UCLA Humanities

William and Lois Matthews Samuel Pepys Lecture by Carla Pestana
2025-04-01 18:00 - 19:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Luskin Conference Center, 425 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, 90095, United States
Striving for Expertise
Guest Speaker: Carla Pestana (UCLA)
Scholars often refer to Samuel Pepys as an early example of a state bureaucrat, his career as a civil servant in the burgeoning Restoration bureaucracy offering documentation of an important shift in governance. Of equal note—and perhaps greater interest—is the way Pepys himself aimed for expertise. Not content to serve as a cog in a larger bureaucratic machine, Pepys sought to educate himself about the workings of the navy and of sailing ships, going beyond the demands of his own office to achieve a deeper understanding. In doing so, he once again revealed his insecurities, while he also indulged in personal rivalries and resisted the limitations placed on him in his role as a civil servant.
Carla Gardina Pestana is Distinguished Professor of History and Joyce Appleby Endowed Chair of America in the World. Her research focuses on 17th and 18th century Atlantic worlds, especially the English Atlantic, the Caribbean, and U.S. religious history. Professor Pestana has published books on religion and empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, most notably Protestant Empire: Religion and the Making of the British Atlantic World (2009).
Professor William Matthews, a member of UCLA’s English Department faculty and the Center’s second Director (1970-1972), was an authority on the life and writings of the seventeenth-century British wit and diarist Samuel Pepys. With the assistance of his wife Lois, Matthews and his co-editor Robert Latham produced the definitive edition (eleven volumes) of Pepys’s works, which was published incrementally between 1971 and 1983. The Matthewses’ will, which endows the Center’s annual lecture and also a festive dinner, specifies that the event should be scheduled to coincide with Pepys’s own annual celebration commemorating the surgery he endured on March 26, 1658.
Register to attend in Luskin Conference Center, Laureate Classroom
More information about past William and Lois Matthews Samuel Pepys lectures can be found here.

ELTS Job Fair
2025-03-31 09:30 - 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Royce Hall 306 and 314, 10745 Dickson Court, Los Angeles, CA, 90095
The UCLA Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies will host its 2025 job fair on March 31 from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Royce Hall, rooms 306 and 314. This transcultural event builds on the success of the 2024 French Job Fair and offers a broad range of global and interdisciplinary career opportunities.
Students will have the chance to connect with professionals, explore career paths, and discover how language and cultural studies can open doors across various industries.
Learn more about the ELTS Job Fair here.
We look forward to seeing you there!

Cases and Scale in Historiography
2025-03-14 10:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 2520 Cimarron Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90018, United States
Conference organized by Michael Osman and Cristóbal Amunátegui (University of California, Los Angeles)
In the last few decades, debates stemming from the science and history “wars” have called attention to the ways in which cases are constructed and proven across disciplines. “Cases and Scale in Historiography” will explore the relationship between the case and one of its constitutive elements: scale. Among many other things, cases are a way of managing distance: between the past and the present, the far away and the near, norms and exceptions, ideation and reality. Thus defined, cases are inevitably bound to the shifting measures and temporalities of scale, something which may seem at odds with today’s dominant culture of scholarly specialization. Like magnets, cases have the potential of centripetally attracting different knowledge, sites, and periods in order to solve the problems they pose. To deal with the spatiotemporal vagaries of scale, however, entails facing a wide-ranging set of historiographical and epistemological difficulties: the scalar analysis imposed by cases seems to pit historiographical specificity against both blind specialization and Diogenean erudition. By pointing to the links between scale and the case, then, our invitation is to explore the limits and possibilities of the historian as both expert and generalist.
Please visit the website for the list of speakers and program schedule and register for this event.

The Bible in Its Ancient Iranian Context
2025-03-13 - 2025-03-14 | 306 Royce Hall, 10745 Dickson Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
March 13-14, 2025 | 306 & 314 Royce Hall
UCLA
An International Conference Convened by:
M. Rahim Shayegan, UCLA
William Schniedewind, UCLA
Catherine Bonesho, UCLA
Co-sponsored by:
The Pourdavoud Institute for the Study of the Iranian World
The Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies
Zoom Webinar Link
Download the Conference Program
Although there has been renewed interest in the Persian period in biblical scholarship, the profound impact of the ancient Iranian world on the biblical books of Esther and Daniel has often been taken for granted. From their dynamic portraits of foreign kings and Jewish communities in the imperial court to their use of Iranian institutions and literary traditions, it is impossible to disentangle the books of Esther and Daniel from their ancient Iranian contexts. This conference foregrounds the influence of the ancient Iranian world on Esther and Daniel and its lasting impact on ancient Jewish communities.
In organizing this conference, we hope to offer a truly interdisciplinary analysis of Esther, Daniel and ancient Iranian Studies by inviting speakers specializing in subjects related to Second Temple Judaism, Hebrew Bible, and the Achaemenid Empire. Topics explored at the conference include Jewish constructions of the diaspora and Persian court, Achaemenid religions, Aramaic scribalism, and imperial ideology and hybridity.
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This RSVP form is for both conference days. Please select the day(s) you are able to attend in person. The Zoom webinar link to attend the event online is: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/91611647646

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Thursday, March 13

Friday, March 14

Please select all dates you plan to attend the lectures in-person.

