UCLA Humanities

Bruman Summer Chamber Music Festival: Webern Quartet
2025-07-29 12:00 - 13:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Lani Hall, Schoenberg Music Building
The Henry J. Bruman Summer Chamber Music Festival is held in Lani Hall, a 133-seat auditorium located in the Schoenberg Music Building on the UCLA campus. All concerts are free of charge, and no reservations are required. Seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis.
Lot 2 is the closest campus parking lot; click here for full details on UCLA visitor parking, including campus parking maps and rates.
This year’s Festival will be livestreamed on the Center’s YouTube Channel. Please subscribe to our channel to be notified when the concerts go live.

Founded in Los Angeles in 2022, the Webern Quartet has been featured in The New Yorker, where they were praised as having “found the through line of Schoenberg’s personality.”
The Webern Quartet chose the name of Anton Webern, former student of Arnold Schoenberg, whose important string quartet oeuvre has been the starting point of the quartet. Next to their dedication to the works of the composers from the Second Viennese School, the Webern Quartet is known for its committed and intimate interpretations of works from the classical repertoire to newly written music.
In 2023, the Webern Quartet held an extensive residency at the Arnold Schoenberg Center in Vienna where they performed the complete Schoenberg quartets at two concerts on the same day. Through their work in Vienna with Henk Guittart of the Schoenberg Quartet (which in its time coached with Eugene Lehner of the renowned Kolisch Quartet, Schoenberg’s preferred performers), the Webern Quartet is privileged to honor and continue an interpretive tradition of these quartets.
The quartet’s members are from Italy, Japan, South Korea, and the U.S.
Program
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91)
Quartet in F Major No. 23, K. 590
I. Allegro moderato
II. Andante/Allegretto
III. Menuetto: Allegretto – Trio
IV. Allegro
Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)
String Quartet in F Major
I. Allegro moderato – très doux
II. Assez vif – très rythmé
III. Très lent
IV. Vif et agité
Webern Quartet
Benjamin Hoffman, violin
Chiai Tajima, violin
Alex Granger, viola
Stella Cho, cello

AI Ethics for Humanities and Social Science
2025-07-07 10:00 - 12:00
Monday, July 7, 2025, 10 a.m. – 12 noon, Hybrid Event
This follow-up to the previous “Introduction to AI/ML/LLM for Humanities and Social Science” workshop builds upon the skills and techniques of using and implementing AI to discuss the technology’s social, ethical, and political ramifications, along with guidelines to using AI for research and teaching.
The workshop will address critical ethical concerns surrounding AI, including bias, the network effects of dis- and misinformation, and the authenticity of historical records and provide illustrative use case examples. Discussions will highlight issues of fairness, intellectual property, and academic integrity, drawing from key scholarship in algorithmic ethics and data justice.
By the end of the session, participants will gain a foundational understanding of AI’s role in the humanities, along with practical tools and frameworks for critically engaging with these technologies in their own research and teaching. The workshop will devote significant time to group discussion, where participants’ specific concerns and questions about the ethical and practical use of AI can be addressed.
Participants are also encouraged to reach out to the workshop organizers in advance with any questions or topics of interest, which will be integrated into the workshop.
Hybrid Workshop (OARC Portal and Zoom):

In-person: Math Sciences 5628
Zoom: Link will be emailed to you

Follow this link to register.

Humanities Division Commencement
2025-06-14 13:00 - 14:30 | Royce Hall, 10945 Dickson Drive, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Saturday, June 14, 2025, 1 p.m., Royce Hall
Join us in historic Royce Hall as we celebrate this year’s graduating students from across the Humanities Division.
Our distinguished commencement speaker be Carribean Fragoza, award-winning author, journalist, editor, artist and teacher. Fragoza earned degrees in comparative literature and Chicana and Chicano studies from UCLA in 2003. She is the author of the short story collection “Eat the Mouth That Feeds You” (2021) and “Writing Home: New Terrains of California” (2024) a collection of essays. (Read more about Carribean Fragoza here.)
The Humanities Division ceremony is for 2025 graduates in the following departments and programs: Art History; Asian Languages and Cultures; Classics; Comparative Literature; Digital Humanities; European Languages and Transcultural Studies; Near Eastern Languages and Cultures; Slavic, East European and Eurasian Languages and Cultures; the Study of Religion IDP; and Spanish & Portuguese.
Please note that the English Department (Sunday, June 15, 2025, 2 p.m., Dickson Court North), Linguistics Department (Sunday, June 15, 2025, 5:30 p.m., Royce Hall) and Philosophy Department (Saturday, June 14, 2025, 3:30 p.m., Royce Hall) each have their own departmental ceremonies.
For complete information about the Humanities Commencement, including ticket information, event guidelines and eligibility, please visit the Humanities Division Commencement page.
For information about UCLA College Commencement, visit the College Commencement page.

Clark Library Nature and Garden Festival
2025-05-31 11:00 - 14:00 | William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 2520 Cimarron Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90018, United States
The Clark Library preserves and provides access to over 130,000 books, manuscripts, and artworks dating from the 15th century to the present. But there is a library of living things on the five acres outside the library’s building, too, and this event will celebrate the urban nature and green spaces at the Clark – and across LA!
Attendees can get garden advice from an expert UC Master Gardener, go on bird walks with experienced guides from UCLA’s Bruin Birding Club, and learn more about how people thought and learned about gardens and wild creatures in the 1700s through rare books on display inside the historic library building. Attendees will also be able to make their own field notebooks, participate in a Clark Library Biodiversity survey on iNaturalist to help expand our knowledge of the library’s outdoor collections, plant seeds to take home from our heirloom seed library, trade plant cuttings and seeds with other attendees – and more!
All ages are welcome! Registration is free, but limited; please fill out the form below. Guests are welcome to bring a lunch and picnic on the Clark grounds, and to explore all of the day’s activities at their own pace. The Clark can be reached via LA Metro and LADOT Dash public transit, and free parking and bike racks are available on site; please see here for more information and directions.

