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Humanities

UCLA Department of Art History Colloquium with Susan Dackerman, May 6

Please join us for a Department of Art History Colloquium with featured speaker Susan Dackerman on Wednesday, May 6 at 1 PM in Dodd 275 for her talk, The Paleontology of Print: Lithographic Limestone and the Nature of Reproducibility.  Summary: When in 1796, the Munich playwright Alois Senefelder developed a method of printing from the surface of the local Bavarian limestone, he was utilizing a material that had been reproducing indexical images for millions of years. The Jurassic-era limestone slabs were riddled with fossilized flora and fauna. The same year as Senefelder’s invention, from study of the same Bavarian limestone, the French naturalist…

“The Distribution of Doubt” – Eleanor Gordon-Smith (University of Southern California)

Friday, April 24, 2026 4:00 – 6:00 PM Dodd Hall 321 RSVP HERE   Join us on Friday, April 24, 2026 for a lecture by Eleanor Gordon-Smith (University of Southern California). This event is hosted by Women in Philosophy. The talk will take place from 4:00 – 6:00 PM in Dodd 321 with a small reception to follow.   The Distribution of Doubt   In this talk I connect two seemingly disparate questions. First, how suspicious should each of us be of our fellow members of public life? On the one hand, it is important for us to find out…

Jewish Anti-Zionism as Political Theology: The Major Writings of Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum

Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum of Satmar, one of the most celebrated Hasidic masters of the twentieth century, is known not only for founding the world’s largest Hasidic dynasty, but also for his strongly held anti-Zionist views. His work articulates a Jewish political theology against Zionism built on the foundations of traditional Jewish sources, and its influence remains strong within the ultra-Orthodox Satmar community and beyond. Dense with references to rabbinic, medieval, and modern sources, Teitelbaum’s writing is notoriously challenging even for scholars of Torah to parse. In this volume, Shaul Magid provides a richly annotated translation of selections from the books…

Art Council Lecture Series – A Conversation with Annemarie Jacir

On Wednesday, May 20, at 2 PM, PT the Art History Department will host Writer and Director, Annemarie Jacir for a conversation about her film “Palestine 36.” Ms. Jacir will be appearing virtually for this event.  Guests may attend in-person in Dodd 247 or attend via webinar. Kindly RSVP here to receive the webinar information prior to this event.  All are welcome!

The Past, Present, and Future of Jews and the Labor Movement in Los Angeles

What drew Jewish immigrants to the labor movement? How did unions become distinctly “Jewish” spaces – and what happened when they changed? Join historians, organizers, and community leaders for a panel on Jewish labor activism in Los Angeles: from the open-shop battles of the early 20th century to today. Thursday, May 28, 2026 • UCLA Labor Center • 5:30 PM 675 S Park View Street, Los Angeles, CA 90057 The Past, Present, and Future of Jews and the Labor Movement in Los Angeles Featuring Jackie Goldberg (Community Leader & Labor Activist) Sponsored by The UCLA Labor Center The UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for…

(De)medicalization and the Dying Body: Sallekhanā, Kinship, and the Limits of Liberal Bioethics

In this talk, Miki Chase (U of Wisconsin-Madison) explores how trajectories of illness and care, such as terminal cancer or anticipated cognitive decline, are reinterpreted through Jain doctrinal frameworks in the narratives of adult children of women who undertake the Jain ritual fast to death (sallekhanā or santhāra). Drawing on ethnographic accounts of women’s deaths in contemporary urban Jain households, Chase traces how narratives of bodily decline are reframed not as losses to be managed through medical intervention but as conditions of spiritual possibility that invite ascetic detachment and renunciation. Rather than resisting biomedical or bioethical paradigms outright, these narratives…

A corazón abierto: notas para una escritura quirúrgica

Lina Meruane (hija de un cardiólogo jubilado) aborda la aparición del “corazón abierto” en la novelística latinoamericana. Inspirada por El intruso (2006), relato de Jean Luc Nancy sobre su trasplante de corazón, Meruane examina trastornos reales (incluido su reciente episodio de arritmia) y comenta problemáticas éticas y estéticas en tres novelas quirúrgicas: Sutura (2025), de Sofía Balbuena, La novela del corazón (2022) de Roberto Castillo y Todo está bien, salvo mi corazón, (2022) de Héctor Abad Faciolince. Lina Meruane es una escritora chilena y doctora en literatura (New York University, 2009). Su obra incluye dos colecciones de relatos y cinco…

Jolene Rickard to present the 2026 Gretchen Taylor Millson Lecture, May 11

The UCLA Department of Art History proudly presents the 2026 Gretchen Taylor Millson Distinguished Lecture, featuring Jolene Rickard, Associate Professor, Departments of Art History + Visual Studies, Art American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program, Cornell University. Professor Rickard’s lecture is entitled, “Creative Defiance as Sensory Ecologies.” The Gretchen Taylor Millson Distinguished Lectureship was established in memory of UCLA alumna Gretchen Millson in December 2009 by her husband, Dr. John J. Millson. Gretchen graduated from UCLA with a B.A. from the Department of Art in 1961. This endowed fund provides much-needed resources to the department to allow us to grow and continue our longstanding…