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Use this Zoom webinar link for all days.
https://ucla.zoom.us/j/91611647646

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Katherine Philips, Meta-Metaphysical Poet
2025-03-10 12:00 - 13:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | ZOOM Lecture
Kenneth Karmiole Endowed Graduate Research Fellowship
Lecture by Arya Sureshbabu, Ph.D. Candidate in English, University of California, Berkeley. Recipient of the 2024–25 Kenneth Karmiole Endowed Graduate Research Fellowship
Katherine Philips (1632–64) occupies an unusual place in the canon of seventeenth-century poetry. Now alternatively billed as an apostle of female friendship or a proto-sapphic icon, she was also known in her own time as an exemplary practitioner of intimacy. But a less adulatory strain of reception history reads her verse as overstuffed with hyperbolic praise and extended conceits that fail to sustain readerly interest. This talk suggests that these seemingly contradictory assessments of Philips are in fact connected: her poems and letters express closeness through a disproportionate outpouring of attention to minor details, petty situations, and all-too-earthly individuals. Philips’s preoccupation with the interplay between excess and diminution is as stylistic as it is thematic; her copious adaptations of her poetic predecessors index a process of intimate reading in addition to describing intimate relationships among members of her literary coterie. Her self-conscious reflections on the twinned practices of reading and writing are especially evident in her embellishments of John Donne’s poems, where she iteratively revises his images with an assiduousness that anticipates modern characterizations of the metaphysical conceit’s simultaneous fragility and force. Taking these resonances as a point of departure, this presentation explores how Philips’s poetics blur the lines between affection, interpretation, and creative endeavor—and how eighteenth-century readers’ fleeting encounters with her literary output remix and reactivate its intimate potentials.
Arya Sureshbabu is a PhD candidate in English with a Designated Emphasis in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She is completing a dissertation on intimacy and textual minutiae in the poetry, drama, and correspondence of the English Renaissance. In addition to the Center & Clark, her work has been supported by the Beinecke Library, the Harry Ransom Center, the UC Humanities Research Institute, and the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender.
For additional details and to register for the Zoom lecture

Bilingual Lecture Series: Women’s Rights and the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran
2025-03-09 11:30 - 13:30 (America/Los_Angeles)
زن در قانون اساسی ایران
Women’s Rights and the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran
Sunday, March 9, 2025 | 11:30 am – 1:30 pm
Zoom Registration:
https://ucla.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_pM3LdrXXSriCfDMGfzVg8w

The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, ratified after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, stands as the country’s foundational legal framework, requiring all subsequent laws to align with its principles. The revolution itself was propelled by widespread calls for social and political reform, with significant factions advocating for democracy, human rights, and gender equality. Iranian women played a prominent role in this movement, underscoring the aspirations for a more inclusive and equitable society. While the constitution reflects these revolutionary demands by enumerating freedoms and rights modeled after Western constitutions, it also incorporates elements of Islamic jurisprudence. This duality emerged from the influence of conservative religious factions, who, after helping to overthrow the monarchy, swiftly consolidated power post-revolution. In this talk, I will examine the provisions within Iran’s constitution that pertain to women’s rights, focusing on how these provisions intersect with religious and secular legal systems. I will also explore the real-world impact on women’s personal and professional lives, highlighting the challenges of extreme gender-based oppression under the current system. Finally, I will discuss pathways for reform and envision how future constitutional efforts can avoid the missteps that have perpetuated inequality for over forty years.
About the Speaker

Pegah Banihashemi is currently a JSD candidate at the University of Chicago Law School, where she also completed an LL.M. in 2022. Pegah is currently working on the history of the formation of the Iranian Constitution both before and after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. In this project, she will explore the problems of implementing the constitution in Iran. Part of Pegah’s project is dedicated to the issue of comparing constitutions among different countries. Pegah began her undergraduate studies focusing on French literature in Iran where reading the works of French philosophers and thinkers piqued her interest in the field of law. She completed a second Bachelor’s of Law, after which, she earned a Master’s and LL.M. in International Commercial Law and Private Law at Shahid Beheshti University, achieving a first rank and defending her thesis in international arbitration. In Britain, she worked on human rights research, commentary, and advocacy, focusing on death sentences, immigration law, and women’s and children’s rights in Middle Eastern and Sharia Law. She has worked extensively in the analysis of international law and international human rights and is a regular expert legal analyst with many global media outlets and non-profits. She has also taught several legal courses on topics including women, economics, and the law, human rights advocacy, and students’ and teachers’ rights.

