Edible Entanglements: Race, Environment and Ethics
2025-10-14 09:30 - 19:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | 314 Royce Hall, 10745 Dickson Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Full schedule is available here. Free healthy lunch is provided for all attendees. Event is organized by UCLA English Professor Arvind Thomas and sponsored by the University of California Humanities Research Institute.
Come and hear international leaders in food justice, including:
Kathy Freston (New York Times best-selling author)
Gwenna Hunter (Founder of Planetary Unity)
Lisa Bloom (Civil rights attorney)
Julieanna Hever (Dietitian)
Jennifer Jay (Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, UCLA)
David Cleveland (Professor of Sustainable Food and Agriculture, UC Santa Barbara)
Questions about the event?
Contact: Arvind Thomas, arvindthomas@ucla.edu

Post-Classical Libraries Conference
2025-10-17 - 2025-10-18 | Royce 306 & 314
Libraries occupied a central place in the organization and reproduction of pre-modern knowledge cultures.
Texts had been assembled in archives of various kinds from the Bronze Age, but most were of only ephemeral interest. Only when writing was deployed to create works intended to have lasting value – as literature, as contributions to science, or as records of historical investigations or sacred revelations – did it become necessary to actively curate them. In a world before printing, the risk that any given book – on papyrus or parchment, clay tablets or wooden ones, on rolls or in codices –would simply perish was a real one. Libraries became places where textual communities studied, catalogued, repaired, and recopied works of this kind. Recent studies have investigated the libraries of the Bronze Age Near East and of the Classical Mediterranean. These were royal or civic, private or public, based in temples, villas, or educational establishments. A few, like the Library of Alexandria, have been mythologized.
Most of these studies end in the third century CE, yet libraries also played a crucial role in the passages from antiquity to the Middle Ages. This will be the subject of our conference.
Speaker Abstracts and Titles

Day 1

10:15
Coffee, fresh fruit, pastries (Royce, 314)

10:30
Welcome Remarks

11:00
The “Library of Caesarea” between Gaza and Berytus – Jeremiah Coogan (Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University)

11:50
Break

12:00
The Library on the Page: Booklists from Antiquity to the Latin West – Thomas Hendrickson (Stanford)

1:00
Lunch

2:30
‘The Fortress of Writing was Burned…’: Archives and Institutions of Learning in Sasanian and Post-Sasanian Iran – Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina (University of Oxford)

3:20
Break

3:30
New Approaches to the Early Arabic Library – Michael Cooperson (NELC, UCLA)

4:30
Reception

6:00
Dinner (Plateia – participants only)

Day 2

10:00
Coffee, fresh fruit, pastries

10:30
Irish Libraries in the Early Middle Ages: Home and Abroad – Viktoriia Krivoshchekova (School of Celtic Studies, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies)

11:20
Strategies of Preservation at Monastic Libraries and Archives in Medieval Italy – Maya Maskarinec (USC)

12:10
Break

12:20
Books and libraries in Byzantium (8th–10th centuries) – Daniele Bianconi (University of Rome, La Sapienza)

1:15
Lunch

3:00
Closing Round Table

Organizers: Stefania Tutino and Greg Woolf

Modern French Thought and the History of Philosophy
2025-10-17 - 2025-10-18 | Kaplan 348
In person attendance is encouraged but Zoom attendance also available. Your advance registration will help determine the event catering order. The Zoom meeting link will be sent EOD on October 15. For any questions or concerns, please contact Lisset at lisset@humnet.ucla.edu.

October 17: 4 – 7 p.m. PST
October 18: 10:30 a.m. – 6:30 p.m. PST

Kaplan Hall Room 348
In person and Zoom hybrid

The Scapegoat by Sophia Nikolaidou
2025-10-18 10:00 - 11:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Zoom
Design by: Christopher King
Gefyra Book Club:
The Scapegoat by Sophia Nikolaidou, trans. Karen Emmerich
(Melville House, 2015)
Discussion led by Professor Sharon Gerstel, Director, UCLA SNF Hellenic Center
and Dr. Eirini Kotsovili, Senior Lecturer, Global Humanities at Simon Fraser University
Saturday, October 18, 2025
10 A.M. Los Angeles / 8 P.M. Greece
Via Zoom
RSVP Here
From the Publisher:
In 1948, the body of an American journalist is found floating in the bay off Thessaloniki. A small-time Greek journalist is tried and convicted for the murder… but when he’s released twelve years later, he claims his confession was the result of torture.
Flash forward to contemporary Greece, where a rebellious young high school student is given an assignment for a school project: find the truth. And as he begrudgingly takes it on, he begins to make a startling series of gripping discoveries–about history, love, and even his own family’s involvement.
Based on the real story of famed CBS reporter George Polk—journalism’s prestigious Polk Awards were named after him—The Scapegoat is a sweeping saga that brings together the Greece of the post-World War II era with the Greece of today, a country facing dangerous times once again.
As told by key players in the story—the dashing journalist’s Greek widow; the mother and sisters of the convicted man; the brutal Thessaloniki Chief of Police; a U.S. Foreign Office investigator, and, finally, the modern-day student, in the novel’s most stirring narration of all–The Scapegoat confronts questions of truth, justice, and sacrifice…and how the past is always with us.
About the Author:
Sophia Nikolaidou was born in Thessaloniki in 1968. She teaches literature and creative writing and writes criticism for various newspapers, including Ta Nea. She has published two collections of short stories and three novels, all of which have been translated into eight languages. Her last novel, Tonight We Have Friends, won the 2011 Athens Prize for Literature, and The Scapegoat was shortlisted for the 2012 Greek State Prize for Fiction.
Karen Emmerich’s translations include Rien ne va plus by Margarita Karapanou, Landscape with Dog and Other Stories by Ersi Sotiropoulos, I’d Like by Amanda Michalopoulou, and Poems (1945-1971) by Miltos Sachtouris. She received the 2013 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation for her translation, with Edmund Keeley, of Yannis Ritsos’ Diaries of Exile.
This program is made possible thanks to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).
Link to purchase book:
https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?isbn=1612193846&clickid=SNaQmzT01xyKTPw2A70VbTfEUksWhC2WzTQ7zI0&cm_mmc=aff-_-ir-_-64613-_-77416&ref=imprad64613&afn_sr=impact&ref_=aff_ir_64613_77416
https://livebrary.overdrive.com/media/1903986

Careers in Publishing: A Humanities Career Panel Series event
2025-10-21 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Zoom
Discover what it’s really like to work in the fast-changing world of digital and print publishing whether you’re passionate about classic paperbacks or all-in on e-readers. Join us for an inside look at the industry, and hear from Humanities alumni who’ve turned their degrees into exciting careers in publishing, publicity, editing, digital media and more.

To register, go to Careers in Publishing

Meet our moderator: Laura Hartenberger

Laura Hartenberger is a Continuing Lecturer in UCLA’s Writing Programs, where she teaches courses in the Professional Writing Minor and Writing I program, and works on projects related to writing assessment. She has been a freelance editor and a writer in the tech field, and her fiction and essays have been published in various magazines and literary journals, including Noema, CRAFT Literary, Ninth Letter, Redivider, Massachusetts Review, and others. Laura has a B.A. in English from Yale University and an M.A. in English and Creative Writing from the University of Toronto.

