RSS FeedUpcoming EventsChristian Voller | Messages in a Bottle: Recent Studies on the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, March 19https://events.berkeley.edu/live/events/240396-christian-voller-messages-in-a-bottle-recent

“Messages in a Bottle: Recent Studies on the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory” is a three-part virtual book talk series. The second book talk is presented by Christian Voller (Leuphana University Lüneburg) on his book In the Twilight: Studies in the Prehistory and Early History of Critical Theory (2022).

About the Series

“Messages in a Bottle: Recent Studies on the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory” is a three-part lecture series. Each lecture requires advance registration.

- February 27, 2024; 12 -1 pm PST; Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy (Brill/Haymarket) with Dirk Braunstein, Institue for Social Research Frankfurt am Main. Registration required.

- March 19, 2024; 12 - 1 pm PST; In the Twilight: Studies in the Prehistory and Early History of Critical Theory (Matthes & Seitz 2022) with Christian Voller, Leuphana University of Lüneburg. Register in advance at this link.

- April 16, 2024; 12 - 1 pm PST; The Archives of Critical Theory (Springer) with Isabelle Aubert, University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Register in advance at this link.

Sponsors

Cosponsored by the Program in Critical Theory at UC Berkeley, the Department of History, and the Department of German.

Speakers

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American Thanatocracy vs Abolition Democracy: On Cops, Capitalism, and the War on Black Life, March 20https://events.berkeley.edu/live/events/239372-american-thanatocracy-vs-abolition-democracy-on

This lecture is part of the Jefferson Memorial Lecture series

About this lecture

This talk will examine how police in the neoliberal era–in tandem with other state and corporate entities—have become engines of capital accumulation, government revenue, gentrification, the municipal bond market, the tech and private security industry—in a phrase, the profits of death. The police don’t just take lives; they make life and living less viable for the communities they occupy. The growth of police power has also fundamentally weakened democracy and strengthened “thanatocracy”—rule by death– especially with respect to Black communities. And yet, these same communities have produced a new abolition democracy, organizing to advance a different future, without oppression and exploitation, war, poverty, prisons, police, borders, the constraints of imposed gender, sexual, and ableist norms, and an economic system that destroys the planet while generating obscene inequality.  

About Robin D.G. Kelley

Robin D. G. Kelley is Distinguished Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA. Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is the recipient of many awards and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and Freedom Scholar Award. His books include the award-winning, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original; Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression; Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination; Race Rebels: Culture Politics and the Black Working Class; Yo’ Mama’s DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (Beacon Press 1997); Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times.

Kelley is currently completing two books, Making a Killing: Cops, Capitalism, and the War on Black Life and The Education of Ms. Grace Halsell: An Intimate History of the American Century (both forthcoming Metropolitan Books).

His essays have appeared in dozens of publications, including The Nation, New York Times,American Historical Review, American Quarterly, African Studies Review, Social Text, Metropolis, Journal of American History, New Labor Forum, and The Boston Review, for which he also serves as Contributing Editor.

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The City Without Jews: A Centenary Film Soirée, March 20https://events.berkeley.edu/live/events/240947-the-city-without-jews-a-centenary-film-soiree

Join us for a special screening of the historic silent film The City Without Jews accompanied live with original music composed and performed by klezmer violinist Alicia Svigals and silent film pianist Donald Sosin. The screening will be followed by a conversation with the musicians, UC San Diego Professor Emerita Cynthia Walk, and UC Berkeley Professor Philipp Lenhard.

Wednesday, March 20, 2024 | 5:30pm

In person at The Magnes Collection, 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA

5:00 pm: Doors open
5:30 pm: Program begins

Based on the controversial and best-selling novel by Austrian-Jewish writer Hugo Bettauer, H.K. Breslauer’s 1924 film adaptation of The City Without Jews (Die Stadt ohne Juden) was produced two years after the publication of the book, and, tragically, only a brief time before the satirical events depicted in the fictional story transformed into an all-too-horrific reality.

Set in the Austrian city of Utopia (a thinly-disguised stand-in for Vienna), the story follows the political and personal consequences of an antisemitic law passed by the National Assembly forcing all Jews to leave the country. At first, the decision is met with celebration, yet when the citizens of Utopia eventually come to terms with the loss of the Jewish population—and the resulting economic and cultural decline—the National Assembly must decide whether or not to invite the Jews back.

Though darkly comedic in tone, and stylistically influenced by German Expressionism, the film nonetheless contains ominous and eerily realistic sequences, such as the shots of freight trains transporting Jews out of the city. The stinging critique of Nazism in the film is part of the reason it no longer screened in public after 1933 (all complete prints were thought to be destroyed). Now, thanks to the discovery of a nitrate print in a Parisian flea market in 2015, as well as to the brilliant restoration efforts of the Filmarchiv Austria, this previously “lost” film can once again be appreciated in its unfortunately ever-relevant entirety.

The program will include a welcome by Austrian Consul Isabella Tomás, live original music composed and performed by world-renowned klezmer violinist Alicia Svigals and celebrated silent film pianist Donald Sosin, and a conversation with the musicians, Professor Emerita Cynthia Walk and UC Berkeley’s DAAD Visiting Associate Professor of History and German Philipp Lenhard.

