Panel Discussion & Marathon Reading of Kafka’s “The Trial”

Monika Fabijanska is a New York-based art historian and independent curator who specializes in women’s and feminist art. Her critically acclaimed exhibition, “The Un-Heroic Act: Representations of Rape in Women’s Contemporary Art in the U.S.” at Shiva Gallery, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY was ranked the fifth best NYC art show in 2018 by Hyperallergic, and reviewed by The New York Times, New Yorker, Artforum, Art in America, and The Brooklyn Rail, among others. The exhibition, motivated in part by her interest in censorship, was accompanied by a catalog and symposium. From 2000-2010, Fabijanska was Poland’s cultural attaché and served as Deputy Director and later Director of the Polish Cultural Institute in New York, where she curated or co-produced more than 600 visual and performing arts projects with the best US cultural presenters. In 2009, she brought Krystian Lupa’s Kalkwerk to Lincoln Center Festival, his first production presented in New York City. Fabijanska’s exhibition Ada Trillo. La Caravana opens on March 26, 2020 at The New School, and the exhibition on ecofeminism – at Thomas Erben Gallery in May 2020. monikafabijanska.com

Holly Hughes is a writer and performer. She launched her career at the WOW Cafe, the Lower East Side’s Petri dish for lesbian and queer culture. Her work has been presented internationally, earning recognition in the form of funding from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation and placing her at the center of the Culture Wars of the 1990s. Books include: “Clit Notes: A Sapphic Sampler,”  “O Solo Homo: The New Queer Performance” (with David Roman), “Animal Acts” (with Una Chaudhuri), and “Memories of the Revolution” (with Carmelita Tropicana and Jill S. Dolan). She is a Professor at the University of Michigan’s Stamps School of Art and Design.

Felix U. Kaputu is a scholar from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, country where he got his first tastes in comparative literature and biblical studies. Professor of English Literature from the University of Lubumbashi (2000), he is a recipient of a double PhD in Anthropology and Interdisciplinary Studies from Universiteit Gent and Vrije Universiteit Brussel (2017). He has worked with Higher Education institutions since 1988 around the world. His research focused on Writing as an Art, comparative literature, religions (shamanism), gender and cultural studies, and identity construction patterns in global perspectives, while keeping his first love with literature, fiction and poetry.

Fulbright Scholar at the University of California Santa Barbara, he is the recipient of many other awards from the United States, Japan, Belgium, and the Netherlands. He quickly chose University Pedagogy with new technologies for class communications. He taught at the University of Lubumbashi, Purchase College, and Massachusetts College of Art and Design. He was for research at Harvard University (at the W.E. Dubois Institute). In Europe, he taught at Ghent University, offered modules on African development and security to Helsinki España in Madrid. In Japan, he was at the Christian University of Tokyo, and the international Research Center, Nichibunken in Kyoto.

André Lepecki is Full Professor and Chairperson at the Department of Performance Studies at New York University. Editor of several anthologies on dance and performance theory including Of the Presence of the Body (2004), Dance (2012), and Points of Convergence (with Marta Dziewanska, 2015). An independent performance curator, he has created projects for HKW-Berlin, MoMA-Warsaw, MoMA PS1, the Hayward Gallery, Haus der Künst-Munich, Sydney Biennial 2016, among others. Selected lectures include the Gauss Seminar at Princeton University, Brown University, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales – Paris, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Freie Universität – Berlin, Universidade de Lisboa, Roehampton University, University of New South Wales, among many others. Author of Exhausting Dance: performance and the politics of movement (2006, translated into thirteen languages), and of Singularities: dance in the age of performance (2016). AICA-US award “Best Performance” 2008 for co-curating and directing the authorized redoing of Allan Kaprow’s 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (a commission of Haus der Kunst 2006, performed at PERFORMA 07).

Julie Trébault is the director of PEN America’s Artists-at-Risk Connection project. A highly respected leader in the arts world, she brings skills, experience, and a network to launch a new support system for artists at risk worldwide. Prior to joining PEN America, she served as director of public programs at the Museum of the City of New York, where she built a robust roster of panel discussions, performances, screenings, and symposia spanning New York City’s arts, culture, and history. She previously was director of public programs at the Center for Architecture. Before moving to New York, she worked at the National Museum of Ethnology in The Netherlands, where she build a network of 116 museums across the globe that shared a virtual collection of masterpieces and developed an innovative array of online and mobile applications and exhibitions to make the collection as widely accessible as possible. From 2004 until 2007, she was Head of Higher Education and Academic Events at the Musée du quai Branly (Paris), where she conceived and implemented a policy for higher education by creating an international network of universities, graduate schools, and research institutes. Trébault holds a Master’s Degree in Arts Administration from the Sorbonne University and a Master’s Degree in Archeology from the University of Strasbourg.

Catharine R. Stimpson (moderator), one of the pioneers in the study of women and gender, a founder of feminist criticism, is also known for her role as a public intellectual and her public service, which includes her wide-ranging writing on the humanities, liberal arts, and the university.