Writing Your Future: Careers and Pathways for Writers
2025-05-28 14:00 - 15:30
Join us for a conversation with professionals from diverse fields who will share their career journeys—from the challenges and rewards of making a living as a writer to finding fulfilling work that keeps writing at the center. Whether you’re on a traditional career path or wondering how to build a life around writing, this discussion will offer valuable insights into the many professional opportunities available to strong communicators. Bring your questions and learn how to turn your writing skills into a rewarding career after graduation.
Panelists:
LaShea Delaney, Freelance Writer, Theatermaker, Wine Pro
Jeffrey Janis, UCLA Peace Corps Campus Recruiter and Returned Volunteer (Ukraine)
Willa Needham, Communications Specialist, UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (and UCLA alumna, class of 2024)
Carolyn Nelson Rowan, J.D., Editor-in-Chief & Practicing Attorney, Miller Starr Regalia
Week 9, Wednesday
May 28, 2025
2:00 – 3:30 pm
193 Kaplan Hall
This event is free and open to Professional Writing minors and other interested students.
Organized by UCLA Writing Programs’ Sp25 ECM185 instructors with grant support from the Teaching & Learning Center; for more information: wpinfo@humnet.ucla.edu.

Works-in-Progress Session: Earth and Exchange: Tapia and the Construction of Early Modern Iberia
2025-05-28 11:00 - 12:00
Presented by Rachel Schloss, Doctoral Candidate, University of California, Los Angeles

Hosted by the Early Modern Research Group
Online event via Zoom
To register, please visit: https://ucla.zoom.us/meeting/register/qHytTYlcTiiINu5XzDQiew

Earthen materials have played a critical role in political and social development on the Iberian Peninsula. The unique geology of the Peninsula harbors rich soils, minerals, and clays that have featured in the built environment and material culture of diverse peoples and practices across the region up to the present: Spain and Portugal together are two of the world’s largest exporters of ceramics. Iberian earthen architectural traditions are part of this suite of practices, but their deep importance to cultural and political realities is underexplored.
In this presentation, Rachel Schloss analyzes the social, cultural, and technological history of tapia, a system of rammed-earth building utilized on the Iberian Peninsula from the 11th to 17th centuries CE, from which impressive large-scale structures were built, including the Alhambra in Granada. In particular, Schloss considers how the shifts and changes in the material and construction technology over time were underwritten by political developments and exchange of knowledge as well as shifting relationships with the environment and the earth. As tapia originated in the Near East, Schloss reflects on the question: Is there such a thing as Iberian tapia? Finally, by understanding tapia as a means to sculpt the Iberian built landscape out of earth, Schloss demonstrates how the technology tells a story of the construction of Early Modern Iberian identity into the age of conquest, where Iberians exported earthen practices and values to new places.
Rachel Schloss is a doctoral candidate in the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, where she studies early modern Andean and Iberian earthen practices, and their roles in shaping built environments and the construction of Inca history. In her doctoral research, Schloss combines methods from Archaeology, Art and Architectural History, Indigenous Studies, and Geology. Additionally, Schloss co-coordinates the Architecture Lab and Architecture Working Group at UCLA. Her research has been supported by UCLA’s Center for 17th- and 18th-Century Studies, Latin American Institute, Cotsen Institute, and the Division of Graduate Education, and by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Society of Architectural Historians, and the Vernacular Architecture Forum.

Meditations Journal Conference 2025
2025-05-23 15:00 - 20:00 | Dodd Hall 399
Friday, May 23, 2025
3:00 – 8:00 PM
Dodd Hall 399

Please join us on Friday, May 23, 2025 at 3:00 PM in Dodd Hall 399 for the 2025 Meditations Journal Conference.

In 2014, the Philosophy Club at UCLA proudly hosted its first conference on behalf of Meditations: The Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy at UCLA. All participating authors and editors of the journal are undergraduate students who have dedicated several months to this philosophical project. This conference is an exciting opportunity to honor their hard work and hear them present their original ideas.

Conference Program

Coming soon!

If you have any questions, please reach out to meditations.philosophy.journal@gmail.com.

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Pourdavoud Lecture Series: Gunvor Lindström
2025-05-21 16:00 - 18:00 | 306 Royce Hall, 10745 Dickson Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
The Denavar Satyrs as Time Travelers: From Ancient Persia to Greece, Rome, and 20th Century Collections

The influence of Greco-Roman artistic traditions on the Parthian Empire (c. 250 BCE–225 CE) remains a subject of debate, with little direct evidence attesting to their presence. One long-overlooked artifact that challenges this assumption is the recently reconstructed Denavar Vase, a monumental stone bowl adorned with a satyr frieze in the Greek style. The reconstruction of this bowl—its fragments now dispersed across museums and collections on three continents—suggests that it once formed part of a local ruler’s palace décor, reflecting a deep engagement with the visual language of the Roman elite. The second part of this lecture traces the biographies of these fragments since their discovery around 1914. It will follow the track of famous scholars and connoisseurs who incorporated the pieces into their collections, and go on a varied journey through the art history and historiography of Hellenistic and Parthian art. This journey also explores 19th-century decorative arts and museum presentations, ultimately navigating the political history from the First to the end of the Second World War.
About the Speaker

Dr. Gunvor Lindström is a Classical Archaeologist with a deep engagement in neighboring disciplines. A leading expert on Hellenism in the Ancient East, she has conducted extensive research across Central Asia, Iran, and Mesopotamia, focusing on the Hellenistic and Parthian periods. Since 2004, she has conceived and led several high-profile projects at the German Archaeological Institute’s Eurasia Department. Her work on Hellenistic and Kushan Bactria includes studies of votive practices, notably the offerings from the famous Oxus Temple. She also discovered and excavated a Hellenistic sanctuary at Torbulok in modern Tajikistan (2013–2018), now a key reference point for Hellenistic Bactria. In recent years, she has focused on Hellenistic art in Central Asia and Iran, conducting the first systematic study of bronze and marble statues from Kale-e Chendar in Khuzestan (better known as Shami) and reconstructing a monumental bronze portrait statue of a Hellenistic ruler in the National Museum of Iran.

Pourdavoud Lecture Series – Gunvor Lindström

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Professional Writing Minor Capstone Seminar Colloquium
2025-05-19 10:00 - 2025-05-21 16:00
4th annual Professional Writing Minor Capstone Seminar Colloquium
“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.”
-Anne Lamott
About The Event
UCLA Writing Programs and the Department of English cordially invite you to our fourth annual Professional Writing Minor Capstone Seminar Colloquium, organized as part of Undergraduate Research Week 2025. In this series of panels, students from the Professional Writing Minor (PWM) will present an exciting array of capstone seminar projects.
A new and growing minor with just eleven graduating seniors in 2020, forty-three of the PWM’s eighty-one graduating seniors in AY 24-25 will present on a rich diversity of topics that exemplify the range, depth, and individualized paths possible within the Professional Writing Minor. From Rachel Zegler to the Armenian diaspora, urban planning to the effects of SSRIs during pregnancy, students from diverse majors will share their original work in a range of genres including memoirs, websites, zines, research articles, and digital marketing campaigns.
The colloquium is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served. Friends, family, faculty, staff, and students are welcome to attend. Join us to experience writing as an act of both communication and exploration as these emerging writers and soon-to-be graduates share their insights and discoveries.
Schedule

List of Presenters
Annika Anbiai-Fard
Matthew Beymer
Madison Browning
Angelica Catalan
Natalie Chapin
Leila Chiddick
Danielle Cho
Naomi Chou
Jonathan Cohn
Natalie Denhardt
Emmy Etlin
Delia Falliers
Miranda Fogel
Luciaceleste Garcia
Sarah Gauger
Roxanne Ha
Lucy Herlihy
Micah Hoffman
Ada Jack
Olivia Johnson
Amariyah Lane-Volz
Sophie Lattu
Sophia Manos
Alex McCullough
Jacob Mora
Autumn Morgan
Kimberly Muro
Pacheco Nicole
Isabella Orr
Kristen Perez
Valerie Prado
Maya Rego
Isabel Rodriguez
Oluwadamilola Salami
Diana Sargsyan
Leah Snyderman
Jane Sonnichsen
Janelle Soriano
Citlali Tejeda
Soraya Tofighrad
Taylor Wallace
Siena Wong
Esther Zhang
The PWM Capstone Seminars are led in Sp25 by Writing Programs faculty, Drs. Amber West, Dana Cairns Watson, Laurel Westrup, and Maja Manojlovic.
Event flyer links: 8.5×11 / Square

Gefyra Book Club: “Niki: A Novel” by Christos Chomenidis
2025-05-17 10:00 - 11:00 | by Zoom
Gefyra Book Club: Niki: A Novel by Christos Chomenidis, trans. Patricia Felisa Barbeito
(Other Press, 2023)
Discussion led by Professor Sharon Gerstel, Director, UCLA SNF Hellenic Center
and Dr. Eirini Kotsovili, Senior Lecturer, Global Humanities at Simon Fraser University
Saturday, May 17, 2025
10 a.m. Los Angeles / 8 p.m. Greece
Via Zoom
RSVP here: https://ucla.zoom.us/meeting/register/tOd7OiJDRcCfM5-T2u0Ecg
This academic year’s book club is held in English and will feature Greek books in translation. For future book selections and meeting dates, click here.
Born in 1938, Niki, the daughter of the deputy secretary general of the Greek Communist Party, is swept up in turmoil before her first birthday: her parents are arrested, and she joins her mother in exile on an island near Santorini. Growing up, she experiences the Italian and German invasion, the Nazi occupation, and the civil war that came after, often caught between her socialist values and those of the right-wing establishment, to which half her relatives belong. Through her memories and the stories of her family, with roots on both coasts of the Aegean Sea, Niki also tells the history of Greece and Asia Minor from the late nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth. Her remarkable tales, full of humor and verve in spite of hardship, are populated by working-class heroes, privileged elites, daring revolutionaries, and free-spirited bohemians.
Christos Chomenidis was born in Athens, Greece. In addition to writing novels, Chomenidis has hosted his own nationally broadcast radio show, written scripts for cinema and television, and writes a column for Greece’s largest newspaper, Ta Nea. His novel Νiki won the 2021 European Book Prize, and his works have been translated into numerous languages.
Patricia Felisa Barbeito is Professor of American Literatures at the Rhode Island School of Design and a translator of modern Greek fiction and poetry. Her translations include Elias Maglinis’s The Interrogation, which was awarded the 2013 Modern Greek Studies Association’s Constantinides Memorial Translation Prize, M. Karagatsis’s The Great Chimera, and Amanda Michalopoulou’s God’s Wife, which was short-listed for the 2020 National Translation Award.
This program is made possible thanks to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).
Links to purchase book:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/niki-christos-chomenidis/1142242207?ean=9781635421972
https://otherpress.com/product/niki-9781635421972/
https://www.amazon.com/Niki-Novel-Christos-Chomenidis/dp/1635421977
The Gefyra Book Club meeting is part of Gefyra (Bridge), a collaborative program established by the UCLA SNF Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture and the Simon Fraser University SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies with support from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).

Pourdavoud Lecture Series: Wu Xin
2025-05-14 16:00 - 18:00 | 306 Royce Hall, 10745 Dickson Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Imperial Foundations of the Silk Road: Persian Roads and Han Walls

While the Silk Road is often celebrated as a pivotal example of early globalization, scholarship has primarily focused on the consequences of its connectivity, neglecting the crucial question of its formation and operational logistics. This lecture re-examines the origins and mechanisms of this trans-Eurasian network during the latter half of the first millennium BCE. It posits that the imperial ambitions of the Achaemenid Persian and Han Chinese dynasties were fundamental in establishing this communication network. Specifically, the Persian Royal Road facilitated movement from Central Asia to the Mediterranean, while the Han dynasty’s extensive wall systems provided security and strategic control from Chang’an to Samarkand. This analysis, drawn on archaeological discoveries from Central Asia and wester China, argues that the combined infrastructural investments of these geographically and temporally distinct empires laid the groundwork for the roads that ultimately interconnected the ancient Eurasian world.
About the Speaker
Wu Xin received her undergraduate and master’s training at Beijing University, focusing on Chinese archaeology and Central Asian Buddhist Art. She earned her PhD at the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in the art and archaeology of the ancient Near East. Her dissertation, titled “Central Asia in the Context of the Achaemenid Persian Empire (6th to 4th Centuries B.C.),” reflects her interest in the interactions between Central Asia and the Achaemenid imperial power. With extensive experience in archaeological projects, Wu Xin directed the Kyzyltepa Project in Uzbekistan and is finalizing a monograph titled Persia and the East, which presents her renewed scholarship on the relationships between Central Asia, the Eurasian steppe, and the Achaemenid Empire. Previously a professor in the Department of History at Fudan University in Shanghai, Wu Xin currently serves as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology at Bryn Mawr College.

