Conference organized by Carla Gardina Pestana (UCLA) and Gabriel de Avilez Rocha (Brown University) Co-sponsored by the Joyce Appleby Endowed Chair of America in the World The diverse peoples who converged on the Caribbean before 1700 held a range of differing beliefs, ideas about the natural world, and understandings of social, political, and spiritual order. Considering how Indigenous, African, and European systems of thought and faith clashed, adapted, and transformed will be the focus of this second meeting. We invite participants to consider how culturally specific systems of knowledge were expressed and transformed under emergent rubrics of what would become known…
زن در قانون اساسی ایران Women’s Rights and the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran Sunday, March 9, 2025 | 11:30 am – 1:30 pm Zoom Registration: https://ucla.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_pM3LdrXXSriCfDMGfzVg8w The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, ratified after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, stands as the country’s foundational legal framework, requiring all subsequent laws to align with its principles. The revolution itself was propelled by widespread calls for social and political reform, with significant factions advocating for democracy, human rights, and gender equality. Iranian women played a prominent role in this movement, underscoring the aspirations for a more inclusive and…
:گاهشماری و هویت چگونه تقویم خورشیدی ایران ۱۴۰۰ سال پایدار ماند و نماد بارزی از هویت ملی شد؟ Calendar and Identity: Why did the Persian solar calendar survive for 1400 years and become an important feature of Iranian identity? Sunday, April 6, 2025 at 4:00pm, Royce Hall 314 Alternate live stream on Zoom: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/97895439218 (No need to register in advance, just click the link at 4:00pm on April 6 to join) Since the end of the Sasanian era the Persian solar calendar, and the associated rite of Nowruz, endured as became a significant features of Iranian, and to some…
Calendar and Identity: Why did the Persian solar calendar survive for 1400 years and become an important feature of Iranian identity? Monday, April 7, 2025 at 3:00pm, Bunche Hall 10383 Alternate live stream on Zoom: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/95885037418 (No need to register in advance, just click the link at 3:00pm on April 7 to join.) Since the end of the Sasanian era, the Persian solar calendar—and the associated rite of Norouz—has endured and grown to become a significant feature of Iranian, and to some extent the Persianate, cultural identity. With Hijra as its starting point but based on vernal equinox, it is…
Abstract: At the end of the 1650s, Melchiorre Cafà, a Maltese sculptor, was newly established in Rome. Rome was the most significant site for sculptural production in Europe at that time. It was also a Golden Age of sculpture as artists vied for papal commissions and pushed the limits of their medium. They transformed hard stone into weightless apparitions. But, in his early days in the Caput Mundi, Cafà returned home conceptually. He carved in the humble material of wood the patron saint of his island, St. Paul, to be sent back to Malta. Today the sculpture is at the…
Striving for Expertise Guest Speaker: Carla Pestana (UCLA) Scholars often refer to Samuel Pepys as an early example of a state bureaucrat, his career as a civil servant in the burgeoning Restoration bureaucracy offering documentation of an important shift in governance. Of equal note—and perhaps greater interest—is the way Pepys himself aimed for expertise. Not content to serve as a cog in a larger bureaucratic machine, Pepys sought to educate himself about the workings of the navy and of sailing ships, going beyond the demands of his own office to achieve a deeper understanding. In doing so, he once again…
“Between Two Worlds: The Roma and Early Global Print Cultures” Guest Speaker: Kristina Richardson (University of Virginia) Richardson will show that Roma and other traveling people not only utilized block printing between 800 and 1450 in North Africa and West Asia but also introduced print technology in their new homes when they migrated to Central Europe in the 1410s. Traveling people were the links bridging the early print cultures of North Africa, West Asia, and Central Europe. Kristina Richardson is the John L. Nau Professor of History at the University of Virginia. Her research focuses on premodern non-elite Arab history,…
Bilingual Lecture Series: Film Screening and Director Q&A with Mohammad Ehsani Alternate live stream on Zoom: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/95549537236 The Water Will Take Us (2022) (Persian with English subtitles) In the spring of 2019 Iran experienced a near apocalypse event that went by almost unnoticed by the world. Widespread flash flooding affected large parts of the country over the course of one month, leading to major damages countrywide and leaving the already impoverished population in utter disarray. The film is a look at how years of mismanagement, poor spatial planning and climate change are impacting civil society in Iran. Lady Urmia (2013)…
April 5, 2025 USC Join us for the 2025 USC-UCLA Graduate Student Conference in Philosophy happening on April 5, 2025 at USC! The USC-UCLA Graduate Student Conference began in 2006. Each year, the graduate students of the University of Southern California and the University of California, Los Angeles solicit high-quality papers in all areas of philosophy from graduate students studying at other departments to be presented at the annual conference. For more information, please visit the Conference Home Page. Conference program coming soon. For any questions, please contact the conference organizers at <uscucla.conference@gmail.com>
