Theme for 2026-2027: Silence/Noise

Turn on the news, open a social media app, and listen to administrators and it is plain to see that there is a fixation on our attention span, the way we listen, what we hear, and the privatization of those experiences. We also live in a moment where the silencing of voices, the noise of protest, and the shouting between all sides proliferates. In this year, we ask our colleagues and students: in what ways do we see silence and noise in our world? How does this twinned pair operate, literally and figuratively? 

Theme for 2025-2026: Borders/Crossings

At a time when crossing political borders—on maps, in discourse, in public and private—seems fraught, and at a time when boundaries around ideas, ideology, and definition are being both rigorously questioned and vehemently (re)inforced, we ask the UVM campus to explore how, when, and why the reality and construction of borders and the crossings thereof operate, and to what avail. 

Theme for 2024-2025: Justice/Injustice

We are experiencing the global rise of hate crimes, increasing fears about and the realities of growing far-right politics at home and abroad, rising costs and inflation, the defunding of education, continued limits of access to healthcare, increasing legal, digital, and physical attacks on trans people, the ongoing and multifaceted impacts of climate crisis, and the ever- present specters of racism, ableism, casteism, classism, sexism.