RSS FeedUpcoming EventsFoundations of Buddhist Chaplaincy: A Japan-US Dialogue, March 27https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243883-foundations-of-buddhist-chaplaincy-a-japan-us

The Institute of Buddhist Studies and the Center for Japanese Studies at U.C Berkeley are excited to announce this bilingual workshop, which brings together chaplaincy educators and working chaplains in Japan and the United States to reflect on how we connect Buddhist teachings with effective service. We will discuss the current state of chaplaincy in our respective countries, the practice of Buddhist chaplaincy on the ground, the training and education of Buddhist chaplains, as well as the role of chaplains in our changing world. Through a dialogical session format we intend to exchange ideas, create and strengthen relationships, and share resources that will equip and enrich Buddhist chaplaincy practice and education.

The event is co-sponsored by the Institute of Buddhist Studies; the Center for Japanese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley; the Numata Foundation; and the Buddhist Ministry Working Group.

 

Translation will be provided into Japanese and English.

This in-person event is free and open to the public.

Register for the workshop here.

 

Speakers and Moderators:

  • Ram Appalaraju, Buddhist Eco Chaplain and faculty, Sati Center for Buddhist Studies
  • Dr. Mark Blum, Professor and Shinjo Ito Distinguished Chair in Japanese Studies, UC Berkeley
  • Dr. Lilu Chen, Field Education Director, Institute of Buddhist Studies
  • Dr. Gil Fronsdal, senior guiding teacher, Insight Meditation Center
  • Dr. Jitsujo T. Gauthier, CoChair, Buddhist Chaplaincy Department, University of the West
  • Rev. HIRANO Shunkō, former abbot of Chūgenji Temple; death row chaplain at Tokyo Jail
  • Dr. KASAI Kenta, Psychologist, Professor at the Graduate School for Applied Religious Studies, Sophia University
  • Dr. KAWAMOTO Kanae, JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute of Advanced Studies on Asia, The University of Tokyo
  • Prof. KIGOSHI Yasushi, Professor, Shin Buddhist Studies, Otani University
  • Jamie Kimmel, BCC, Staff Chaplain, UCSF Health
  • Rev. Dr. Daijaku Kinst, Professor Emerita, IBS; guiding co-teacher, Ocean Gate Zen Center; Kokusaifukyoshi (International Teacher), Soto Shu
  • Dr. Nancy G. Lin, Professor of Buddhist Chaplaincy, Tibetan and South Asian Studies, Institute of Buddhist Studies
  • Dr. Adam Lyons, Assistant Professor, Institute of Religious Studies, Université de Montréal
  • Dr. Leigh Miller, Director of the MDiv Degree and Chaplaincy Program, Maitripa College
  • Dr. Scott Mitchell, Dean of Students and Faculty Affairs, Institute of Buddhist Studies
  • Mary Remington, Director, Spiritual Care Department, Good Samaritan Hospital, Suffern, NY; Director, Buddhist Chaplaincy Training Program, Upaya Institute and Zen Center
  • Rev. Dr. Monica Sanford, Assistant Dean for Multireligious Ministry, Harvard Divinity School
  • Rev. TAKAHASHI Eigo, Abbot, Koryūzan Kichijōji Temple
  • Dr. TANIYAMA Yōzō, Professor, Practical Religious Studies, Tohoku University
  • Trent Thornley, Executive Director & CPE Educator, San Francisco Night Ministry
  • Dr. UCHIMOTO Koyu, Associate Professor, Ryukoku University
  • Jonathan Watts, Coordinator, International Buddhist Psychotherapy and Chaplaincy working group; Senior Research Fellow, Rinbutsuken Buddhist Chaplaincy Training Program, Tokyo, Japan
  • Evan Wong, BCC, Pediatric Palliative Care Chaplain, Kaiser Permanente, Oakland Medical Center
  • Dr. Pamela Ayo Yetunde, pastoral counselor and author, Marabella Storycraft; world traveler; spiritual care “crier”
  • Dr. Elaine Yuen, contemplative educator and chaplain; professor emerita, Naropa University

 

Workshop Schedule

Wednesday, March 27th

3:00 PM Welcoming remarks

  • Dr. Scott Mitchell, Dean of Students and Faculty Affairs, Institute of Buddhist Studies
  • Dr. Mark Blum, Professor and Shinjo Ito Distinguished Chair in Japanese Studies, UC Berkeley

3:15–5:15 Key Topics for Chaplaincy in the US and Japan

What developments in the field of chaplaincy are worth naming and/or celebrating? How is the work of chaplains evolving alongside the changing nature of our world? What are the key issues and challenges faced by chaplains and chaplaincy educators today? In this workshop, what do we hope to learn from each other in our respective approaches to chaplaincy?

  • Rev. HIRANO Shunkō, former abbot of Chūgenji Temple; death row chaplain at Tokyo Jail
  • Dr. Daijaku Kinst, Professor Emerita, IBS; guiding co-teacher, Ocean Gate Zen Center; Kokusaifukyoshi (International Teacher), Soto Shu
  • Prof. KIGOSHI Yasushi, Professor, Shin Buddhist Studies, Otani University
  • Rev. Mary Remington, Director, Spiritual Care Department, Good Samaritan Hospital, Suffern, NY; Director, Buddhist Chaplaincy Training Program, Upaya Institute and Zen Center

Moderator: Dr. Nancy G. Lin, Professor of Buddhist Chaplaincy, Tibetan and South Asian Studies, Institute of Buddhist Studies

5:15-6:15 Reception

 

Thursday, March 28th

10:00 AM–12:00 PM Education, Training, and Formation of Buddhist Chaplains

How are chaplains trained in Japan or the US? What goes into the formation process of future chaplains on the personal and institutional level? How is chaplaincy grounded in Buddhist teachings? How do we draw upon the Buddhist tradition to serve people of diverse backgrounds and situations? What challenges do chaplaincy educators face today? What kinds of training might better equip or enrich our work as chaplains?

  • Dr. TANIYAMA Yōzō, Professor, Practical Religious Studies, Tohoku University
  • Dr. Jitsujo T. Gauthier, CoChair, Buddhist Chaplaincy Department, University of the West
  • Dr. Leigh Miller, Director of the MDiv Degree and Chaplaincy Program, Maitripa College
  • Rev. Prof. Gil Fronsdal, senior guiding teacher, Insight Meditation Center

Moderator: Dr. Lilu Chen, Field Education Director, Institute of Buddhist Studies

1:30–3:30 Collective Crisis

Chaplains respond to natural disasters, pandemics, and tragedies that affect large groups of people. What challenges or issues arise for chaplains when responding to a collective crisis? How do chaplains draw upon the study and practice of the Dharma to shape their relationship to tragedy? How do chaplains interact with individuals and communities to facilitate healing and recovery? We will discuss some specific case studies.

  • Dr. Elaine Yuen, contemplative educator and chaplain; professor emerita, Naropa University
  • Rev. TAKAHASHI Eigo, Abbot, Koryūzan Kichijōji Temple
  • Ram Appalaraju, Buddhist Eco Chaplain and faculty, Sati Center for Buddhist Studies
  • Jamie Kimmel, BCC, Staff Chaplain, UCSF Health

Moderator: Dr. Scott Mitchell, Dean of Students and Faculty Affairs, Institute of Buddhist Studies

3:30-4:00 Tea and Snacks

4:00–6:00 Personal Crisis

Individuals often encounter personal crises when facing death, physical illness, addiction, and/or mental health challenges for themselves or their family members. What issues arise for chaplains when working closely with those experiencing a personal crisis? How do chaplains draw upon the study and practice of the Dharma to respond to the suffering of others? In what ways do chaplains interact with individuals and families to facilitate healing and recovery? We will discuss some specific case studies.

