The Meaning of the American Revolution in 2026
2026-04-10 09:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 2520 Cimarron Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90018, United States
Conference organized by Professors Craig Yirush (University of California, Los Angeles), and Brad A. Jones (California State University, Fresno)
On the 200th anniversary of the American Revolution in 1976, Americans celebrated it as the story of a struggle for liberty which culminated in the creation of the world’s first democratic republic. Leading historians largely concurred with this nationalistic view of the Revolution’s significance. They disagreed about whether the republicanism of the new nation was liberal and individualistic, or classical and communitarian; but they all agreed that the Revolution sparked a “contagion of liberty” which transformed American society.
Approaching the 250th anniversary in 2026, things are very different. While the public continues to think about the Revolution in democratic and egalitarian terms, historians are no longer so confident that the Revolution ushered in an age of liberty.
This conference will gather a group of leading scholars to see where scholarship about the Revolution is fifty years later, on its 250th anniversary, exploring how we’ve come to rethink this important event, including its broader continental and global reach, and its racial and ideological underpinnings. By addressing the talks to a largely non-academic and public audience, we hope to show non-scholars the new ways historians are currently thinking about the meaning of this seminal event in U.S. and world history.
The list of speakers, the conference schedule, and the registration form are available on our website.

This event is free to attend with advance registration and will be held in person at the Clark Library.
Registration will close on Monday, April 6 at 5:00 p.m.
Capacity is limited at the Clark Library; walk-in registrants are welcome as space permits.

“The Evolution of Animal Consciousness” – Eva Jablonka, Prof. Emerita, Tel Aviv University
2026-04-10 16:00 - 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Royce Hall – Room 306
Friday, April 10, 2026
4:00 – 6:00 PM
Royce Hall 306
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Join us on April 10, 2026 for a talk with Eva Jablonka, hosted by the UCLA Department of Philosophy. The talk will take place from 4:00 – 6:00 PM in Royce 306.

The Evolution of Animal Consciousness

The study of animal consciousness is becoming a respectable domain of study, which has implications for neuroscience, evolutionary biology and ethics. In this lecture I discuss the theoretical commitments of different naturalistic approaches to animal consciousness and point to markers of consciousness. I suggest that an approach focusing on cognitive capacities in humans that were shown by contrastive experiments (comparing conscious and non-conscious perception) to require consciousness is a good starting point for the search for consciousness markers in non-human animals. However, the choice of contrastive experiments that are deemed relevant for animals is theory-dependent. I present an evolutionary approach suggesting that consciousness is the outcome of the evolution of a complex form of associative learning (unlimited associative learning, UAL), and that the cognitive architecture that evolved to enable this kind of learning is the architecture of minimal consciousness. This theory provides a framework for observational and experimental studies in animals and has many testable predictions. I end by discussing the implications of the evolutionary approach for consciousness studies and for research in evolutionary biology.

Eva Jablonka is Professor emerita, The Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel-Aviv University. At present, she is a visiting fellow in the Simons Center for Systems Biology in the IAS, Princeton.

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California Medieval Seminar (Spring 2026)
2026-04-11 09:30 - 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Royce 306
Participation in the Seminar consists of group discussion of pre-circulated papers, typically drafts of articles, book chapters, or dissertation chapters (with complete apparatus). Two of the papers are ordinarily by emerging scholars (including PhD students) and the other two are by established scholars. We allocate one hour per paper and presenters should anticipate substantial, and substantive, feedback. Calls for presenters are circulated via e-mail from the Center approximately two months prior to each meeting and papers are accepted on a first-come basis.
Faculty, postdocs, and grad students from across California are welcome to participate.
The papers will be discussed at the seminar in the following order:

“Threats and Violence in Carolingian Disputing,” Amos Bronner (The Catholic University of America)
“Apostolic Legends and Visions of Christian Globality in the Twelfth Century: An Indian Cleric Visits Rome,” John Eldevik (Hamilton College)
“Were Married Clerics Tonsured?” Fiona Griffiths (Stanford)
“Narrative Sequences of the Apocalypse in Romanesque Italy: Location, Structure, Function, Meaning,” Alison Perchuk (California State University Channel Islands)

Register to attend in Royce 306
Register to attend via ZOOM
More information can be found here.

2026 ELTS Job Fair
2026-04-13 09:00 - 16:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Royce Hall 306 & 314
Thinking about internships, careers, or what comes after UCLA?
Join us at the 2026 ELTS Job Fair on April 13 to meet people working across global industries — from cultural institutions to media, tech, and beyond.
Come for the networking, stay for the conversations, and start to get a clearer sense of what your path could look like.
And don’t just listen—ask. Go to this webpage to submit a question you actually want answered.
We’ll bring selected questions into the live roundtable.
Presented by the UCLA Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies.

“Evolutionary Theory and the Unification of Life Sciences in the 21st Century” – Eva Jablonka, Prof. Emerita, Tel Aviv University
2026-04-13 12:00 - 13:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Haines Hall 352
Monday, April 13, 2026
12:00 – 1:30 PM
Haines Hall 352
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Join us on April 13, 2026 at 12:00 – 1:30 PM in Haines Hall 352 for a talk with Eva Jablonka, hosted by the UCLA Department of Anthropology. This lecture is part of the Frank Marlowe Memorial Lecture Series, in the Center for Behavior, Evolution and Culture.

There will be a reception to launch the exhibition of artwork by Jablonka’s collaborator, Anna Zeligowski, with food and drinks at 5:30 – 7:00 PM in Dodd Hall 321.

Evolutionary Theory and the Unification of Life Sciences in the 21st Century

I argue that the changes in our current view of evolutionary theory are leading to a new unification of life-sciences, which is occurring, seemingly paradoxically, within the context of their increased specialization and fracturing. Unlike the modern evolutionary synthesis of the 20th century (the MS) which claimed that selection is the only direction-giving process in evolution, the current synthesis incorporates not only new biological domains but also processes that were excluded by the MS. I consider two aspects of this unification: the first is the synthesis between development and heredity, which involves enrichment of both notions and is leading to important changes in our view of evolution, discussed within the framework of the extended evolutionary synthesis (EES). The second aspect is the study of mental processes stemming from research into the evolutionary origins and effects of consciousness. I argue that these developments enable the construction of a unifying evolutionary framework for the expanding domain of 21st century life sciences, which is becoming based on broader and richer views of heredity, adaptation and cognition.