Meet our panelists:James Faccinto

James Faccinto is the founder and principal at Full Complement Communications, an independent, Los Angeles-based company specializing in literary publicity & publishing strategy. James combines his background in creative writing with extensive experience representing bestselling literary titles across all genres for both “Big Five” and independent publishers. He approaches every project or campaign with a storyteller’s sense of creativity, detail, and energy.

Irene Yoon

Irene Yoon is the Executive Director of LARB, where she oversees the day-to-day operations and broader strategic vision and planning for the organization. For the last four years, Irene has also served as Director of the LARB Publishing Workshop. She earned her doctorate in English from UC Berkeley, where she also managed an interdisciplinary writing program and trained new teachers as the English Department’s Assistant Pedagogy Chair. Irene has worked with several authors to prepare books and articles for publication, and her own writing has appeared in journals such as Twentieth Century Literature, Transition Magazine, and Los Angeles Review of Books.
Andy Etzkorn

Andy Etzkorn is currently Lead Marketing Manager at the University of California Press where he oversees the implementation of marketing plans for all upcoming books and also serves on committees for DEI and FirstGen Scholars. For nearly twenty years, he has served in various marketing roles for “Big Five” publishers as well as academic and university book publishers. Andy has a B.A. in English from UCLA and an M.A. in English Literature from Fordham University.

A Conversation with Author and Professor Catherine Conybeare
2025-10-21 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | 247 Dodd Hall, CA, United States
Please join us for a book event featuring author and professor Catherine Conybeare. Professor Michele Salzman (UC Riverside) will facilitate a conversation with the author about her new book. Augustine the African is an extraordinary work of revisionist history that centers Africa in the life of one of the greatest philosophers.
All are welcome!

Practice and Theory: Next Steps in Kantian Practical Philosophy
2025-10-24 12:00 - 2025-10-25 17:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Hershey Hall Salon (Room 158)
October 24 – 25, 2025
Hershey Hall Salon (Room 158)
RSVP HERE

Please join us for Practice and Theory: Next Steps in Kantian Practical Philosophy, a workshop at UCLA from Friday & Saturday, October 24-25, 2025.

Workshop Program

Friday, October 24th
12:00 – 1:00 PM: Lunch
1:00 – 3:00 PM: Nataliya Palatnik (Milwaukee) “‘Not So Completely an Animal’: Kant on Moral Sensibility and Moral Constraint”
3:00 – 3:30 PM: Break
3:30 – 5:30 PM: Thomas Pendlebury (Chicago) “The Will and the Good”
5:30 PM: Reception in Hershey Hall Salon

Saturday, October 25th
10:00 AM – 12:00 PM: Jordan Pascoe (Binghamton) “Kant, Structural Injustice, and Universalism”
12:00 – 1:00 PM: Lunch
1:00 – 3:00 PM: Japa Pallikkathayil (Pittsburgh) “Constitutional Constraints in the Kantian State”
3:00 – 3:30 PM: Break
3:30 – 5:30 PM: Rafeeq Hasan (Amherst) “What’s the Point of Kantian Independence?”

RSVP HERE

Directions to Hershey Hall: head toward the Terasaki Life Sciences Building just south of Parking Structure 2, go down the steps or the nearby ramp and through the building’s underpass, and you’ll see the entrance to Mira Hershey Hall on your left. Look for the signs that direct you to “Practice and Theory: Next Steps in Kantian Practical Philosophy.”

Join our mailing list!
Sign up for our mailing list to stay up-to-date with future UCLA Philosophy events, conferences, and colloquia!
SIGN UP HERE

Webs of Life: Domestic Jewish Worlds in Early Modern Venice – Federica Francesconi
2025-10-28 14:00 - 15:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Royce Hall, 314, 314 Royce Hall, 10745 Dickson Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
This lecture explores domestic life in the Venetian ghetto as both a site of physical segregation, housing scarcity, and oppression, and a space of cultural negotiation and transformation. Drawing on unpublished archival sources, surviving material culture, and the built environment, it traces how Venetian Jews actively shaped their living spaces through engagement with objects, furnishings, and architectural features. From the central portego (the central space in Venetian houses) to repurposed Islamic carpets and gilt leather panels, the home emerged as a site of transculturation where Jewish, Islamic, and Renaissance aesthetics intersected. These material choices reveal not only practical adaptation but also enduring ties to memory, mobility, and diasporic identity. By examining the interplay of people, objects, and spaces, the lecture foregrounds the Jewish home in the ghetto as a dynamic meshwork—extending both vertically and horizontally, and connecting domestic life to the broader urban fabric, natural surroundings, and the wider Mediterranean world.
Federica Francesconi is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Judaic Studies Program at the University at Albany, SUNY. Her research and publications focus on the social, religious, and cultural dimensions of early modern Jewish life in Italy, with particular attention to the politics and dynamics of the ghetto. She has held fellowships in Europe, Israel, and the United States. Her recent book, Invisible Enlighteners: The Jewish Merchants of Modena, from the Renaissance to the Emancipation (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021), won the 2022 Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize from the American Historical Association and was the finalist for the 2021 National Jewish Book Awards’ JDC-Herbert Katzki Award for Writing Based on Archival Material. She is currently working on a new monograph, The Jewish Home in Early Modern Venice: Cosmopolitan Intimacy, Global Networks, and Diasporic Material Culture, which examines the Jewish home in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Venice as a multi-religious and multi-ethnic nexus of individuals, communities, and objects in motion. This project has been supported by the Gladys Krieble Delmas, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, and I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Renaissance Studies in Florence.
Tuesday, October 28, 2025 • 314 Royce Hall • 2 PM
Webs of Life: Domestic Jewish Worlds in Early Modern Venice
Federica Francesconi (University at Albany)
Moderator: Stefania Tutino (UCLA)
Viterbi Program in Mediterranean Jewish Studies
RSVP

Literary Studies, Professionalization, and the Public Sphere
2025-10-30 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Lydeen Library, Rolfe 4302, 345 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90024, United States
Speaker: Gabriela Adamo
Date: October 30, 2025
Time: 4:00 PM
Location: Rolfe Hall, Lydeen Library

Speaker’s statement:
The publishing industry offers one of the most diverse and rewarding career paths for graduates in the Humanities. In this presentation, I’ll outline the wide range of roles available—from scouting and scriptwriting to organizing literary festivals. Drawing on thirty years of experience in the field, I will explore the key steps and practical tools needed to enter the profession and highlight the growing international opportunities within the industry.

About the speaker:
Gabriela Adamo has worked as an editor for several of the most prominent publishing houses in Latin America. She served as executive director of both the Buenos Aires Book Fair and the International Literature Festival, and also led the Literature Department at the TyPA Foundation. She currently works as a consultant for various literary projects, including FILNYC (the Spanish Book Fair in New York City). She teaches in the Master’s program in Cultural Management at Universidad de San Andrés.

For more information, visit the UCLA Department of Spanish and Portuguese website.

Día de los Muertos: Mourning and Remembering through Ecological Change
2025-11-01 11:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | UCLA Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden
Día de los Muertos: Mourning and Remembering through Ecological Change will explore cross-cultural grief in the context of environmental and species loss. Join us on November 1 from 11am-1pm at the UCLA Mathias Botanical Garden (707 Tiverton Drive) for ofrendas, art, and talks on topics such as deforestation, extinction, and environmental colonialism and imperialism. Come early for a guided Garden tour at 10am (provided by the Botanical Garden). We’ll have snacks and drinks including champurrado and a variety of pan dulces.
This event is free and open to the public; it is hosted by the Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies (LENS), Environmental Humanities Reading Group (EHRG), and Radical Imagination Coalition (RIC), and is co-sponsored by the UCLA Mathias Botanical Garden and Center for Developing Leadership in Science (CDLS).
If you are interested in contributing an ofrenda, art, or your time to this event, please email Elijah Catalan (elijahcatalan@g.ucla.edu) and Olivia Simon (oliviameyers@g.ucla.edu) with a short description of how you would like to be involved and “Día de los Muertos: Request to Participate” in the subject line.