  • Dr. UCHIMOTO Koyu, Associate Professor, Ryukoku University
  • Trent Thornley, Executive Director & CPE Educator, San Francisco Night Ministry
  • Dr. KAWAMOTO Kanae, JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute of Advanced Studies on Asia, The University of Tokyo
  • Evan Wong, BCC, Pediatric Palliative Care Chaplain, Kaiser Permanente, Oakland Medical Center

Moderator: Dr. Adam Lyons, Assistant Professor, Institute of Religious Studies, Université de Montréal

 

Friday, March 29th

10:00-12:00 The Future of Chaplaincy

What is the role of the chaplain in our changing world? With shifting religious demographics, how do we imagine chaplains adapting to the unique needs of their communities? What new forms of chaplaincy are becoming relevant in both Japan and the U.S.?

  • Rev. Dr. Monica Sanford, Assistant Dean for Multireligious Ministry, Harvard Divinity School
  • Dr. Pamela Ayo Yetunde, pastoral counselor and author, Marabella Storycraft; world traveler; spiritual care “crier”
  • Dr. KASAI Kenta, Psychologist, Professor at the Graduate School for Applied Religious Studies, Sophia University
  • Jonathan Watts, Coordinator, International Buddhist Psychotherapy and Chaplaincy working group; Senior Research Fellow, Rinbutsuken Buddhist Chaplaincy Training Program, Tokyo, Japan

Moderator: Dr. Mark Blum, Professor and Shinjo Ito Distinguished Chair in Japanese Studies, UC Berkeley

12:00 PM–12:30 PM Closing discussion

Moderator: Dr. Nancy G. Lin, Professor of Buddhist Chaplaincy, Tibetan and South Asian Studies, Institute of Buddhist Studies

https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243883-foundations-of-buddhist-chaplaincy-a-japan-us
Webinar. Collaborators and Competitors–China and the US in the Current Geopolitics of International Higher Education, March 28https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243884-webinar-collaborators-and-competitorschina-and-the

Ever since China re-emerged on the global higher-education stage following the Cultural Revolution, it has had a close, sometimes symbiotic with the United States. U.S. Universities helped China rebuild its educational infrastructure, while talented Chinese students and scientists have filled U.S. classrooms and laboratories. For the past several decades, academics in each country have frequently regarded the other as key research and scholarly partners. But in recent years, the relationship between the two knowledge super-powers has become competitive and at times contentious. The speakers will look at how student mobility, research cooperation, and other forms of Sino-American academic collaboration have been complicated by a host of issues including domestic political pressures, geopolitics, economic imperatives, the safeguarding of intellectual property, and concerns about academic freedom.

https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243884-webinar-collaborators-and-competitorschina-and-the
Film Screening: Tótem, March 30https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243885-film-screening-totem

In the enormously poignant follow-up to her international breakthrough, The Chambermaid, director Lila Avilés nestles in with one family over the course of a single, meaningful day. Tótem is told largely from the perspective of seven-year-old Sol (the marvelously naturalistic Naíma Sentíes), as her mother and extended relatives prepare for the birthday party of the girl’s father. As the hours wear on, building to an event both anticipated and dreaded, the fragile bonds and unsure future of the family become ever clearer. Avilés confirms her formidable skill at expressing the subtlest contours of her characters’ inner lives in this emotionally expansive and affecting drama.

-Film at Lincoln Center
https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243885-film-screening-totem
Film Screening: Xala, March 31https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243886-film-screening-xala

“Ousmane Sembène has created one of the most sophisticated works of the new African cinema—at once comic satire and a deadly accurate polemic against the black bourgeoisie of Dakar” (Albert Johnson). Heavily censored in Senegal, Xala strips bare the myth of African independence and exposes ways in which ruling-class Senegalese have appropriated colonial bureaucracy for their own benefit. El Hadji (Thierno Leye) is an aging, affluent businessman about to marry his third wife. But on his wedding night, he is struck with the curse of xala (impotence). His physical affliction soon affects all aspects of his life. Xala becomes a metaphor for what’s wrong with contemporary Senegalese culture and what paralyzes much of modern Africa. With its satirical mix of Senegalese superstitions and customs with Western symbolism and values, Xala is reminiscent of the Surrealism of Luis Buñuel.

-Susan Oxtoby
https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243886-film-screening-xala
Oxyopia Seminar: Title to be Announced, April 1https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243887-oxyopia-seminar-title-to-be-announced

Abstract to be Announced

https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243887-oxyopia-seminar-title-to-be-announced
Creative Careers Week | Arts & Humanities, April 1https://events.berkeley.edu/live/events/241151-creative-careers-week-arts-humanities

Monday, April 1, 2024
Berkeley Career Engagement
2-3pm, Dwinelle Hall 370
Presented by the Career Center

Learn the best practices for networking and more.

Tuesday, April 2, 2024, Register here
Creative Careers Networking Mixer
5-7pm, Platform Art Space, Bauer Wurster Hall
Hosted by Division of Arts & Humanities

Meet recent graduates and mid-career alumni who are working in their fields with a range of professional represented. We’ll have a great spread of food, swag, and prizes!

Wednesday, April 3, 2024, Register here
Creative Career Talk with Jill Foley, VP of Peloton Apparel
in conversation with Sara Guyer, Dean of Arts & Humanities

 Noon-1pm, Maude Fife, Wheeler Hall

Join a talk with Jill Foley, VP of Peloton Apparel to hear about her career trajectory and how her degree in Film & Media serves her role as an industry leader and entrepreneur.

/live/events/241151-creative-careers-week-arts-humanities
Diet Quality in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: The Role of Food Systems and Implications for Health Outcomes, April 1https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243889-diet-quality-in-low-and-middle-income-countries


Dr. Isabel Madzorera is an Assistant Professor in Public Health Nutrition at the University of California, Berkeley, in the division of Community Health Sciences. Prior to joining UC Berkeley, Dr. Madzorera was a Research Associate in the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard School of Public Health. The goals of her research program are to utilize advanced nutrition epidemiologic methods to assess diet quality as a key modifiable risk factor for poor maternal and child health outcomes in LMICs, and to identify the role of food systems and other contributing factors to the triple burden of malnutrition in these contexts. Dr. Madzorera has led global health research focusing on the evaluation of food systems and diet quality, and their influence on maternal and child health. Her previous research has included evaluating the role of maternal diet quality during pregnancy and its impacts on the risk of low birth weight, small for gestational age and preterm births and also assessing the effect of COVID-19 on food prices and diets.

Dr. Madzorera has extensive field-based experience including leading maternal and child nutrition interventions in sub-Saharan Africa. She has spent considerable time working in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique and conducted research in Tanzania and Ethiopia. Her previous work experience has included work with not-for-profit organizations such as Save the Children, United Nations agencies and the World Bank.

https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243889-diet-quality-in-low-and-middle-income-countries
Excessive Punishment: How the Justice System Creates Mass Incarceration, April 1https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243890-excessive-punishment-how-the-justice-system

The United States represents less than 5 percent of the world’s population, but holds over 20 percent of its prisoners. With just under 1.8 million people behind bars, the American criminal justice system has increased our incarcerated population by 500% since 1970. Excessive Punishment: How the Justice System Creates Mass Incarceration, edited by Lauren-Brooke Eisen of the Brennan Center for Justice, examines the American justice system’s dependance on retribution. Through a collection of essays by wide range of experts, Excessive Punishment explores the myriad factors contributing to mass incarceration—poverty, racism, the legacy of slavery—and offers potential reforms.

Join the Goldman School of Public Policy, the Berkeley Criminal Law & Justice Center, and the Brennan Center for Justice during Second Chance Month for a thought-provoking discussion on the far-reaching effects of the American prison system and how we can move towards restoration rather than punishment.

https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243890-excessive-punishment-how-the-justice-system
AI & the Humanities: AI is Weird, April 1https://events.berkeley.edu/live/events/242393-ai-the-humanities-ai-is-weird

with Erik Davis
Writer, Journalist, and Lecturer

The AI & the Humanities series is a collaboration between the Townsend Center and the Berkeley Center for New Media.