Eva Jablonka is Professor emerita, The Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel-Aviv University. At present, she is a visiting fellow in the Simons Center for Systems Biology in the IAS, Princeton.

Visit the Anthropology event page for more info: https://bec.ucla.edu/event/eva-jablonka-prof-emeritus-tel-aviv-univ/

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“After Oscar”: A Conversation with Merlin Holland about Family, Scandal, and Legacies
2026-04-13 16:00 - 17:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 2520 Cimarron Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90018, United States
Oscar Wilde died in November 1900, exiled in Paris and exhausted by scandal and prison life. The details of his life in the limelight are well known; what has regularly been ignored are the reverberations of the scandal for decades after his death: the challenges his descendants faced, the myths and legends, the quarrels between his friends and enemies, and the court cases.
During this special event, Wilde’s only grandson, Merlin Holland, will speak with Rebecca Fenning Marschall, Manuscripts & Archives Librarian, about his new book, After Oscar: The Legacy of a Scandal, which details the remarkable posthumous life of one of the most celebrated literary and cultural figures. With pathos, humor, and his grandfather’s signature wit, Holland charts the extraordinary afterlife of the legendary writer and thinker, tracing the dramatic fluctuations in Wilde’s posthumous reputation and exposing a century of bigotry and hypocrisy within the cultural establishment.
An account of Oscar’s “posthumous life,” After Oscar: The Legacy of a Scandal, showing that his grandfather has caused even more trouble after his death than when he was alive, will be published in the United States on April 7, 2026. One of the most important works on Wilde in over fifty years, After Oscar exposes decades of sensationalist conjecture surrounding the Wilde family, and documents a century of homophobia within the British establishment. Illuminating and heartbreaking, Holland has written a book that will amuse, infuriate, fascinate, and shock. Mr. Holland will be available to sign copies of his new book at this event. Attendees are encouraged to bring their own copy; a limited number of books will be available at the event.
After Oscar Wilde’s conviction in 1895, his wife, Constance, and their two sons were forced to move abroad and change their name to Holland. The family has never reverted to the name Wilde. Merlin Holland writes, lectures, and broadcasts regularly on the subject of his grandfather’s life. Publications include Irish Peacock and Scarlet Marquess, the first complete record of the libel trial which ultimately brought Oscar Wilde to ruin and social disgrace, and The Wilde Album, a pictorial biography of Oscar Wilde. He is also the co-editor of The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde and author of Conversations with Oscar Wilde, a series of imaginary conversations between him and his grandfather.
The Oscar Wilde holdings at the Clark Library are the largest and most significant in the world and include nearly every edition of every printed book by and about Wilde, in addition to a large number of his literary manuscripts and correspondence. The Library collects Wilde’s works in translation in as many languages as possible, as well as materials related to his wider social circle and the generations of artists, writers, and queer activists immediately before and after Wilde. Other collections are related to contemporary social movements, theater, bibliophilic clubs, and university life. A display of books and manuscripts from this collection will be available for viewing in the north and south book rooms prior to the conversation.

The event is free to attend with advance registration. It will be held in-person at the Clark Library and livestreamed on the Center’s YouTube Channel. No registration is required to watch the livestream. Seating is limited at the Clark Library; walk-in registrants are welcome as space permits.
Visit the event webpage to register.

Living on After Failure. A Talk with Irving Goh | Program in Experimental Critical Theory
2026-04-14 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Kaplan Hall 348, 415 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
The Program in Experimental Critical Theory presents
Living on After Failure
A Talk with Irving Goh

Tuesday, April 14, 2026
5:00pm PDT
Kaplan Hall Room #348
In person

Advanced Registration
Advanced registration is required by Friday, April 10, 2026.
REGISTER TO ATTEND HERE

About the Talk
In this talk, Irving Goh will present on his latest book, Living On After Failure (Duke UP, 2025). He will share his thoughts on failure as failure, that is, failure without recuperation, failure as all negativity. Such a thinking of failure as a thorough impasse not only resists narratives of progress and ideologies of success and their accompanying notions of grit and resilience. It also registers, at the ontological level, the affective structure of existence. Professor Goh will also discuss the literary texts that inform his work on failure.

Readings to be discussed are listed below and are available on the ECT site:

Introduction and Ch. 3 of Living On After Failure.

About the Speaker
Irving Goh is Professor of Comparative Literature at Emory University. He is the author of The Reject: Community, Politics, and Religion after the Subject (Fordham UP, 2014), which won the MLA 23rd Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for French and Francophone Studies, L’existence prépositionnelle (Galilée, 2019), The Deconstruction of Sex (with Jean-Luc Nancy, Duke UP, 2021), and most recently, Living On After Failure (Duke UP, 2025). His next book, Touching Literature, or the Experience of the Limit, will be published by Cornell UP this summer 2026. For his current book projects, he is interested in the end(s) of work, world literature and the question of citizenship, and theorizing the Asian figure.

About the Program in Experimental Critical Theory
The focus of the 2025-2026 Experimental Critical Theory seminar (COM LIT250), taught by Professor Eleanor Kaufman, is “Structure.”

CANCELLED: 2025-26 UCLA Art Council Distinguished Scholar Lectureship in Art History – Hilton Als, Part Two
2026-04-15 19:30 - 21:00 UTC | Billy Wilder Theater, Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA, 90024
NOTE: Due to unforeseen circumstances, part two of the UCLA Art Council Distinguished Scholar Lectureship with Hilton Als is cancelled. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused and thank you for your understanding.
Hilton Als delighted the audience in part one of the 2025-26 UCLA Art Council Distinguished Scholar Lectureship in Art History on Wednesday, March 5th. If you missed this talk on Diane Arbus, you can watch it on YouTube here.
Als will be returning to the Billy Wilder Theater on Wednesday, April 15th at 7:30 PM for a conversation with Zoë Ryan, Director of the Hammer Museum. The conversation will be on curating, and specifically giving attention to the many exhibitions he has curated both at the Hammer (Joan Didion) and elsewhere, specifically to the kind of artists and artworks he has highlighted, and to the larger issue of his curating exhibitions in relation to the issue of writing, and to literature and specific writers (from James Baldwin to Jean Rhys).
Please join us for Part Two of this lecture series. All are welcome!