Careers in Nonprofit: Explore, Learn, and Make an Impact!
2025-11-04 16:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Zoom
Have you ever thought about working in the nonprofit world? Curious about what it’s really like to build a career that’s all about creating change and making a difference? This is your chance to find out!
To register, go to: Careers in Nonprofit
Meet our panelists:
Humzah Farrukh

Humzah Farrukh is a Pakistani-American author, social impact founder, and UCLA graduate. His debut poetry collection explores migration, family rupture, and inherited silence. His writing has been published in Sonder Literary, Santa Barbara Literary Journal and others. He is the CEO and co-founder of Farrukh Foundation, a non-profit building schools in Pakistan, supporting boarding houses for girls in Morocco, and building libraries and literacy programs in Colombia and West Africa. Humzah leads lifecycle marketing efforts at Candidly, a financial wellness startup geared towards providing student debt solutions as a benefit to employees. He is also a 2025 UCLA Anderson Riordan MBA Fellow, 2024 Yale Writing Fellow, and 2024 Western Union Global Fellow.
Chanell Gore

Chanell Gore is the Scholarship and Foundation Programming Manager at Clark College Foundation (Vancouver, WA), where she oversees initiatives that award over $2 million in scholarship funding annually to Clark College students. With a career rooted in access, equity, and public service, Chanell’s work has centered on nonprofit operations management, strategic program design, and business administration. A proud double Bruin, Chanell earned her BA in Psychology with a minor in Public Affairs in 2006 and returned to UCLA to complete her Master of Public Policy in 2011. She is passionate about expanding educational opportunities, especially for historically underserved students, and building pathways that enable people to thrive through higher education.
Jeff King

Jeffrey King is a vice president with Netzel Grigsby Associates who specializes in helping nonprofits achieve ambitious visions through integration of fundraising into their strategic goals. He has developed and executed strategic plans for nonprofit management; capital and annual fund campaigns; and executive leadership transitions for universities, liberal arts institutions, independent schools, social services nonprofits, and arts and culture organizations. Jeffrey received his Bachelor of Arts in English and Education from Vassar College and his Master of Education in Higher Education Administration with a specialization in External Relations from Vanderbilt University. He also received a Secondary Education English Teaching License from the State of New York.

Lucinda Dirven: Zoroastrianism in the Religious Context of the Arsacid Empire
2025-11-05 16:00 - 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | 306 Royce Hall, 340 Royce Drive, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
November 5, 2025
Royce Hall 306, 4:00 p.m.
Download Event Flyer Here
Zoom link for online attendance: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/94920554065
RSVP link: https://forms.gle/2BmZz73crt582bJJ8
Zoroastrianism in the Religious Context of the Arsacid Empire
Unlike the tendency to emphasize the multifaceted and diverse aspects of religious life in the Parthian Empire, this talk aims to identify shared characteristics by focusing on the religious preferences of the Arsacid rulers. Although Zoroastrianism was not yet clearly defined at this time, evidence suggests that Zoroastrian ideas influenced the ideology of Arsacid kingship. Conversely, the ideology of the King of Kings influenced the practices of families and rulers who reigned under their suzerainty, including those who were otherwise unaffected by Zoroastrianism. Although such practices were rare, they still had repercussions for the religious lives of the populace in the Arsacid Empire.

Lucinda Dirven
University of Nijmegen

Lucinda Dirven is a professor of ancient religions at the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands. She studied art history and theology (history of religions and comparative religion) at Leiden University, where she obtained her PhD, which was published in 1999. Following a postdoctoral fellowship in the archaeology department at the University of Amsterdam, she taught in the history departments at the universities of Utrecht and Amsterdam. Since completing her PhD, her research has focused on the Roman and Parthian Near East, particularly Dura, Hatra and Palmyra, and the influence of these regions on the Roman West. Her research combines material culture and written sources, primarily focusing on religion. One recent topic has been religious continuity and change in Syria and Mesopotamia, particularly during the Roman and Parthian periods. She is currently a Getty Scholar working on a project focusing on the cult of Mithras in Dura-Europos.

We Were Here: The Untold History of Black Africans in Renaissance Europe
2025-11-10 15:30 - 16:45 (America/Los_Angeles) | 147 Dodd Hall, 390 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
We Were Here: The Untold History of Black Africans in Renaissance Europe sheds light on the overlooked presence of African and Black individuals in Renaissance Europe, highlighting their depiction in masterpieces by some of the era’s most celebrated artists.
Directed by award-winning filmmaker Fred Kudjo Kuwornu and produced by Do The Right Films, this multilingual documentary takes viewers on an expansive journey through the UK, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and France, offering a compelling reexamination of European art history and its cultural legacy. Featuring insights from leading scholars in Art History, Black Studies, and History, alongside Black activists and curators, the film provides a rich, layered perspective on a neglected chapter of European history.
To learn more, please view the trailer here.

The screening is free to attend with advance registration.
It will be held in-person at UCLA Dodd Hall, Room 147.
Seating is limited; walk-in registrants are welcome as space permits.

Archaeological Perspectives on the Economic Transformation of China during the First Millennium BCE
2025-11-14 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | 306 Royce Hall, 340 Royce Drive, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Starting about the middle of the first millennium BCE, continental East Asia experienced an unprecedented economic florescence as the Bronze Age redistributive economy gave way to a full-fledged market economy. In this new economy, metallic currency was beginning to play an important role. Technological innovations and intensification in the rural sector enabled significant demographic growth: the number of cities multiplied, and as their function morphed from elite ceremonial centers to densely populated hubs of mass-production and trade, a new urban culture came into being. Rather than depending on an individual’s descent and kinship, social divisions were now mainly wealth-based, and the pervasive use of writing enabled new intellectual breakthroughs. Drawn from a forthcoming major monograph, this lecture surveys some of the currently available archaeological evidence of this transformation, tracing its preliminary stages back to the beginning of the first millennium BCE and following its development down to the onset of China’s imperial age. In keeping with the spirit of “Global Antiquity,” possible connections with other parts of Eurasia will be touched upon.
About the Speaker
Lothar von Falkenhausen is Distinguished Professor of Chinese Archaeology and Art History at UCLA, where he has taught since 1993. He is also on the faculty of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA, of which he served as Associate Director from 2004 to 2014, and he holds a concurrent part-time appointment as Visiting Professor at Xibei University in Xi’an, China. Falkenhausen was educated at Bonn University, Peking University, Kyoto University, and Harvard University, receiving his PhD in anthropology from Harvard in 1988. His research mainly concerns the archaeology of Bronze Age China, focusing on large interdisciplinary and historical issues on which archaeological materials can provide significant new information. His major books are Suspended Music: Chime Bells in the Culture of Bronze Age China (1993) and the award-winning Chinese Society in the Age of Confucius (1000-250 BC): The Archaeological Evidence (2006). The current lecture coincides with the release of his new monograph, Economic Trends in China During the Age of Confucius: The Archaeological Evidence, to be published with the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press. Falkenhausen has served as co-Principal Investigator and Instructor of Record for archaeological projects and field schools and received numerous honorary professorships and fellowships.

