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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20261202T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20261202T180000
DTSTAMP:20261029T231912Z
CREATED:20261012T213411Z
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UID:2462724-1796227200-1796234400@humanities.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Pourdavoud Lecture Series and Cunard Lecture Series: Beate Pongratz-Leisten
DESCRIPTION:Ancient Near Eastern Narratives: Making a Case for the Epistemic Function of Myth in Text and Image\nBeate Pongratz-Leisten\n(New York University)\nWednesday December 2\, 2026 at 4:00 pm Pacific Time\nRoyce Hall 306 and Via Zoom \nRegistration Link: https://forms.gle/aNCt12TXFDrfwULP7\nJoin Livestream Zoom: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/96272801601 \nThroughout its history\, Assyriological scholarship has turned to exploring many facets of ancient epistemology\, including lexical lists\, divinatory knowledge\, medicine\, mathematics\, pharmaceutical knowledge\, legal compendia\, and commentary literature. Two domains of knowledge production conspicuously have remained left out of the picture: mythic narratives and the image. \nThe book Myth\, Text\, and Image in Ancient Mesopotamia: A Narrative Reading of the World makes a case for establishing human thinking-in-images as an essential part of ancient Mesopotamian reasoning based in the fact that in the human mind\, imagistic thinking exists alongside rational logical thought. Due to their orientational and expository nature\, story-telling and myth-making can claim their rightful place as systems of knowledge. Mythic narrative as realized in text and image is an analytical tool that offers insight into life experiences\, conveys cultural knowledge\, provides potential models for decision-making and behavior\, and/or explains existing cultic realities as well as socio-political structures and hierarchies. \nDrawing on insights from cognitive narratology\, cognitive semiotics\, and visual studies\, the book explores how myth as episteme\, that is\, as a system of knowledge and part of cognitive and cultural experience\, serves as an explanatory system and a way of world-making in that it not only reflects\, but also constitutes reality. Past events or core metaphors—mythical or historical—are reactivated in the memory\, while the inclination for emplotment creates coherence and meaning for the present. The process of reworking and re-actualization in text and image is selective and innovative\, forever interpreting\, constructing\, re-inventing\, and reconstructing the past and establishing tropes from the stream of tradition. Narrative knowledge is not simply a recollection of the past\, but a product of narrative understanding\, a retrospective\, interpretative composition\, viewing\, or reception. \nCo-sponsored by the Pourdavoud Institute for the Study of the Iranian World and the Jeffrey P. Cunard Center for Global Antiquity. \nAbout the Speaker\nBeate Pongratz-Leisten is Professor at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World\, New York University. She is a cultural historian of the Ancient Near East. Her research interests include the political\, intellectual\, and religious history of Western Asia\, materialities of culture\, literature\, formation of textual communities\, transmission of cultural memory\, ritual performance and ritual texts\, text and image\, and knowledge production. Her publications include several books on the cultural and religious history of ancient Mesopotamia\, among them more recently Reconsidering the Concept of Revolutionary Monotheism (2011)\, Religion and Ideology in Assyria (2015)\, a volume of collected articles Materiality of Divine Agency (2015) co-edited with Karen Sonik\, and Myth\, Text\, and Image: A Narrative Reading of the World (2026). Currently she is working on a monograph\, Image and Knowledge Production: The Social Construction of the Visual and the Construction of the Visual in Early Mesopotamia. Together with her Co-PI Elizabeth Knott\, she is heading the edition of Akkadian Rituals for the series Writings from the Ancient World\, and she is editor-in-chief of Ancient Literature for Old Testament Studies.