The contemporary humanities is largely concerned with the social and political function of texts and images, often at the expense of the meta-discipline’s long engagement with the uncanny, the visionary, the paradoxical, the otherworldly, and the abject. But it may be these latter concerns that become most salient in the humanistic encounter with contemporary AI and its exploding impact on culture and consciousness. Drawing from ideas developed in his book High Weirdness (MIT Press, 2019) and his Burning Shore Substack, Davis will explore how the concept of the weird helps illuminate the speculative and reality-bending properties of AI discourse and practice, as algorithms, machine learning, and massive data sets open up an ontologically unstable space of mythology, weird fiction, and dreamlike encounters with the simulacrum.

About Erik Davis

Erik Davis is an author, award-winning journalist, and teacher based in San Francisco. His wide-ranging work focuses on the intersection of alternative religion, media, and the popular imagination. He is the author, most recently, of High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies, co-published by MIT Press and Strange Attractor. He also wrote Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica (2010), The Visionary State: A Journey through California’s Spiritual Landscape (2006), a critical volume on Led Zeppelin (2005), and the celebrated cult classic TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information (1998). Erik’s scholarly and popular essays on music, technoculture, drugs, and spirituality have appeared in scores of books, magazines, and journals, and his writing has been translated into a dozen languages. For a decade, he explored the “cultures of consciousness” on his groundbreaking weekly podcast Expanding Mind. Davis has spoken widely at universities, conferences, retreat centers, and festivals, and has been interviewed by CNN, the BBC, NPR, and the New York Times. He graduated from Yale University in 1988, and more recently earned his PhD in religious studies at Rice University. His book on the history of LSD blotter art will be published in 2024.

/live/events/242393-ai-the-humanities-ai-is-weird
Grant Farred | Diaspora-in-Place, April 2https://events.berkeley.edu/live/events/236103-grant-farred-diaspora-in-place

This project stands as the mark of a previous insufficiency. In my recent monograph, The Perversity of Gratitude: An Apartheid Education, one of the concepts on offer is diaspora-in-place. The concept was, however, not brought into its fullness – it remained as a provocation, a provocation demanding address. Thus, this writing – this still provisional – rendering of the diaspora-in-place. The recognition that the diaspora, much as it turns on departure, leaving, the dream of returning, making a place in an unfamiliar locale, also possesses a different dimension. Contains within it a mobility-in-stasis. To leave without departing. To be gone while remaining in place. That is the condition that this presentation subjects to thinking.

 

Please Note: For the pre-circulated paper, please write to Patty Dunlap at pattydunlap@berkeley.edu

 

Speaker Biography

Grant Farred is a Professor of Africana Studies at Cornell University and the author of Long Distance Love: A Passion for Football and T he Burden of Over-representation: Race, Sport, and Philosophy , and the editor of Africana Studies: Theoretical Futures (all Temple University Press), among several other books and pamphlets in theory, postcolonial studies, race, intellectuals, sport, and cultural and literary studies.

Sponsors

In generous collaboration with the Center for African Studies, the Center for Race and Gender, the Department of African American Studies, the Department of Comparative Literature, the Department of English, the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, the Department of Geography, the Department of Political Science, the Department of Rhetoric, the Department of Sociology, the Institute for International Studies, the Irving Stone Chair in Literature, the Marion E. Koshland Chair in the Humanities, the Office of the Dean of the Social Science Division, the Rachel Anderson Stageberg Chair in English, the Social Science Matrix, and the Townsend Center for the Humanities.

/live/events/236103-grant-farred-diaspora-in-place
Fotos Desaparecidas: Disparate Memories of the Peruvian Internal Armed Conflict Series presenta Conversatorio V: Sharmelí Bustíos habla del rescate fotográfico de su padre Hugo Bustíos, April 2https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243892-fotos-desaparecidas-disparate-memories-of-the

Descripción del evento

Fotos Desaparecidas es una serie de conversaciones virtuales y exposiciones híbridas de los archivos fotográficos peruanos que documentaron el conflicto armado interno del país (1980-2000). En el vigésimo aniversario del Informe Final de la Comisión de la Verdad y la Reconciliación del Perú, esta serie de eventos presentará fotografías del epicentro del conflicto que nunca han sido publicadas, además de poner en diálogo a fotógrafos quechua hablantes de Ayacucho con otros artistas, curadores y académicos para discutir memorias dispares del conflicto armado interno en el contexto de la situación política actual del Perú. Según el Informe Final, de las casi 70.000 personas asesinadas, el 75% eran indígenas (la mayoría quechua) y el 40% eran de la región andina de Ayacucho.

Presentadora

Sharmelí Bustíos Patiño es periodista y activista de derechos humanos en defensa de la memoria y lucha contra la impunidad. Es la hija mayor de Margarita Patiño y Hugo Bustíos. Su padre fue asesinado en 1988 mientras ejercía su profesión de periodista durante el período de violencia en el Perú. Desde entonces junto a su madre emprendieron una larga lucha por hallar justicia. Después de 34 años uno de los autores del asesinato fue sentenciado a prisión el 12 de abril de 2023. Sus padres son sus principales fuentes de inspiración de vida, lucha y resistencia.

Copatrocinadores

Organizado porEmilyFjaellen Thompson, con financiamiento delEvent Series Grant del Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos y Caribeños.

https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243892-fotos-desaparecidas-disparate-memories-of-the
From Farming to Importing Food: Colonial Racial Capitalism, Sovereignty, and Cuisine in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico from 1919 to the present (Natasha Fernández-Preston), April 3https://events.berkeley.edu/live/events/242597-from-farming-to-importing-food-colonial-racial-capita

This talk will take place in person at the ARF and on Zoom (you must have a Zoom account to attend). Register for online attendance here.

Abstract: 

The purpose of this research is to trace food practices, landscape changes, and cuisine changes in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico for the last century (1919-2018) relating them to the processes of colonial racial capitalism and sovereignty. Since the mid-twentieth century, Puerto Rico went from being a mostly agricultural archipelago to an archipelago where there is barely any agriculture and that imports 85% of the food it consumes. This transformation was led by the development strategies that were initiated in 1947, under the political banner of bringing a better quality of life to the archipelago. However, there is a lack of specific knowledge of how agriculture was abandoned, and political narratives tend to blame individuals who did not want to continue farming. Most people are familiar with the result, which is the 85% importation of food, but not how these changesrelate to sociopolitical and economic decisions, broadscale inequities, and day-to-day cooking practices. Preliminary data from this dissertation illustrates how the abandonment of subsistence agriculture and development strategies such as industrialization by invitation could have been purposeful and necessary steps for establishing a secure market for U.S. food products in Puerto Rico. This is especially so since after World War II, U.S. agriculture experienced an increased growth in the production of surplus products due to Green Revolution technologies. While this was happening in the U.S. mainland, agriculture was being abandoned in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, and national identities and “traditional” dishes (cuisine), many of which are composed of imported ingredients, were becoming emblemized and institutionalized as part of “Puerto Rican culture.” Thus, the central questions that will guide this research are: How do food practices and cuisine relate to the processes of colonial racial capitalism? How do food practices and cuisine relate to ideas and enactments of sovereignty? I will explore the material traces left of past food practices in archival records (censuses, importation and exportation records, and cookbooks) to understand agricultural landscape uses, food trade, and cooking practices. These food practices will be visualized in GIS maps, as well as graphs and tables. With cuisine enacted through these food practices, I will then analyze what is the role of cuisine in the perpetuation or breaking of broader political-economic systems with the concepts of colonial racial capitalism and sovereignty.

 

/live/events/242597-from-farming-to-importing-food-colonial-racial-capita
Heidi Kuhn, founder of Roots of Peace, April 3https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243893-heidi-kuhn-founder-of-roots-of-peace

Heidi Kuhn is the founder and CEO of Roots of Peace, which has impacted over 1.1 million farmers and family members, spanning seven countries. Thanks to Roots of Peace, over one hundred thousand landmines and unexploded ordnances have been removed since 2001. Her numerous awards include the 2002 Alumni of the Year Award for Excellence in Achievement from UC Berkeley, the 2005 World Association of Non-Governmental Organizations Peace & Security Award, the 2006 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, the 2007 Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Award for Outstanding Public Service Benefitting Local Communities, the 2019 Mahatma Gandhi Seva Medal, and the 2023 Mother Teresa Memorial Award. Heidi is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and a former CNN reporter and producer. 

https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243893-heidi-kuhn-founder-of-roots-of-peace
Our Golden Age: American Judaism, In Transition, April 3https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243894-our-golden-age-american-judaism-in-transition

American Judaism is at an inflection point between the successes of the past and the anxieties of the future. The political, economic, and ideological conditions of postwar liberalism in the 20th century enabled many Jews to flourish in America, and produced a coherent American Judaism that intertwined American and Jewish values. Our changing world is testing this vitality and coherence and forcing essential questions: Are liberalism, American Jewish values, and Zionism compatible? How does American Judaism respond to the growing threats of polarization and hyper-partisanship? Can “the Jewish community” survive as a collective enterprise? Yehuda Kurtzer, President of the Shalom Hartman Institute, will consider the calculations that produced the American Judaism that we have inherited, and offer a new framework for how American Judaism might continue to thrive into the future.

Yehuda Kurtzer, President, Shalom Hartman Institute

This distinguished annual lecture is a partnership between the Helen Diller Institute and the Robbins Collection and Research Center at Berkeley Law.

https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243894-our-golden-age-american-judaism-in-transition
Film Screening: R21: aka Restoring Solidarity, April 3https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243895-film-screening-r21-aka-restoring-solidarity

Drawing on a collection of twenty films safeguarded in the Tokyo home of a Japanese scholar, Palestinian filmmaker and archivist Mohanad Yaqubi tells the story of Palestine’s struggle through the lens of international solidarity. Ranging in style from reportage to agit-prop and short fiction, the films span nearly two decades. After cataloging and scanning the films—without erasing the signs of wear or the multilingual layers of subtitles and dubbing that indicate their exhibition history—Yaqubi edited together excerpts, adding another reel, R21, to the collection.

https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243895-film-screening-r21-aka-restoring-solidarity
Lunch Poems: Brandon Shimoda, April 4https://events.berkeley.edu/live/events/236916-lunch-poems-brandon-shimoda

Lunch Poems, Berkeley’s storied noontime poetry series, welcomes Brandon Shimoda.

Brandon Shimoda is the author of several books of poetry and prose, including: The Grave on the Wall, recipient of the PEN Open Book Award; Evening Oracle, recipient of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America; and his two-volume Tucson/desert book, The Desert. His latest work, Hydra Medusa, was published by Nightboat Books this year. He is an associate professor at Colorado College, and curator of the Hiroshima Library, an itinerant reading room/collection of books on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

/live/events/236916-lunch-poems-brandon-shimoda
Lunch Poems: Brandon Shimoda, April 4https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243896-lunch-poems-brandon-shimoda

Lunch Poems, Berkeley’s storied noontime poetry series, welcomes Brandon Shimoda.

Brandon Shimoda is the author of several books of poetry and prose, including: The Grave on the Wall, recipient of the PEN Open Book Award; Evening Oracle, recipient of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America; and his two-volume Tucson/desert book, The Desert. His latest work, Hydra Medusa, was published by Nightboat Books this year. He is an associate professor at Colorado College, and curator of the Hiroshima Library, an itinerant reading room/collection of books on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243896-lunch-poems-brandon-shimoda
Fraternity: Classical Siblings and Revolution, April 4https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243897-fraternity-classical-siblings-and-revolution
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. This paper explores the role of the concept of fraternity in revolution. In The Politics of Friendship, Jacques Derrida reveals how our models of politics are deeply rooted in a classical theorization of friendship. In their respective discussions of friendship, Plato and Aristotle place consanguinity as an essential component of political community. Such an understanding of the polis has profound consequences for the emancipatory movements which take classical models as their inspiration. Beyond its evident phallocentrism, a politics of fraternity also excludes those who exist beyond the familial conception of the nation. The paper will consider a series of treatments of Aeschylus’ Oresteia which characterise the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy as the ur-revolution of antiquity. From Bachofen to Engels, from Freud to Cixous, ‘the dawn of phallocentrism’ has repeatedly been discussed as an intellectual revolution which provided the foundation of ethics, politics and community. The paper explores the bloodlines of revolution asking whether our sense of fraternity with the ancients will act as a source or hindrance to the revolutions of the future.
Miriam Leonard is Professor of Greek Literature and its Reception at University College London. Her research explores the intellectual history of classics in modern European thought from the eighteenth century to the present. Her most recent publications are Socrates and the Jews: Hellenism and Hebraism from Moses Mendelssohn to Sigmund Freud (Chicago, 2012) and Tragic Modernities (Cambridge MA, 2015). Her next book is entitled Revolution.
https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243897-fraternity-classical-siblings-and-revolution
The Future is History: Restorative Nationalism and Conflict in Post-Napoleonic Europe, April 4https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243898-the-future-is-history-restorative-nationalism-and

As illustrated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the recent revival of nationalism has triggered a threatening return of revisionist conflict. While the literature on nationalism shows how nationalist narratives are socially constructed, much less is known about their real-world consequences. Taking nationalist narratives seriously, we study how past “golden ages” affect territorial claims and conflict in post-Napoleonic Europe. We expect nationalists to be more likely to mobilize and initiate conflict if they can contrast the status quo to a historical polity with supposedly greater national unity and/or independence. Using data on European state borders going back to 1100, combined with spatial data covering ethnic settlement areas during the past two centuries, we find that the availability of plausible golden ages increases the risk of both domestic and interstate conflict. These findings suggest that specific historical legacies make some modern nationalisms more consequential than others.

https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243898-the-future-is-history-restorative-nationalism-and
Getting to Know You: Korean Orphanhood and Christian Benevolence in One to One, April 4https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243899-getting-to-know-you-korean-orphanhood-and

One to Onewas a televised musical special that first aired on network television on December 15, 1975. It starred Julie Andrews, the World Vision Korean Children’s Choir, and Jim Henson’s The Muppets. The special functioned as a telethon for World Vision, and promoted its international child sponsorship and the practice of adoption. In this talk, I offer a critical reading of key scenes in One to One. I consider these scenes in relation to representations of orphanhood, Christian benevolence, and faith-based humanitarianism in the musical performances by the Korean Children’s Choir (formerly known as the World Vision Korean Orphan Choir) and by Julie Andrews. I focus on the ways in which the telethon highlighted the World Vision’s charitable aims while also creating a sense of intimacy through the children’s racialized performances. I argue that this strategy—consistently used in World Vision child sponsorship campaigns of the past—gained new traction in the medium of a televised broadcast during the mid-1970s. Whereas images of impoverished and suffering Korean children from the Korean War were frequently used by World Vision in earlier campaigns, the performances of music by smiling Korean children helped to complete an idealized model of an eminently adoptable child. By amplifying the coded musical messaging in One to One, I contribute a different perspective to an area of critical adoption studies that has previously paid more attention to the visual image of the orphan figure.

 

Dr. Katherine In-Young Lee is Founder of Rise with Clarity, a coaching and consulting business for women of color faculty in higher education. She hosts the Rise with Clarity Podcast.