Between the Minoans and the Mycenaeans: Craft Technologies in the Second Millennium BCE Aegean
2025-11-15 14:00 - 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Royce Hall, 314, 314 Royce Hall, 10745 Dickson Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Between the Minoans and the Mycenaeans: Craft Technologies in the Second Millennium BCE Aegean
Lecture by Nikolas Papadimitriou (Director, Paul and Alexandra Canellopoulos Museum, Athens) and Eleni Konstantinidi-Syvridi (Curator, Department of Prehistoric, Egyptian, Cypriot and Near Eastern Collections of Antiquities, at the Hellenic National Archaeological Museum, Athens)
Demonstration by Akis Goumas (contemporary jewelry maker and researcher of ancient crafting technologies)
Hosted by the
UCLA SNF Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture
in collaboration with
The J. Paul Getty Museum
and held in conjunction with the exhibition
The Kingdom of Pylos: Warrior-Princes of Mycenaean Greece
Saturday, November 15, 2025
2:00 P.M.
314 Royce Hall, UCLA Campus
RSVP Here
The Kingdom of Pylos: Warrior-Princes of Mycenaean Greece exhibition at the Getty Villa brings together some of the most exquisite artistic creations of the second millennium BCE Aegean. Many of these objects were the products of cultural fusion and combined elements from different artistic traditions originating in Minoan Crete, Mycenaean Greece, and areas far beyond. This presentation will examine the highly demanding techniques goldsmiths and seal-engravers used to create many of the objects in this exhibition. Following the lecture, Akis Goumas will demonstrate the main steps of the technical processes involved in Mycenaean gold-working (sheet metal, wire, granulation, etc.) and Minoan seal-engraving (soft materials and hard stones).

Demonstration by Akis Goumas
The artist and researcher of ancient technologies Akis Goumas will demonstrate the main steps of the technical processes involved in:
– Mycenaean gold-working (sheet metal, wire, granulation etc.)
– Minoan seal-engraving (soft materials and hard stones).
The demonstration is based on the results of studies conducted in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, the Herakleion Archaeological Museum, other museums in Greece, and the Coprus of Minoan and Mycenaean Seals at Heidelberg, Germany, which involved microscopic examination of artefacts, archaeometric analyses and experimental reconstructions.
The studies have been conducted in collaboration with Dr Eleni Konstantinidi-Syvridi, of the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, and Dr Nikolas Papadimitirou, of the Paul and Alexandra Canellopoulos Museum, Athens. Participants will have the opportunity to discuss with Mr Goumas and try some of the tools and materials used in the experiments.
Bios:
Nikolas Papadimitriou is the Director of the Paul and Alexandra Canellopoulos Museum, Athens, Greece (www.camu.gr). He specializes in the Aegean Bronze Age, with an emphasis on Mycenaean burial practices, cultural interaction in the Mediterranean in the 2nd millennium BCE, the prehistory of Athens and Attica, and the study of craft technologies. Previously, he worked as a Lecturer at the Institute of Classical Archaeology, Heidelberg University, Germany, the Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens and the Cyprus Department of Antiquities. Currently, he is co-directing research projects at the archaeological sites of Marathon, Thorikos (Attica) and Kato Samikon (Elis). He has a rich publication record and has received research fellowships from the Centers of Hellenic Studies at Princeton and Harvard (2011, 2017).
Eleni Konstantinidi-Syvridi is Curator at the Department of Prehistoric, Egyptian, Cypriot and Near Eastern Collections of Antiquities at the National Archaeological Museum, Athens (https://www.namuseum.gr/en/). She graduated from the University of Ioannina, Greece, and received her PhD at the University of Birmingham, UK. Her research focuses on the Late Bronze Age Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean, with special interest in Mycenaean jewelry and dress. She has given seminars and lectures on the history and technology of Mycenaean jewelry in Greece and abroad and has written articles and book chapters on various Late Bronze Age issues. For the past decade, she has been co-directing a multi-disciplinary project for the reconstruction of ancient gold-working techniques, while she is currently studying the corpus of metal signet rings housed in the Mycenaean Collection of the National Archaeological Museum.
Akis Goumas is a contemporary jewelry maker and researcher of ancient crafting technologies. After receiving a Diploma in Economics (1978), he was trained as a jeweler and silversmith. From 1982 to 1986 he studied gemology and seal engraving in Greece and Germany. Between 1990 and 2006 he was the head designer in the jewelry company ONAR. Since 2000, he has been teaching creative jewelry at the Chalkis School of Art, and since 2017 at the ANAMMA Jewelry School in Athens, and the ALCHIMIA Contemporary Jewelry School in Florence. Since 2006, he is member of an interdisciplinary group of researchers, who study ancient gold-working and seal-engraving techniques. In 2021 he was a Visiting Artist at the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies. Ιn 2023-24, he was the holder of a Homo Faber fellowship, established by Jaeger LeCoultre and Michelangelo Foundation for Creativity and Craftsmanship. In 2024-25 he participated in the organization of the exhibition “Art in Gold. Jewelry in Hellenistic Times” at the Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece.
This event is organized by Professor David Schneller (UCLA) and Dr. Claire Lyons (Getty) and is made possible thanks to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).
Co-Sponsored by:
UCLA College, Division of Humanities
The Peter J. and Caroline B. Caloyeras Endowment for the Arts
The George P. Kolovos Family Centennial Term Chair in Hellenic Studies
Gefyra
UCLA Global Antiquity
The Joan Palevsky Chair of Classics at UCLA
UCLA Department of Art History
UCLA Department of Classics
UCLA Department of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures
UCLA David C. Copley Center for the Study of Costume Design
Don’t miss our other upcoming programs in collaboration with the J. Paul Getty Museum here:
Saturday, November 22, 2025Pylos and Minoan Crete
Saturday, December 6, 2025
Messenia to Mesopotamia: New Directions in the Art and Archaeology of the Second Millennium BCE Symposium

La Xirgu: la pelicula
2025-11-15 17:00 - 19:00 UTC | Rolfe Hall 4302, Lydeen Library, Rolfe Hall 4302, Lydeen Library
Barcelona, 1927. Only a few hours remain before Margarita Xirgu is set to premiere “Mariana Pineda” written by then-unknown Federico Garcia Lorca. The authorities threaten her with prison or exile if she dares to stage this libertarian play. Yet nothing seems to shake her determination, Until her friend and mentor, Valle-Inclán, also turns against her.

Chamber Music at the Clark presents: Modigliani Quartet
2025-11-16 14:00 - 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 2520 Cimarron Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90018, United States
Founded in 2003, the Modigliani Quartet is recognized as one of today’s most sought-after quartets, featuring regularly in prominent international series and on the world’s most prestigious stages.
In addition to annual tours in the United States and in Asia, the quartet’s numerous European tours have brought them to Wigmore Hall, the Paris Philharmonie, the Théâtre des Champs- Elysées, the Berlin Philharmonie, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Saint-Petersburg Philharmonia, and the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg.
The Modigliani Quartet has been recording for the Mirare label since 2008 and has released 13 award-winning albums. In January 2024, the quartet’s latest album with string quartets by Grieg and Smetana was released and received enthusiastically by the international press. Since 2024, the quartet has dedicated itself to the greatest challenge in the life of a string quartet: recording all 16 string quartets by Beethoven.
For further details and a the full program, please visit our website.