A corazón abierto: notas para una escritura quirúrgica
2026-04-17 15:00 UTC | Rolfe Hall 4302, Lydeen Library, Rolfe Hall 4302, Lydeen Library
Lina Meruane (hija de un cardiólogo jubilado) aborda la aparición del “corazón abierto” en la novelística latinoamericana. Inspirada por El intruso (2006), relato de Jean Luc Nancy sobre su trasplante de corazón, Meruane examina trastornos reales (incluido su reciente episodio de arritmia) y comenta problemáticas éticas y estéticas en tres novelas quirúrgicas: Sutura (2025), de Sofía Balbuena, La novela del corazón (2022) de Roberto Castillo y Todo está bien, salvo mi corazón, (2022) de Héctor Abad Faciolince.
Lina Meruane es una escritora chilena y doctora en literatura (New York University, 2009). Su obra incluye dos colecciones de relatos y cinco novelas traducidas a doce lenguas, así como diez libros de ensayo sobre el cuerpo y la enfermedad, los feminismos y la cuestión palestina. Su obra ha sido reconocida con los premios José Donoso (Chile), Metrópolis Azul (Canadá), Cálamo (España), Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (México), Anna Seghers (Alemania), y las becas Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Arts y DAAD. Actualmente dirige el programa de escritura creativa en la Universidad de Nueva York, donde también es escritora distinguida.

Colloquium: “Beyond Speech: Pictures and Oppression” – A.W. Eaton (University of Illinois, Chicago)
2026-04-17 16:00 - 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Royce Hall 314
Friday, April 17, 2026
4:00 – 6:00 PM
Royce Hall 314
RSVP HERE

Join us on Friday, April 17, 2026 for a colloquium with A.W. Eaton, University of Illinois, Chicago. The talk will take place from 4:00 – 6:00 PM in Royce 314 with a reception to follow.

Beyond Speech: Pictures and Oppression

Philosophical work on oppressive forms of expression strongly tends to give verbal and written linguistic expression pride of place. When it comes to pictures, there is a tendency to either treat them as if they were language – one sees this in feminist work on pornography – or worse, to ignore pictures altogether when the topic at hand least typically pictorial or typically has a significant pictorial dimension – one sees this in Jason Stanley’s work on propaganda. Against this linguisticism, I argue that central and influential forms of oppressive “speech” are in fact pictorial and that to understand how they do their oppressive work, we must approach pictures as pictures rather than as forms of spoken or written language. In this paper, I first examine one glaring case of linguisticism, then say something about what I think is going on here, and finally briefly examine examples of oppressive pictures and give the outlines of an explanation of how they do their oppressive work.

Please note that I will be discussing pictures that glorify and eroticize rape, and pictures that mock, shame, and demean Black persons. I will also mention pictures of lynchings. I will briefly show some of these pictures, though not the lynching pictures. I will not leave any pictures up for long because they are triggering or otherwise injurious for many of us. That, after all, is part of the point of this paper. I will do my best to give warning before I show or mention these pictures.

A.W. Eaton is Professor of Philosophy and Associate Dean at University of Illinois Chicago (sometimes known as “Chicago Circle”). She received her PhD in both philosophy and art history from The University of Chicago. She has published on topics such as the relationship between aesthetic and ethical value, pornography, erotic art, fatness, feminist aesthetics, aesthetics and race, and artistic representations of rape. She is currently developing a pragmatic account of pictures and working on various topics related to aesthetic injustice. Eaton has been a Laurence Rockefeller Fellow at Princeton’s Center for Human Values; Senior Research Fellow at Lichtenberg Kolleg, University of Göttingen; and the Brady Distinguished Visiting Associate Professor, Northwestern University.

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2026 USC-UCLA Graduate Conference in Philosophy
2026-04-18 10:00 - 17:50 (America/Los_Angeles) | Royce Hall 314
Saturday, April 18, 2026
UCLA, Royce Hall 314
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Join us for the 2026 USC-UCLA Graduate Student Conference in Philosophy happening on Saturday, April 18, 2026 at UCLA, Royce Hall, Room 314!

The USC-UCLA Graduate Student Conference began in 2006. Each year, the graduate students of the University of Southern California and the University of California, Los Angeles solicit high-quality papers in all areas of philosophy from graduate students studying at other departments to be presented at the annual conference.

This year’s keynote address will be given by Julia Staffel (University of Colorado, Boulder), whose talk is titled, “The Planning Fallacy and the Agent’s Perspective.”

Conference Program
Download PDF
Graduate Student Talks: 25 minutes for talk, 5 minutes for commentary, 5 minutes for a reply, 15 minutes for Q&A

10:00 – 10:55: “Innocent Apologies,” Ilya Shemmer (New York University)
11:00 – 11:55: “On inquiring lovingly: A Murdochian account,” Lepei Liu (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities)
12:00 – 1:20: Lunch (provided)
1:30 – 2:25: “What My Future Beliefs Should Be About,” Konstantinos M. Konstantinou (Stanford University)
2:30 – 3:25: “The Epistemic Rationality of Grit,” Jingzhi Chen (McGill University)
4:00 – 5:50: Keynote Address given by Julia Staffel (Boulder): “The Planning Fallacy and the Agent’s Perspective”
Dinner (for invited speakers and conference organizers) will be held at 6:30 after the conference.

For any questions, please contact uscucla.conference@gmail.com

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The Art of Duo | Musical Salon: From Lekeu to Los Angeles
2026-04-18 14:00 - 15:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 2520 Cimarron Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90018, United States
Ambroise Aubrun, violin
Steven Vanhauwaert, piano
This concert pays tribute to the refined tradition of musical salons, tracing their influence from nineteenth-century Vienna to early twentieth-century Los Angeles. At its heart is Guillaume Lekeu’s Violin Sonata, performed in homage to Alfred Megerlin, the Belgian violin virtuoso and concertmaster of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the 1920s. The L.A. Philharmonic itself was founded by William Andrews Clark Jr., a passionate patron of the arts who likely hosted intimate musical gatherings in the Drawing Room at the Clark Library. Through works by Schubert, Fauré, Debussy and others, the program evokes the elegance, intimacy, and cultural dialogue that defined salon music across generations and continents.
Further details and the complete program are on the website.

