The key thematic focus for the academic years 2007-2009 is "Topographies of Violence." The Thursday Series is a bi-weekly program of seminars, colloquia and lectures with distinguished guests and UM faculty designed to explore the ways that visual representations affect historical understanding and processes of historical change. Among other issues, we engage the historical dimensions of space and spatial contexts, the embedded representations of art and architecture, the epistemologies of photographic and artifactual evidence, and the ways historians "envision" their subjects more generally in their scholarship and teaching.
In addition to the Thursday Series, the Institute sponsors and supports additional programming, including a Friday Workshop with the guests of the Thursday Series (see Graduate Workshops and Programs), various graduate student initiatives, a film series, and other events designed to cultivate critical thinking about historical research and teaching.
