Center for the Humanities | Julia Stern: Love and Work Are the Cornerstones of Our Humanity

In this in-person Humanities Without Boundaries talk, Julia Stern reflects on the significance of love and work, Freud’s indices of a life well lived, and on her teaching and scholarship over 30 years. Stern explores how her recent scholarly interests – in American and African American women’s writing from the 17th century through the 20th, classic Hollywood cinema and particularly, the films of Bette Davis – have been informed by childhood passions and the questions she raised about the world’s inequities from a very young age. Stern’s talk will attempt to demystify how a literature professor’s lived experience makes possible her humanistic research and to show that the humanities really are without borders.