In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union
2026-04-21 14:00 - 15:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Royce Hall, 314, 314 Royce Hall, 10745 Dickson Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
The short fiction collected in In the Shadow of the Holocaust recovers a range of compelling voices that had been scarcely known or translated. Jewish authors from Ukraine, Lithuania, Russia, and Belarus, some writing in Yiddish and others in Russian, tell the stories of ordinary people living on after the massive devastation of the Holocaust on Soviet territory, depicting memories, conflicts, love, and loss. These are not stories only about how people died, but how they continued to live: an entire family legacy is reduced to a single tea cup, the now raspy voice of a telephone that once never stopped ringing, and a train timetable that lists key places of Jewish life largely destroyed but still vital. Translated by Sasha Senderovich and Harriet Murav, these stories provide new perspectives on questions fundamental to literature of the Holocaust and legacies of other genocides and mass violence.
Sasha Senderovich is Associate Professor of Slavic Languages & Literatures and of International Studies at the University of Washington. With Harriet Murav, he translated David Bergelson’s Judgment: A Novel (2017). He is the author of How the Soviet Jew Was Made (2022). Harriet Murav is Center for Advanced Study Professor Emerita at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her most recent books are David Bergelson’s Strange New World: Untimeliness and Futurity (2019) and As the Dust of the Earth: The Literature of Abandonment in Revolutionary Russia and Ukraine (2024).
Tuesday, April 21, 2026 • 314 Royce Hall • 2 PM
In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union
Sasha Senderovich (University of Washington, Seattle) and
Harriet Murav (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
Moderators: Michael Rothberg (UCLA) & Lilya Kaganovsky (UCLA)
The 1939 Society Program in Holocaust Studies
Lecture made possible by The 1939 Society, a division of Holocaust Museum Los Angeles
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UCLA Department of Art History Colloquium with Felix Ho Yuen Chan, Apr. 22
2026-04-22 13:00 - 14:00 UTC | Dodd Hall Room 275, 390 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, 90095, United States
Please join us for a Department of Art History Colloquium with featured speaker Felix Ho Yuen Chan on Wednesday, Apr. 22 at 1 PM in Dodd 275 for his talk, Work on [Il]literacy: Sidney D. Gamble’s “May Fourth China” Photographs (1917-1925).

Pourdavoud Lecture Series: Jake Nabel
2026-04-22 16:00 - 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Royce 306
Misunderstanding in Ancient Interstate Relations
The Arsacid Princes of the Roman Empire
Jake Nabel (Pennsylvania State University)
Wednesday, April 22, 2026 at 4:00 pm Pacific Time
Royce Hall 306 and Via Zoom

Registration Link: https://forms.gle/ZFb7yBFBeEs2VfMt6
Zoom: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/92060104969

In the first century CE, several Arsacid princes from the Iranian empire of Parthia were sent to live at the court of the Roman emperor. While Roman authors called these figures “hostages” and scholars have studied them as such, this talk will employ Iranian and Armenian sources to argue that the Parthians would have seen them as the emperor’s foster-children. These divergent perspectives allowed each empire to perceive itself as superior to the other, since the two sides interpreted the transfer of royal children through conflicting cultural frameworks. Moving beyond the paradigms of anarchy and hierarchy, this focus advances a new vision of interstate relations with misunderstanding at its center. The talk is based on the book The Arsacids of Rome, which was recently published by the University of California Press in the Pourdavoud Institute’s Iran and the Ancient World series.

About the Speaker
Jake Nabel is the Tombros Early Career Professor of Classical Studies and an Assistant Professor of Classics & Ancient Mediterranean Studies at Penn State. He is a historian of ancient Rome, pre-Islamic Iran, and the points of contact between the two. Jake has published on Roman-Parthian relations, Latin and Iranian literature, ancient political thought, and the Hellenistic east. His current book project is on the concept of freedom in late antique Iran.
About the Book
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.
At the beginning of the common era, the two major imperial powers of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East were Rome and Parthia. In this book, Jake Nabel analyzes Roman-Parthian interstate politics by focusing on a group of princes from the Arsacid family—the ruling dynasty of Parthia—who were sent to live at the Roman court. Although Roman authors called these figures “hostages” and scholars have studied them as such, Nabel draws on Iranian and Armenian sources to argue that the Parthians would have seen them as the emperor’s foster-children. These divergent perspectives allowed each empire to perceive itself as superior to the other, since the two sides interpreted the exchange of royal children through conflicting cultural frameworks. Moving beyond the paradigm of great powers in conflict, The Arsacids of Rome advances a new vision of interstate relations with misunderstanding at its center.

Humanities Career Panel Series: Careers in Design and Communication
2026-04-23 16:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Zoom
Careers in design and communication are available in nearly every industry! Hear from alumni who have leveraged their skills and knowledge to pursue a variety of paths within these evolving fields, and learn how their UCLA
degrees have helped them in their career journey.
This event is presented in partnership with the UCLA Career Center.
Panelists
Savannah Shapiro, Senior Copywriter, Ingram Micro
Kirsten Lew, Associate Digital Media Producer, Getty Research Institute
Other panelists to be announced soon
Register now on Handshake

Emily Greenwood | “Audre Lorde and Plato’s Menexenus: The Master’s House and the House of Difference”
2026-04-23 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Dodd 247
The UCLA Department of Classics is pleased to present a lecture by Professor Emily Greenwood, Harvard University entitled “Audre Lorde and Plato’s Menexenus: The Master’s House and the House of Difference”

“The Distribution of Doubt” – Eleanor Gordon-Smith (University of Southern California)
2026-04-24 16:00 - 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Dodd Hall 321
Friday, April 24, 2026
4:00 – 6:00 PM
Dodd Hall 321
RSVP HERE

Join us on Friday, April 24, 2026 for a lecture by Eleanor Gordon-Smith (University of Southern California). This event is hosted by Women in Philosophy. The talk will take place from 4:00 – 6:00 PM in Dodd 321 with a small reception to follow.