URL:https://humanities.ucla.edu/event/pourdavoud-lecture-series-and-cunard-lecture-series-beate-pongratz-leisten/
LOCATION:Royce 306
CATEGORIES:Cunard Center,Iranian,Pourdavoud Institute
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20261205
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20261207
DTSTAMP:20261015T234037Z
CREATED:20261015T234037Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261015T234037Z
UID:2462807-1796428800-1796601599@humanities.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:The Art of the Benshi 2026
DESCRIPTION:Presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive and the Yanai Initiative \nDecember 5\, 2026 screenings begin at 7:30 p.m.\nDecember 6\, 2026 screenings begin at 7 p.m.\nBilly Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum\n10899 Wilshire Blvd.\, Los Angeles CA 90024 \n\n\n\n\n\nThe UCLA Film & Television Archive and the Yanai Initiative are honored to welcome back to the Billy Wilder Theater renowned Japanese benshi Ichirō Kataoka for a weekend of live performances timed to celebrate the new release of a Flicker Alley Blu-ray box set inspired by the national Art of the Benshi tour organized by the Archive and Yanai in 2024. \nDuring the silent film era in Japan\, film screenings were accompanied by live narrators\, called benshi. Full-fledged artists in their own right\, benshi familiarized and enlivened the cinema experience in Japan through expressive performances that illuminated and extended the emotional and thematic range of the works on screen. The art\, today\, is carried on by a small group of specialized performers who have been apprenticed by the preceding generations of benshi\, creating a continuous lineage back to the original performers. \nKataoka will be joined on stage by another veteran of the 2024 tour\, composer and pianist Makia Matsumura\, who will accompany his original performances with original scores. Every benshi event is a unique\, live experience but this weekend’s program will be especially memorable for the North American premiere of the National Film Archive of Japan’s restoration of director Teinosuke Kinugasa’s groundbreaking\, always astonishing A Page of Madness on the centennial of its original release. \n\nVisit the UCLA Library Film & Television Archive calendar for individual film listings for December 5 and December 6. \n\nProgrammed by Ichirō Kataoka\, Michael Emmerich and Paul Malcolm. Notes written by Senior Public Programmer Paul Malcolm. Special thanks to Michael Emmerich and Elizabeth Leicester\, Yanai Initiative; National Film Archive of Japan. Special thanks to our community partner: West Los Angeles Sawtelle Neighborhood Council.
URL:https://humanities.ucla.edu/event/the-art-of-the-benshi-2026/
LOCATION:Billy Wilder Theater\, Hammer Museum\, 10899 Wilshire Blvd\, Los Angeles\, CA\, 90024
CATEGORIES:Film,Screening,Yanai Initiative
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20261213T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20261213T180000
DTSTAMP:20261029T231912Z
CREATED:20261026T224918Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261029T231912Z
UID:2463129-1797177600-1797184800@humanities.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Bilingual Lecture Series: Afshin Matin-Asgari
DESCRIPTION:An Update on the US-Israeli War on Iran\nAfshin Matin-Asgar\nCalifornia State University\, Los Angeles\nSunday\, December 13\, 2026 \nLecture in Persian \nRoyce Hall 314\, 4:00pm \nZoom link for hybrid online viewing: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/97189398973\nRegistration requested: https://forms.gle/NvbydTUWyWui9x9z7 \nBased on the research published in\, Axis of Empire: A History of Iran-US Relations\, this book talk will briefly review the events leading to the US-Israeli war on Iran\, followed by a summary of the most recent developments in the war and a discussion of how they are interpreted by Iranian and international scholars and political observers. \n  \n  \nAfshin Matin-Asgari is professor emeritus of modern Middle East history at California State University\, Los Angeles. His specialty is 20th century Iranian intellectual and political history\, particularly leftist movements. He is the author of Iranian Student Opposition to the Shah: 1960s-1970s (Mazda Publishers\, 2002)\, Both Eastern and Western: An Intellectual History of Iranian Modernity (Cambridge University Press\, 2018) and Axis of Empire: A History of Iran-US Relations (Verso Publishers\, 2026)\, as well as more than thirty articles and book chapters.
URL:https://humanities.ucla.edu/event/bilingual-lecture-series-afshin-matin-asgari/
LOCATION:Royce Hall 314\, 340 Royce Drive\, Los Angeles\, CA\, 90095\, United States
CATEGORIES:Humanities,Iranian
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://humanities.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/2026-12-13_Matin-Asgari-web-image-KuTUEU.jpg
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