Pourdavoud Lecture Series – Wu Xin

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Power and Alterity in Black Religious Thought
2025-05-13 12:30 - 13:30 | Kaplan 365
Who is the human? What is legitimate religion? Who is left out of these discourses? Questions of power, humanity, and alterity animate religious discourse and responses to oppression. Leveraging the Rastafari movement and interrogating religious racism this talk will allow us to grapple with 20th century Black religious discourses and their continued relevance for thinking about how to protect religious freedom in the contemporary moment.
RSVP here for in-person event.
Register here for Zoom link.
Shamara Wyllie Alhassan is Assistant Professor of African American Studies at the University of California – Los Angeles. Alhassan comes to UCLA from Arizona State University where she was Assistant Professor of Religious Studies in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies. As a transdisciplinary Africana Studies scholar of religion, philosophy, and gender theory, Alhassan transnational ethnographic work focuses on Black women’s radical epistemologies in Africa and the Caribbean. She is interested in the healing communities Rastafari women form to combat anti-black gendered racism and religious discrimination. Her forthcoming book tentatively titled, Re-Membering the Maternal Goddess: Rastafari Women’s Intellectual History and Activism in the Pan-African World is the winner of the National Women’s Association and University of Illinois Press First Book Prize. She is the co-editor of the book, Black Women and Da Rona: Community, Consciousness, and Ethics of Care, published with the Feminist Wire Series Books at the University of Arizona Press in 2023. Her published work also appears in Callaloo, the National Political Science Review, Religions, The Black Scholar, IDEAZ journal, Political Theology Network, the Immanent Frame, and Caliban’s Readings. She is a Crossroads Arts Fellow with The Crossroads Project Black Religious, Histories, Communities and Cultures at Princeton University. Currently, she serves as the Secretary of Rastafari Thought at the Caribbean Philosophical Association, on the board of the Religion, Medicines, and Healing Unit at the American Academy of Religion, and an organizer of the Collaborative for Research on Black Women and Girls.

Level Up: Careers in Digital Media
2025-05-08 16:00 - 17:00 | On Zoom
Wondering how to apply your UCLA Humanities skills in an increasingly online world? Log on to learn from our alumni panelists, who will share their experiences curating content, crafting 21st-century narratives, and leveraging digital tools.
To register, go to: Level Up: Careers in Digital Media
Meet our moderator:
Daniel Scott Snelson

Daniel Scott Snelson is a writer, editor, and archivist working as an Assistant Professor in the Departments of English and Design Media Arts at UCLA, where he serves as faculty for the Digital Humanities, the Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies, and the UCLA Game Lab. His online editorial work can be found on PennSound, Eclipse, UbuWeb, Jacket2, and the EPC. Published books works include Elden Poem (Hysterically Real, 2022), Full Bleed: A Mourning Letter for the Printed Page (Sync, 2019), Apocalypse Reliquary: 1984-2000 (Monoskop, 2018), Radios (Make Now, 2016), EXE TXT (Gauss PDF, 2015), Epic Lyric Poem (Troll Thread, 2014), and Inventory Arousal with James Hoff (Bedford Press/Architectural Association, 2011). With Mashinka Firunts Hakopian and Avi Alpert, he performs as one-third of the academic performance group Research Service. His forthcoming book, The Little Database: A Poetics of Media Formats (University of Minnesota Press, 2025), examines the networked afterlives of media-reflexive works of art and letters.
Meet our panelists:
Josh Levine

Josh Levine is an entrepreneur whose journey has been defined by spotting the gaps where music, technology, and culture intersect. As an industry outsider by design, he brings fresh perspectives to established systems and creates opportunities where others see roadblocks, which has made him a valuable guide for those navigating their own entrepreneurial paths.
As co-founder of Rebel Creator Services, Josh identified a critical gap in digital rights management costing music artists millions in lost revenue. His company empowers independent musicians to maximize their YouTube earnings in an increasingly complex digital landscape. Josh also leads A Coffee Called Folks, a coffee brand celebrating hiphop culture, and co-founded LA TO IBIZA Records with his teenage son Justin – a family business in its early stages launching Justin’s career in house music while creating opportunities for other young artists.
Josh’s innovative brand-culture partnerships include serving as head of global brand partnerships for Linkin Park, generating multimillion-dollar collaborations with Mercedes-AMG and Intel. His pioneering work helped Toyota launch its youth-focused Scion brand, positioned Dr Pepper as an early leader in esports, and guided 7UP into EDM culture through collaborations with global stars like Tiësto.
Since 2015, Josh has hosted the Rebel Radio podcast, uncovering business and life lessons in over 300 interviews with artists and creative entrepreneurs. His work has been featured in Forbes, Brand Week, Advertising Age, and the Wall Street Journal.
Josh began his career as a music journalist writing for The Source and Vibe, before evolving into artist management and founding culture-marketing agency Rebel Industries. A UCLA graduate with a degree in Linguistics and Psychology, he also holds a Certificate in Business Management from USC’s Marshall School of Business.
*Josh is available for solo presentations or, for select topics, can present alongside his son Justin as a father-son entrepreneurial team discussing their journey building LA TO IBIZA Records together.*
Jordan Galczynski

Jordan Galczynski (she/her) manages the Instructional Technology Group within Humanities Technology, overseeing lab and learning spaces, a team of graduate students serving as Research and Instructional Technology Consultants (RITCs), and internal Digital Humanities projects (DH Accelerator). She received her Ph.D. from UCLA in Egyptology in 2024. Jordan co-hosts a podcast, Afterlives of Ancient Egypt, and writes on the Substack Ancient/Now, discussing the intersection of the ancient and modern worlds.
Emily Pitcher

Emily Pitcher (aka SonderingEmily) is a game developer and content creator, sharing her journey making games and her favorite indie games. She’s been featured in Forbes 30 under 30 Games, The Game Awards Future Class, Business Insider, Polygon, and Entrepreneur. Currently, she’s making lily’s world XD, a Y2K inspired horror game about investigating a young girl’s computer. Everything seems normal until you find messages addressed to you. Previously, she worked at Meta and Yahoo.
Francesca Albrezzi

Francesca Albrezzi, Ph.D. has worked with museums for over a decade, including the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (Washington, D.C.), the Institut national d’histoire de l’art (Paris, France), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Getty Research Institute (Los Angeles, California). She completed her doctoral degree in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at UCLA, as well as a Digital Humanities Graduate Certificate through UCLA’s Center for Digital Humanities. Her dissertation interrogates modes of publishing, display, and information capture in museums and archives that illustrate a break from “traditional” models, and argues that digital modalities provide a distinctly different paradigm for epistemologies of art and culture that offer greater contextualized understandings. Specifically, she is interested in spectrums of immersive experience within GLAM organizations as offered by technologies such as virtual reality, augmented reality, and 360 photo and video capture. Dr. Albrezzi also has significant experience developing digital tools, such as The Getty Scholars’ Workspace™ for conducting collaborative arts research and preservation. She was aHASTAC Scholar, has worked and taught within the field of Digital Humanities, Art History, and Cultural Studies for eight years, and helped to produce an online digital art history textbook. Currently, she is a digital research consultant at the Institute for Digital Research and Education at UCLA.