Preserving Your Family History
2025-03-08 10:00 - 12:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 2520 Cimarron Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90018, United States
Join us at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library to learn the basics of understanding and caring for your family heirlooms with the Clark’s librarians and conservators from the UCLA Library Preservation & Conservation Department.
Participants may bring up to five paper-based heirlooms (no larger than 18” x 24”) from their own collections. These items will become part of the instructional display, alongside examples from the Clark Library’s stacks. Using this group display, librarians and conservators will be able to discuss and show common issues – and provide guidance for next steps and other preservation resources.
For more information and to register for this workshop, please visit our website.
This workshop is limited to 30 participants and will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis.
Registration will close on Monday, February 17 at 5:00 p.m.

The Codex Osuna: A Landmark Nahua Lawsuit in Early Colonial Mexico City
2025-03-06 12:00 - 13:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Zoom
Early Modern Research Group Works-in-Progress Session
Presented by Sofia Yazpik, Ph.D. Student, University of California, Los Angeles
The Codex Osuna, or the Pintura del gobernador, alcaldes y regidores de México (Painting of the Municipal Governor, Judges, and Councilors of Mexico), is a pictorial and Nahuatl-language text produced by Nahuas for a legal dispute in Mexico City during the sixteenth century. It is a valuable resource for deepening our understanding of how the Spanish legal system functioned in New Spain and how Indigenous litigants strategically presented their cases to defend their rights and property within this colonial institution, particularly during the politically tumultuous period of the 1560s. By focusing on pictorial writing in particular, Yazpik’s research project seeks to demonstrate the Codex Osuna’s historical significance in the early colonial period by examining how Indigenous peoples utilized their own creative forms of expression within the Spanish legal system.
Sofía Yazpik is a third-year Ph.D. student in History at UCLA. Her research focuses on Mesoamerican codices, presently examining an early colonial legal pictorial and alphabetic-writing manuscript from central Mexico. She is interested in Indigenous productions of knowledge, the relationship between pictorial and alphabetic writing systems, and early modern collecting practices.
For additional details and to register for the Zoom lecture, visit the website.

Chamber Music at the Clark 30th Anniversary presents, Ariel Quartet
2025-03-02 14:00 - 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 2520 Cimarron Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90018, United States
Distinguished by its virtuosity, probing musical insight, and impassioned, fiery performances, the Ariel Quartet has garnered critical praise worldwide for more than twenty years. The Quartet serves as the Faculty Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, where they direct the chamber music program and present a concert series in addition to maintaining a busy touring schedule in the United States and abroad.
Recent highlights include the Ariel Quartet’s Carnegie Hall debut, as well as the release of a Brahms and Bartók album for Avie Records. In 2020, the Ariel gave the U.S. premiere of the Quintet for Piano and Strings by Daniil Trifonov (with the composer as pianist). Ariel Quartet has won numerous international prizes, including the Cleveland Quartet Award: Grand Prize at the 2006 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition.
Further details and the full program are on our website. Competition
Photo: Ariel Quartet by Marco Borggreve

“The Same Frame of Mind, but a Different Villain”: Conspiracist Narratology and the Decolonization of Africa
2025-02-28 13:00 - 15:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Kaplan Hall 348, 415 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
A workshop with Christian David Alvarado

KAPLAN HALL ROOM #348
1:00-2:30pm Workshop
2:30-3:00pm Reception

This workshop is open to UCLA Comparative Literature graduate students, UCLA English graduate students, and UCLA African Studies Center students.

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UCLA Comparative Literature graduate studentUCLA English graduate studentUCLA African Studies Center studentUCLA facultyUCLA staff

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Related Document: Workshop Chapter
The chapter we will be discussing in this workshop examines a key episode in the history of global conspiracist thought: speculative accounts and narratives regarding the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya across mid-20th century Britain and its empire. In it, I argue that contemporary allegations about the uprising’s aim of “white genocide,” the Satanic rituals conducted by those who participated in it, and its role in global Communist plots should all be read as conspiracy theories which fundamentally shaped its history and attempts to suppress it. Reframing them as such allows us to see how speculative thinking about Mau Mau is part of a longer tradition of reading world events that continues to inform many of the most prominent iterations of conspiracism that shape Western politics and culture today. Developing this chapter also led to my second major research project, which aims to understand how the history of conspiracist literary production in European and African contexts shaped imperial governance and engagements with processes of decolonization on both of these continents.

About the Speaker
Christian Alvarado received his PhD in History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz and is President’s and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the African American and African Studies Department at the University of California, Davis. His current book project situates the event most commonly known as the Mau Mau Uprising in late-colonial Kenya within the broader historical and narratological landscape of 20th century Africa. By tracing how understandings of this event circulated across transnational networks and cultural formations, his work aims to show how the frameworks to which Mau Mau is put illuminate novel insights into the global dimensions of knowledge production regarding African decolonization.

