This series presented thinkers and writers from the NYU intellectual community whose work has an urgent bearing on the present.

With deep contexts, these lessons in cultural history help us ask: What do we need to know in an emergency? How is this emergency related to the past and how is it particular to the present? What do we need to learn and remember in moments of social fracture? How do we reason urgently? How can we learn differently? What emerges in an emergency?

The first lecture - “The Political Uses of Emotion: What Can We Learn from Spanish Fascism?” - was offered by Prof. Jo Labanyi: