Humanities

Organized by Yinghui Wu (University of California, Los Angeles) and Kunqu Opera Society USA Co-sponsored by UCLA Asia Pacific Center and Center for Chinese StudiesLocation Kunqu Opera, with over 600 years of history, is one of the world’s oldest theatrical traditions, alongside Greek drama and Indian Sanskrit theatre. This lecture features two distinguished experts: a first-class national actor known for his xiaosheng roles and an associate professor at Chinese Culture University in Taiwan, specializing in chou roles. They will explore Kunqu Opera’s unique performance conventions and the artistry of chou roles through a blend of explanation and demonstration. Additionally, actors from the Kunqu Opera Society...

Lecture by Ida Altman, Professor Emerita, University of Florida As Iberians in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries expanded into the Atlantic world they intentionally and unintentionally created conditions for the unprecedented convergence of peoples and cultures in the Caribbean that would transform them and the region as a whole. The dimensions and complexities of that process can be identified at nearly all levels. Over time, as other European nations became active in the Caribbean, contraband or extra-legal trade and efforts to stake out territorial claims generated other forms of convergence. Other Europeans followed many of the precedents that...

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 Caribbean became global through successive aggregations of disparate peoples across a wide span of time. Long before the arrival of Europeans, the Caribbean Sea served as a bridge among the more than 700 islands that dot the area. For millennia, Indigenous people moved among islands and between them and the adjacent mainland, motived by settlement, trade, and conflict. The circulation of peoples accelerated with the advent of Europeans who seized lands, killed...

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 Caribbean became global through successive aggregations of disparate peoples across a wide span of time. Long before the arrival of Europeans, the Caribbean Sea served as a bridge among the more than 700 islands that dot the area. For millennia, Indigenous people moved among islands and between them and the adjacent mainland, motived by settlement, trade, and conflict. The circulation of peoples accelerated with the advent of Europeans who seized lands, killed many...

Second Annual Spotlight Talk by Johanna Drucker, Distinguished Professor and Breslauer Professor Emerita, Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles Paul Landacre was a wood engraver and artist whose first published work, California Hills (1931), established his reputation within the Fine Press community of Los Angeles. Highly skilled as an engraver, he produced a considerable corpus of acclaimed work, and he also kept scrupulous records of all aspects of his activity—account books, correspondence, sketches, and personal memorabilia. These materials provide an in-depth look at his professional life, and his connections to a singular network of artists and intellectuals in the region. But the...

Since winning First Prizes at the London and Brahms-Hamburg competitions, Cuarteto Casals, which was founded in 1997 at the Escuela Reina Sofía in Madrid, has been a continual guest at the world’s most prestigious concert halls, including Carnegie Hall, Philharmonie Berlin, Cité de la Musique Paris, Philharmonie Paris, Konzerthaus and Musikverein in Vienna, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, and Suntory Hall, among many others. To celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary, the quartet released a recording of the complete Art of Fugue by J.S. Bach to much critical acclaim and is currently undertaking a recording of all fifteen quartets by Dmitri Shostakovich, one of the great cycles...