Global Antiquity Faculty Lunch Series- “Por Mares Nunca D’antes Navegados…”: Poetic Primacy in Arcadian Epic and Caminões’s The Lusiads with Adriana Vazquez
2025-02-28 12:00 - 13:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Royce Hall 306, 10745 Dickson Court, Los Angeles, California, 90095
Global Antiquity is pleased to invite you to the next in its 2024–2025 Faculty Lunch Series talks, featuring Professor Adriana Vazquez (Classics, UCLA). On Friday, February 28 from 12:00–1:30 pm in Royce 306, she will deliver a lecture titled “Por Mores Nunca D’antes Navegados…”: Poetic Primacy in Arcadian Epic and Caminões’s The Lusiads. Lunch and refreshments will be served at 12:00 pm followed immediately by the talk and discussion. All are welcome, and we hope to see you there!
Abstract: This presentation is an excerpt of a monograph on the poetry of the Brazilian colonial period and its reception of antiquity, titled “Arcadia Ultramarina: Studies in the Neoclassical Literature of Portuguese America.” The talk highlights statements of poetic primacy in two epics produced under the umbrella of 18th century Brazilian Arcadianism, each of which considers moments in the Portuguese settlement of Brazil. I argue that both epics conceive of poetic primacy as an adaptation of colonial concepts of ‘newness,’ reflecting the crisis in European thinking ignited by the apparent lacunae in ancient geographic knowledge concerning the so-called New World. I additionally consider the intermediary of Camões’ The Lusiads as instrumental to the formalization of a lexicon of poetic primacy in the Arcadian epics.
About the Speaker: Adriana Vazquez is an assistant professor of Classics at UCLA specializing in Latin literature of the Augustan period, with particular interest in its legacy in the Lusophone literature of the 17th- and 18th-centuries. She is currently working on a monograph on the legacy of Latin literature in the poetry of colonial Brazil, which analyzes the literary output of the poets of the Arcadia Ultramarina, a literary academy that placed itself in dialogue with the ancient poetic tradition. She is a cofounder and former steering committee member of Hesperides: Classics in the Luso-hispanic World, an interest group focusing on Ibero-global reception.

What is this thing called Mau Mau? The “Storm in Kenya” in Global Perspectives
2025-02-27 17:00 - 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Kaplan Hall 348, 415 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
A Talk by Christian David Alvarado

Kaplan Hall Room #348
5:00-8:00 PM

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In the opening pages of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s 1967 novel A Grain of Wheat, a European district officer asks a version of the question at the core of discourse about the anticolonial movement that gripped Kenya in the 1950s: “What is this thing called Mau Mau?” As an icon of violent resistance to colonial domination, one answer regarding the armed struggle that defined late-colonial Kenya has been to read it as an “unfinished revolution” whose decolonial aims remain unfulfilled (or, more precisely, betrayed). This talk attends to Mau Mau’s symbolic place in cultural politics in Kenya and beyond by exploring how narratives interpreting it as such have shaped transnational understandings of postcolonialism and decolonization. By tracing the rhetorical politics that cohere around it, I argue that we should consider the invocation of the idea of Mau Mau — whether it be central to a text or present as an offhand reference — as a catalyst through which broader claims are made. I link how African and diasporic writers have positioned Mau Mau as an episode in the greater “African Revolution” to the challenge it represents to existing racial and ethnic structures. Drawing from Kenyan, South African, and American sources, this talk explores how these dual interpretations have shaped Mau Mau’s prominent position in cultural production and the politics of dissent across the world.

About the Speaker
Christian Alvarado received his PhD in History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz and is President’s and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the African American and African Studies Department at the University of California, Davis. His current book project situates the event most commonly known as the Mau Mau Uprising in late-colonial Kenya within the broader historical and narratological landscape of 20th century Africa. By tracing how understandings of this event circulated across transnational networks and cultural formations, his work aims to show how the frameworks to which Mau Mau is put illuminate novel insights into the global dimensions of knowledge production regarding African decolonization.

HPASS: Kathleen Creel, Northeastern University
2025-02-26 17:00 - 19:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Dodd Hall 248
February 26, 2025 | 5:00PM – 7:00PM
Dodd Hall 248 & Zoom
RSVP HERE

Join us on Wednesday, February 26, 2025 in Dodd Hall 248 for a talk by Kathleen Creel, Northeastern University, as part of the History, Philosophy, and Science of Science (HPASS) speaker series.

Talk title, abstract, and speaker bio coming soon.

RSVP HERE

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‘Wild and Ungovernable Passions’: Emotional Scripts and the Fate of U.S. Expansion in the Vigilante Rocky Mountain West, 1864–1866
2025-02-25 12:00 - 13:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Zoom
Lecture by Abby Gibson, Ph.D. Candidate in History, University of Southern California. Recipient of the 2024–25 Kenneth Karmiole Endowed Graduate Research Fellowship
The Montana Vigilantes, as they have become known within the popular nostalgia of the Wild West, were almost immediately and are still often hailed as heroes of the frontier in their brave efforts to fill in for the American justice system in the wild days before statehood. In 1866, English schoolteacher and recent arrival to Montana Territory, Thomas J. Dimsdale, published a passionate defense of the events of January and February 1864–The Montana Vigilantes!–which is held in the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library’s vast collection of Montana memorabilia. Dimsdale’s book is among the most cited firsthand accounts of the Montana Vigilantes, but in this presentation Gibson will take a different angle on his work by bringing to the fore his extensive commentary on the disorderly emotional climate of Montana Territory that made the extremism of the vigilante violence possible. With this affective lens trained on Dimsdale’s account, Gibson will discuss not only an implicit ambivalence in his descriptions of the Vigilantes, but consider the larger story of emotional containment and U.S. expansion in the Rocky Mountain West contained within this work.
Abby Gibson is a Ph.D. candidate in the Van Hunnick History Department at the University of Southern California and an Editorial Assistant for The Huntington Library Quarterly. Before arriving at USC, she received her Master’s degree in the history of the American West at the University of Oklahoma, where she worked as one of two Editorial Fellows for The Western Historical Quarterly during her two years at OU. Abby’s dissertation, “Fearful Land: Managing Terror in the American West, 1820–1920” lies at the intersection of the history of U.S. westward expansion and the history of emotions.
For additional details and to register for the Zoom lecture, please visit the website

