral Fellow! Scholars who received or will receive their PhD between May 2021 and June 2026 from any field or related field represented by our 15 member units in the humanities and social sciences are invited to apply.
We are particularly interested in scholars whose work can speak to our 2026–27 theme “Counter,” which explores questions of quantification, representation, and opposition, asking what kinds of accounting the current moment demands, as well as reflections and responses to what the humanities are up against.

Taft Postdoctoral Fellowship, College of Arts & Sciences

02/19/2026

Our next lecture in our Colloquium interlocutor series will take place TODAY, 3PM at Taft. Register for FREE here: 👉https://eventactions.com/eareg.aspx?ea=Rsvp&invite=g93vtxe8gm5xpxwu6hja9kpybd2exad83nb9j4m2bvt1xgz3ypv1

The "Destruction"—and "Reconquest"—of Louisville: Strikes, Militias, and Blue-Gray Reunion in Gilded Age America with Matt Stanley 🇺🇸
Thursday, February 19, 3pm | Taft Research Center
Co-sponsored with the Department of History

This talk explores how business and political elites in the aftermath of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 leveraged Civil War veteranhood to reassert control over workplaces, boost industrial development, and promote a range of pro-owner, anti-worker ideas. In Louisville, those direct efforts led to the reformation of the Louisville Legion, an upper crust militia and de facto anti-labor instrument, and culminated in the city's 1895 "Blue-Gray" encampment and the Legion's celebrated role in the Spanish-American War. Idealized as an institution in which elite Union and Confederate veterans clasped hands in the name of "public order," the Legion came to serve as a powerful symbol of North-South accommodation in a mercurial border region whose civic leaders had long prided themselves on being the nation's political as well as geographic "middle." The Legion's form and function--its social makeup and synergy with emergent business owners' associations--also underscored the central role of capital organization and anti-labor repression, in the Ohio Valley and beyond, to the broader process of sectional reconciliation.

02/16/2026

"A sonic trip that asks you to rethink the world through your ears instead of your eyes"👂 Be sure to register for The World According to Sound, happening TONIGHT at 7:30 in the Patricia Corbett Theater!
https://eventactions.com/eareg.aspx?ea=Rsvp&invite=021ktc9yjeha9797622nc135f3g6eyn91ncee98s7fskg2njpd99

02/06/2026

An interactive and immersive experience you don't want to miss!
🌎The World According to Sound🔊
Monday, February 16, 7:30pm
Patricia Corbett Theater, 290 CCM Blvd.
FREE & open to the public! Registration required:
https://www.trumba.com/eareg.aspx?ea=Rsvp&invite=021ktc9yjeha9797622nc135f3g6eyn91ncee98s7fskg2njpd99

Presented in partnership with the College of Arts & Sciences, College-Conservatory of Music (CCM), and the Institute for Research in Sensing (IRiS).

02/04/2026

Winter is for planning. Students in the Taft Seminar "History, Ecology, and Creative Practice" are developing project proposals for the Harriet Beecher Stowe House landscape. Their work will be on display in DAAP’s student gallery space the week of February 16.

02/04/2026

mind the gap: sound, image, print, and collective methods for writing otherwise 📖
February 13, 20, 27 & 28
All events free & open to the public. Registration required: https://taft-uc.trumba.com
mind the gap is a three-part series that brings together scholars, artists, makers, and publishers to contemplate what it means to work through archival and institutional gaps and how to do it collaboratively. Embracing the unsaid, unmade, and undone, the series frames the "gap" as a productive opening and collaboration as a worldmaking mode of working with and for one another.

01/14/2026

New year, new semester, new Taft events!🎉 Join us and the Department of Anthropology, University of Cincinnati for our first spring event at the Center:
Infrastructures of Discomfort and Bullsh*t Access: Public Toileting in New York City in the 20th & 21st Centuries with Matthew Wolf-Meyer🚽
Wednesday, January 21, 4-5:30pm
Registration is FREE and required: https://eventactions.com/eareg.aspx?ea=Rsvp&invite=0h6pg9mzwd76bwfyzvxakk8pahcv2t8u1kpmcx9neha6pawabh26

Learn more about this lecture and other upcoming events on our website: www.taft.center/taft

12/14/2025

📝APPLY BY JANUARY 1! 🗓️
This summer, Taft is sponsoring advanced doctoral students in the humanities and social sciences at The Institute for Critical Social Inquiry and doctoral students in humanities programs for the National Humanities Center Graduate Student Summer Residency. ☀️
To apply, send required application materials to [email protected].

Two summer programs are now accepting applications: The Institute for Critical Social Inquiry - ICSI for advanced doctoral students and faculty in the humanities and social sciences and the National Humanities Center Graduate Student Summer Residency for all doctoral students in humanities programs with Taft Research Center, University of Cincinnati sponsorship available for eligible students for both opportunities. Apply by Thurs. Jan. 1!

Institute for Critical Social Inquiry (ICSI)
🗓 June 7–13, 2026 | 📍 The New School, NYC
Open to advanced doctoral students and faculty in the humanities and social sciences. Participants engage in intensive master classes and collaborative workshops led by internationally recognized scholars. Taft will cover round-trip airfare, lodging, per diem, and program costs for up to 2 graduate students from Taft units who apply and are selected for the Institute.

📩 Interested students and faculty must apply to ICSI directly and submit a copy of their application materials to Taft (emailed as a single PDF to [email protected]) by Jan. 1. See full seminar descriptions → https://bit.ly/4pB6aGy

National Humanities Center Graduate Student Summer Residency
🗓 July (Dates TBD) | 📍The Research Triangle Park, NC
Open to all doctoral students in humanities programs. Taft will sponsor up to two doctoral students from Taft-eligible units who have advanced to candidacy but not yet entered the job market with planned graduation for 2027 or later, covering both the registration and round-trip travel costs for the residency (estimated value $2300).

📩 Interested students should submit the following to Taft (emailed as a single PDF to [email protected]) by Jan. 1: (1) Brief 2-page cv, and (2) 500-word narrative describing your research, interest in the residency, and how it fits into your planned career trajectory. Dates for the residency will be announced in mid-December.

College of Arts & Sciences, University of Cincinnati

11/18/2025

everyday-theory 💭📒
Wednesday, November 19, 7pm
SWELL Art Café, 2936 Colerain Avenue
Register: https://taft-uc.trumba.com/taft-research-center-events-taft-and

Join us for a new reading/making group that centers everyday knowledge now. Inspired by The Swell Reader quarterly theme Repair, our monthly sessions will take up recent books that theorize from the everyday and imagine methods for a livable world. Taft Postdoctoral Fellow Harshavardhan Bhat will facilitate the sessions, sharing excerpts from the books and guiding discussion and reflection/making activities.

🗣️This Wednesday we will discuss Christina Sharpe’s 2023 book Ordinary Notes. After shared reading and discussion, participants will develop their own postcard-length reflections on processing what constitutes a note based on an observation or reading. All are welcome to attend; note-making materials will be provided. Copies of the book are available at CHPL.