Her book, Dynamic Korea and Rhythmic Form (Wesleyan University Press 2018), explores how a percussion genre from South Korea (samul nori) became a global music genre. Dynamic Korea and Rhythmic Form was recognized with the 2019 BélaBartók Award for Outstanding Ethnomusicology from the ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Awards. Past research topics have included the politicized drumming of dissent and the audible dimensions of a nation branding campaign. Her research on the role of music as scenes of protest during South Korea’s democratization movement was awarded the Charles Seeger Prize by the Society for Ethnomusicology and the Martin Hatch Award by the Society for Asian Music. Lee’s latest research project explores the World Vision Korean Orphan Choir through the lenses of critical adoption studies, Cold War history, evangelical Christianity, and sound studies. She received a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from Harvard University in 2012 and served as Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at UC Davis and (2012-17) and at UCLA (2017-23), respectively.

https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243899-getting-to-know-you-korean-orphanhood-and
Colloquium: Western Categories, Knowledge Building, and the Scientific Value of Sinological Discourse, April 4https://events.berkeley.edu/live/events/230007-colloquium-western-categories-knowledge-building

How do European-language scholars with a Western cultural background perceive, understand and describe the human phenomena they observe in East Asia? How does their mind process written or spoken information conveyed in foreign script and languages? This lecture will discuss the cognitive and epistemological relationship existing between Sinology and source-language data from several complementary perspectives, including the role of metalanguage and culturally predetermined categories in the generation of learned discourse, the formation of terminologies, the coinage of neologisms, the epistemic value of the information produced, and the conditions of its reception by neighbouring disciplines in the humanities and by the educated public.


Grégoire Espesset is associate member of the Groupe Sociétés Religions Laïcités (GSRL) in Paris, France, and a research partner of the International Consortium for Research in the Humanities (IKGF) in Erlangen, Germany. A historian and a philologist, he has conducted research at the Academia Sinica and the Centre for Chinese Studies in Taiwan; the Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University, Japan; German federally-sponsored international centres hosted by the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and the Ruhr University Bochum; the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and Université de Paris in France. He has taught the history of Taoism and Chinese religions at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE) in Paris (2008-2010). His current research focuses on intellectual and literary production in imperial China from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages, with a special focus on remnants of the “Weft” or “Confucian Apocrypha”; the comparative epistemology of premodern China and the modern West; and contemporary scholarly discourse in European languages on history, knowledge and religion in East Asia.

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Colloquium: Western Categories, Knowledge Building, and the Scientific Value of Sinological Discourse, April 4https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243900-colloquium-western-categories-knowledge-building

How do European-language scholars with a Western cultural background perceive, understand and describe the human phenomena they observe in East Asia? How does their mind process written or spoken information conveyed in foreign script and languages? This lecture will discuss the cognitive and epistemological relationship existing between Sinology and source-language data from several complementary perspectives, including the role of metalanguage and culturally predetermined categories in the generation of learned discourse, the formation of terminologies, the coinage of neologisms, the epistemic value of the information produced, and the conditions of its reception by neighbouring disciplines in the humanities and by the educated public.


Grégoire Espesset is associate member of the Groupe Sociétés Religions Laïcités (GSRL) in Paris, France, and a research partner of the International Consortium for Research in the Humanities (IKGF) in Erlangen, Germany. A historian and a philologist, he has conducted research at the Academia Sinica and the Centre for Chinese Studies in Taiwan; the Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University, Japan; German federally-sponsored international centres hosted by the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and the Ruhr University Bochum; the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and Université de Paris in France. He has taught the history of Taoism and Chinese religions at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE) in Paris (2008-2010). His current research focuses on intellectual and literary production in imperial China from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages, with a special focus on remnants of the “Weft” or “Confucian Apocrypha”; the comparative epistemology of premodern China and the modern West; and contemporary scholarly discourse in European languages on history, knowledge and religion in East Asia.

https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243900-colloquium-western-categories-knowledge-building
Ocean Vuong, Writer, April 4https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243304-ocean-vuong-writer

Poet and novelist Ocean Vuong is the 2023-24 Avenali Chair in the Humanities.

Vuong is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019), which was named one of the top ten books of 2019 by the Washington Post and has been translated into 37 languages. Vuong has also published two collections of poetry: Time is a Mother (2022) and Night Sky with Exit Wounds (2016), which won the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Whiting Award, the Thom Gunn Award, and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. His other honors include a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, a Pushcart Prize, and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Elizabeth George Foundation, and the Academy of American Poets. His work has appeared in the Atlantic, Granta, Harper’s, the Nation, the New Republic, the New Yorker, the New York Times, and the Paris Review.

Born in Saigon, Vuong came to the United States as a refugee with his family at the age of two and was raised in Hartford, Connecticut in a working-class family of nail salon and factory laborers. He attended Manchester Community College before transferring to Pace University to study international marketing. Without completing his first term, he dropped out and enrolled at Brooklyn College, where he graduated with a BA in English. The novelist and poet Ben Lerner, Vuong’s teacher at Brooklyn College, has said of him, “once in a while, you get a student who’s not testing to be a writer, but who is already one.” Vuong went on to earn his MFA in poetry at New York University, where he now serves on the faculty as professor of creative writing.

With its award of a 2019 fellowship, the MacArthur Foundation described Vuong as “a poet and fiction writer whose works explore the ongoing trauma of war and conditions of exile with tragic eloquence and clarity. […] Vuong is a vital new literary voice demonstrating mastery of multiple poetic registers while addressing the effects of intergenerational trauma, the refugee experience, and the complexities of identity and desire.”

For the Avenali Lecture, Vuong is in conversation with writer and Berkeley faculty member Cathy Park Hong (English), whose New York Times bestselling book of creative nonfiction, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography, and earned its author recognition on TIME’s 100 Most Influential People of 2021 list. Hong is also the author of poetry collections Engine Empire; Dance Dance Revolution, chosen by Adrienne Rich for the Barnard Women Poets Prize; and Translating Mo’um. She is the recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.

https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243304-ocean-vuong-writer
Ocean Vuong, Poetry Reading, April 5https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243307-ocean-vuong-poetry-reading

Ocean Vuong, the 2023-24 Avenali Chair in the Humanities, reads from his poetry and engages with questions from the audience.

Vuong is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, among other awards. His most recent poetry collection, Time is a Mother (2022), was written after the publication of his celebrated novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. Working in the wake of his mother’s death from cancer at age 51 and during the darkest days of the pandemic, Vuong returned to poetry in order to wrestle with themes of loss, trauma, and memory, both personal and societal. “I was grieving, the world was grieving, and the only thing I really had was to go back to poems,” he notes.

At age two, Vuong and his family fled Vietnam, lived in a refugee camp in the Philippines, and ultimately settled in Hartford, Connecticut. His mother, who suffered childhood trauma during the Vietnam War, made her living working in a nail salon. The first in his immediate family to learn to read in any language and the only one fluent in English, Vuong felt a deep sense of linguistic responsibility toward his mother: “I have to speak for you,” he imagines saying to her. “I have to speak for your pain. I have to verbalize your humanity.” Time is a Mother gives voice to that imperative.

Vuong’s first book of poetry, Night Sky with Exit Wounds (2016), won numerous awards including the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Whiting Award, the Thom Gunn Award, and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. In her New York Times review of Vuong’s “remarkable” collection, Michiko Kakutani writes, “There is a powerful emotional undertow to these poems that springs from Mr. Vuong’s sincerity and candor, and from his ability to capture specific moments in time with both photographic clarity and a sense of the evanescence of all earthly things. Whether he is writing about war or family or sex, there is a presentiment of loss — wrought by violence, by misunderstanding or the simple ticking of the calendar and clock.”

https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243307-ocean-vuong-poetry-reading
Sarah Wolff | Secular Power Europe: insights on decentring international relations, April 9https://events.berkeley.edu/live/events/223910-secular-power-europe-insights-on-decentring-internati

Based on her award winning book (European Union Studies Association Best Book award 2023) Secular Power Europe and Islam and through an exploration of Europe’s secular identity, an identity that is seen erroneously as normative, Professor Wolff shows will explain how Islam confronts the EU’s existential anxieties about its security and its secular identity. Islam disrupts Eurocentric assumptions about democracy and revolution and human rights. She will document how EU’s diplomats are trying to address that issue and to conduct some ‘religious engagement’. She will also discuss the avenues provided by the decentring agenda, which involves provincialising Europe, engaging with the perspective of the others and reconstructing EU’s agency as a global actor.

