SASiety 
Happy February! Have you got any special aims or deadlines you need to catch this month? We are reminiscing back to Being Human Festival and so we are taking some time to catch up with some of the events which you can find here. For our Weekly Favorites this week, we have chosen events that we hope you find thought-provoking and insightful.
There are, of course, more events taking place within SAS, so we highly advise you to visit SAS’ Events Page to get more of an idea of the extensive events that are available. Remember there are also Research Training events taking place. Read more about it here.
If you’d like to review one of the events, you can! Click here for more information.
Isolation and community: pandemic reflections on Philoctetes and Achilles – ICS
Monday 1st February 2021, 17.00 – 18.30, Book Here
This week, we are starting with the past. The concept of isolation isn’t a new one; it goes back thousands of years. Philoctetes, a lonesome wounded figure, abandoned on an island; Achilles being driven into isolation in the Illiad are two examples which Seth L Schein (University of California) will be exploring in his lecture “Isolation and community: pandemic reflection on Philoctetes and Achilles”. Though the subject matter may feel removed at first glance, upon closer inspection the subject feels much more familiar: both of those heroes face and experience turmoil in their isolation, while they are thrown in deep contemplation.
Original sin & the Anthropocene – IHR
Tuesday 2nd February 2021, 15.30 – 17.00, Book Here
Join French historian, Sylvain Piron on a discussion about “Original sin & the Anthropocene.” Piron particularly focuses on the intellectual history of medieval societies from the 12th to the 14th century, and more specifically on the history of economic and political thought. He is also interested in the Italian intellectuals and artists of the generation of Dante, the papacy of Avignon, Franciscan dissent, prophetism, relations between Jews and Christians as well as angelology and love letters.
Rewriting the Indian Other: A Post-Colonial Translation of Rudyard Kipling’s “The Story of Muhammad Din” into Arabic – IMLR
Thursday 4th February 2021, 16.00 – 17.30, Book Here
As we approach the end of the week, we couldn’t think of anything better than a discussion on postcolonial theory and Rudyard Kipling’s “The Story of Muhammad Din” into Arabic. Join Mohammed Hamdan (Associate Professor of Anglo-America literary studies at An-Najah National University, Palestine) in a conversation on literary translations, Rudyard Kipling, Victorian literature and postcolonialism.
Latin American Anthropology Seminar – ILAS
Thursday 4th February 2021, 17.00 – 19.00, Book Here
One of the things that continues to fascinate us about SAS is its outward, forward, international outlook in its research and development. We thought, then, that we absolutely ought to include this fascinating talk led by Vitor Richter (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul) on the Techno-Politics of Brazil’s forensic DNA database and its promises. Richter’s paper “will describe how Brazilian forensic geneticists face the practical challenges that emerge from relations with other institutions and infrastructures, such as the criminal justice system, police practices and the Brazilian carceral infrastructure when the time to sample subjects’ DNA inside prison facilities and at the crime scene arrives.”
EMPHASIS – IES
Saturday 6th February 2021, 14.00 – 16.00, Book Here
We are wrapping up this week with IES’ EMPHASIS seminars. This week, Louise Devoy (National Maritime Museum) will be discussing “New perspectives on the life and work of Humfrey Cole (c. 1530-91), England’s first native-born scientific instrument maker.” We think this will be a fascinating topic not only to Early modern scholars, but also to those that are interested in the development of science and history.