The Distribution of Doubt

In this talk I connect two seemingly disparate questions. First, how suspicious should each of us be of our fellow members of public life? On the one hand, it is important for us to find out about malfeasance where it exists; this seems to recommend a lot of scrutiny. On the other hand, many of our most important political and social projects fare better when we do not subject each other to strong suspicion; collective projects often fare better under trust or hope or faith than under suspicion. Second question: what justifies the special privileges journalists seem to hold, e.g., to violate duties of confidentiality in the service of their discoveries?

The question of how suspicious we should be of one another in public life has frequently been understood as a question of which attitude we all should take. The effort to justify journalistic privileges has frequently been treated as an extension of rights to free speech. Against both tendencies, I argue for a division of skepticism, in which just some of us take on an attitude I call ‘paranoid investigating’ towards others in public life. Second, I argue that seeing journalists in the role of dedicated paranoid investigators supplies new and fruitful justification for their privileges. The ethics of interpersonal attitudes and the ethics of the press can both be advanced by this model, on which questions of attitudes in public life are not just individual epistemology or moral psychology at scale.

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Backgammon Night
2026-04-24 18:00 - 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | 2117 Rolfe Hall, 345 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, 90095, United States
Backgammon Night
Friday, April 24, 2026
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
2117 Rolfe Hall, UCLA Campus
RSVP here
This event is free, but space is limited.
Join us for mezedes and conversation.
Parking information:
If you plan on driving to UCLA, please note that parking is available at Parking Structure 5, located at 302 Charles E Young Dr N, Westwood, Los Angeles, CA 90095. We highly recommend purchasing your parking permit in advance for $17, as there will be no attendant on-site and parking is limited. To purchase your permit, please visit the Bruin ePermit website and choose Campus Event, then Backgammon Night: https://bruinepermit.t2hosted.com/pnw2/selectValue.aspx. This permit will be valid for only levels 1-4 in parking structure 5.
Accessible parking: If you have accessibility needs, you may park in the Pay-By-Space/Visitor Parking area on the rooftop (level 5) of this structure, and proceed to the Self-Service Pay Station machine to pay by credit card. Elevators are accessible on levels 1 and 4 only. Please visit our Campus Accessibility Map to view related information.
The nearest guest drop-off is the rooftop level of parking structure 5, next to the Anderson School of Business (see directions above).

29th Annual University of California Undergraduate Conference on Slavic and East/Central European Studies
2026-04-25 08:00 - 18:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | 314 Royce Hall, 10745 Dickson Ct, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Conference Page
Please visit the conference page for additional information.

RSVP for non-participants:
If you are not presenting but plan to attend the conference:
REGISTRATION FOR THIS EVENT HAS CLOSED.
Please RSVP here by Monday, April 20, 2026. The form lets you indicate if you plan to attend in person or via Zoom.
If you plan to attend virtually via Zoom: You MUST register by April 20. You will receive the Zoom link on April 21.

Call for Papers
Please view the Call for Papers on the conference page.

For participants:
All submissions are through the conference portal, which will open in mid-February.
♦ A tentative title and proposal are due by March 2nd. Please submit them here.
♦ The finalized paper title and short abstract are due by April 10. Please submit them here.
♦ Slideshow presentations are due by Friday, April 17. We are only accepting Google Slides due to the hybrid nature of the conference.We regret that we cannot accept presentations in any other formats (including PowerPoint, Prezi, Canva, etc). Please share your Google Slides link with lissetcadena@g.ucla.edu by Friday, April 17.
Include your first and last name in the Google Slides file title. Ex: “Joe Bruin-2026 Slavic Conference”.
You only need to share your Google Slides link once and you can continue to make edits to your slideshow, so please ensure that you share your Google Slides link with Lisset by April 17.
For questions, please email lisset@humnet.ucla.edu

Program and Abstracts
View the Program and Book of Abstracts here.

Location, Date and Time

The Conference will be held on Saturday, April 25, 2026 from 8:00am-6:30pm in Royce Hall at UCLA.
Royce Hall Room #314 (third floor)
10745 Dickson Ct
Los Angeles, CA 90095

Parking for campus visitors:

The closest parking structures to Royce Hall are Structure 2, Structure 3 North, Structure 4 and Structure 5. Parking rates vary by structure, so please refer to the rates here. Guest parking is available on a first come, first served basis. Please plan on arriving early to the event if you are not familiar with the campus or parking structures.

The UCLA Slavic department is not responsible for any tickets or citations received by event attendees. For further assistance, please contact the UCLA Transportation department directly.

VISITOR PARKING AREAS:
♦ Structure 2: Structure 2 has pay stations for visitors on the first and second floors. These floors are the only floors with visitor parking; there are also signs indicating which parking stalls are for visitors. The Google Maps link for the visitor’s section (“Pay Station Parking”) is here.
♦ Structure 3 North: Parking Structure 3 North, Visitor’s Section is located at 215 Charles E Young Dr N, Los Angeles, CA 90024. The parking structure has visitor parking in levels 1, 2 and 3. The Google Maps link to the visitor’s section (“Pay Station Parking”) is here.
♦ Structure 4: Parking Structure 4, Visitor’s Section is located at 221 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, CA 90095. The parking structure has visitor parking in level 1, and the entrance will state “Visitor’s Section” that guests enter through. The Google Maps link to the visitor’s section is here .
♦ Structure 5: Parking Structure 5, Visitor’s Section is located at 405 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA 90095. The parking structure has visitor parking in both levels 4 and 6, and the entrance will state “Visitor’s Section” that guests enter through. The link to the visitor’s section is here .
HOW TO PAY FOR PARKING:
Self-service pay stations are located in all visitor parking areas. Visitors must pay for parking BEFORE they leave their vehicles. Visitor parking permits are not valid in parking stalls outside of the visitor parking section of the structure and stalls posted for Blue and X permits or otherwise reserved.
1. All self-service pay stations use pay-by-plate technology.
2. Once parked, go to the nearest parking pay station
3. Enter your license plate number. If you do not have a license plate number, please enter the last 6 (six) digits of your Vehicle ID Number (VIN). Your VIN can be found on the driver’s side door or the lower driver’s side of the windshield.
4. Choose the amount of time that you would like to spend on campus.
5. Pay using the exact cash amount or with a credit card. For those using their VIN, please place your receipt on your dashboard, otherwise nothing else is required. Pay stations do not provide change. There are no refunds for pay station purchases.
Additional visitor parking information can be found on the UCLA Transportation website.