Saving our Survivors: How American Jews Learned about the Holocaust – Rachel Deblinger
2025-11-18 14:00 - 15:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Royce Hall, 314, 314 Royce Hall, 10745 Dickson Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Drawing on previously unexamined archives and postwar cultural materials, Saving Our Survivors explores how American Jews constructed meaning out of devastation—and how humanitarian aid became intertwined with public memory. The book uncovers how American Jewish communities first came to learn about and respond to the Holocaust through communal campaigns, radio broadcasts, speeches, short films, and urgent calls to action. Rachel Deblinger highlights the messy, diffuse, and contested nature of memory construction in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust and raises larger questions about how historical tragedies are narrated in moments of crisis.
Rachel Deblinger is the author of Saving Our Survivors: How American Jews learned about the Holocaust (2025, Indiana University Press). Her research focuses on Holocaust memory in America, media technology, and the intersection of philanthropy and representation. Deblinger is also the Director of the Modern Endangered Archives Program (MEAP) at the UCLA Library, a granting program that funds the digitization and preservation of at-risk cultural heritage materials from around the world. MEAP grants facilitate archival documentation and open access to diverse global collections.

Tuesday, November 18, 2025 • 314 Royce Hall • 2 PM
Saving our Survivors: How American Jews Learned about the Holocaust
Rachel Deblinger (UCLA)
The 1939 Society Program in Holocaust Studies
The Alan D. Leve Program for Public History
RSVP

Fiebre de carnaval: una conversación con Yuliana Ortiz Ruano
2025-11-18 16:00 UTC | Rolfe Hall 4302, Lydeen Library, Rolfe Hall 4302, Lydeen Library
Yuliana Ortiz Ruano is an Afro-Ecuadorian writer, poet, and teacher, as well as a DJ of Afro-Caribbean music. She has published several books of poetry and prose, including the multi award-winning Fiebre de carnaval (Carnaval Fever), which was chosen as one of the 50 best books of 2022 by El País. She is also the author of the poetry books Sovoz, Canciones del fin del mundo, y Cuaderno del imposible retorno a Pangea, and the book of short stories Litorales. She was selected by the International Writers in Residence program in Granada, Spain in 2023, and was chosen for the Translator Choice II award at the LATINALE Latin America Literature Festival in Berlin. Her first novel, Carnaval Fever, won the Joaquín Gallegos Lara Award (Ecuador), the Primo Romanzo Latinoamericano Award (Italy), and the PEN Translation Award (UK).

Scotland’s Gutenberg: William Ged and the Invention of Stereotype Printing, 1725–49
2025-11-19 16:00 - 17:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 2520 Cimarron Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90018, United States
Twentieth Kenneth Karmiole Lecture on the History of the Book Trade
Lecture by William Zachs, Director of the Blackie House Library and Museum
In this lecture, William Zachs outlines the origins of stereotype printing (print production from metal plates rather than moveable type), then turns his focus to the “non-moveable type” productions of Edinburgh goldsmith William Ged (c. 1683–1749). Taking a forensic look at Ged’s few known works, Zachs hypothesizes the existence of a group of previously unknown stereotyped books, thus offering a revised history of alternative methods of book production in Britain in the first half of the 18th century.
Dr. William Zachs is the Director of the Blackie House Library and Museum, a registered Scottish charity with a mission to bring Scottish culture to a wider audience. He is the author of numerous books and articles on book history and book collecting. In 2013, the University of Edinburgh awarded him an honorary Doctor of Letters for his contributions to book historical studies and book curation. He is a Fellow of the National Library of Scotland and an Honorary Fellow at the universities of Edinburgh and Stirling.

This event is free to attend with advance registration and will be held in person at the Clark Library.
Registration will close on Monday, November 17 at 5:00 p.m.
Capacity is limited at the Clark Library; walk-in registrants are welcome as space permits.
This lecture will also be livestreamed on the Center’s YouTube Channel.

Can Comedia Help Us Understand California’s Past?
2025-11-20 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, 501 N. Main Street, Los Angeles, 90012
Co-presented by Zócalo Public Square, Playwrights’ Arena, UCLA Diversifying the Classics, and LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, with generous support from Snap Foundation, Karsh Family Foundation, Broad Foundation, and Olga Garay-English
During the artistic and literary boom of Spain’s Golden Age, theater known as comedia helped audiences on both sides of the Atlantic understand their past and present. Today, contemporary playwrights have adapted these 17th-century classics to shed light on L.A.’s history, touching on issues including power and sexuality, gentrification, and Black, Korean, and Latino identity.
Join us under the stars at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes for readings of three adaptations from the 2024 anthology Golden Tongues: Adapting Hispanic Classical Theater in Los Angeles. Barbara Fuchs, director of UCLA’s Diversifying the Classics initiative, will introduce central themes of the plays. Playwrights Diana Burbano, June Carryl, and Luis Alfaro will offer brief pre-performance remarks and will sign copies of Golden Tongues, available for purchase from Tía Chucha’s, during a post-reading reception.
Admission is free, but registration in advance is advised. Visit this page to reserve seats.
About the plays:
In Diana Burbano’s Flickers, a director in early 20th-century Los Angeles becomes embroiled in the perils of Hollywood: ambition and treachery, prejudice and plagiarism. In her version of Juan Ruiz de Alarcón’s La cueva de Salamanca (The Cave of Salamanca), Burbano recreates the magic of the first days of film while exploring its racism.
June Carryl’s Florence and Normandie adapts Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s Amar después de la muerte (To Love Beyond Death) and sets the action against the backdrop of the Rodney King uprising. As tensions boil, two families entwined by location and love find themselves living the American racial nightmare.
Painting in Red is Luis Alfaro‘s “whitewash” of Calderón de la Barca’s El pintor de su deshonra (The Painter of His Own Dishonor), exploring a Chicano painter’s relationship to a real and imagined Spain and an endlessly gentrifying Los Angeles.
This program is part of California 175 — What Connects California?, a suite of free Zócalo events and essays, bringing together leaders and thinkers from all walks of life to envision California’s next 175 years.

