SEWANEE SUMMER SEMINAR:
CELEBRATING 50 YEARS (1976-2026)

There's no age limit on curiosity. The mind doesn't retire.

The Talks | The Faculty | Registration | LifeLong Learning

 

When do the Seminars take place?

  • SESSION I: June 21 – 27, 2026
  • SESSION II: July 5 – 11, 2026

The Program

The Seminar will be housed in several locations across campus in 2026. 

Each lecture described below is given on a single morning. After a break for refreshments, participants may join a further discussion of the main lecture or choose to attend a different presentation given by another faculty member.

Who comes to the Seminars?

We always have a lively group composed of alumni, friends of Sewanee, and those who are simply curious about this beautiful place. The only prerequisite is that you enjoy the flow of ideas and the company of interesting people. Some participants are quickly swept into active dialogue; others come to absorb and reflect.

Who teaches the Seminars?

We will be celebrating our 50th anniversary this summer with a group of outstanding speakers:

  • Professor Emmanuel Asiedu-Acquah, International and Global Studies
  • Professor Anne Duffee, Mathematics
  • Professor Evan Joslin, Chemistry
  • Professor Andrea Mansker, History
  • Professor Britt Threatt, English

Click here to learn more about this year's faculty.

The Week

  • Sunday, afternoon:
    • Arrive at Biehl Commons for check-in between 2:00 - 4:30 p.m. Central Time
    • Opening reception at Biehl Commons 4:30 – 6:00 p.m. Introductions at 5:00 p.m. 
  • Monday–Friday mornings, 9 a.m.–noon: Seminars
  • Monday–Friday afternoon and evenings: Optional programs and activities
  • Friday late afternoon: Final reception and farewell dinner
  • Saturday morning: Departure by 10 a.m.

The Daily Schedule

Mornings begin with a hearty breakfast at McClurg, followed by the main lecture of the day at 9 a.m. After a break for refreshments it is time for a choice: to discuss the main lecture topic or to join a new talk with a different professor. Thus, each morning includes opportunities to pursue two different subjects. Everyone hears the main lecture, then some pursue that subject for the rest of the morning while others jump into one of the “second talks.”

Afternoons and evenings are for more informal activities. We provide plenty of opportunities for hikes, visits to interesting local spots, film viewings, and other activities. Many participants mix these with their own forays into the library, into the sun, or into the luxury of unscheduled time. Use of duPont Library and the Fowler Sport and Fitness Center are included in the program.

Housing and Meals

Session I participants will live in Quintard Hall while Session II participants will be housed in Benedict Hall. Meals, with the exceptions of our opening reception and farewell dinner, will be at the University Dining Commons, McClurg Hall. The campus coffee house, named after Ted Stirling, the founder of the Sewanee Summer Seminar, is on the east side of the Bishop’s Common.

How much does it cost?

$750 for each adult participant (tuition, double room, shared bath, and meals)
$800 for each adult participant (tuition, single room, might be a shared bath if we are crowded, and meals)
$450 for tuition only, per person (no housing or meals)
$75 early arrival fee per day, per person
For tuition-only participants, meals are also available on an individual basis.

Remember: The Summer Conference Office charges early arrivals (Saturday after 2 p.m.) $75.00 per person, per night

How do I make a reservation?

Register online
A deposit of $100 reserves your place or send deposits and direct questions to:
Professor Bethel Seballos
Director, Sewanee Summer Seminar
The University of the South
735 University Avenue, Sewanee, TN 37383-1000
Email     931.598.1469    

 


Sewanee Seminar Talks

THE TALKS | THE FACULTY | REGISTRATION | LIFELONG LEARNING

 

Primary Talks

Professor Emmanuel Asiedu-Acquah - “‘Rain or shine we gonna rock’1: American cultural flows and urban popular culture in Ghana”
Ragtime, vaudeville, American silent films, minstrelsy, African American humor and musical theater, American westerns, Rock ’n’ roll, Soul, Funk, Jazz, and Hip Hop. What do these have to do with urban popular culture in Ghana? This talk answers the question by offering a history of the appropriation, adaptation, and hybridization of American cultural influences in Ghanaian urban popular culture from the early 20th century, when Ghana was a colony of Britain, to recent postcolonial times. We will examine in particular American influences on a Ghanaian popular theater tradition called the concert party, a recreational dance and music named kpanlogo, changes in Ghanaian popular music in the late 1960s and ’70s, and the more recent Ghanaian hip hop music genre called hiplife. Far from being a cultural imperialism, as some have argued about the spread of American cultural influences, these have been but one source of material from which Ghanaians have creatively drawn in their urban popular culture.
1The motto of the Black Eagle Rock ’n’ Roll Club, formed in Accra, Ghana’s capital, in the late 1950s. See Steven Salm, “‘Rain or Shine We Gonna Rock’: Dance Subcultures and Identity Construction in Accra” in Sources and Methods in African History: Spoken, Written, Unearthed, eds. Toyin Falola and Christian Jennings (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2003): 361-372.

Professor Anne Duffee - “An Infinite Library and a Fatal Paradox”
Jorge Luis Borges’s famous story "The Library of Babel" describes a universe made of books, with endless shelves of texts containing every possible combination of letters. But the mathematics behind such a library leads to deep and unsettling questions. In the early twentieth century, Betrand Russell tried to secure all of mathematics by deriving it from pure logic, promising clarity and certainty, until paradox intervened. Borges’s "The Library of Babel," with its infinite shelves of meaningful books and meaningless gibberish, captures both the allure and the futility of that program. This talk examines the mathematics behind Borges’s vision and the foundational crisis it echoes, when the search for complete and consistent order revealed the limits of logic itself.