Parking for UCLA faculty, students, and staff:
Active Bruin ePemit Holders can request a “Transfer Permit” to cross-park in an alternate lot or structure on campus at no additional cost according to the privileges of your permit type. Check the Parking Permit Privileges for details.
– You can obtain a 1-Day cross-parking permit through the Bruin ePermit Portal, excluding Night and Weekend permit holders. The 1-Day cross parking permit is valid for same-day use only.
– Faculty and staff may receive a maximum of five (5) cross-parking permits per quarter.
– Please note, Cross Parking (Transfer) Permits will vary depending on parking space availability.
– To request a “Transfer Permit” please follow these instructions

Lodging and Visitor Info
There are several hotels located near the UCLA campus:
♦ Inn at UCLA (formerly the UCLA Guest House)
♦ UCLA Meyer and Renee Luskin Conference Center
♦ Palihotel Westwood Village
♦ W Los Angeles – West Beverly Hills
♦ Kimpton Hotel Palomar
♦ Luxe Sunset
♦ Hotel Angeleno
♦ Plaza La Reina
♦ Royal Palace
♦ Beverly Hills Plaza Hotel & Spa

UCLA campus maps: https://admission.ucla.edu/visit/maps-and-parking
Dining on campus (check weekend hours): https://www.asucla.ucla.edu/locations
Dining in Westwood Village: http://www.thewestwoodvillage.com/directory/?category=Dining
Transportation to/from LAX: http://www.supershuttle.com/
LA Metro: https://www.metro.net/riding/schedules-2/
Plan your trip from UCLA to the Russian area of LA (West Hollywood) on the LA Metro website.
Santa Monica Big Blue Bus: https://www.bigbluebus.com/
Be sure to check the location of the UCLA bus stops specifically on weekends.
Getty Center: https://www.getty.edu/visit/center/parking-and-transportation/
You need to make (free) reservations in advance.

Spinoza on Mind: A Manuscript Workshop
2026-04-25 10:00 - 2026-04-26 14:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Royce Hall – Room 306
April 25-26, 2026
Royce Hall 306
RSVP HERE

Please join us on Saturday-Sunday, April 25-26, 2026 in Royce Hall 306 for a manuscript workshop on Spinoza on Mind by Karolina Hübner!

Presented by: UCLA Modern Philosophy Roundtable
Title: A Manuscript Workshop: Spinoza on Mind by Karolina Hübner (UCLA)
Dates: Saturday-Sunday, April 25-26, 2026
Location: UCLA, Royce Hall, Room 306

Comments by:
Michael Della Rocca (Yale)
Sam Newlands (Notre Dame)
Kristin Primus (Berkeley)
Tad Schmaltz (Michigan)
Stephan Schmid (Hamburg)

For the manuscript precis and workshop details please email khubner@humnet.ucla.edu.

Workshop Program
Download PDF program
Saturday, April 25
10:00 – 10:30 AM: Coffee & light breakfast
10:30 – 10:35 AM: Justin Steinberg (Cornell/UCLA): Welcome
10:35 – 11:15 AM: Karolina Hübner (UCLA): Manuscript overview
11:45 AM – 12:45 PM: Michael Della Rocca (Yale): Expression and intelligibility
12:45 – 1:45 PM: Lunch for participants
1:45 – 2:45 PM: Stephan Schmid (Hamburg): The theory of ideas
3:15 – 4:15 PM: Kristin Primus (UC Berkeley): Arguments for a thinking substance
4:15 – 5:00 PM: General Discussion

Sunday April 26
9:30 – 10:00 AM: Coffee & light breakfast
10:00 – 11:00 AM: Sam Newlands (Notre Dame): Idealism and substance as an infinite thinking cause
11:30 AM – 12:30 PM: Tad Schmaltz (Michigan): Infinite intellect, idea Dei, and mental parts
12:30 – 1:00 PM: General Discussion
1:00 – 2:00 PM: Lunch for participants

RSVP HERE

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Chamber Music at the Clark presents: ATOS Trio
2026-04-26 14:00 - 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 2520 Cimarron Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90018, United States
Founded in Berlin, Germany in 2003, the ATOS Trio has established itself as one of the finest piano trios performing today. After intensive studies with Ilan Gronich, Menahem Pressler, and the Alban Berg Quartet, the Trio won the Deutsche Musikwettbewerb, the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson International Trio Award, and the Melbourne Chamber Music Competition. A New Generation Artists Award from the BBC and a Borletto Buitoni Award soon followed.
Since then, the ATOS Trio has performed in many of the world’s prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, and the Berlin Philharmonic Kammersaal, to name but a few, with a repertoire that includes all the piano trio masterworks as well as many contemporary pieces.
Further details and the full program are on our website.

Tickets for the ATOS Trio concert will go on sale at 12 noon on Tuesday, March 24, 2026.

