Humanities

Co-Sponsored Symposium and Workshop: Nezāmi and the Iranian World

Nezāmi and the Iranian World November 21–22, 2024 | UCLA Royce Hall 306 A symposium and workshop convened by Domenico Ingenito (University of California, Los Angeles) Morning Refreshments at 8:30am Conference beings at 9:00am “Nezāmi and the Iranian World” is a two-day conference (November 21–22, 2024) that brings together specialists of Persian literature, junior faculty, and graduate students to facilitate in-depth conversations on Nezāmi in a stimulating intellectual environment at UCLA. Nezāmi Ganjavi’s five romances in verse, collectively known as the Quintet (Khamsa), are regarded as the most precious examples of medieval Iran’s literary refinement. Drawing upon a vast repertoire…

Calidore String Quartet, Chamber Music at the Clark 30th Anniversary

Concert presented in honor of Peter Hanns Reill (1938–2019) The Calidore String Quartet is recognized as one of the world’s foremost interpreters of a vast chamber music repertory. For more than a decade, the Calidore has enjoyed performances and residencies in the world’s major venues and festivals, released multiple critically acclaimed recordings, and won numerous awards. The Los Angeles Times described the musicians as “astonishing,” their playing “shockingly deep,” approaching “the kind of sublimity other quartets spend a lifetime searching.” The New York Times noted the Quartet’s “deep reserves of virtuosity and irrepressible dramatic instinct,” and the Washington Post wrote that “four more individual musicians are…

Cuarteto Casals, Chamber Music at the Clark 30th Anniversary

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…

Funding London’s Elite Music Scene Through the Profits of Slavery in the Eighteenth Century and Beyond: Bio-Bibliographical Work as Reparative History

  Nineteenth Kenneth Karmiole Lecture on the History of the Book Trade Lecture by David Hunter, Librarian Emeritus, University of Texas at Austin Until eleven years ago, when David Hunter found Handel’s signature on several share transfer slips in the records of the Royal African Company at The National Archives, Kew, London, no one had thought to investigate the ways in which the profits of the slave trade and the plantation economy made their way into the musical world in London and elsewhere in Britain and its Caribbean and North American colonies. Those ways included subscription to opera and concert seasons, to…

Reading Paul Landacre’s Archive with the Clark Collections: California Landscape and the Erasure of Indigeneity

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…

Early Global Caribbean: Conference 1: Convergences – Day 2

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…

Early Global Caribbean: Conference 1: Convergences – Day 1

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…

Caribbean Kaleidoscope: Convergence and Transformation in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

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…

Appreciation of Kunqu Opera Performance: Techniques and Characteristics

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…

Iranian Studies & Yarshater Center Symposium and Workshop: Nezāmi and the Iranian World

Nezāmi and the Iranian World November 21–22, 2024 | UCLA Royce Hall 306 A symposium and workshop convened by Domenico Ingenito (University of California, Los Angeles) Morning Refreshments at 8:30am Conference beings at 9:00am “Nezāmi and the Iranian World” is a two-day conference (November 21–22, 2024) that brings together specialists of Persian literature, junior faculty, and graduate students to facilitate in-depth conversations on Nezāmi in a stimulating intellectual environment at UCLA. Nezāmi Ganjavi’s five romances in verse, collectively known as the Quintet (Khamsa), are regarded as the most precious examples of medieval Iran’s literary refinement. Drawing upon a vast repertoire…