Sarah Wolff is Professor in International Studies and Global Politics at Leiden University in the Netherlands. She holds until January 2024 a Professor position in European Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London where she also leads the Centre for European Research (2017-2023), led the NEXTEUK Jean Monnet Chair of Excellence (2020-2023) on the future of EU-UK relations. She was the Director of the QMUL MA in International Relations in Paris (2021-2023). Her research concentrates on EU-UK foreign and security cooperation, EU migration and asylum policies, EU-Middle East and North Africa, as well as EU’s policies on gender and religion abroad. She is on the Editorial Board of the journal Mediterranean Politics. Her book Michigan University Press on ‘Secular Power Europe and Islam: Identity and foreign policy’(summer 2021) was conducted thanks to a Fulbright-Schuman and a Leverhulme research grants. She is Visiting Professor at the College of Europe and on the steering committee of UACES and of ECPR SGEU.

If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) or information about campus mobility access features in order to fully participate in this event, please contact Ray Savord at rsavord@berkeley.edu or (510) 642-4555 with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days before the event.

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Sonali Deraniyagala, April 10https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243594-sonali-deraniyagala

While on vacation at a beach resort on the coast of Sri Lanka in 2004, Sonali Deraniyagala lost her husband, their two sons, her parents, her best friend, and her best friend’s mother in the Indian Ocean tsunami. Deraniyagala herself was carried two miles inland by the water; by clinging to a tree limb, she was the only member of the group to survive.

Wave is Deraniyagala’s account of the nearly incomprehensible event and its emotional aftermath. An economist who currently teaches at the University of London and Columbia, Deraniyagala did not have a background in personal, creative, or literary writing. Her decision to write a memoir began at the advice of her therapist, who suggested that she write down her painful memories in an effort to work through her trauma and suffering.

Described by Cheryl Strayed as “the most exceptional book about grief I’ve ever read,” Wave became a New York Times bestseller and won the PEN Ackerley Prize in 2013. Hailed for its “scrupulous honesty and unsentimentality,” it was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography/memoir.

In her visit to Berkeley, Deraniyagala engages in conversation about her writing practices, her evolution as a memoirist, and the emotional and intellectual experience of writing Wave.

The Art of Writing Lecture is supported by a generous endowment created in memory of Michael Rogin, who taught political science at UC Berkeley for more than three decades.

https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/243594-sonali-deraniyagala
Holloway Poetry Series: LaTasha Nevada Diggs, April 10https://events.berkeley.edu/live/events/236178-holloway-poetry-series-latasha-nevada-diggs

The Holloway Series presents a reading by poet LaTasha Nevada Diggs.

LaTasha Nevada Diggs is a poet and sound artist from Harlem. She is the author of Village (Coffee House Books, 2023), TwERK (Belladonna*, 2013), the chapbooks Ichi-Ban: from the files of muneca morena linda (MOH Press, 1998) and Ni-Ban: Villa Miseria (MOH Press, 2001), and the album “Televisíon” (2003). Her work has been featured at the Venice Biennale, the Whitney, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art. Her honors include fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and Cave Canem, as well as a C.D. Wright Award for Poetry from the Foundation for Contemporary Art and a Whiting Award. She earned her MFA at California College of the Arts and is currently a faculty member at Stetson University and Brooklyn College.

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Iyiola Solanke | Solidarity across time and place: towards a decolonial narrative of refugees and asylum seekers in EU law, April 11https://events.berkeley.edu/live/events/237677-iyiola-solanke-solidarity-across-time-and-place-towar

‘there are so many silences to be broken’ (Audrey Lorde)

War in Ukraine is an opportunity for the EU to show solidarity with the people of Ukraine, not only through the supply of armaments and military support, but also through providing refuge to those fleeing war and helping them to continue with their lives to the greatest extent possible.

It is also an opportune time for the EU to show solidarity with those fleeing war in Ukraine who are not nationals of that country: the over 76,000 foreign students from 155 countries who were studying in Ukraine at the time of the invasion. The majority of these came from India, Morocco and Nigeria, but large numbers also came from elsewhere in Africa and Asia, such as Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya and Uganda. These students, who were stranded in Ukraine and are now stranded across Europe, were subjected to a ‘racialised refugee hierarchy’ (ODI) as they sought to leave Ukraine and enter other countries: border guards enacted a ‘Ukrainians first’ policy.

In this paper, I suggest that this has happened due to pan-European mis-education in the 21 st century on the mis-adventures of 19 th century European imperialism. The 200-year silencing of the latter has facilitated the perpetuation of a general environment of ignorance across Europe within which racism and xenophobia towards Black people can be embedded in institutions and enacted by individuals.

I argue that the logic of solidarity in 21 st century EU should incorporate this 19 th century imperialism - solidarity in the EU needs to be built across time and place. A de-colonial approach to solidarity would recognize the many ways in which the peoples of the Global South have contributed to the construction of present-day Europe, for example through participation in European wars and post-war reconstruction.

It is to be hoped that a corrected understanding of the contribution of the peoples of Africa, Asia and the Caribbean to Europe will shift the public narrative to focus on ensuring that African and Asian students fleeing war in Ukraine receive the help that they need. In addition, such thinking would also provide a general refresh of EU debates on the legal framework for refugees and asylum seekers.

I will begin by describing what is meant by a ‘decolonial’ approach in general, before setting out what this offers in relation to EU law. I will then outline some of the challenges faced by African and Asian students fleeing war in Ukraine, before reflecting upon the contribution of colonised people to European colonial wars. I end by suggesting some ways in which this approach can help us to rethink the European approach to supporting and caring for refugees and asylum seekers regardless of race.

Iyiola Solanke is Jacques Delors Professor of European Union Law at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Somerville College.

She was previously Professor of European Union Law and Social Justice at the University of Leeds Law School and the Dean for EDI for the University. She is a Visiting Professor at Wake Forest University School of Law and Harvard University School of Public Health and a former Fernand Braudel Fellow at the European University Institute. Professor Solanke is also an Academic Bencher of the Inner Temple.

Her research focuses on institutional change, in relation to both law and organisations. Her work adopts socio-legal, historical and comparative methodologies. She is the author of ‘EU Law’ (CUP 2022), ‘Making Anti-Racial Discrimination Law’ (Routledge 2011) and ‘Discrimination as Stigma - A Theory of Anti- Discrimination Law’ (Hart 2017), as well as many articles in peer reviewed journals.

She founded the Black Female Professors Forum to promote visibility of women professors of colour, and the Temple Women’s Forum North to promote engagement between legal professionals and students in and around Yorkshire. In 2018 she chaired the Inquiry into the History of Eugenics at UCL. From 2019 – 2022 she led Co-POWeR, an ESRC-funded project looking into the impact of COVID on practices for wellbeing and resilience in Black, Asian and minority ethnic families and communities. She is currently Co-I on Generation Delta, a RE/OfS-funded project promoting access to PGR study for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) women.

Current projects focus on weight discrimination and law as well as decolonising European Union law.

If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) or information about campus mobility access features in order to fully participate in this event, please contact Ray Savord at rsavord@berkeley.edu or (510) 642-4555 with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days before the event.

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Cristina Rivera Garza: Bedri Distinguished Writers Series, April 11https://events.berkeley.edu/live/events/236385-cristina-rivera-garza-bedri-distinguished-writers

Professor Cristina Rivera Garza will deliver the 2024 lecture in the Bedri Distinguished Writers Series, “The Affective Archives: Writing, Bodies, and Collective Memory.” Please join us on April 11th, 2024, at 5 PM in Wheeler Hall, Room 315 (The Maude Fife Room). A Q&A will follow Garza’s lecture.