“Because of slavery”: The Irreverent Art of Kara Walker and Harryette Mullen
2026-04-26 15:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | The Brick, 518 N. Western Ave., Los Angeles, CA, 90004
“Because of slavery” is the correct answer to the question: Why did the slaveholding states go to war against the free states of the Union? MONUMENTS reckons with deceptive narratives implicit in the presentation of a defeated Confederacy — not as traitors and losers, but as objects of hero worship. The Old South lost the Civil War but won the nation’s post-war reconciliation with monuments, movies, and textbooks that upheld white supremacy and perpetuated black subordination. Kara Walker’s art and Harryette Mullen’s poetry have in common an irreverent attitude toward oppressive systems and institutions, from the Lost Cause glorified in the proliferation of Confederate monuments to the ghosts of slavery still haunting American life. Walker and Mullen employ exacting craft to disarm the ugly isms with parody, satire, humor, and surprising remixes of historical and cultural artifacts.
In view of Walker’s Unmanned Drone, Mullen will read from her latest poetry collection, Regaining Unconsciousness.
This event is free and open to the public.
Harryette Mullen’s latest poetry collection, Regaining Unconsciousness (Graywolf, 2025) is one of Publishers Weekly’s and California Independent Booksellers Alliance’s Best Books of the Year. Recyclopedia (Graywolf, 2006) won a PEN Beyond Margins Award. Sleeping with the Dictionary (U of California, 2002) was a finalist for a National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and LA Times Book Award. The Cracks Between (U of Alabama, 2012), essays and interviews, received an Elizabeth Agee Award. Other books include Her Silver-Tongued Companion (Edinburgh U, 2024), Open Leaves (Black Sunflowers, 2023), and Urban Tumbleweed (Graywolf, 2013). She teaches literature and creative writing at UCLA.
This program is co-presented by The Brick and the UCLA College Division of Humanities in conjunction with MONUMENTS, an exhibition co-organized and co-presented by The Brick and The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles (MOCA).

All Consuming: Germans, Jews, and the Meaning of Meat
2026-04-28 16:00 - 17:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Royce Hall, 306, 306 Royce Hall, 10745 Dickson Plaza, Los Angeles, 90095, United States
Meat is one of the most visible markers of Jewish distinctness and social separation. In his most recent book, John Efron argues that meat has played an especially important role in the formation of Jewish and Christian identities in Germany from the Middle Ages until today. To an extent not seen elsewhere in Europe, the importance of meat is reflected in many realms including the visual arts, literature, religion, politics, commerce, and home life. Studying the history of meat and its multiple meanings in Germany tells us much about the changing nature of German and German-Jewish identity, the links between religion, nationality, politics, and food. Above all, focusing on meat provides us with a singular window into the rich, fraught, and ultimately tragic history of German Jewry.
John Efron is the Koret Professor of Jewish History at the University of California at Berkeley, where specializes in the cultural and social history of German Jewry. A native of Melbourne, Australia, he has a B.A. from Monash University, an M.A. from New York University, and a Ph.D. at Columbia University. In his work, Efron has focused on the way German Jewry attempted to reinterpret and reinvent Jewish culture in the wake of its complex encounter with modernity. Among his publications are Defenders of the Race: Jewish Doctors and Race Science in Fin-de-Siècle Europe (Yale UP, 1994); Medicine and the German Jews: A History (Yale UP, 2001); German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic (Princeton UP, 2016); The Jews: A Modern History (Routledge, forthcoming 2025); and All Consuming: Germans, Jews, and the Meaning of Meat (Stanford UP, 2025).
Tuesday, April 28, 2026 • 306 Royce Hall • 4 PM
All Consuming: Germans, Jews, and the Meaning of Meat
John Efron (UC Berkeley)
Moderator: David N. Myers (UCLA)
Naftulin Family Program on Studies in Jewish Identity
RSVP

Jewish Anti-Zionism as Political Theology: The Major Writings of Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum
2026-04-29 16:00 - 17:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Royce Hall, 306, 306 Royce Hall, 10745 Dickson Plaza, Los Angeles, 90095, United States
Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum of Satmar, one of the most celebrated Hasidic masters of the twentieth century, is known not only for founding the world’s largest Hasidic dynasty, but also for his strongly held anti-Zionist views. His work articulates a Jewish political theology against Zionism built on the foundations of traditional Jewish sources, and its influence remains strong within the ultra-Orthodox Satmar community and beyond. Dense with references to rabbinic, medieval, and modern sources, Teitelbaum’s writing is notoriously challenging even for scholars of Torah to parse. In this volume, Shaul Magid provides a richly annotated translation of selections from the books Vayoel Moshe and ‘Al Ha-Geulah ve ‘al Ha-Temurah, making Teitelbaum’s major political writings accessible to English-speaking readers for the first time.
Shaul Magid is Professor of Modern Jewish Studies in Residence at Harvard Divinity School. After spending time in various yeshivot in Israel, where he lived for a decade, and receiving rabbinical ordination in 1984, he went on to complete a master’s degree in Jewish thought from the Hebrew University and a Ph.D. in near eastern and Judaic studies from Brandeis University.
Magid’s research bridges centuries and disciplines, exploring topics from sixteenth-century Kabbalistic mysticism and Hasidism, including its spiritual ties to Christianity, to contemporary American Judaism, Jewish identity, race, and critical theory. His groundbreaking work engages a broad spectrum of readers, combining deep textual analysis with theoretical sophistication.
Magid is the author of nine books and more than 75 scholarly articles. He has also written over 150 essays, offering insight into the cultural, political, and spiritual dimensions of modern Jewish life. His writing has contributed significantly to broader conversations on religion, culture, and justice.
Wed, April 29, 2026 • 306 Royce Hall • 4 PM
Jewish Anti-Zionism as Political Theology: The Major Writings of Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum
Shaul Magid (Harvard Divinity School)
Respondents:
Leah Hochman (Hebrew Union College)
David N. Myers (UCLA)
Joshua Shanes (UC Davis)
RSVP

