In conjunction with the Wolf Humanities Center’s 2025–2026 Forum on Truth, this interdisciplinary symposium engages experts in an exploration of truth(s) contested or revealed in crises across panels on Institutions of Learning, Land and its Technologies, and Borders. The symposium keynote, "The Prison and Moving Images: The Aesthetics of Politics and Truth-Making," will be delivered by University of California, Santa Barbara professor Althea Wasow.

Schedule Breakdown:

9:20–9:30am Welcome Remarks

Ayako Kano, Director, Wolf Humanities Center; Professor, East Asian Languages & Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania

Julia Verkholantsev, Topic Director, Forum on Truth, Wolf Humanities Center; Associate Professor, Russian and East European Studies, University of Pennsylvania

9:30–10:45am Keynote: The Prison and Moving Images: The Aesthetics of Politics and Truth-Making 

Moderator: Jennifer Sierra, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Wolf Humanities Center

Althea Wasow, Assistant Professor, Film and Media Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

11:00am–12:30pm Institutions of Learning

Moderator: Chris Halsted, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Wolf Humanities Center

Julia Alekseyeva, Assistant Professor, English and Cinema Studies, University of Pennsylvania Towards a Critique of Cinema-Truth

Emily Ng, Assistant Professor, Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania Beyond Certitude: Devotion and Negation in Charismatic Pedagogy

Ege Yumusak, Assistant Professor, Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania Collective Distraction at the University 

1:45–3:15pm Land and its Technologies

Moderator: Delbar Khakzad, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Wolf Humanities Center

Nikhil Anand, Daniel Braun Silvers and Robert Peter Silvers Family Presidential Professor of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania Desiccation: Dry Land Technologies and the Making of the Urban Climate

Samuel Driver, Visiting Assistant Professor, Russian, Dickinson College Present, Looming, and Enduring: Temporalities of Environmental Crisis in the Work of Rodchenko, Nigaryan, and Mikhailov

M. Susan Lindee, Janice and Julian Bers Professor of the History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania Rivers in Exact Miniature: Modeling Truth in the Mississippi Basin 

3:30–5:00pm Borders

Moderator: Spencer Small, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Wolf Humanities Center

Alex Brostoff, Assistant Professor, English and Women's and Gender Studies, Georgetown University Thirteen Truths in Thirteen Titles; or, Cuíer Clarice, Queer Migrations 

Hardeep Dhillon, Assistant Professor, History, University of Pennsylvania The Battle for Birthright Citizenship and the Children of Immigrants Ineligible to Naturalize

Mina Magda, Assistant Professor, Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University Imperial Vision in Living Color: Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii Against the Grain

5:00pm Closing Remarks

Caitlin Adkins, Research Associate, Wolf Humanities Center; Ph.D. Candidate, East Asian Civilizations and Languages, University of Pennsylvania