In this year’s Core Program, historians of the Ottoman, Qing, and Mughal empires revisit the problem of comparison by considering synchronicities and structural parallels across Asia. The third conference looks at Society, Materiality, and Knowledge. Increased mobility and commercial activity across the early modern Eurasian space heightened imperial concerns about the effectiveness of political control over increasingly assertive and unruly subjects. Anxieties over a changing social and economic order engendered a new momentum in cultural production, reflected in literature, in legal codes that tried to reinforce status hierarchies, and in new religious and spiritual movements. In what new ways did…
The Program in Experimental Critical Theory presents Psychoanalysis and Structure A Talk with A. Kiarina Kordela Monday, February 23, 2026 3:00-4:30pm PST Via Zoom Advanced Registration Advanced registration is required by Friday, February 20, 2026. The Zoom meeting link will be sent end of day on February 20. REGISTER TO ATTEND HERE About the Talk Based on the introduction to Epistemontology, its third chapter, “Psychoanalysis and Structuralism,” shows the necessary interconnection between capitalist economy and psychoanalytic thought. It does so by reading together (a) Spinozian monism—as the first philosophical system that conceived of being (substance) in structural terms;…
In our deeply fractured world, religion serves both to connect and offer wisdom and to foster conflict and division. Over the course of centuries, it has been frequently invoked to justify brutal violence, but can it be an effective tool to advance justice? To explore different perspectives on the topic of faith, forgiveness, and justice, we will be joined by a distinguished panel of religious leaders: Father Greg Boyle, Rabbi Sharon Brous, Valarie Kaur, and Imam Dr. Jihad Turk. Father Greg Boyle is a Jesuit priest and director of Homeboy Industries, the world’s largest gang intervention and rehabilitation program. Rabbi…
Ambroise Aubrun, violin Steven Vanhauwaert, piano This concert pays tribute to the refined tradition of musical salons, tracing their influence from nineteenth-century Vienna to early twentieth-century Los Angeles. At its heart is Guillaume Lekeu’s Violin Sonata, performed in homage to Alfred Megerlin, the Belgian violin virtuoso and concertmaster of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the 1920s. The L.A. Philharmonic itself was founded by William Andrews Clark Jr., a passionate patron of the arts who likely hosted intimate musical gatherings in the Drawing Room at the Clark Library. Through works by Schubert, Fauré, Debussy and others, the program evokes the elegance, intimacy, and…
In this year’s Core Program, historians of the Ottoman, Qing, and Mughal empires revisit the problem of comparison by considering synchronicities and structural parallels across Asia. The second conference looks at Imperial Operations. How did empires work? What did the everyday operations of imperial rule look like? Early modern empires confronted the same “great enemy” of distance which severely constrained all actions, from government communications to tax collection. The systems for delegating authority and distributing tasks that the Ottomans, Mughals, and Qing developed to address these common problems shared some essential features despite their autonomous development and local variations, and…
Lecture by Tracy Wolk (Landscape Designer) and Stephanie Landregan (Landscape Architect and Director Altadena Green). Moderated by Brian Brodersen, (Landscape Architect and Principal/Owner Brodersen Associates). Join us for the inaugural Ahmanson Lecture at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, an evening exploring how history, design, and stewardship can shape the future of Los Angeles’s most meaningful landscapes. Landscape designer Tracy Wolk shares her vision for the Clark’s historic gardens, reimagining their early 20th-century character for a future grounded in sustainability, resilience, and respect for heritage. She will be joined by Stephanie Landregan, director of Altadena Green, a community initiative established after the Altadena fires to protect and…
William Andrews Clark Oscar Wilde Lecture Lecture by Margaret D. Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women’s Studies and Professor of Humanities, University of Delaware Oscar Wilde’s importance in the world of the theatre is, of course, unparalleled. His effect on Gothic fiction (and on queer fiction) has been equally profound, due to the popularity of his one novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. This talk, however, will suggest that his fairy tales have been just as influential, and that their influence was clear almost immediately after the publication of both The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888) and A House…
Organized by Professors Lyle Massey (University of California, Irvine), Vin Nardizzi (The University of British Columbia), Tiffany Jo Werth (University of California, Davis), and Bronwen Wilson (University of California, Los Angeles) Co-sponsored by the UCLA Edward W. Carter Chair in European Art Conference organizers are grateful to the Hannah & Edward Carter Endowment for 17th-Century Art History for generous programming support. Critiquing the environmental humanities’ narrowly earth-centric focus, Carl Phelphstead asks us to look heavenward, to think “cosmocritically” and expand our awareness for how attitudes towards the heaven shape those on earth. What is sky? Both a border for land and sea, and a blank canvas for…
The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library is pleased to present the exhibition Printing the Gothic: Horace Walpole and the Reimagining of English Aesthetic Tradition, curated by Edward Hyunsoo Yang, Loren and Frances Rothschild Endowed Graduate Research Fellow. The Gothic has long carried a reputation of being little more than cheap entertainment: a genre thought to possess limited literary or cultural value. This exhibit challenges that view by tracing the Gothic’s connection to a collective cultural effort to establish, and promote, an identifiably English art. At the center of this exhibit is Horace Walpole—antiquarian, collector, and author of the first Gothic novel—whose Castle…
Conference organized by Professors Craig Yirush (University of California, Los Angeles), and Brad A. Jones (California State University, Fresno) On the 200th anniversary of the American Revolution in 1976, Americans celebrated it as the story of a struggle for liberty which culminated in the creation of the world’s first democratic republic. Leading historians largely concurred with this nationalistic view of the Revolution’s significance. They disagreed about whether the republicanism of the new nation was liberal and individualistic, or classical and communitarian; but they all agreed that the Revolution sparked a “contagion of liberty” which transformed American society. Approaching the 250th anniversary in 2026, things…
