Kylee Pastore Asirvatham
Throughout the 2024–2025 academic year, the Rifkind Center for the Humanities and the Arts continued its mission of promoting intellectual and cultural activity at The City College of New York. The Rifkind Center supports faculty research, organizes lectures and conferences, sponsors student outreach programs, and hosts interdisciplinary events that connect the campus community through the richness of the humanities. This year’s programming reflected the breadth of that mission, offering students, faculty, and the public opportunities to engage with valuable questions about art, politics, history, justice, and the creative process.
The year opened with a thought-provoking lecture by NYU historian Stefanos Geroulanos, who presented ideas from his latest book, The Invention of Prehistory: Why Are We Obsessed With Human Origins? In it, Geroulanos traced how centuries of fascination with early humans have shaped modern Western thought, raising questions about science, mythology, and identity. Later in the fall, the MFA in Creative Writing launched the season’s first “Chai & Chat” reading with poet and literary agent Kima Jones, who spoke about the stages of literary publishing and book advocacy from sending out the query letter to evaluating contracts.
Literary legend Joyce Carol Oates visited campus in November for a conversation with longtime CCNY professor and FICTION magazine editor Mark J. Mirsky. The discussion ranged from Oates’s latest novel, Butcher, to reflections on her six-decade career, and it concluded with a reading from some of her unpublished work. The fall semester ended with a visit from anthropologist Ryan Cecil Jobson, who offered a critical look at fossil fuel economies. In his book talk on The Petro-State Masquerade: Oil, Sovereignty, and Power in Trinidad and Tobago, he invited the audience to rethink global energy histories through a Caribbean lens.
In the spring, the Rifkind Center turned its attention to film, philosophy, and fiction. CCNY’s Professor Martin Woessner sat down with philosophy professor Nickolas Pappas to discuss Woessner’s new book, Terrence Malick and the Examined Life, in which he examines how the filmmaker’s body of work wrestles with existential themes and spiritual inquiry. And novelist and poet Andrew Krivák joined Professor Salar Abdoh for a reading and craft talk about how narrative openings can and should shape an entire novel.
March concluded with a conversation between Professors Amr Kamal and Bettina Lerner on Kamal’s book Emporialism: Department Store Fictions and the Politics of the Mediterranean. Their discussion explored the convergence between emporia (department stores) and spaces and imaginaries of empires, particularly within the context of a modern Mediterranean divided between the British, French, and Ottoman empires. In early April, the second installment of “Chai & Chat” featured acclaimed poet Rosanna Young Oh, who was the Bill & Doris Lippman Visiting Poet at the CCNY this year.
Closing out the year, the Rifkind Center hosted a sobering and deeply relevant panel titled Truth, Memory, and Accountability for Mass Atrocity. Louis Bickford and Eduardo González—both with decades of international experience supporting truth commissions and justice initiatives—joined CCNY Professor Mikhal Dekel to share stories from the front lines of global memory work. Their conversation examined their challenges, successes, and the ideas and ideals that animate them.
Together, these events exemplify the Rifkind Center’s commitment to fostering dialogue that bridges disciplines, communities, and generations. By bringing authors, scholars, and activists into conversation with CCNY students, staff, and faculty, the Rifkind Center continues to affirm the enduring relevance of the humanities in understanding our world—and shaping its future.
More about the Rifkind Center: https://rifkindcenter.org/