Progressive Activists and the Bible
2025-05-08 11:15 - 12:15 | Online on Zoom
Some of America’s most effective reformers did not just refer to the Bible, but fused their own struggles with its narratives, seeing themselves as part of a cosmic divine battle within history. Claudia Setzer will have us consider how abolitionist Frederick Douglass, Civil Rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer and others used multiple methods of biblical interpretation to make sense of their struggles and to reject despair. We will also consider contemporary activist groups that root themselves in the Bible and religious traditions.
Register here for the Zoom link.

The Art of Duo: A Journey through Europe to the USA from 1700 to 1930
2025-05-03 14:00 - 15:30 | William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 2520 Cimarron Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90018, United States
Ambroise Aubrun, violin
Steven Vanhauwaert, piano
“ A Journey through Europe to the USA from 1700 to 1930” invites you to an exploration of the violin and piano duo’s rich history. Each piece performed will reflect the evolving styles and cultural influences that shaped the duo’s repertoire from the baroque era to the early 20th century. The performance is complemented by engaging presentations and discussions, offering a guide to a deeper understanding of this timeless repertoire.
Further details and the complete program are on the website.

California Medieval Seminar (Spring 2025)
2025-05-03 09:30 - 16:00 | Royce 306, 10745 Dickson Ct, Los Angeles CA, 90095, United States
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.
More information can be found here.
Register to attend in Royce 306
Register to attend via Zoom

Symposium – (Mis)Using the Bible: White Evangelicalism & Christian Nationalism in America
2025-04-28 14:00 - 17:00 | Royce Hall 306/Zoom
White Evangelicalism and Christian Nationalism has occupied an increasingly prominent position since—and in many ways before—the first Trump administration. Events such as January 6 and the second Trump presidency have highlighted the entanglement of politics and religious belief that is central to Christian Nationalism. This symposium brings together several scholars to discuss various aspects of white Evangelicalism and Christian Nationalism, particularly as they connect to modern and contemporary American politics. The symposium serves as a forum for investigating topics such as tolerance and religious pluralism, the use of anti-abortion protests, and the intersection of race and Christian Nationalism. Further, the symposium opens a discussion on how Evangelicalism and Christian Nationalism use and misuse biblical and historical material to bolster their narratives.

Space is limited. RSVP here for the in-person event.
Register here for the Zoom link here.

Symposium Schedule:
2–2:10: Welcome – Carol Bakhos, Chair, Study of Religion
2:10-2:30: Introduction and Opening Remarks by Gina Konstantopoulos, Symposium Moderator – “Evangelizing Antiquity: The Museum of the Bible and the Appropriation of the Past”
2:30-3:00 Sophie Bjork-James – “To Be Pro-life in an Age of Extinction: Abortion, Christian Nationalism, and Ecological Denial”
3:00-3:20: Break
3:20-3:50: Brooklyn Walker – “Counterpoint in the Heavenly Choir: Christian Nationalism, Anti-Christian Nationalism, and the Multivocality of American Christianity”
3:50-4:20: Michael R. Fisher, Jr. – “Race, Politics, and Christian Nationalism in the Second Era of Trump”
4:20-5: Discussion and Q&A

Opening Remarks: “Evangelizing Antiquity: The Museum of the Bible and the Appropriation of the Past”
Founded in 2017 by David Green, the Museum of the Bible stands as an impressive institution: it boasts seven floors and 430,000 square feet of exhibition space, all located two blocks from the National Mall in Washington DC. The museum presents a narrative wherein historical and religious evidence and artefacts are utilized to bolster an evangelical perspective. This talk discusses how the Museum of the Bible, as well as other evangelical institutions, utilize the past in particular in their attempt to craft—and moreover legitimize—their own, often very specific, narrative.
Gina Konstantopoulos is an associate professor in Assyriology and Cuneiform studies in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research centers on religion, magic, and literature in Mesopotamia, with a focus on the role of demons and monsters. She is the author of The Divine/Demonic Seven and the Place of Demons in Mesopotamia (Brill, 2023). She has authored articles on demons and monsters in Mesopotamia, translations of Sumerian and Akkadian texts, and the reception of Mesopotamia in later pre-modern and modern contexts.

“To Be Pro-life in an Age of Extinction: Abortion, Christian Nationalism, and Ecological Denial”
Within Christian Nationalism, anti-abortion and anti-environmental politics are united. Since white evangelicals adopted an anti-abortion stance between the late 1970s and early 1980s, they have sought to make it the most significant moral issue of our time. Abortion can then act as a moral pivot, re-directing concern away from other problems, especially environmental ones. Drawing on long-term research on white evangelical politics in Colorado, this talk shows how within Christian Nationalism concern about abortion often serves to occlude care about the environment and the climate crisis. The significance of this is hard to overstate in our current era of climate crisis and species collapse.
Sophie Bjork-James is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Vanderbilt University. She has over ten years of experience researching both the US based Religious Right and the white nationalist movements. She is the author of The Divine Institution: White Evangelicalism’s Politics of the Family (Rutgers 2021, winner of the Anne Bolin & Gil Herdt Book Prize) and the co-editor of Beyond Populism: Angry Politics and the Twilight of Neoliberalism (2020). She has been interviewed on the NBC Nightly News, NPR’s All Things Considered, BBC Radio 4’s Today, and in the New York Times. Her work has received support the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, the American Academy of Religion, the National Science Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation. She is currently working on a new book exploring how young people understand abortion in a state that has implemented a total abortion ban.

