By Michelle Adams, Editor in Chief

Shenandoah University’s College of Arts and Sciences will be hosting its annual Virginia Humanities Conference on April 7-8. Titled “The Unbearable Humanities,” this year’s conference will feature the attendance of approximately 135 scholars and undergraduates from numerous areas of study and institutions across the United States.

According to the University’s official blog, the conference will examine “how and what kinds of knowledge the humanities produce that existing structures cannot bear; how and why approaches to this unbearableness that are grounded in the humanities are met with resistance; and, finally, how those in the humanities value, make use of, and respond to contemporary, and sometimes unbearable, issues.”

Featured presenters including keynote speakers Lauren Berlant, Ph.D, author and the George M. Pullman Distinguished Service Professor of English at the University of Chicago, and Lee Edelman, Ph.D, author and the Fletcher Professor of English Literature at Tufts University, who will discuss “Pressures of the Unbearable” at 5 p.m. on Friday in Halpin-Harrison Hall’s Stimpson Auditorium. Their address, as well as a panel discussion questioning if 21st-century America can “bear the humanities,” at 11 a.m. on Saturday, moderated by dean of the College of Arts & Sciences Jeff Coker, Ph.D, are free and open to the public.

For more information about the conference, visit the official website.