Professor Cristina Rivera Garza is an author, translator and critic. Recent publications include Liliana’s Invincible Summer (Hogarth, 2023), which was long listed for the National Book Award in nonfiction. The Taiga Syndrome, trans. by Suzanne Jill Levine and Aviva Kana, (Dorothy Project, 2018) was awarded the 2018 Shirley Jackson Award. Grieving: Dispatches from a Wounded Country, trans. by Sarah Booker (The Feminist Press, 2020) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle for Criticism. In 2020, she was a MacArthur Fellow and is currently Artist-In-Residence at DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) in Berlin. She is M.D. Anderson Distinguished Professor and founder of the PhD Program in Creative Writing in Spanish at the University of Houston, Department of Hispanic Studies.

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Berkeley Book Chats: Shannon Steen, April 17https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/229983-berkeley-book-chats-shannon-steen

The Creativity Complex: Art, Tech, and the Seduction of an Idea

With its associations of brilliance and achievement, “creativity” is a seductive concept — variously conceived as a shield against conformity, a channel for innovation across the arts, sciences, technology, and education, and a mechanism for economic revival and personal success.

But creativity has not always evoked these ideas. In The Creativity Complex (Michigan, 2023), Shannon Steen (Theater, Dance & Performance Studies) traces the history of how creativity has come to mean the things it now does, and explores the ethical implications of how we use this term today for both the arts and the social world more broadly. Richly researched, the book explores how creativity has been invoked in arenas as varied as Enlightenment debates over the nature of cognition, Victorian-era intelligence research, the Cold War technology race, contemporary K-12 education, and modern electoral politics.

Ultimately, The Creativity Complex asks how our ideas about creativity are bound up with those of self-fulfillment, responsibility, and the individual, and how these might seduce us into joining a worldview and even a set of social imperatives that we might otherwise find troubling.

https://events.berkeley.edu/townsend/event/229983-berkeley-book-chats-shannon-steen
Holloway Poetry Series: Tim Wood, April 17https://events.berkeley.edu/live/events/237723-holloway-poetry-series-tim-wood

The Holloway Series presents a reading by poet Tim Wood.

Tim Wood is the author of Otherwise Known as Home (BlazeVOX, 2010) and Notched Sunsets (Atelos, 2016). He is co-editor of The Hip Hop Reader (Longman, 2008), and his critical work has been published in Jacket2, Convolution, the Colorado Review, The Iowa Review, and the Boston Review. He earned his Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley, an M.F.A. from The Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and is currently an associate professor of English at SUNY Nassau Community College in Garden City, New York. In Spring 2024, he is Holloway Lecturer in the Practice of Poetry at UC Berkeley. 

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Worker Power and the New Class War, April 18https://events.berkeley.edu/live/events/243955-worker-power-and-the-new-class-war

Citrin Center Flyer

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2024 Charles Mills Gayley Lecture: Professor Stephen Best, “Baldwin’s Inarticulacy”, April 18https://events.berkeley.edu/live/events/240460-2024-charles-mills-gayley-lecture-professor

Stephen Best, Professor & Rachael Anderson Stageberg Chair in English, will deliver the annual Charles Mills Gayley Lecture, titled “Baldwin’s Inarticulacy,”on April 18th at 5 PM.

Stephen Best’s scholarship encompasses a variety of fields and materials: American and African-American literature and culture, cinema and technology, rhetoric and the law, and critical theory. His research pursuits in the fields of American and African American criticism have been rather closely aligned with a broader interrogation of recent literary critical practice. To be specific, his interest in the critical nexus between slavery and historiography, in the varying scholarly and political preoccupations with establishing the authority of the slave past in black life, quadrates with an exploration of where the limits of historicism as a mode of literary study may lay, especially where that search manifests as an interest in alternatives to suspicious reading in the text-based disciplines. To this end, Professor Best has edited a number of special issues of the journal Representations (on whose board he sits) – “Redress” (with Saidiya Hartman), on theoretical and political projects to undo the slave past, “The Way We Read Now” (with Sharon Marcus), on the limits of symptomatic reading, and “Description Across Disciplines” (with Sharon Marcus and Heather Love), on disciplinary valuations of description as critical practice.

Best is the author of two books: The Fugitive’s Properties: Law and the Poetics of Possession(link is external)(link is external)(link is external) (University of Chicago, 2004), a study of property, poetics, and legal hermeneutics in nineteenth-century American literary and legal culture; and, most recently, None Like Us: Blackness, Belonging, Aesthetic Life(link is external)(link is external)(link is external) (Duke University Press, 2018).

His work has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, the Hellman Foundation, the Humanities Research Institute (University of California), and the Ford Foundation. In 2015-2016, he was the Mary Bundy Scott Professor at Williams College, and in spring 2020 he was the Whitney J. Oates Fellow in the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University. He is currently director of the Townsend Center for the Humanities. 

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Maryam Kashani | Medina by the Bay, April 18https://events.berkeley.edu/live/events/236106-maryam-kashani-medina-by-the-bay

From the Black Power movement and state surveillance to Silicon Valley and gentrification, Medina by the Bayexamines how multiracial Muslim communities in the San Francisco Bay Area survive and flourish within and against racial capitalist, carceral, and imperial logics. Weaving expansive histories, peoples, and geographies together in an ethnographic screenplay of cinematic scenes, Maryam Kashani resituates Islam as liberatory and abolitionist theory, theology, and praxis for all those engaged in struggle.

Maryam Kashani is a filmmaker and Assistant Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Presented by the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion. Co-sponsored by the Asian American Research Center, the Center for Islamic Studies at the Graduate Theological Union, the Center for Race and Gender, the Department of Ethnic Studies, and the Townsend Center for the Humanities.

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Nguyễn Tân Hoàng | Looking for Jackie: Gaysian Archival Fantasies, April 18https://events.berkeley.edu/live/events/gaysian-archival-fantasies

The Graduate Group in Performance Studies presents:

Looking for Jackie: Gaysian Archival Fantasies

A talk by Nguyễn Tân Hoàng

Associate Professor of Literature & Cultural Studies at the University of California, San Diego

In the U.S. popular imagination, gaysians (gay Asian men) occupy the position of absence, lack, and invisibility. What does it mean, then, to advance the concept of a gaysian sex archive? This presentation considers my imagining of the gaysian sex archive through three case studies: 1) PIRATED! (2000) a found-footage video about my perilous boat escape from Vietnam in 1978; 2) the “Asian Male Nude Collection” the University of South Florida; and 3) a new video essay The Lesbian Hand that culls footage of hands from lesbian-themed movies. These case studies push against conventional understandings of the archive as an official repository of documents buttressing dominant narratives of race, gender, sexuality, and nation. Instead, they advance an expanded notion of the archive to consider a gaysian sex archive as a material and affective entity, filled with imaginary, speculative, fantastical, fleshy, and gestural potentialities. 

About the Speaker:

Nguyễn Tân Hoàng is an experimental videomaker and film and media scholar. His videos include Forever Bottom!, K.I.P., look_im_azn, and I Remember Dancing. They have been screened at MoMA, the Pompidou Center, and the Getty. His writings have appeared in Camera Obscura: Journal of Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies, Porn Studies, Visual Anthropology, and The Asian American Literary Review. He is the author of A View from the Bottom: Asian American Masculinity and Sexual Representation (Duke UP, 2014). He teaches film and media at UC San Diego.


This event is free and open to the public. RSVP below to receive a reminder email one day before the event

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Forests and Foods of Ancient Arenal, Costa Rica (Venicia Slotten), April 24https://events.berkeley.edu/live/events/242599-forests-and-foods-of-ancient-arenal-costa-rica-venici

This talk will take place in person at the ARF and on Zoom (you must have a Zoom account to attend). Register for online attendance here.

