Sunday, March 2 | Hamman Hall 

2 p.m., performance of Lauren Gunderson’s The Revolutionists 

4 p.m., “Whose Revolution? Life and Art Amidst Political Violence and Turmoil — A Conversation with Dean Kathleen Canning”

Rice Theatre is hosting a conversation with School of Humanities Dean Kathleen Canning, a historian of Germany and modern Europe, following the Sunday, March 2, performance of The Revolutionists.

Directed by Weston Twardowski, Lauren Gunderson’s The Revolutionists is a comic exploration of life under the Reign of Terror and the role of art during periods of political violence. After the performance, Dean Canning and Dr. Twardowski will discuss how the era echoes throughout the centuries, both in art and politics. They will engage the audience in a thoughtful conversation around the rise of authoritarian regimes and modern global parallels.

Kathleen Canning (PhD, Johns Hopkins University, 1988) is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of History and Dean of the School of Humanities. The author of three books and numerous articles on 19th and 20th German history, her most recent work focuses on the history of citizenship and democracy in interwar Germany. She has written on the founding of Weimar democracy in 1919, shaped by the aftermath of the First World War, and on the social and cultural claims of a new gendered citizenship during the 1920s. Her own study of a democracy that collapsed in 1933 has informed her understanding of the humanities as a foundation for a vital democracy in the present and future.

Weston Twardowski (PhD, Northwestern University, 2022) is a collaborative artist interested in creating art that addresses urgent, contemporary problems facing our world. At Rice, he is a lecturer of Theatre and Environmental Studies, associate director of the Center for Environmental Studies in the School of Humanities and associate director of the Sustainability Institute’s EcoStudio.