Pylos and Minoan Crete
2025-11-22 15:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Royce Hall, 314, 314 Royce Hall, 10745 Dickson Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
The “Ring of Nestor”, c. 1500 BC, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum.
Pylos and Minoan Crete
Lecture by Professor Andreas Vlachopoulos, University of Ioannina
Hosted by the
UCLA SNF Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture
in collaboration with
The J. Paul Getty Museum
and held in conjunction with the exhibition
The Kingdom of Pylos: Warrior-Princes of Mycenaean Greece
(June 27, 2025 – January 12, 2026 at The Getty Villa)
Saturday, November 22, 2025
4:00 p.m.
314 Royce Hall, UCLA Campus
Reception to follow
RSVP Here
Description:
Pylos is a sunny, fertile coastal area of Messinia (Southwestern Peloponnese), with many features of the land and its natural resources resembling those of the palatial Knossos. In the heyday of the New Palace period of Crete (c. 1600-1500 BC) the area of Pylos gradually became the seat of powerful rulers of the Mycenaean elite, whose way of life reflected not only a strong influence from the art and aesthetics of the Minoans, but also a high degree of ideological and religious osmosis of the two societies. The lecture entitled Pylos and Minoan Crete will follow the historical course of the two Aegean cultures and will try to interpret the broad Minoan influence on Pylos and the other Helladic regions where the palatial Mycenaean world of early Greece will gradually emerge.
Bio:
Andreas G. Vlachopoulos is Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at the University of Ioannina. He completed undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Archaeology at the University of Athens, specializing in Aegean Prehistory. His 1995 dissertation on the Post-Palatial period on Naxos and the Aegean received the Michael Ventris Award. He has been a Research Fellow at Princeton University (1998-99) and at the New York University Institute of Fine Arts (2001-02). Currently, Andreas directs the Vathy, Astypalaia Archaeological Project and the Kokkino Vouno Project at Akrotiri, Thera. Among his main research interests are the Mycenaean Cyclades, the Mycenaean period in Pylos, the Thera frescoes, and the Aegean Early Bronze Age. He is the author of monographs on Mycenaean Naxos and Astypalaia and the editor of two volumes on Aegean Prehistory (Argonautes and Paintbrushes) and seven volumes on Greek archaeology. He is a Fellow of the Archaeological Society at Athens and a Corresponding Member of the German Archaeological Institute.
This event is organized by Professor David Schneller (UCLA) and Dr. Claire Lyons (Getty) and is made possible thanks to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).
Co-Sponsored by:
UCLA College Division of Humanities
The Peter J. and Caroline B. Caloyeras Endowment for the Arts
The George P. Kolovos Family Centennial Term Chair in Hellenic Studies
Gefyra
UCLA Global Antiquity
The Joan Palevsky Chair of Classics at UCLA
UCLA Department of Art History
UCLA Department of Classics
UCLA Department of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures
UCLA David C. Copley Center for the Study of Costume Design
Don’t miss our other upcoming programs in collaboration with the J. Paul Getty Museum here:
Saturday, November 15, 2025Between the Minoans and the Mycenaeans: Craft Technologies in the Second Millennium BCE Aegean
Saturday, December 6, 2025
Messenia to Mesopotamia: New Directions in the Art and Archaeology of the Second Millennium BCE Symposium

EVENT POSTPONED: Black Lives Under Nazism: Making History Visible in Literature and Art – Sarah Phillips Casteel
2025-12-02 14:00 - 15:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Royce Hall, 314, 314 Royce Hall, 10745 Dickson Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
The event, Black Lives under Nazism: Making History Visible in Literature and Art with Sarah Phillips Casteel (Carleton University), has been postponed. A new date will be announced once it is finalized.
We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your understanding. Please stay tuned for further updates.

In a little-known chapter of World War II, Black people living in Nazi Germany and occupied Europe were subjected to ostracization, forced sterilization, and incarceration in internment and concentration camps. In the absence of public commemoration, Black writers and visual artists have preserved the stories of these forgotten victims of the Third Reich. Their works of memoir, poetry, fiction, painting and photomontage illuminate both the relationship between creativity and wartime survival and the role of art in the formation of collective memory. Probing the boundaries of Holocaust memory and representation, this talk draws attention to a largely unrecognized artistic corpus that challenges the erasure of Black wartime history.
Sarah Phillips Casteel is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and Professor of English at Carleton University. She has written and co-edited five books, the most recent of which is Black Lives Under Nazism: Making History Visible in Literature and Art (Columbia University Press, 2024). She has held visiting professorships at the Universities of Vienna and Potsdam and visiting fellowships at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Zentrum Jüdische Studien Berlin-Brandenburg. The recipient of a Canadian Jewish Literary Award and a Polanyi Prize, she is a member of the Academic Council of the Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University.

Black Lives Under Nazism: Making History Visible in Literature and Art
Sarah Phillips Casteel (Carleton University)
In conversation with Ben Ratskoff (Occidental College)
Introduction by/Moderated by Todd Presner (UCLA)
Michael and Irene Ross Program in Yiddish Studies

Embracing Exile: The Case for Jewish Diaspora – David Kraemer
2025-12-04 14:00 - 15:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Royce Hall, 314, 314 Royce Hall, 10745 Dickson Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Jewish people have always wandered. From the time of the Babylonian Exile in the early 6th century BCE, diaspora became the Jews’ normal condition, and though they may have hoped for a return to their “Promised Land” at the “End of Days,” they made sense of their many homes, defending diaspora as the realm where Jewish life could grow, and they could fulfil their obligations to God.
Embracing Exile analyzes biblical and rabbinic texts, philosophical treatises, works of Kabbalah, Hasidism, and a multiplicity of modern expressions, to show that diaspora Jews through the ages insisted that God joined them in their exiles, that “Zion” was found in Babylon, Ottoman Turkey, and Eastern Europe, and that, as citizens of the world, Jews could only live throughout the world. The result is an assertion that lament has not been the most common Jewish response to “exile” and that Zionism is not the natural outcome of either Jewish ideology or history.
David Kraemer is Joseph J. and Dora Abbell Librarian at The Jewish Theological Seminary, where he has also served as Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics for many years. As Librarian, Prof. Kraemer is at the helm of the most extensive collection of Judaica—rare and contemporary—in the Western hemisphere. On account of the size and importance of the collection, Prof. Kraemer is instrumental in setting policy and establishing vision for projects of international importance.
Prof. Kraemer is a prolific author and commentator. His books include The Mind of the Talmud (1990), Responses to Suffering in Classical Rabbinic Literature (1995), The Meanings of Death in Rabbinic Judaism (2000), Jewish Eating and Identity Through the Ages (Routledge, 2007, 2009), and A History of the Talmud (Cambridge U. Press, 2019), among others. His most recent book is Embracing Exile: The Case for Jewish Diaspora, (Oxford U. Press, 2025).

Thursday, December 4 2025 • 314 Royce Hall • 2 PM
Embracing Exile: The Case for Jewish Diaspora
David Kraemer (Jewish Theological Seminary)
Moderator: David N. Myers (UCLA)
Alan D. Leve Center Book Talk Series
RSVP

Strange Synchronicities and Familiar Parallels in Asia, 1600–1800: Joseph Fletcher’s Plane Ride Revisited Conference 1: Empires of Thought
2025-12-05 09:00 - 17:15 (America/Los_Angeles) | William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 2520 Cimarron Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90018, United States
Conference organized by Choon Hwee Koh (History, UCLA), Meng Zhang (History, UCLA), Abhishek Kaicker (History, UC Berkeley)
Co-sponsored by the UCLA Program on Central Asia, Center for Near Eastern Studies, and Center for Chinese Studies
In this year’s Core Program, historians of the Ottoman, Qing, and Mughal empires revisit the problem of comparison by considering synchronicities and structural parallels across Asia.
This first conference, Empires of Thought, looks at imperial ideology, challenging and broadening the default understanding of empire as a large territorial state by focusing on how each empire upheld a normative universe within which particular kinds of political authority and legitimacy were articulated. How did early modern Eurasian empires conceive of and construct power and legitimacy? What were the bases of imperial ideologies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and who were their audiences? More fundamentally, what do we mean when we talk about Eurasian “empires”? Rather than assuming a commonality in the aims of historical empires, we seek to understand how varying traditions of thought about power patterned the practices of rule. Papers addressing these questions will be presented in four thematically organized panels: “Rulers and Plebeians,” “Testing Sovereignty,” “Temporal and Genealogical Order,” and “Scholars and Bureaucrats.”
The list of speakers, the conference schedule, and the registration form, is 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, December 1 at 5:00 p.m.
Capacity is limited at the Clark Library; walk-in registrants are welcome as space permits.