Abstract: 

Paleoethnobotanical investigations at multiple domestic structures in Arenal, Costa Rica, reveal the plant resources utilized by past peoples living in this volcanically active setting from 1500 BCE to 600 CE. Roughly 200 different genera of plants have been recovered and identified between the two sites (G-995 La Chiripa and G-164 Sitio Bolivar) from the preserved seeds, fruits, and wood charcoal including cacao, maize, beans, manioc, achiote, avocado, cashew, cherry, fig, guava, guanabana, jocote, mamey, nance, palms, ramon, sapodilla, and tobacco. These preserved plant remains represent the diverse assemblage of edible fruits, leaves, or vegetative material that the ancient inhabitants would have incorporated into their daily cuisine. The people of ancient Arenal were knowledgeable arboriculturalists who did not rely heavily on agriculture, but rather would have collected from a variety of trees and root crops for their subsistence needs. The macrobotanical results suggest that the ancient inhabitants employed mixed strategies for subsistence and may have preferred food resources that would have remained accessible during times of ecological stress.

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The Wednesday Club: A New Musical, April 25https://events.berkeley.edu/live/events/wednesday-club

TDPS presents:

The Wednesday Club

Written & Directed by Joe Goode
Music Direction & Composition by Ben Juodvalkis

April 25–28, 2024
Zellerbach Playhouse

What do a gay cowboy, a slam poetry genius, a revolutionary poet, a naturalist, a couple of starry-eyed lovers, and a doomsayer have in common? They all want to experiment with the theatrical form as members of the Wednesday Club, a group of LGBTQ+ drama nerds (and their allies) who get together to test out their theatrical innovations every Wednesday evening in a church basement.

Based on songs from the repertoire of the Joe Goode Performance Group, this piece looks at the sometimes painful process of collaboration and the wisdom that can be gleaned from listening and slogging through the rough stuff to arrive at a place of trust and belonging.


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Film Screening and Panel Discussion: Of Color & Ink: Chang Dai-chien After 1949, April 25https://events.berkeley.edu/live/events/239128-film-screening-and-panel-discussion-of-color-amp

Widely acclaimed as China’s foremost 20 th century painter, Chang Dai-chien (1899-1983) spent his last three decades living in self-imposed exile from his beloved homeland. This film unravels the mystery and controversy of his creative and spiritual quest abroad and his journey East to West to become an artist of global significance.

“Of Color and Ink” is a feature-length documentary that follows the journey of the Chinese artist Chang Dai-chien as he embarks on a quest from the East to the West in search of the Peach Blossom Spring, a utopian place of life and the ultimate truth of art. The film delves into Chang’s extraordinary exile journey and sheds light on his mission in the global art world.

From CINEQUEST:

Winner Best International Feature Documentary Film Award at The 47th Sao Paulo International Film Festival

Winner Best Feature Documentary Film Award at The China (Guangzhou) International Documentary Film Festival

The wonderful Of Color and Ink uncovers the creative, political, and spiritual journeys of China’s foremost 20th-century painter Chang Dai-chien (1899-1983). The film follows his unusual life journey from pre-Communist China to Argentina, the jungles of Brazil; his much acclaimed exhibits in Paris and Germany in the 1960s; as well as his final years in California and Taiwan, in a thirty-year exile in the West that has been shrouded in mystery.

Director Zhang Weimin’s captivating film explores Chang Dai-chien’s pursuit of a vision of Peach Blossom Spring, a utopian ideal of harmony and tolerance, in a world far removed from the traditional China he left behind, as he moved from East to West to become the first Chinese artist to achieve international renown, whose works today command the highest auction prices of any of any post World War II painter.

Through innovative techniques and visual styles, “Of Color and Ink” spectacularly offers an illuminating, refreshing, artistic, and entertaining exploration of an emblematic influential figure in 20th century art.

Panelists:

Weimin Zhang is an award-winning filmmaker, cinematographer, and professor at San Francisco State University. As one of China’s Sixth Generation filmmakers, she worked on numerous award-winning films, documentaries, and TV drama series in both China and the U.S. as a director, cinematographer, and editor. Her film, The House of Spirit (2000) won the Women in Film Award; She also produced, wrote, and directed the feature documentary Missing Home: The Last Days of Beijing Hutongs (2013) which was presented at more than a dozen international film festivals. In 2007, the Library of Congress acquired her interactive multimedia DVD-ROM, Nushu: The Women’s Secret Writing for its permanent collection.

Mark Dean Johnson is a professor of art. He was educated at Yale University, where he was a personal assistant to Josef Albers, and received his M.F.A. from UC Berkeley. He previously was a professor at Humboldt State University in Arcata, CA, and associate dean of Academic Affairs at the San Francisco Art Institute. His publications include Asian American Art: A History, 1850-1970 (2008: Stanford University Press), and AT WORK: The Art of California Labor (2003: California Historical Society Press).

Carl Nagin has worked as an editor, teacher, and independent journalist in print and documentaries for four decades. His features have appeared in The New Yorker, Art and Antiques, The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, BBC World, and New York magazine. He wrote and reported documentaries for the PBS series FRONTLINE, the BBC, and ABC News. At Harvard University, he taught writing, rhetoric, and journalism, and served as a speechwriter, editor, and researcher for Joseph Nye, dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government. A three-time recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities for his work on Chang Dai-ch’ien, he is completing the artist’s first English-language biography and produced the 1993 documentary Abode of Illusion: The Art and Life of Chang Dai-ch’ien. For the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, he served as chief editor for the award-winning catalogue, Tales from the Land of Dragons: 1000 Years of Chinese Painting and for Masterpieces of Chinese Painting: Tang, Sung, and Yuan Dynasties published by Otsuka Kogeisha. He currently serves as a Professor of Humanities and Sciences at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Jun Hu is an assistant professor; Mr. & Mrs. Pai Ruchu Presidential Professor in Arts & Humanities at UC Berkeley. He specializes in Chinese art and architecture, with an emphasis on how the material process of art-making intersects with other modes of knowledge production. His research and teaching engage with the history of Chinese architecture and its connections to other scholarly traditions, print culture and painting theory in the early modern period, and interregional interactions between China, Japan, and Korea.

Winnie Wong is an associate professor in the Department of Rhetoric at UC Berkeley. Her research is concerned with the history and present of artistic authorship, with a focus on interactions between China and the West. Her theoretical interests revolve around the critical distinctions of high and low, true and fake, art and commodity, originality and imitation, and, conceptual and manual labor, and thus her work focuses on objects and practices at the boundary of these categories. 

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Cancelled - Colloquium: Lang Shining as Daemon: Giuseppe Castiglione and the Language of European Sinology, May 2https://events.berkeley.edu/live/events/235610-colloquium-lang-shining-as-daemon-giuseppe

Please kindly note that this event has been cancelled due to an emergency. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

In the eighteenth century, what we generally define as chinoiserie comprehended different forms, from painting to furniture, created in Europe in dialogue with real Chinese productions. These items displayed elements recognized as Chinese but created along the lines of European poetics. The world of chinoiserie thus became one of the loci of a language of appropriation which structured descriptions of pretended exchanges between Europe and China. Here, I discuss such a context from the perspective of European artists and missionaries living in China, especially through the lenses of a Jesuit lay-brother and painter, Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766), who worked in the imperial painting workshops in Beijing. By discussing the evidence related to his experiences, we have the chance to shed light on significant European views on China, and in turn, to explore some of the colonial concepts concealed into sinological and art-historical narratives.

Marco Musillo is an independent scholar working on early modern China-Europe artistic dialogues. He has published on the eighteenth-century pictorial encounters at the Qing court, and on the historiography of transcultural art forms, from the Renaissance to the modern period. In 2016 he published The Shining Inheritance: Italian Artists at the Qing Court, 1699-1812(Getty Research Institute Publications); he is author of Tangible Whispers, Neglected Encounters: Histories of East-West Artistic Dialogues, 1350-1904(Mimesis International, 2018); and co-editor of Art, Mobility, and Exchange in Early Modern Tuscany and Eurasia (Routledge, 2020).

This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Art History, UC Berkeley.

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