Professor Evan Joslin – “From Reactors to Radiology: Rethinking the Narrative Around Nuclear Technology”
NUCLEAR. For many, the word carries weight: memories of duck-and-cover drills, Cold War tensions, and atomic headlines. Yet nuclear science is far more than destruction and fear. It is also a driver of scientific discovery, life-saving medical treatments, and energy production by harnessing some of the most powerful chemistry ever developed. From the creation of secret cities during World War II to power plants that light our homes, to advanced diagnostic imaging, nuclear chemistry has profoundly shaped the modern world. In this course, we will explore the fundamental principles behind nuclear reactions, examine how nuclear processes generate energy, and investigate the groundbreaking medical applications that continue to transform science and society.

Professor Andrea Mansker – “Marriage-Mania and the Matchmaking Fad in Napoleon’s Paris”
Why did the novel practice of commercial matchmaking provoke a consumer frenzy in imperial Paris following two turbulent decades of revolution and warfare? In this context, a former revolutionary soldier named Claude Villiaume who had been imprisoned by the state after a purported attempt to assassinate First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte, refashioned himself into a prominent marriage broker serving “Paris and the Empire.” Villiaume took advantage of new commercial spaces in the press to craft engaging consumer narratives for readers about the search for love in an alienating urban environment. He hit upon a winning formula when he constructed love as a product of blind destiny and marriage as a “lottery” that subverted rational attempts at control and planning. This talk considers how and why Villiaume’s framing of the love connection as arbitrary appealed to numerous men and women during a period of political censorship, war, and the Napoleonic state’s deeply unpopular practice of mass conscription.

Professor Britt Threatt – “Commercial Fiction in the Classroom: Teaching to Gen Z”
In this seminar, Prof. Threatt will talk about why she researches and teaches commercial fiction just as much as the literary classics. She offers classroom practices and exercises that help students (and you) read commercial fiction critically. In preparation for her talk, Prof. Threatt recommends you read, watch, or re-watch The Hunger Games (books and movies – but if you can, prioritize the books). For this primary lecture, additional reading includes: The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games by Ebony Elizabeth Thomas (Introduction and Chapter 1). NYU Press (2019).

Second Talks

Professor Emmanuel Asiedu-Acquah - “The US, Cold War Politics, and Student Internationalism in Ghana”

Professor Anne Duffee – TBA

Professor Evan Joslin – “To Drink or Not to Drink: The Dangers Flowing from our Taps”

Professor Andrea Mansker – “Mademoiselle Arria Ly Wants Blood!” A Feminist Dueling Challenge in Belle Époque France

Professor Britt Threatt – “Here There Be Monsters: Revelatory Fear in Times of Crisis”


Sewanee Seminar Faculty

THE TALKS | THE FACULTY | REGISTRATION | LIFELONG LEARNING

2026 Faculty:

Professor Emmanuel Asiedu-Acquah, International and Global Studies

Emmanuel Asiedu-Acquah is an associate professor in Sewanee’s International and Global Studies program. He teaches courses on globalization, Atlantic Africa, African youth cultures, West African popular culture and politics, and African cities among others. He is a historian of contemporary West Africa with a particular interest in the history of student and youth politics, and media in Ghana. He has published journal articles and a book chapter on these topics. He is developing a new project on the media in anglophone West Africa.

Professor Anne Duffee, Mathematics

Anne Duffee is Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of the South. Her research lies in the history and philosophy of mathematics, with particular attention to how the historical development of mathematical ideas can be mirrored in student learning. She is also interested in the phenomenology of mathematics—how mathematical ideas are actually experienced, understood, and lived by those who study them—and how mathematical concepts change over time. 

Professor Evan Joslin, Chemistry

Evan E. Joslin earned her B.A. in Chemistry with ACS certification from Agnes Scott College in 2008 and earned her Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry, focusing on Organometallic Chemistry, from the University of Virginia in 2013. She completed postdoctoral research at The Johns Hopkins University, where she studied metalloporphyrin chemistry in the field of bioinorganic chemistry. Since 2016, she has been a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry at Sewanee and is now a tenured Associate Professor. Her research explores the use of energy-efficient microwave radiation to synthesize organic ligands and coordinate them to cobalt and ruthenium, creating catalysts for transfer hydrogenation.

Professor Andrea Mansker, History

Andrea Mansker is the David E. Underdown Professor of Modern European History. Specializing in French cultural and gender history, her research interests range from the history of marriage, reproduction, war, and consumerism in postrevolutionary France to gendered codes of honor and citizenship during the Third Republic. She is the author of Matchmaking and the Marriage Market in Postrevolutionary France (2024) and Sex, Honor, and Citizenship in Early Third Republic France (2011). Her latest research project considers how the French used the malleable interpretive space of women’s reproductive bodies to re-think the body politic following the 1789 Revolution.

Professor Britt Threatt, English

Professor Britt Threatt is an educator, researcher, and writer committed to studying and depicting Black life. She earned her MA and doctorate in Africana Studies from Brown University. As a researcher, Prof. Threatt has always been devoted to interdisciplinarity with intersections in literary theory, performance studies, and women and gender studies. These fields inform her current project of analyzing slave legacies in Black women’s speculative fiction. In the classroom, Prof. Threatt prides herself on being a collaborative instructor who helps her students achieve their personal learning goals while equipping them with necessary fundamentals of composition and critical thinking. Her commitment extends beyond the classroom through her podcast College Writing, Actually where she discusses practical writing tips and multilingualism. In all she does, Prof. Threatt centers the cultural diversity and multivocality emblematic of our rich world.


Registration

THE TALKS | THE FACULTY | REGISTRATION | LIFELONG LEARNING

 

Use the form below to secure your spot in the Summer Seminar.

To complete this form, click here.