Dean’s Lecture in Humanistic Inquiry: Kate Manne on Sensitivity and Survival
2026-04-30 16:00 - 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Royce Hall 314, 10745 Dickson Ct, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
The Inaugural Dean’s Lecture in Humanistic Inquiry
Thursday, April 30
4 p.m. – 6 p.m.
Royce Hall Room 314
Free admission. Reception with light refreshments to follow lecture. Advance registration strongly recommended.
Presented by the UCLA College Division of Humanities
The Dean’s Lecture in Humanistic Inquiry is a biennial lecture dedicated to exploring cross-cutting topics and ideas in humanistic research and examining how humanistic inquiry connects to the most pressing questions of the day.
About our inaugural speaker
Kate Manne is a professor at the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University. She specializes in moral, social and feminist philosophy, and has written three books: DOWN GIRL: The Logic of Misogyny (Oxford University Press, 2018), ENTITLED: How Male Privilege Hurts Women (Crown, 2020) and UNSHRINKING: How to Face Fatphobia (Crown, 2024). In addition to her academic work, she regularly writes opinion pieces and essays for a wider audience, including in outlets such as The New York Times, The Cut, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Nation and Time. She writes a Substack newsletter, More to Hate, exploring misogyny, fatphobia and their intersection.
About Professor Manne’s lecture
Sensitivity and Survival
Accusations of oversensitivity are nowadays very common. Are they typically warranted? Is there in fact a scourge of snowflakes?
In this lecture, Kate Manne will distinguish three things that are commonly meant by “oversensitivity”: over-identification of instances, over-extension of the relevant concepts and over-reactions to the relevant harms or forms of injustice, such as sexism, misogyny and racism. Her talk will draw on two rich humanistic traditions: feminist epistemology and non-ideal theory.
While acknowledging that oversensitivity of all three kinds can and does occur, Manne will highlight and explore the comparatively under-emphasized converse dangers: the under-identification of instances, the under-extension of concepts, and under-reactions or the undermining of warranted reactions, respectively. In view of this, she concludes that what is called oversensitivity is often simply sensitivity: a normatively valuable and justified way of reacting to harms and injustices that often go under the radar in society as we know it.
Please visit this page to register.
Event cosponsors
Thank you to our cosponsors: UCLA Department of Philosophy, UCLA Department of Gender Studies, UCLA Center for the Study of Women | Streisand Center, and UCLA Program in Experimental Critical Theory

La Celestina: An Illuminated Lecture presented by theatre dybbuk
2026-04-30 19:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Philosophical Research Society, 3910 Los Feliz Blvd., Los Angeles, CA, 90027
Please join us for an illuminated lecture by Professor Barbara Fuchs on an extraordinary text from an extraordinary time, enlivened by the marvelous actors of theater dybbuk!
Written in Spain at the turn of the sixteenth century, soon after the expulsion of the Jews, La Celestina gives powerful voice to marginal characters somehow central to every exchange and transaction— wily go-betweens, panders, and disaffected servants. Along the way, it asks radically uncomfortable questions of its society and our own: what do we owe each other, especially across lines of class or gender? How do we make room for ourselves, when society has already decided on our place? In a time of profound dislocation, how do we find meaning in the world? A mix of manifesto and cautionary tale, bawdy story and philosophical meditation, La Celestina haunts us with its devastating insight.
Trained as a comparatist (English, Spanish, French, Italian), Professor Fuchs works on European cultural production from the late fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries, with a special emphasis on literature and empire, and on theater and performance in transnational contexts. As part of her commitment to the public humanities and collaborative work, she directs the UCLA “Diversifying the Classics” initiative and edits the series “The Comedia in Translation and Performance” for Juan de la Cuesta. She is also director of LA Escena, Los Angeles’ biennial festival of Hispanic classical theater, founded in 2018.
When: April 30, 2026, 7 p.m.
Where: The Philosophical Research Society
Tickets: $15
Visit the Eventbrite page for tickets and more information.

Jennifer Trimble | “Monuments and meanings: ancient Roman damnatio memoriae and statue destructions today”
2026-05-01 16:00 - 18:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | UCLA Faculty Club, Morrison Room, 480 Charles E Young Dr E, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Annual UCLA Joan Palevsky Lecture
Associate Professor of Classics, Standford University
“Monuments and meanings: ancient Roman damnatio memoriae and statue destructions today”

Bilingual Lecture Series: Sunil Sharma
2026-05-04 11:00 - 13:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
One Divan and Multiple Poets: The Strange Case of Makhfi

Sunil Sharma
Boston University
English Lecture
Monday, May 4, 2026 at 11:00 am Pacific Time
Online via Zoom
Registration Required:
https://ucla.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_6QTp311ZThKErILePfrBEQ

The poet behind the Divan-e Makhfi is thought to have been the Mughal Princess Zebunnisa (d. 1702). However, there are historical and philological problems with this attribution that have been debated by some scholars. While also discussing the problem of authorship of the Divan, this talk will focus on the history of compilation and readership of the text, as it circulated in manuscript and lithographed copies, and came to be considered as a kind of canonical work by an early female poet whose poems deserved a modern scholarly edition.

Sunil Sharma is Professor of Persianate & Comparative Literature and Director of the Center for the Study of Asia at Boston University. He has authored several books and also published translations of works from Persian and Urdu. His areas of research are Persian poetry and court cultures, history of the book, and travel writing, and has a particular interest in the participation of women in Persianate literary cultures.

UCLA Department of Art History Colloquium with Susan Dackerman, May 6
2026-05-06 13:00 - 14:00 UTC
Please join us for a Department of Art History Colloquium with featured speaker Susan Dackerman on Wednesday, May 6 at 1 PM in Dodd 275 for her talk, The Paleontology of Print: Lithographic Limestone and the Nature of Reproducibility.
Summary: When in 1796, the Munich playwright Alois Senefelder developed a method of printing from the surface of the local Bavarian limestone, he was utilizing a material that had been reproducing indexical images for millions of years. The Jurassic-era limestone slabs were riddled with fossilized flora and fauna. The same year as Senefelder’s invention, from study of the same Bavarian limestone, the French naturalist Georges Cuvier recognized that some fossils in the stone were petrifications of species that were no longer extant, establishing the idea of extinction. Prior to Cuvier, fossils were imagined to be images made by Nature itself. Senefelder’s use of the local limestone was preceded by the stone’s use by regional sculptors such as Hans Daucher, who around 1500 turned from marble to the native limestone because the characteristics of the stone suited precision carving. Many of the fossil-laden stone sculptures subsequently were used as templates to cast bronze copies, conceptually replicating the stone’s capacity to cast fossils. Nearly 300 years later, the stone’s generative potential again was exploited to make printed multiples known as lithographs. My paper imagines how examining the history of early modern sculpture and prints alongside the history of paleontology enables us to see how Nature, and the contemporaneous historical theories that explicate it, have informed the work of artists, as well as shaped the history of print and replication.
All are welcome!