“Counterpoint in the Heavenly Choir: Christian Nationalism, Anti-Christian Nationalism, and the Multivocality of American Christianity”
The Bible has been used to give voice to the concepts of rule by religious precept and ethnocentrism central to Christian nationalism. But, in opposition to religious nationalism, the Bible has also been used to proclaim themes of pluralism, equality, and liberty. Using data drawn from a survey of American Christians, I explore the extent to which both Christian nationalist and anti-Christian nationalist ideas derived from the Bible have taken hold in the public. Among American Christians, support for Christian nationalism and anti-Christian nationalism are positively linked. While anti-Christian nationalist ideas have the potential to improve tolerance, feelings of threat can silence these messages supportive of religious pluralism.
Brooklyn Walker is an Instructor of Political Science at Hutchinson Community College and will be joining the University of Tennessee-Knoxville as Assistant Professor in the fall of 2025. Brooklyn is interested in how people come to think of themselves as members of politicized groups and in the effects of politicized identities on intergroup relations and public opinion. Her projects have explored the intersections of Christian nationalism and religious and racial group identities. She also researches in the areas of political psychology, racial and ethnic politics, and gender and politics.

“Race, Politics, and Christian Nationalism in the Second Era of Trump”
Although Christian nationalism ideology resonates across the United States, it’s important to recognize that, like many demographic groups, supporters of Christian nationalism don’t universally subscribe to the same ideas. Existing research focuses almost exclusively on White Americans who qualify as Christian nationalism adherents and sympathizers (hereafter Christian nationalists) and does so through observational analysis with few exceptions. This presentation leverages observational analysis and causal inference to examine the ideological and political differences between Black, White, and Latine Americans who qualify as Christian nationalists.
Michael R. Fisher Jr., Ph.D. is Assistant Professor in the political economy of race/racism in the Department of African American and African Studies and is a Faculty Affiliate at the Center for the Study of Religion at The Ohio State University. Trained as an interdisciplinary scholar, Dr. Fisher’s areas of specialization include race, policy, and socio-economic inequality and race and religion. He holds research appointments at the Metropolitan Policy Center at American University, the National Initiative of Mixed-Income Communities at Case Western Reserve University, and the Institute for Gender Studies at the University of South Africa. He is also a 2023–25 Public Fellow with the Public Religion Research Institute and is editor of Confronting Racism and White Supremacy in the US: Twenty-First-Century Theological Perspectives (Friendship Press, 2024).

Organized by Gina Konstantopoulos
Co-sponsored by the UCLA Department of History and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures.

Teaching for Thinking
2025-04-28 11:00 - 12:30 | Young Research Library, YRL 2"d Floor West Classroom 23167, Los Angeles, 90095, United States
Join us for the third and final session of our Critical Thinking Focused Teaching Workshop, hosted by the University of Queensland Critical Thinking Project (UQCTP) and sponsored by the UCLA Department of Philosophy and HumTech.
This session challenges the false dichotomy of teaching for thinking and teaching for content knowledge. We will show that developing deep and complex content knowledge demands attention to how students think, both as they are learning and in how they are using and creating new knowledge. The extent to which we value explicit teaching must carry into the explicit teaching of thinking, and the language and concepts of how this is best done are critical for effective pedagogical discussions.  A range of concepts and tools will be discussed that demonstrate practical guides to putting key principles of teaching for thinking into action.
Lunch will be provided to allow for informal conversation, networking, and deeper reflection on these practices.
Space is limited. Please RSVP.

Chamber Music at the Clark 30th Anniversary presents Borromeo String Quartet
2025-04-27 14:00 - 16:00 | William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 2520 Cimarron Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90018, United States
Concert presented in honor of Bruce Whiteman
Each visionary performance of the award-winning Borromeo String Quartet strengthens and deepens its reputation as one of the most important ensembles of our time. Admired and sought after for both its fresh interpretations of the classical music canon and its championing of works by twentieth- and twenty-first-century composers, the ensemble has been hailed for its “edge-of-the-seat performances” by the Boston Globe, which called it “simply the best.”
The group recently premiered new works written for it by Sebastian Currier and Aaron Jay Kernis at recitals at Carnegie Hall, Shriver Concerts, and the Tippet Rise Art Center. The ensemble continues to perform violinist Nicholas Kitchen’s transcriptions of Bach’s Goldberg Variations and the Well-Tempered Clavier Bk. I, the latter of which the BSQ recently released as an acclaimed premiere recording which hit the billboard charts.
Further details and the complete program are on the website.

“Hybridity”: In-Between People, Texts & Objects Across the Early Global World – MEMSA Graduate Student Conference
2025-04-26 09:00 - 17:30 | Royce 306, 10745 Dickson Ct, Los Angeles CA, 90095, United States
The 5th Annual Conference of the UCLA Medieval and Early Modern Student Association seeks to highlight the innovative work of graduate students on the manifold ways people, texts, and objects “in-between” shaped the early global world, from the early medieval to the late early modern periods. Presentations will engage with the concept of the so-called “hybrid,” asking: what does it mean to label something as in-between, mixed, syncretic, blended, amalgamated, or composite? To what end might something be constituted as “hybrid”? Does “hybridity” as a term still carry meaning when encompassing so much? Does the contact and exchange of people, things, and ideas inevitably result in “hybridity”? The event seeks to problematize the term and its synonyms, thinking about “hybridity” as a threshold of negotiation, contestation, in(ter)vention, interpretation, translation, and debate.
Register to attend in Royce 306
Organized by the Officers of MEMSA: Chase Caldwell Smith, Sofía Yazpik, Miranda Heaner, and Stanley Wu
Sponsored by the UCLA CMRS Center for Early Global Studies

Naoíse Mac Sweeney | “The Birth of the Ancient Greek World: Migration, Urbanisation, and the Emergence of Greekness?”
2025-04-24 17:00 - 19:00 | Fowler Museum
Annual UCLA Joan Palevsky Lecture Professor
Naoíse Mac Sweeney, University of Vienna
“The Birth of the Ancient Greek World: Migration, Urbanisation, and the Emergence of Greekness?”
Lecture summary: By the start of the classical period, the Greek world stretched from Spain to Cyprus, and from Libya to the Crimea, and was comprised of over 1,000 autonomous polities. In this lecture, I will consider how this geographically dispersed and politically fragmented Greek world came into being over the course of the 11th to sixth centuries BCE, focusing in particular on new data from archaeological surveys designed to uncover processes of urbanisation and migration at varying scales. This new data suggests divergent pathways to Greekness in different parts of the Greek world, with the adoption of Greek lifestyles and cultural traits happening at radically different times and in response to different local contexts. If, as this evidence suggests, the Greek world was forged in a more piecemeal and uneven manner than previously thought, does this have implications for what we assume the Greek world fundamentally was?
About the speaker: Naoíse Mac Sweeney, professor of Greek archaeology at the University of Vienna, is the author of books including “Community Identity and Archaeology” (2011), “Foundation Myths and Politics in Ancient Ionia” (2013), “Troy: Myth, City, Icon” (2018) and, most recently, “The West: A New History of an Old Idea” (2023).
Kindly RSVP at collegeevents@support.ucla.edu.

