The Havens Wright Center for Social Justice

Visiting Scholars Program

The Visiting Scholars Program brings distinguished critical scholars and activists from around the world to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Visiting scholars spend 2-3 days in residence at the Havens Center, delivering lectures, conducting seminars, and meeting with students, faculty, and the interested public. The Visiting Scholars Program enriches the campus and community in several ways. Scholars speak with expertise on a wide range of topics, very often presenting the findings of recently conducted original research. Havens Center lectures and seminars are also sites of cross-disciplinary discussion among faculty and students and a context in which people from the broader community can participate in intellectually stimulating programs with academics. The Center also maintains an extensive archive of audio recordings (and more recently, video recordings) of past lectures on our website. Through the Visiting Scholars Program, the Center also offers a Colloquium in Critical Sociology, which is available every semester and can be taken for variable credit.

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Archive

See an archive of past scholar visits.

Sociology 994

Students can earn up to 3 credits in Sociology 994 (Colloquium in Critical Sociology) by attending Visiting Scholars Program lectures and seminars. Graduate students have the option of registering for Sociology 994 for either graded or ungraded credit (s/u). UNDERGRADUATE students MUST take the course for GRADED credit.

The seminar is organized very flexibly, so students can take from one to three credits in a term, depending on the number of visiting scholars during that term. Students may decide at any point which lecture and seminar series to attend for credit, and it is possible to register for credits at any point in the semester. Students can also accumulate credits over the span of two semesters, up to a maximum of three credits.

For UNGRADED CREDIT:

  • Students are required to attend lectures and seminars and do the readings provided by the visiting scholar. To earn ONE UNGRADED CREDIT, a student is expected to attend TWO WEEKS of lectures and seminars.

For GRADED CREDIT:

  • Students are required to attend all lectures and seminars. To earn ONE GRADED CREDIT, a student is expected to attend THREE WEEKS of lectures and seminars.
  • Students are required to write a short memo (5-10 pages) for each of the visiting scholars. The memos should raise important and engaging issues and questions, based on the scholars’ lectures. The memos are to be completed by noon the Friday following the visiting scholar’s visit and should be sent to Patrick Barrett (pbarrett@ssc.wisc.edu).
  • The lineup of visiting scholars is available on the Havens Center website. The locations of the lectures and seminars are listed there, and the readings will be available there as well.

To register (or to get more information about Sociology 994), please contact Patrick Barrett (pbarrett@ssc.wisc.edu or 262-0854), indicating how many credits you intend to enroll for and whether you will be taking the course for graded credit or ungraded credit.

Award for Lifetime Contribution to Critical Scholarship

Every few years, the Havens Center bestows the Award for Lifetime Contribution to Critical Scholarship on an individual whose work and career has demonstrated a distinguished and extensive record of scholarly achievement in the critical tradition of social thought as well as a strong commitment to social justice. To date, recipients have included:

  • Frances Fox Piven (2004)
  • Howard Zinn (2006)
  • Noam Chomsky (2010)
  • Eduardo Galeano (2013)
  • Barbara Ehrenreich (2014)
  • Tariq Ali (2018)

Spring 2020 Visiting Scholars

Past Visiting Scholars