Messenia to Mesopotamia: New Directions in the Art and Archaeology of the Second Millennium BCE Symposium
2025-12-06 09:00 - 16:15 (America/Los_Angeles) | Royce Hall, 314, 314 Royce Hall, 10745 Dickson Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Messenia to Mesopotamia: New Directions in the Art and Archaeology of the Second Millennium BCE
Hosted by the
UCLA SNF Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture
in collaboration with
The J. Paul Getty Museum
and held in conjunction with the exhibition
The Kingdom of Pylos: Warrior-Princes of Mycenaean Greece
Saturday, December 6, 2025
9:00 A.M. – 4:15 P.M.
314 Royce Hall, UCLA Campus
Reception to follow
RSVP Here
Symposium Description: TBD
Bios:
Emily Catherine Egan is Assistant Professor of Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Art and Archaeology in the Department of Art History & Archaeology at the University of Maryland. She holds a dual B.A. in Classics and Old World Archaeology and Art from Brown University, an M.Phil. in Archaeology from the University of Cambridge, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Cincinnati. Her research focuses on artistic practice in the Bronze Age Aegean, and particularly on the production, consumption, and iconography of Mycenaean painted surface decoration. She has undertaken archaeological fieldwork in Italy, Turkey, Jordan, Armenia, Cyprus, and most recently in Greece, where she is engaged in the study of wall and floor paintings from the Palace of Nestor at Pylos, and Petsas House, Mycenae.
Joanne Murphy is a professor of Ancient Mediterranean Studies and Archaeology at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, where she has worked since 2008 and serves as Department Head. She is also the current Director of the Irish Institute of Hellenic Studies, President of The American Friends of the Irish Institute of Hellenic Studies (a 501c non-profit), and an Academic Trustee at the Archaeological Institute of America. She received her BA and first MA from University College Dublin, Ireland, and an MA and PhD from University of Cincinnati. Her research focuses primarily on religion and death and how they connect with identity, community, and political economies. As well as giving tens of lectures both nationally and internationally, she has published over 30 papers and five edited volumes on these and related topics and has one monograph in press and two other volumes underway. She has led two major research projects: one, a legacy study, on the tombs around Pylos in southwestern Greece and one, an archaeological survey on the Greek island of Kea. She has received awards for her research and for initiatives at UNCG and non-profits from various foundations including INSTAP, the Mellon Foundation, the Onassis Foundation, the NEH, and the Loeb Foundation. She has also been recognized for her teaching and was awarded the Archaeological Institute of America’s Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award and UNCG College of Arts and Sciences Teaching Excellence Award. She has a great love of sharing the past and has led tours in Greece, Ireland, France, England, Italy, and Turkey, as well as running an annual archaeological field school in Greece.
Efthymia Tsiolaki is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Classics at the University of Toronto. She is an archaeologist specializing in the Bronze Age Aegean, with a focus on the social and economic organization of the Greek mainland. Her current research project explores the long-term history of settlement and land use in Messenia from the bottom-up, integrating surface survey and excavation data with GIS-based analysis to highlight the dynamic character of peripheral communities before and during the rise of the Mycenaean palace at Pylos (ca. 3000 – 1100 BC). She also studies the technology and function of ground stone tools across several archaeological projects, examining their roles in domestic and craft activities.
This event is organized by Professor David Schneller (UCLA) and Dr. Claire Lyons (Getty) and is made possible thanks to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).
Co-Sponsored by:
UCLA College Division of Humanities
Peter J. and Caroline B. Caloyeras Endowment for the Arts
George P. Kolovos Family Centennial Term Chair in Hellenic Studies
Gefyra
UCLA Global Antiquity
The Joan Palevsky Chair of Classics at UCLA
UCLA Department of Art History
UCLA Department of Classics
UCLA Department of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures
UCLA David C. Copley Center for the Study of Costume Design
Don’t miss our other upcoming programs in collaboration with the J. Paul Getty Museum here:
Saturday, November 22, 2025Pylos and Minoan Crete
Saturday, December 6, 2025
Messenia to Mesopotamia: New Directions in the Art and Archaeology of the Second Millennium BCE Symposium

Unpacking my Father’s Book Store – Laurence Roth
2025-12-09 14:00 - 15:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Royce Hall, 314, 314 Royce Hall, 10745 Dickson Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
During its nearly thirty years in business, J. Roth / Bookseller of Fine & Scholarly Judaica was a microcosm of the Los Angeles Jewish community and one of the premier Jewish bookstores in the United States. It thrived in the glow of the Jewish ethnic pride movements of the sixties and seventies but was unable to market its uniquely broad definition and collection of Jewish literature after the resurgence of Orthodox Judaism and the assimilation of Jewish writing into the corporate book superstores during the late eighties and early nineties. Through a combination of memoir and critical analysis, and by connecting both to larger forces that helped shape Jewish and American book retailing in the twentieth-century, Laurence Roth not only illustrates the importance of one American Jewish bookstore to its customers and to the family that helped run it. He explores, too, the role of Jewish bookstores in the assembly and transformation of Jewish cultures and how independent bookstores like J. Roth Bookseller, which mostly disappear from history, often had outsized effects on their communities. Breaking with conventional modes of scholarship, Roth tells a unique and troubled story that rarely gets told, one that is both personal and analytical, theoretical but rooted in the everyday.
Laurence Roth is the Charles B. Degenstein Professor of English and director of the Jewish & Israel Studies Program and The Build Collaborative (a project-based center for liberal arts, business, and creativity) at Susquehanna University, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Inspecting Jews: American Jewish Detective Stories; coeditor, with Nadia Valman, of The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Jewish Cultures; and editor of Modern Language Studies, the scholarly journal of the Northeast Modern Language Association.

Tuesday, December 9, 2025 • 314 Royce Hall • 2 PM
Unpacking my Father’s Book Store: The Life and Times of J. Roth Bookseller in Los Angeles, 1966-1994
Laurence Roth (Susquehanna University)
Moderator: David N. Myers (UCLA)
Arnold Band Distinguished Lecture in Jewish Studies
RSVP

FLOW: Philosophy and Jiu-Jitsu Workshop
2025-12-11 - 2025-12-13 | John Wooden Center (Blue Room) & Dodd Hall
December 11-13, 2025
John Wooden Center (Blue Room) & Dodd Hall 399
RSVP HERE

Please join us December 11-13, 2025 for FLOW: Philosophy Workshop.

FLOW is a pre-read workshop in which leading philosophers working in a range of areas in philosophy will present work in progress and receive comments from other leading philosophers in their respective fields. In addition to the usual academic discussions, FLOW will have a distinctive community-building component– the workshop will include sessions at the Blue Room in the John Wooden Center in which workshop participants will be able to participate in sport jiu-jitsu together. We will be offering seminars by Dominyka Obelenyte, Michael Schweiger, and Christian Barry, as well as open-mat sessions. These sessions will take place in the mornings of Dec 11-13.

In the afternoons, we will shift over to the philosophy position of the workshop. The format here is pre-read. Talks will be made available either as a paper or a recorded video. If you need access to view the papers, please reach out to Ashna Madni at ashnamadni@humnet.ucla.edu.

