Past Events

Please Note: This Event Has Been Canceled.

Emilie Hafner-Burton (UC San Diego), along with UC Berkeley and Stanford faculty, discuss why it's been so hard for international law to have an impact in parts of the world where human rights are most at risk.

Professor of French Debarati Sanyal’s forthcoming book examines the ways in which literature and film from the French-speaking world have repeatedly sought not to singularize the Holocaust as the paradigm of historical trauma, but rather to connect its memory with other memories of atrocity.

A new bill threatens to further criminalize homosexuality in Uganda, making it punishable by death. David Kato, Uganda’s first openly gay man, is one of the few who dare to publicly protest this state-sanctioned homophobia.

Professor of History of Art Whitney Davis’ book presents a new and original framework for understanding visual culture.

Intermingling large street scenes with individual portraits of citizens from Mexico City, Mumbai, New York, and Moscow, this film exposes divergent forms of urban living and weaves a moving portrait of the effects of globalization.

Hart and Campion will discuss their sculptural opera, The Alice’s Walking, which premiers in March 2014 at the Eyebeam Center in NYC.

CLUSTER is a multi-channel sound/video installation investigating human perception and the impact of new technologies on both individual and collective consciousness.

Jonathan Fineberg is professor emeritus of art history at the University of Illinois. His lecture will set out an argument for the evolutionary necessity of art and discuss the effects of art on the brain.

In his second Avenali lecture, Lawrence Weschler will consider a spectrum of convergent effects, including apophenia (the tendency of humans to see patterns where none exist), homage, quotation, cryptomnesia (verbatim appropriation without realizing you’re doing so), and even outright plagiarism.