California Medieval Seminar (Winter 2025)
2025-02-22 09:30 - 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | 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

Early Global Caribbean: Conference 2: Convictions
2025-02-21 10:00 - 2025-02-22 13:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 2520 Cimarron Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90018, United States
Conference organized by Carla Gardina Pestana (UCLA) and Gabriel de Avilez Rocha (Brown University)
Co-sponsored by the Joyce Appleby Endowed Chair of America in the World
The diverse peoples who converged on the Caribbean before 1700 held a range of differing beliefs, ideas about the natural world, and understandings of social, political, and spiritual order. Considering how Indigenous, African, and European systems of thought and faith clashed, adapted, and transformed will be the focus of this second meeting. We invite participants to consider how culturally specific systems of knowledge were expressed and transformed under emergent rubrics of what would become known as religion, science, and law. We will likewise reflect on how these ideas animated the creation and maintenance of institutions of governance and knowledge production both in the Caribbean and extending beyond it. This conference grants an opportunity to weigh how the globalization of the early Caribbean marked historical changes in beliefs and ideas but also witnessed continuities that cut across the 1492 divide. In the process, a multitude of convictions about spiritual, natural, corporal, social, and political order helped shape (and were reshaped by) encounters in the Basin.
For the list of speakers and the program schedule, please visit the website.

The Great Search with John Philip Newell
2025-02-19 16:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | 314 Royce Hall/Zoom
The story of Adam and Eve’s fall from innocence in the Garden of Eden is a mythical account of humanity’s broken relationship with the divine, with Earth, and with themselves.
In contrast, Celtic wisdom is built on a strong bond with Earth. In the prophetic figures that author John Philip Newell draws from in his book The Great Search, the Garden of Eden represents the inner garden of our souls and the outer garden of Earth, which are seen as essentially one. To live in relation to what is deepest in us is to live in relation to the ground from which we and all things have come. Where are we today, in relation to our true selves and the sacredness of Earth? And how are we to find our way home again?
Newell’s talk will explore some of these questions raised in his book at this moment of great spiritual awakening, an era characterized by religious exile on a vast scale.
RSVP here for the in-person talk (Royce 314).
Register here for the Zoom link for the event
John Philip Newell is a Celtic teacher and author of spirituality who calls the modern world to reawaken to the sacredness of Earth and every human being. His PhD is from the University of Edinburgh and he has authored over fifteen books, including his award-winning publication, Sacred Earth Sacred Soul, which was the 2022 Gold Winner of the Nautilus Book Award for Spirituality and Religious Thought of the West. His new book is The Great Search (August 2024), in which he looks at the great spiritual yearnings of humanity today in the context of the decline of religion as we have known it.
Newell speaks of himself as ‘a wandering teacher’ following the ancient path of many lone teachers before him in the Celtic world, ‘wandering Scots’ (or scotus vagans as they were called) seeking the wellbeing of the world. He has been described as having ‘the heart of a Celtic bard and the mind of a Celtic scholar’, combining in his teachings the poetic and the intellectual, the head as well as the heart, and spiritual awareness as well as political and ecological concern. His writings have been translated into seven languages. In 2020 he relinquished his ordination as a minister of the Church of Scotland as no longer reflecting the heart of his belief in the sacredness of Earth and every human being. He continues, however, to see himself as ‘a grateful son of the Christian household’ seeking to be in relationship with the wisdom of humanity’s other great spiritual traditions.
In 2016 he began the Earth & Soul initiative and teaches regularly in the United States and Canada as well as leading international pilgrimage weeks on Iona in the Western Isles of Scotland.

