Upcoming Events

Oct
10

LHUCA Literary Series featuring Ama Codjoe

Once per semester, the LHUCA Literary Series features a visiting writer, a TTU graduate writer, and undergraduate writer. Light refreshments will be provided. The visiting writer for fall 2025 is Ama Codjoe, the graduate writer is Nikki Lyssy, and the undergraduate writer is Amor Costilla.

Ama Codjoe is the author of Bluest Nude (Milkweed Editions, 2022), winner of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and finalist for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Poetry, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and the Paterson Poetry Prize; and Blood of the Air (Northwestern University Press, 2020), winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize. She has been awarded support from Bogliasco, Cave Canem, Robert Rauschenberg, and Saltonstall foundations as well as from Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, Hedgebrook, Yaddo, Hawthornden Literary Retreat, Willapa Bay AiR, MacDowell, and the Amy Clampitt Residency. Among other honors, Codjoe has received fellowships from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bronx Council on the Arts, the New York State Council/New York Foundation of the Arts, and the Jerome Foundation. In 2023, Codjoe was appointed as the second Poet-in-Residence at the Guggenheim Museum. She is the winner of a 2023 Whiting Award and a recipient of a 2024 Arts and Letters Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
 
Nikki Lyssy is a writer from Austin, Texas, specializing in essays and young adult literature. She has work published in HAD/Was, Sweet Literary, and appeared as a guest on the MFA Writers Podcast. Nikki is pursuing a PhD in English with a concentration in creative nonfiction at Texas Tech University.
 
Amor Costilla is a first-gen undergrad at TTU, earning a BA in English with a creative writing concentration. She's also a journalism minor who is just as passionate about fiction and poetry as she is about current political events.

7pm, Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts (511 Ave K)

Oct
14

Humanity Speakers Series:
Vlora Konushevci,
"Between Tongues and Ruins: Translation as Testimony in Post-War Societies"

A co-sponsored event with the Thomas Jay Harris Institute for Hispanic and International Communication in the TTU College of Media and Communications, the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program and the Creative Writing program in the  TTU Department of English.

Vlora Konushevci (poet, translator, and essayist; Kosovo) is the author of the poetry collection Lavdi Vetes and the editor-translator of the bilingual anthologies Poetry Without Borders (Albanian–Serbian) and Magma (Albanian–English). Her poetry and translations appear in The Common, Songs of Eretz, and European Literature Network. A winner of multiple literary awards and a contributor to Kosovo’s cultural press, she also works as a certified translator for national and international institutions. Her participation is made possible thanks to the University of Iowa’s Office of the Vice President for Research and Graduate College.

5pm, Humanities Building 108

Oct
15

Alumni College Annual Event

Join the Humanities Center in the Mesa and Traditions Rooms of the Student Union Building at 6pm on October 15 for our annual Alumni College event. We will be showcasing funded scholarship from this past year's 12 Alumni College Faculty Fellows. Reception to follow in the Matador Lounge.

Click here to read more about this year's Alumni College funded projects.

6-9:30pm, Mesa and Traditions Rooms, Matador Lounge, Student Union Building

Oct
16

TTU Creative Writing Program Reading Featuring Vlora Konushevci

Co-sponsored by the Thomas Jay Harris Institute for Hispanic and International Communication in the TTU College of Media and Communications, the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program and the TTU Department of English, the TTU Creative Writing Program is proud to feature Vlora Konushevci, a visiting writer and translator from Kosovo.

Vlora Konushevci (poet, translator, and essayist; Kosovo) is the author of the poetry collection Lavdi Vetes and the editor-translator of the bilingual anthologies Poetry Without Borders (Albanian–Serbian) and Magma (Albanian–English). Her poetry and translations appear in The Common, Songs of Eretz, and European Literature Network. A winner of multiple literary awards and a contributor to Kosovo’s cultural press, she also works as a certified translator for national and international institutions. Her participation is made possible thanks to the University of Iowa’s Office of the Vice President for Research and Graduate College.

5pm, Escondido Theater, Student Union Building

Oct
17

Humanity Speakers Series:
Dr. Manuel Vargas(UC-San Diego),
"Reconsidering the Free Will Debate"

Co-sponsored by the Department of Philosophy  2025-2026 Colloquium Series.

This talk advances a cluster of distinctive theses about what is sometimes called “the” free will debate. Among them: pluralism about the subjects under dispute; a case for non-error theoretic eliminativism about free will; the virtues of focusing on culpable agency as one regimentation of concerns about free will, and methodological caveats about how to frame the stakes; and last, consideration of a thesis I call “socio-normative insulationism,” according to which some subset of concerns oftentimes associated with free will seem relatively insulated from skeptical concerns.

Dr. Manuel Vargas a Professor of Philosophy at the University of California San Diego. One facet of his research focuses on the overlap of moral and psychological issues concerning human agency and freedom. A second facet concerns the history of philosophy in Mexico, and a third focuses on issues in contemporary Latina/o/x/e philosophy.

Vargas is the author of the forthcoming Mexican Philosophy (OUP), which showcases notable episodes in the history of philosophy in Mexico. He is also the author of Building Better Beings: A Theory of Moral Responsibility (OUP, 2013), which won the American Philosophical Association's Book Prize in 2015. With John Martin Fischer, Robert Kane, and Derk Pereboom, he co-authored Four Views on Free Will (Wiley-Blackwell, 2007), and the forthcoming revised and expanded second edition (Wiley-Blackwell, forthcoming). With John Doris, he edited the Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology (OUP, 2022) and with Gideon Yaffe, he edited Rational and Social Agency: The Philosophy of Michael Bratman (OUP, 2014).

3:00pm, Humanities Building 264