Past Events

Why War?: "Rethinking Terrorism, Peace, and Politics"

Samera Esmeir (Rhetoric) and Saba Mahmood (Anthropology)
| Geballe Room, 220 Stephens Hall

Samera Esmeir’s research focuses on the contemporary Middle East, specifically on questions of violence, war, and the security state. Saba Mahmood’s research interests lie in exploring historically specific articulations of secular modernity in postcolonial societies, with particular attention to issues of subject formation, religiosity, embodiment, and gender.

Bernard Stiegler, Philosopher

"Attentional Forms: Relational Ecology and The Digital Pharmakon"
| Geballe Room, 220 Stephens Hall

In this lecture, Bernard Stiegler will consider how critical intelligence can be renewed in an era when attention and cognitive focus are being radically dissipated by new media technology.

Pauline Yu, President, ACLS

“Of Storms, Frontiers, and Master Plans: Claims for the Future of Higher Education”
Forum on the Humanities & the Public World
| Geballe Room, 220 Stephens Hall

Pauline Yu has been President of the American Council of Learned Societies since July 2003. Professor Yu’s scholarship focuses on classical Chinese poetry, comparative literature, and issues in the humanities.

<em>The Order of Myths</em> (2008)

Directed by Margaret Brown
Depth of Field Film + Video
| Geballe Room, 220 Stephens Hall

Southern Mardi Gras celebrations have long made an art of turning everyday reality on its head, but what seems most upside down about the 300-year-old celebration in Mobile, Alabama is the fact that it is still willingly segregated between the city’s black and white citizens. Capturing the bizarre ritual celebrations and complex meditations on race by local residents, Margaret Brown’s film presents a unique portrait of a place where the line between past and present is continually and intentionally blurred.

Why War?: "Non-Violent Violence"

Simon Critchley, Philosophy, The New School
| Geballe Room, 220 Stephens Hall

In this talk, Critchley reflects on the hugely difficult question of the nature and plausibility of a politics of nonviolence. In particular, he focuses on how such a politics has to negotiate the limits of nonviolence and in what circumstances it might become necessary to transgress those limits.

Why War?: "Violence as Dignity"

J.M. Bernstein, Philosophy, The New School
| Geballe Room, 220 Stephens Hall

In an incident in Auschwitz, Jean Amery describes how, at a particular moment, he was forced to give "concrete form to my dignity by punching a human face." Bernstein's paper will interrogate the thesis, common to Amery and Frantz Fanon, that, as a consequence of the particular character of human embodiment, violent reprisal belongs to the grammar of human dignity.

| Geballe Room, 220 Stephens Hall

Townsend Resident Fellow Michel Pascal is a composer and a professor of electroacoustic composition at the Conservatoire de Nice, France. Pascal was hosted by CNM AT while at Berkeley.

"A Moving Image: Media and Metaphor in Stage"

With Avenali Resident Fellow Ellen Bromberg
|

An informal talk and screening looking at the role of metaphor through Ellen Bromberg’s work as a choreographer and subsequently as a media designer for stage and installation performances. Ideas of space, immersion and interactivity are addressed in the lecture, as Bromberg discusses the Center for Interdisciplinary Arts and Technology and the Multi-Media performance Lab at the University of Utah.

<em>Moving Midway</em> (2008)

Directed by Godfrey Cheshire
Depth of Field Film + Video
| Geballe Room, 220 Stephens Hall

When first-time filmmaker Godfrey Cheshire’s family decided to uproot their pre-civil war plantation home from its original location, more than just the old foundation was dug up. The mansion’s relocation is an opportunity to document a feat of technical ingenuity, to explore the legacy of the South as portrayed by Hollywood, and to revisit a troubled period in our nation’s history.