“Lost in Transfer? Misunderstanding, Miscommunication, and the Production of Knowledge in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean”
2025-02-14 10:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Royce 314, 10745 Dickson Ct, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Organizers: Stefania Tutino (UCLA), Andrea Aldo Robiglio (KU Leuven), and Eva Del Soldato (UPenn)
The question of how knowledge transfers has become central for understanding the culture of the premodern world in a global perspective. This workshop is interested in exploring the question of what happens when transfer fails: what happens when knowledge is not “translated” properly? What kind of knowledge is produced when the chain of transmission breaks down or malfunctions? We think that miscommunication is as important as communication, and we propose to explore this theme both by examining specific case studies of miscommunication and by investigating what they tell us about the structure and modes by which knowledge is produced, which in turn allows us to get to the question of the very category of “transfer” from a philosophical and theoretical perspective.
Register to attend in Royce 314
Presenter Abstracts
Conference Schedule:

9:30
Coffee, fresh fruit, pastries

10:00
Welcoming Remarks (Zrinka Stahuljak, Director CMRS-CEGS)

10:15
Paper 1: Lost in Translation: Early Modern Jesuits and the Creed (Emanuele Colombo, Boston College)

10:45
Paper 2: Mistranslating Indigenous America in the ‘Age of Reason’: Epistemological Hybridity and Colonial Violence (Diego Pirillo, University of California, Berkeley)

11:15
Paper 3: Oikonomia Understood and Misunderstood: The Latin and English Reception of Byzantine Chemical Terminology (Alexandre M. Roberts, University of Southern California)

11:45
Break

12:00
Discussion 1: (Paper 1, 2, 3) – Chaired by Matthew Acton (KU Leuven & University of Rome ‘Tor Vergata’)

12:45
Lunch Break (on Royce 306 loggia)

2:00
Paper 4: Rebellious, but Effective Medieval Translations into Arabic (Cecilia Martini Bonadeo, University of Padua)

2:30
Paper 5: Hang Time: Gambling on the Future in Late Medieval Italy (Karla Mallette, University of Michigan)

3:00
Paper 6: Communicating in Manuscript, Miscommunicating in Print: The Siege of Curzola (1571) and Its Media Aftermath (Ivan Lupić, University of Rijeka)

3:30
Break

3:45
Discussion 2: (Paper 4, 5, 6) – Chaired by Sarah Marie Leitenberger (University of Pennsylvania)

4:30
Closing Remarks

5:00
Reception

Grand Theft Eco: Environmental Futures of Los Angeles - 2 screenings with Q&A
2025-02-05 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Darren Star Theater (Melnitz Hall 1422), 225 Charles E Young Dr E, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Grand Theft Eco: Environmental Futures of Los Angeles repurposes the game engine and design of Grand Theft Auto 5 to creatively imagine environmental change and its consequences for Los Angeles in the year 2050. The first of three “machinima” (video game cinema) episodes, titled “The iBear in the River,” will make its debut on February 5 (episode description in image below).
To commemorate this release, LENS will hold two screenings, each with a production Q&A afterwards.

WHEN: 5:00 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. (Doors at 4:30 p.m. and 6:15 p.m., respectively)
WHERE: Darren Star Screening Room (Melnitz Hall 1422)

The Darren Star Screening Room has a 50-seat capacity. Because of the limited capacity, we ask that you RSVP in advance, if possible, for the screening you plan to attend. Standby attendees without an RSVP may be accommodated, space permitting.

2025 World Languages Day
2025-02-05 10:00 - 15:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Bruin Plaza, Los Angeles, California, 90095
World Languages Day, a cherished UCLA tradition last held in 2018, returns to spotlight the university’s diverse language programs.
Open to all UCLA students, World Languages Day offers opportunities to explore UCLA’s language offerings, engage with faculty and peers and learn about the academic and professional benefits of multilingualism.
Whether you’re curious about studying a new language or deepening your existing knowledge, World Languages Day invites you to discover the many ways languages shape our understanding of the world.
Join us on February 5 to enjoy interactive activities, cultural experiences and opportunities to win special prizes!

Crafting Your Future: Resume and Cover Letter Mastery Workshop
2025-02-04 16:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Zoom
Are you ready to take your Humanities degree into the job market?? Do you want to use your Humanities experience to craft a compelling professional narrative? Join us at the UCLA Career Center for “Crafting Your Future: Resume and Cover Letter Mastery Workshop” where you will learn how to effectively showcase your skills and experiences, tailor your documents for specific roles, and make a lasting impression. Don’t miss this opportunity to gain insider tips and personalized feedback and land your dream job.
Key Topics include:

Understanding Resume Formats and Structure: Explore chronological, functional, and combination formats to determine what best fits your background.
Tailoring Your Resume: Learn how to customize your resume for specific job descriptions using keywords and relevant experiences.
Highlighting Skills and Accomplishments: Discover how to effectively present your skills, achievements, and quantifiable results.
Building Strong Bullet Points: Understand the importance of powerful language and action verbs in conveying your experiences.
Crafting a Compelling Cover Letter: Master the art of writing a cover letter from the format to the structure that complements your resume and captures the employer’s attention.
Common Mistakes to Avoid: Identify frequent pitfalls in resumes and cover letters and how to steer clear of them.

