Johanna Hedva Beckwith Lecture: And The Human, Stuck in a Permanent State of Smelling Like Dirt

Join us for the 2024 Leo and Betty Beckwith Lecture with Johanna Hedva, co-presented with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston at 230 Fenway. 

Hedva will share excerpts from their newest publication How to Tell When We Will Die. The publication expands upon Hedva’s paradigm-shifting perspective in a series of slyly subversive and razor-sharp essays that range from the theoretical to the personal—from Deborah Levy and Susan Sontag to wrestling, kink, mysticism, death, and the color yellow. Drawing from their experiences with America’s byzantine healthcare system, and considering archetypes they call The Psychotic Woman, The Freak, and The Hag in Charge, Hedva offers a bracing indictment of the politics that exploit sickness—relying on and fueling ableism—to the detriment of us all. 

Johanna Hedva is a Korean American writer, artist, and musician from Los Angeles. Hedva is the author of the essay collection How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom, which won the Amber Hollibaugh Award for LGBTQ Social Justice Writing. They are also the author of the novels Your Love Is Not Good and On Hell; and Minerva the Miscarriage of the Brain, a collection of poems, performances, and essays. Their artwork has been shown internationally, and their albums are Black Moon Lilith in Pisces in the 4th House and The Sun and the Moon.

ASL and CART from Hands in Motion, Boston are available for this program. TUAG strives to make our exhibitions and programming accessible for all audiences. If you have any questions or would like to discuss how to best make a program accessible for you, please email galleryaccessibility@tufts.edu.