Seminars
Dominyka Obelenyte, Frogtown Jiu-Jitsu
Christian Barry, Australian National University
Michael Schweiger, Alliance Lucas Lepri

Pre-Read Talks

Christian Barry, ANU / Comments by Josh Armstrong, UCLA
Daniel Greco, Yale / Comments by Rush Stewart, Rochester
Caroline Wall, Boston University / Comments by Thomas Lambert, Pitzer
Adam Elga, Princeton / Comments by Isaiah Lin, Providence Christian College

Workshop Program

***Update on 12/10/25 at 2:30 PM PST***: Adam Elga’s session has moved to Friday and Daniel Greco’s session has moved to Saturday. Isaiah Lin, Providence Christian College, will comment on Adam Elga’s paper.

Thursday, December 11
1:00 PM – 3:00 PM – Gi Seminar with Michael Schweiger and Open Mat (Wooden Center Blue Room)
4:00 PM – 4:30 PM – Welcome and introductions (Dodd Hall 399)
4:30 PM – 5:30 PM – Talk by Dominyka Obelenyte on Philosophy of Jiu-Jitsu (Dodd Hall 399)
5:30 PM – 7:30 PM – Pre-Read Talk: Christian Barry, “Regulated Responsibilities.” Comments by Josh Armstrong (Dodd Hall 399)

Friday, December 12
10:00 AM – 12:00 PM – Open Mat (Wooden Center Blue Room)
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM – Lunch provided for participants
1:00 PM – 3:00 PM – Pre-Read Talk: Adam Elga, “A money pump argument against imprecise credences.” Comments by Isaiah Lin (Dodd Hall 399)
5:00 PM – 7:00 PM – Gi Seminar with Dominyka Obelenyte (Wooden Center Blue Room)

Saturday, December 13
10:00 AM – 12:00 PM – No-Gi Seminar with Christian Barry (Wooden Center Blue Room)
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM – Lunch provided for participants
1:00 PM – 3:00 PM – Pre-Read Talk: Caroline Wall, “No Scars Left Behind: A Hegelian Account of Apologies and Forgiveness.” Comments by Thomas Lambert (Dodd Hall 399)
3:30 PM – 5:30 PM – Pre-Read Talk: Daniel Greco, “Can the Fragmentationist Accept a Formal Account of Irrationality?” Comments by Rush Stewart (Dodd Hall 399)

Join our mailing list!
Sign up for our mailing list to stay up-to-date with future UCLA Philosophy events, conferences, and colloquia!
SIGN UP HERE

Chamber Music at the Clark presents: Escher Quartet
2026-01-11 14:00 - 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 2520 Cimarron Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90018, United States
Within months of its inception in 2005, the Escher Quartet came to the attention of key musical figures worldwide. Championed by the Emerson Quartet, the Escher Quartet was invited by both Pinchas Zukerman and Itzhak Perlman to be Quartet-in-Residence at each artist’s summer festival: the Young Artists Program at Canada’s National Arts Centre, and the Perlman Chamber Music Program on Shelter Island, NY.
The Escher Quartet has received acclaim for its profound musical insight and rare tonal beauty. A former BBC New Generation Artist and recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, the quartet has performed at the BBC Proms at Cadogan Hall and is a regular guest at Wigmore Hall. In its home town of New York, the ensemble serves as season artists of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
The 2023–2024 season found the Escher Quartet embarking upon a major project: performances of the complete cycle of quartets by Bela Bartók, culminating in a single concert performance of all six at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
The Escher Quartet takes its name from the Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher, inspired by Escher’s method of interplay between individual components working together to form a whole.
Further details and the full program are on our website.

Tickets for the Escher Quartet concert will go on sale at 12 noon on Tuesday, December 9, 2025.

Bilingual Lecture Series: Panel on Afghan Refugees in Iran
2026-01-12 11:00 - 13:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Online Via Zoom
Panel on Afghan Refugees in Iran
January 12, 2026
11:00am Pacific Time
Online via Zoom
In Persian and English
Registration Required
Registration Link: https://ucla.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_hcYEa8i_QB6EIvQRBb9YEw
Munazza Ebtikar
PANEL MODERATOR
Dr. Munazza Ebtikar recently completed her PhD (2025) in Politics, History, and Anthropology at the University of Oxford. She was a 2024-2025 Peace Fellow at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs and currently serves as Co-Principal Investigator of Stanford’s Sonic Resistance Archive, documenting Afghan cultural production. She holds an MPhil in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from Oxford and completed her undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley with degrees in Peace and Conflict, Middle Eastern Politics, and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures. Dr. Ebtikar is co-editing “Civil Resistance in Afghanistan” and brings multilingual research capabilities in Persian, Arabic, and Pashto to her work on Afghanistan’s contemporary political and cultural transformations.

Ashraf Haidari
Afghan Refugees in Iran: Precarious Protection, Forced Returns, and Pathways Forward
Ambassador Ashraf Haidari is a distinguished diplomat and humanitarian leader, serving as the Founder and President of Displaced International (DI). From 2018 to 2022, he was Afghanistan’s Ambassador to Sri Lanka and Director-General of the South Asia Cooperative Environment Program (SACEP), leading initiatives on regional security, economic cooperation, climate resilience, and sustainable development. At Afghanistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he held key roles, including Director-General of Policy and Strategy and Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d’Affaires at the Afghan Embassies in Delhi and Washington, D.C. His leadership is deeply shaped by his personal journey as a former refugee. He earned a B.A. in Political Science and International Relations from Wabash College, followed by a Master’s in Security Studies at Georgetown University and a graduate certificate in Refugees, Migration, and Humanitarian Emergencies.

Mejgan Massoumi
Lives in Transit: Afghan Cultural Producers Navigating Precarity and Policing in Iran
Mejgan Massoumi is an Assistant Professor of History at Carnegie Mellon University. Her current book project examines the history of radio in Afghanistan, revealing how music and sound shaped politics, culture, and everyday life at the crossroads of Asia and the Middle East. Her research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), and the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies (AIAS), and her dissertation received the World History Association’s 2023–24 Best Dissertation Prize. Dr. Massoumi earned her PhD in History from Stanford University in 2021. She also holds degrees in Architecture (B.A.) and City Planning (M.C.P.) from the University of California, Berkeley, grounding her scholarship in a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary perspective.

Mitra Naseh
Increasingly Restrictive Migration Policies for Afghans in Iran
Mitra Naseh is a forced migration scholar, currently serving as an Assistant Professor and the Founding Director of the Forced Migration Initiative (FMI) at the Brown School, Washington University in St. Louis. Her research focuses on the multidimensional social and economic integration of forcibly displaced populations, shaped by her interdisciplinary academic training, lived experience as an immigrant, and extensive fieldwork with non-governmental organizations and United Nations agencies, particularly in the Middle East and South Asia. She is the co-author of the widely recognized book Best Practices in Social Work with Refugees and Immigrants, published by Columbia University Press in 2019.

Zuzanna Olszewska
Beyond Dorr-e Dari: The Global Literary Ripples of a Pioneering Refugee Cultural Institution in Iran
Zuzanna Olszewska is Associate Professor in the Social Anthropology of the Middle East at the University of Oxford and a fellow of St. John’s College, Oxford. She is an anthropologist with a particular interest in the literary and cultural production among the Afghan diaspora. She is author of award-winning monograph The Pearl of Dari: Poetry and Personhood among Young Afghans in Iran (Indiana University Press, 2015) and numerous articles. She is also a translator of Persian-language poetry from Afghanistan.
