CHSS Events
Fall 2025 Events
Text and Textile in Indian Culture: A conversation with author Dr. Chitra Banerjee
Divakaruni
August 16, 2025
10 a.m. - 12 p.m.
Event Location:
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Susan and Fayez S. Sarofim Campus
The Audrey Jones Beck Building
Hirsch Library, Lower Level 5601 Main Street
Paid parking available at 1144 Binz Street
UHD students, faculty, and staff are warmly invited to an upcoming community engagement program at the MFAH Hirsch Library in connection to the exhibition, From India to the World: Textiles from the Parpia Collection.
Renowned author and UH professor, Dr. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, will lead a conversation on text and textile in Indian culture, with a focus on Indian mythologies. Additionally, MFAH curatorial assistant of Art of the Islamic Words, Anushka Hosain, will provide an introduction to two Mughal pages depicting scenes from the Razmnama (Mahabharata). Following the talk, guests will be invited to join the speakers and curator for a complimentary visit to the exhibition.
Dr. Chitra Divakaruni is a professor of creative writing at the University of Houston and a best-selling author of 23 books. She is the winner of literary awards such as the American Book Award, a PEN Josephine Miles Award, a Premio Scanno Award from Italy, a Light of India Award, and a Times of India Best Author Award. Her work has been translated into 30 languages and made into films, plays, dance dramas, and operas.
Space is limited. Kindly RSVP to Estefania Garcia at esgarcia@mfah.org.
This event is brought to you by UHD’s Cultural Enrichment Center in partnership with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Second Language & Health Symposium (2025)
10:00 a.m. - 3:15 p.m.
October 1, 2025
Location: TBA
The Second Language & Health Symposium (2025) is scheduled to take place October 1 at the University of Houston-Downtown (One Main Street, 77002). This year, we have planned the symposium in collaboration with HITA (Houston Interpreters & Translators Association) to coincide with International Translators' Day."
God of Carnage
O'Kane Theatre Fall Production
October - November
God of Carnage is a sharp, dark comedy by Yasmina Reza that explores the thin veneer of civility between two sets of parents who meet to discuss a playground fight between their sons. What begins as a polite conversation quickly unravels into chaos, revealing deep-seated tensions, hypocrisy, and the primal instincts lurking beneath the surface of modern adult relationships. Witty and brutally honest, the play holds a mirror to the absurdities of social pretenses.
14th Annual UHD Halloween Horror Film Screening
October 16, 2025
Film starts at dark (around 7 p.m.) ends around 8:30 p.m.
Students begin to gather at 6 p.m.
North Deck (Robertson Auditorium if weather does not allow outdoor screening)
UHD’s 14th year of horror film programming for the public during Halloween season provides the third and final installment in a three-year commitment to classic U.S. slasher films with NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (dir. Wes Craven, 1984). Slashing apart the difference between waking life and dream worlds, NIGHTMARE is an original in the slasher subgenre in how it horrifically melts, mutates, and stretches the limits of what seems like ordinary reality. Ordinary spaces like a high school boiler room, a classroom, and the bedrooms and bathrooms in suburban middle-class homes become nightmarish spaces of danger. Freddy Krueger; the film’s once-human, undead monster whose very touch threatens to slice open our skin; also breaks new ground in American horror story telling. Selected to complete a program that began with 2023’s screening of HALLOWEEN (dir. John Carpenter, 1976) and continued with 2024’s screening of FRIDAY THE 13th (dir. Sean S. Cunningham), students in UHD’s film studies minor and concentration suggested this independent, atmospheric slasher as our very best choice.
UHD’s Annual Halloween Horror Film Screening transforms UHD’s North Deck into a lit-up site of artistic and cultural expression, community belonging, and public feelings. Please join UHD students, staff, faculty, alumni, and members of Houston’s vibrant film communities for this evening of socialization, networking, and thinking through fear and disgust under the waning crescent moon.