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Q&A with Carissa M. Harris

Meet Carissa Harris, Member in the School of Historical Studies, who is an Associate Professor at Temple University. In 2020–21, she is exploring how anger became feminized in the late medieval English popular imagination.

Spotlight 2020–21

Get to know IAS through the Spotlight, an introduction to life at the Institute highlighting the scholars, programs, and facilities that make our mission of advancing knowledge possible.

Covid-19 Updates

CAMPUS REOPENING
As of September 8, the Institute campus has partially reopened, and Faculty, Members, and a limited number of essential staff may request access to work in their offices. The Health Screening Form must be completed each morning before coming to campus and approved by the IAS Covid-19 Response Team. 

* At this time, the Institute's academic campus is accessible only to the IAS community, and is not open to nonessential visitors, members of the public, or family members, including children. 

We have created a series of Return-to-Campus guides that contain more information and should be consulted before coming to campus. 

TRAVEL
Travelers and residents entering New Jersey from any U.S. state or territory beyond the immediate region (New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Delaware) should self-quarantine for 10 days. Individuals who test negative on a viral test for Covid-19 must self-quarantine for 7 full days. For the most up-to-date information, view New Jersey Covid FAQs. 

Additionally, individuals who leave the state of New Jersey for more than 24 hours must complete the IAS Travel Questionnaire upon their return. 

FACE COVERINGS
The State of New Jersey’s mandate requires everyone to wear a face covering indoors, including common spaces, hallways, and libraries—even if you are the only person in the space. If you are working in a private office and another person enters, please put your face covering on and stay at least six feet apart. Outdoors, face coverings also should be worn if social distancing isn't possible.

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Karen Uhlenbeck on Being the First Woman to Receive the Abel Prize

By Karen Uhlenbeck

It's not so easy being a role model. One of the things you learn when you’re going through life and so forth is that you need role models, but you don’t need perfect role models. You need role models who fall down and pick themselves up. You need role models who show how even though you can’t do everything, you can do some things. You need role models to keep you going.

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Joan W. Scott’s Critical History of Inequality

Clyde Plumauzille

Now that “gender theory” has fallen under attack in France, denounced by its critics as an ideology that destroys the natural order and upsets the political and social balance, it seems fitting, if not crucial, that we take a look back on the ever-changing thoughts of a historian who has contributed greatly to the introduction of the concept of gender within the field of historiography. 

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The People of Monotheism and Justice

By Sabine Schmidtke

While traditionalist theologians considered any rational speculation over the dicta of the revealed sources to be impermissible ... they need to be accepted “without asking how” (bi-lā kayfa). The issue took center stage among the rationalist theologians who were unwilling to compromise on the doctrine of tawhīd. The principal defenders of monotheism were the so-called Muʿtazila, the “People of Monotheism and Justice” (ahl al-tawhīd wa-l-ʿadl) as their adherents called themselves, a theological movement that flourished between the eighth and thirteenth century C.E.