To register, go to: Resume & Cover Letter Workshop for Humanities
Meet our workshop leader:
Armine Kulikyan
Armine earned her B.A. in Psychology and M.S. in College and Career Counseling from Cal State Northridge. Prior to her role at UCLA, Armine worked in both academic and career counseling at multiple campuses such as CSU Los Angeles, CSU Northridge, Pasadena City College, and Cal Lutheran University. In her current role as Assistant Director of Undergraduate Education & Development at UCLA’s Career Center, Armine provides career counseling to Social Science and Humanities majors, as well as to Pre-Law students. She also serves as the liaison to the Transfer Student Center and the Humanities Career Panel Series. Through her professional experiences, Armine realized her passion for career development and hopes to motivate, educate, and guide students to reach success and fulfillment. One piece of advice Armine shares with students is “It’s okay to not know where you’re going and you don’t have to have it all figured out. Career development is a lifelong process.”
Meet our moderator:
David MacFadyen
David MacFadyen was trained both at the University of London (SSEES) and UCLA, where he received his PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures. Since that time, he has been an avid scholar, promoter, and collector of recordings from East Slavic cultures (Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus). The size of that collection is now approximately two million compositions, constituting a substantial and unique database, recently donated to the Wende Museum in Los Angeles. It is undergoing major archival treatment––specifically with the application of blockchain technology––such that rare audio files may be safely lent in so-called trustless environments to both institutions and individuals. The embedding of AI-assisted metadata is also an essential part of the archive’s improvement.

A resulting ability to track the use(s) of music 24/7 then opens up exciting possibilities in Western markets, preserving the IP of far-flung musicians with timely, fair payments––free of any intermediaries and/or their commissions. Not to mention the fact that the blockchain makes false information about financial dealings cryptographically impossible.

With this focus on technology’s benefit for free speech and free enterprise in both Russia and Ukraine, MacFadyen is simultaneously authoring a series of monographs on the history of Russia’s recording industry––a troubled domain that, on occasion, reflects the same civic abuse that has taken such awful shape since 2022.

He also runs a non-profit (Pacific Sound and Vision) that offers free education to young musicians from Eastern Europe, connecting them to SoCal experts in a range of technical, creative, and financial realms. Work continues with decentralized tech to offer creative solutions to Russia’s centralized destruction of democratic and artistic liberties.

Richard & Mary Rouse History of the Book Lecture by Kristina Richardson
2025-02-03 17:00 - 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Royce 314, 10745 Dickson Ct, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
“Between Two Worlds: The Roma and Early Global Print Cultures”
Guest Speaker: Kristina Richardson (University of Virginia)
Richardson will show that Roma and other traveling people not only utilized block printing between 800 and 1450 in North Africa and West Asia but also introduced print technology in their new homes when they migrated to Central Europe in the 1410s. Traveling people were the links bridging the early print cultures of North Africa, West Asia, and Central Europe.
Kristina Richardson is the John L. Nau Professor of History at the University of Virginia. Her research focuses on premodern non-elite Arab history, particularly the history of people with disabilities, users of sign language, Romani groups (ghurabā’), craftspeople, and enslaved laborers and entertainers. Her current book project is Black Basra: Race, Labor, and Piety in Early Islamic History.
The History of the Book Lecture series, established in 1993 through the efforts of Richard and Mary Rouse, provides an annual venue for internationally recognized authorities on medieval and Renaissance books to present their expertise at UCLA. The lecture’s focus alternates each year between medieval manuscripts and Renaissance books. The topics explored in past lectures were book and manuscript illustration, the development of printing, early book printers and sellers, the book trade, and medieval and Renaissance book and manuscript collections.
Register to attend in Royce 314
Register to attend via ZOOM
More information about past Richard and Mary Rouse History of the Book lectures can be found here.

Bilingual Lecture Series: Film Screening and Director Q&A
2025-02-02 16:00 - 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | 314 Royce Hall
Bilingual Lecture Series: Film Screening and Director Q&A with Mohammad Ehsani
Alternate live stream on Zoom:
https://ucla.zoom.us/j/95549537236
The Water Will Take Us (2022)
(Persian with English subtitles)

In the spring of 2019 Iran experienced a near apocalypse event that went by almost unnoticed by the world. Widespread flash flooding affected large parts of the country over the course of one month, leading to major damages countrywide and leaving the already impoverished population in utter disarray. The film is a look at how years of mismanagement, poor spatial planning and climate change are impacting civil society in Iran.
Lady Urmia (2013)
(Persian with English subtitles)

The film is a poetic documentary about Lake Urmia, in the northwest of Iran, which is drying up completely. The environmental catastrophe will affect also neighboring countries such as Iraq and Turkey. The film is narrated in the voice of the lake itself, crying for help and trying to gain international attention to its suffering.
About the Director
Mohammad Ehsani, an Iranian independent filmmaker and a member of the Iranian Documentary Filmmakers Association and IDA. He has made several award-winning documentary and fiction films, such as The Lovers: The Victims, Tabriz: Images from the Forgotten World, Enamel Dome, Lady Urmia, Once Hamoun, Karun, When the Woodpeckers Leave, and The Water Will Take Us. Ehsani’s films deal with historical drama and social environmental issues in Iran.