Thinking, Talking and Writing
2025-04-23 11:00 - 12:30 | Young Research Library Presentation Room, YRL 1st. Floor Presentation Presentation Room 11348, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Join us for the second session of our Critical Thinking Focused Teaching Workshop, hosted by the University of Queensland Critical Thinking Project (UQCTP) and sponsored by the UCLA Department of Philosophy and HumTech.
In this session, we will explore a thinking and talk-based writing pedagogy that is transferable to any discipline and year level. Based on a schematic understanding of Accountable Talk (Michaels et al. 2015), argument structure, and the values of inquiry (Ellerton, 2015), we will unpack the significance and utility of these tools, both as stand-alone elements and as integrated components of a comprehensive writing pedagogy.
Participants will have the opportunity to think through and share how they might integrate more critical and collaborative thinking into writing experiences.
As with our first session, lunch will be provided to allow for informal conversation, networking, and deeper reflection on these practices.
Space is limited. Please RSVP.

Careers In the FBI
2025-04-22 16:00 - 18:00 | 314 Royce Hall, 10745 Dickson Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Join us in person to meet a variety of professionals who work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and learn about different career paths and opportunities. Speakers will talk about their experiences in their job roles and provide tips on applying for current open positions and opportunities.
To register, go to: Careers Inside the FBI
Speakers will include:
Assistant Director in Charge of the Los Angeles Field Office, Akil Davis
Special Agent
Supervisory Intelligence Analyst
Language Analyst

Assessing for thinking in an age of AI – the Cognitive Audit
2025-04-22 11:00 - 12:30 | Young Research Library, YRL 2"d Floor West Classroom 23167, Los Angeles, 90095, United States
Join us for the inaugural session of our Critical Thinking Focused Teaching Workshop, hosted by the University of Queensland Critical Thinking Project (UQCTP) and sponsored by the UCLA Department of Philosophy and HumTech.
A key challenge for teachers is planning and assessing student thinking with the same precision and intentionality applied to content knowledge. This issue becomes particularly significant when addressing student engagement with AI. In this session, we will explore how to make the cognitive content of tasks and assessments, especially in argumentative contexts, explicit and targeted during both planning and evaluation stages.
Participants will receive a variety of resources designed to make the processes of planning and assessing thinking transparent, actionable, and easily shareable across all subject areas. Additionally, lunch will be provided to all attendees, allowing you to network and discuss insights with fellow educators over a meal.
Space is limited, please RSVP

New Book Salon Book Talk by Roberta Morosini
2025-04-14 | Royce 306, 10745 Dickson Ct, Los Angeles CA, 90095, United States
What does a flying bull with a half moon on its belly in Filippino Lippi’s 1502 painting, the Adoration of the Golden Calf, have in common with Muhammad, as a character of Dante’s Comedy? This is the question that Roberta Morosini tries to answer by following the journey of a legend traveling in the Oriental Mediterranean. She argues that what Lippis’s painting and Dante’s Muhammad have in common is a legend of a celestial delivery of the “bull law,” the Qur’an and Moses’s Tablets of the Law. Just as Moses received the Tablets of the Law from God on Mount Sinai, the Qur’an, written according to Thomas Aquinas by mixing fables and a rippled Bible, is carried by the bull on its horns. Taking us from Medieval Christian Byzantium to the depictions of Muhammad and Averroës in the iconographic tradition, to the Rome of Oliviero Carafa in the events following the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 through Dante’s Comedy, the real protagonists of Dante, Moses and the Book of Islam, a story narrated through texts and images, are the Book and the Mediterranean as spaces of transmission of knowledge. Morosini provides a ground breaking reading of Filippino’s Adoration of the Golden Calf as an ancient scene of anti-Islam propaganda, while shedding new light on Dante’s construction of the cultural other, on his spaces of otherness, and on the importance the poet gives to books that bring unity and give form to what lacks it, like his book, the Comedy.

Early Global Caribbean: Conference 3: Materialities
2025-04-11 10:00 - 2025-04-12 13:30 | William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 2520 Cimarron Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90018, United States
Conference organized by Carla Gardina Pestana (University of California, Los Angeles) and Gabriel de Avilez Rocha (Brown University)
Co-sponsored by the Joyce Appleby Endowed Chair of America in the World
The tangible realities of daily life and the patterns of exchange in the Caribbean and the other Atlantic regions integrated into the Caribbean’s orbit enhance our understanding of the local dimensions of global processes that have long shaped the Caribbean Basin. This final conference will consider how the region’s early global histories may be tracked through their material manifestations in constructed and natural environments from a variety of different disciplinary perspectives. Focusing on the materials embedded and moving through Caribbean land- and waterscapes prompts lines of investigation about how historical interactions and social constructions of meaning were mediated across different historical moments. These interactions and constructions can be explored through physical artifacts, objects, and living organisms. We will deliberate on how both the environment itself and the material cultural productions of the people living in the Basin were profoundly and continuously influenced by the advent of different groups, the imposition of new agricultural regimes, and a host of other aspects of quotidian life that persisted, gained new forms, or disappeared. To what extent might the historical study of transformations in the circumstances of life in the Caribbean benefit from considering distributed agencies of different human and non-human actors across time? What do considerations of materiality in or beyond traditional archives contribute to a global understanding of Caribbean history?
Please visit the website for a complete list of speakers and the program schedule.