The performance is made possible by the Sunrise Foundation for Education and the Arts.

 

About the musicians

Alicia Svigals, violinist/composer and a founder of the Grammy-winning Klezmatics, is the world’s foremost klezmer fiddler. Alicia almost singlehandedly revived the tradition of klezmer fiddling, which had been on the brink of extinction until she recorded her debut album Fidl in the 1990’s. In May 2023, Svigals was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters by the Jewish Theological Seminary for “extraordinary contributions to the arts and Jewish life.” Website: aliciasvigals.com

Pianist/composer Donald Sosin grew up in Rye, NY and Munich, Germany. Since 1971 has performed his silent film music at Lincoln Center, MoMA, BAM, the National Gallery, Yale, Harvard, and major film festivals here and abroad. He records for various DVD labels: Criterion, Kino, Milestone, Flicker Alley and his scores are heard frequently on TCM. Website: oldmoviemusic.com

 

About the speakers

Cynthia Walk, Associate Professor Emerita of German Literature and Film Studies at the University of California, San Diego, received her Ph.D. from Yale. Her research has focused on modern drama, theater, and film with publications on intermediality, race, and ethnicity in Weimar cinema. She also worked on the restoration of Jewish-themed films from the Weimar era and contributed to the restored version of “The City without Jews”.

Philipp Lenhard, DAAD Associate Professor of History and German at the University of California, Berkeley. He specializes in modern German and Jewish history and has recently published a new history of the Frankfurt School (in German).

Isabella Tomás is the Austrian Consul in San Francisco and Co-Director of Open Austria.

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The Monroe Doctrine: Past, Present, & Future, March 21https://events.berkeley.edu/live/events/242475-the-monroe-doctrine-past-present-future

Please join us on Thursday, March 21, from 4-6pm in 223 Philosophy Hall for a lecture by Jay Sexton, the Rich and Nancy Kinder Chair of Constitutional Democracy, Professor of History, and Director of the Kinder Institute at the University of Missouri. A prolific historian of American foreign relations during the 19th century, Professor Sexton has published influential books on topics ranging from transnational finance in the Civil War Era to anti-imperialism and the centrality of international crises to American history from the eighteenth through the twenty-first centuries. His talk will concern yet another area of his research expertise: “The Monroe Doctrine: Past, Present, & Future.”

Since 2010, the Berkeley Global History Seminar has provided a venue to discuss cutting-edge work-in-progress on global, international, transnational, and borderlands history. The seminar is generously funded by the Institute for International Studies. Professor Sexton’s presentation is co-sponsored by the Berkeley History Department. 

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History Colloquium | Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, April 3https://events.berkeley.edu/History/event/238280-history-colloquium-stephanie-e-jones-rogers

Join the Department of History for the second presentation in this two part colloquia series! This presentation will feature work from Professor Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers. The department invites attendees to read Jones-Rogers’s paper before attending the event. A copy of the paper will be available two weeks before the event. To receive a copy of the paper please email history-admin@berkeley.edu with the subject line ‘History Colloquium: Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers.’

Light refreshments will be served!

https://events.berkeley.edu/History/event/238280-history-colloquium-stephanie-e-jones-rogers
Isabelle Aubert | Messages in a Bottle: Recent Studies on the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, April 16https://events.berkeley.edu/live/events/240412-isabelle-aubert-messages-in-a-bottle-recent

“Messages in a Bottle: Recent Studies on the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory” is a three-part virtual book talk series. The third book talk is presented by Isabelle Aubert, University of Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne, on her book The Archives of Critical Theory (2023).

More information about this topic is forthcoming.

About the Series

“Messages in a Bottle: Recent Studies on the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory” is a three-part lecture series. Each lecture requires advance registration.

- February 27, 2024; 12 -1 pm PST; Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy (Brill/Haymarket) with Dirk Braunstein, Institue for Social Research Frankfurt am Main. Register in advance at this link.

- March 19, 2024; 12 - 1 pm PST; Studies in the Prehistory and Early History of Critical Theory (Matthes & Seitz) with Christian Voller, Leuphana University of Lüneburg. Register in advance at this link.

- April 16, 2024; 12 - 1 pm PST; The Archives of Critical Theory (2023) with Isabelle Aubert, University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Register in advance at this link.

Sponsors

Cosponsored by the Program in Critical Theory at UC Berkeley, the Department of History, and the Department of German.

Speakers

/live/events/240412-isabelle-aubert-messages-in-a-bottle-recent
Martin Meyerson Berkeley Faculty Research Lecture: Michael Nylan, May 1https://events.berkeley.edu/live/events/240572-martin-meyerson-berkeley-faculty-research-lecture

Please join us for the second 2024 Martin Meyerson Berkeley Faculty Research Lecture, a 111-year-old campus tradition celebrating excellence in research at UC Berkeley, taking place Wednesday, May 1, 2024. 

Michael Nylan
Jane K. Sather Chair of History
The Utility of the Useless: Reflections on History Today

Wednesday, May 1, 2024
4-5 p.m.

This event is free and open to the public and will take place in the Toll Room of Alumni House.

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History Commencement, May 14https://events.berkeley.edu/History/event/223421-history-commencement

2024 History Commencement.

https://events.berkeley.edu/History/event/223421-history-commencement