Fighting Antisemitism and Preserving the Memory of the Holocaust: Advances in Greece and Europe? By Leon Saltiel
2025-02-02 16:00 - 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | The Fowler Museum at UCLA, 308 Charles E Young Drive North, Los Angeles, CA, 90024, United States
Fighting Antisemitism and Preserving the Memory of the Holocaust: Advances in Greece and Europe?
Lecture by Leon Saltiel, Director of Diplomacy, Representative at UN Geneva and UNESCO, and
Coordinator on Countering Antisemitism for the World Jewish Congress
Sunday, February 2, 2025
4:00 p.m.
The Harry and Yvonne Lenart Auditorium, The Fowler Museum at UCLA
Reception to follow
Introductory remarks by The Honorable Christina Valassopoulou, Consul General of Greece in Los Angeles
Event is free but advanced registration is requested.
RSVP: https://forms.gle/qeSd5APvr7EewWAG6
If you are unable to attend but would like to watch the lecture via livestream on our YouTube channel, the link is provided below:
Livestream link: https://youtube.com/live/S72stydzSRU?feature=share
This year marks the 80th anniversary from the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp and the end of the Second World War, which resulted in the Holocaust of 6 million Jews in Europe and North Africa by the Germans and their collaborators. Since then, countries have been grappling with how to deal with this past but also with antisemitism, which is scarily showing its ugly face again, threatening democracy, the rule of law and peaceful coexistence. Eighty percent of Jews in Europe feel that antisemitism has grown in their country in recent years. This lecture will focus on these challenges, and a way forward, using Greece as a case study, a country trying to heals its wounds after a turbulent past.
Dr. Leon Saltiel is a historian specializing on the Holocaust in Thessaloniki, Greece. He holds a Ph.D. in Contemporary Greek History from the University of Macedonia, in Thessaloniki, Greece, and has been a post-doctoral researcher at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland and the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. His publications include The Holocaust in Thessaloniki: Reactions to the Anti-Jewish Persecution, 1942–1943 (Routledge 2020), which won the 2021 Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research, and ‘Do Not Forget Me’: Three Jewish Mothers Write to their Sons from the Thessaloniki Ghetto in Greek (Alexandria 2018), English (Berghahn 2021) and French (Denoël 2023). He also serves as Director of Diplomacy and Representative at UN Geneva and UNESCO, and Coordinator on Countering Antisemitism for the World Jewish Congress.
This event is held under the auspices of the Consulate General of Greece in Los Angeles, co-sponsored by the Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies and made possible thanks to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).
Gefyra (Bridge) is a collaborative program established by the UCLA SNF Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture and the SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University with support from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF). Gefyra’s mission is to connect students, faculty, and communities along the West Coast of North America with Greek scholars, artists, and other creators, so that they can together explore expansive and imaginative approaches to Greek culture and knowledge production. The program additionally supports academic conferences and cultural projects that bridge the West Coast and Greece.
Presented by:
Co-sponsored by:

Under the auspices of:

To save time, you may purchase your parking permit for $16 in advance using Bruin ePermit: https://bruinepermit.t2hosted.com/pnw2/selectevent.aspx. Select “UCLA Campus Event,” then “Leon Saltiel Lecture” With the advanced parking permit, you can park anywhere in Parking Structure 5 EXCEPT in the Pay-by-Space section. For instructions on how to use this portal, please click here.
To purchase a permit when you arrive at Parking Structure 5, please park ONLY in the Pay-By-Space/Visitor Parking area on the rooftop of this structure, and proceed to the Self-Service Pay Station machine to pay by credit card (the parking on this level is very limited).
Guest drop/Ride-share drop off is closest at the turnaround at the front of Royce Hall located at: 10745 Dickson Court, Los Angeles, CA 90095.
Accessible parking: If you have accessibility needs, you may park in the Pay-By-Space/Visitor Parking area on the rooftop (level 6) of this structure, and proceed to the Self-Service Pay Station machine to pay by credit card. Please visit our Campus Accessibility Map to view related information.

For inquiries, please contact hellenic@humnet.ucla.edu

2024 Humanities Welcome
2024-09-25 14:00 - 16:00 UTC | Schoenberg Music Building, 1100 Schoenberg Music Building, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
The Humanities Welcome, held at the beginning of each academic year, invites faculty, staff and students to come together to showcase the Humanities at UCLA.

The event introduces students to the benefits of Humanities coursework and degrees, with an introduction by Dean Alexandra Minna Stern, classics professor Hannah Čulík-Baird offering an inside peek at her research, and an undergraduate student providing a first-person account of what it’s like to study in the Humanities.

It all takes place Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Schoenberg Music Building! (map)

Stop by for some free Humanities swag, and stay for a reception afterwards with free refreshments, representatives from Humanities-related clubs and plenty of opportunity to mingle with Humanities faculty, staff and students.

Space is limited! Students, staff and faculty are strongly encouraged to register in advance on the event website.

Featured speakers
Alexandra Minna Stern, Dean, Humanities Division

Hannah Čulík-Baird, Associate Professor of Classics
Jack Perry, Class of 2025