Seeking Liberation: Contemporary Female Ascetic Orders Among the Jains
2025-04-09 14:00 - 15:00 | Online on Zoom
Present day records show an overwhelming numerical preponderance of nuns in Jain mendicant orders. Their striking presence demands that we question the androcentric models of renunciation in South Asia, as well as interrogate the commonsensical assumptions about the attraction that a lifetime of mendicancy may hold for women. By privileging the voice of the nuns, themselves, this presentation looks at how the Indic concept of liberation as spiritual deliverance (moksa) may sometimes overlap, or approximate the more this-worldly idea of women’s liberation.
Register here for Zoom link.
Manisha Sethi, Associate Professor, Centre for Jawaharlal Nehru Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.

Hammer Art History Lecture by Shawon Kinew, “St. Paul Among the Snakes: A Maltese Artist Goes Home, c. 1660”
2025-04-07 17:00 - 18:00 | Royce 314, 10745 Dickson Ct, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Abstract: At the end of the 1650s, Melchiorre Cafà, a Maltese sculptor, was newly established in Rome. Rome was the most significant site for sculptural production in Europe at that time. It was also a Golden Age of sculpture as artists vied for papal commissions and pushed the limits of their medium. They transformed hard stone into weightless apparitions. But, in his early days in the Caput Mundi, Cafà returned home conceptually. He carved in the humble material of wood the patron saint of his island, St. Paul, to be sent back to Malta. Today the sculpture is at the center of local devotional practices, still carried in processions celebrating the Apostle’s shipwreck in Malta. Our time is connected to Paul’s and to Cafà’s in this living tradition. A study of Cafà’s St. Paul is one of Mediterranean cultural continuities, and a meditation on the ethnographic gaze of the art historian.
Shawon Kinew is an art historian of early modern Southern Europe at Harvard University and specializes in seventeenth-century Rome’s art and theory. Her research on Roman Baroque sculpture focuses on the Maltese artist Melchiorre Cafà, who is the subject of a book manuscript in preparation, Baroque Softness: Melchiorre Cafà and the Sculpture of Mysticism.
Register to attend in Royce 314
More information about past Hammer Art History Lectures can be found here.

Bilingual Lecture Series: Calendar and Identity: Why did the Persian solar calendar survive for 1400 years and become an important feature of Iranian identity?
2025-04-07 15:00 - 17:00 | 10383 Bunche Hall, 11282 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Calendar and Identity:
Why did the Persian solar calendar survive for 1400 years and become an important feature of Iranian identity?
Monday, April 7, 2025 at 3:00pm, Bunche Hall 10383
Alternate live stream on Zoom:
https://ucla.zoom.us/j/95885037418
(No need to register in advance, just click the link at 3:00pm on April 7 to join.)

Since the end of the Sasanian era, the Persian solar calendar—and the associated rite of Norouz—has endured and grown to become a significant feature of Iranian, and to some extent the Persianate, cultural identity. With Hijra as its starting point but based on vernal equinox, it is a unique solar time reckoning throughout the Muslim world and beyond. This talk explores the circumstances that allowed its survival and adoption as a national calendar of Iran at the turn of the 20th century.
About the Speaker

Abbas Amanat is William Graham Sumner Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University. Since 1983, he has taught history of early modern and modern Iran, Shi’ism, modern Middle East, and the Persianate world at Yale. He has authored eight books, most recently Iran: A Mod-ern History (Yale University Press, 2017) and Ahd-e Qajar va Sowda-ye Farang in Persian (London, 2021). He has edited and coedited thirteen volumes and published numerous articles, encyclopedia entries, and op eds. His forthcoming books include A Study of the Solar Calendar and Iranian Identity (2024 in Persian); A Study of Historiography and Reconstruction of National Identity in Iran (2024 in Persian and 2025 in English); A New Biography of Fatemah Zarin-Taj Baraghani Qorrat al-Ayn Tahereh (OneWorld, 2025 in English); Companion of Qajar Studies (Cambridge University Press, 2025); and Circle of Justice: Persian Art of Governance (Yale University Press, 2026). Amanat served as the Chair of the Yale Council on Middle East Studies and as the Director of the Yale Program in Iranian Studies. He was the editor-in-chief of the journal of Iranian Studies and he is the editor-in-chief of the forthcoming series Sources for the Study of the Persianate World.

Bilingual Lecture Series: Calendar and Identity: Why did the Persian solar calendar survive for 1400 years and become an important feature of Iranian identity?
2025-04-06 16:00 - 18:00 | 314 Royce Hall
:گاهشماری و هویت
چگونه تقویم خورشیدی ایران ۱۴۰۰ سال پایدار ماند و نماد بارزی از هویت ملی شد؟

Calendar and Identity:
Why did the Persian solar calendar survive for 1400 years and become an important feature of Iranian identity?
Sunday, April 6, 2025 at 4:00pm, Royce Hall 314
Alternate live stream on Zoom:
https://ucla.zoom.us/j/97895439218
(No need to register in advance, just click the link at 4:00pm on April 6 to join)

Since the end of the Sasanian era the Persian solar calendar, and the associated rite of Nowruz, endured as became a significant features of Iranian, and to some extent the Persianate, cultural identity. With Hijra as its starting point but based on vernal equinox, it is a unique solar time reckoning throughout the Muslim world and beyond. This talk explores the circumstances that allowed the survival and its adoption as a national calendar of Iran at the turn of the 20th century. A book of the same title is in the press.

About the Speaker

Abbas Amanat is William Graham Sumner Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University. Since 1983, he has taught history of early modern and modern Iran, Shi’ism, modern Middle East, and the Persianate world at Yale. He has authored eight books, most recently Iran: A Mod-ern History (Yale University Press, 2017) and Ahd-e Qajar va Sowda-ye Farang in Persian (London, 2021). He has edited and coedited thirteen volumes and published numerous articles, encyclopedia entries, and op eds. His forthcoming books include A Study of the Solar Calendar and Iranian Identity (2024 in Persian); A Study of Historiography and Reconstruction of National Identity in Iran (2024 in Persian and 2025 in English); A New Biography of Fatemah Zarin-Taj Baraghani Qorrat al-Ayn Tahereh (OneWorld, 2025 in English); Companion of Qajar Studies (Cambridge University Press, 2025); and Circle of Justice: Persian Art of Governance (Yale University Press, 2026). Amanat served as the Chair of the Yale Council on Middle East Studies and as the Director of the Yale Program in Iranian Studies. He was the editor-in-chief of the journal of Iranian Studies and he is the editor-in-chief of the forthcoming series Sources for the Study of the Persianate World.
