Forum on the Humanities and the Public World

The Townsend Center’s Forum on the Humanities and the Public World presents eminent artists, political leaders, writers and scholars, each representing a unique discipline, viewpoint, and medium. The series brings the humanities into dialogue with the critical issues at play in the public sphere. The Townsend Center at UC Berkeley has a long and distinguished tradition of humanistic scholarship, open dialogue, and pioneering innovation in the humanities. It is in this spirit that the Forum on the Humanities and the Public World presents leading figures from the academic and public worlds in settings designed for scholars and for the public at large.

Spring 2009 Forum 

William Kentridge, artist
“Learning from the Absurd”

Sunday, March 15, 2009
5:00 pm | Hertz Concert Hall

 

Follow-up panel discussion with William Kentridge
Monday, March 16, 2009
12:00 pm | Geballe Room, 220 Stephens Hall
Panelists: Kaja Silverman (Rhetoric and Film Studies) and Larry Rinder
(Berkeley Art Museum)
Moderated by Anthony J. Cascardi, Townsend Center Director

With an innovative use of charcoal drawing, prints, collages, stop-animation, film and theater, South African artist William Kentridge’s work continues to attract international recognition. Especially distinctive are his hand-drawn films, which are created using a technique he calls "stone-age filmmaking.” In both these “drawings for projection” and in his other work, Kentridge explores themes of apartheid, colonialism, social conflict, and both personal and cultural memory.

Kentridge’s appointment as Townsend Avenali lecturer coincides with the March 14th premier of William Kentridge: Five Themes at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

William Kentridge is also the Avenali Chair in the Humanities 2008-2009.

---

Rebecca Solnit, Writer

Wednesday, April 15, 2009
4:00 pm | Geballe Room, 220 Stephens Hall

Rebecca Solnit is the best-selling author of numerous books, including A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Wanderlust: A History of Walking, Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, and most recently, Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics. A contributing editor to Harper's, columnist for Orion, and frequent contributor Tomdispatch.com, Solnit often writes on topics of the environment, politics, place, and art. She is a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award, the Wired Rave Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Click here for more information about Rebecca Solnit.

---

Tzvetan Todorov, theorist
“Memory, a Remedy for Evil?”

Monday, May 4, 2009
Time and Location TBA

From his earliest publications on literary theory in the mid 1960s, to his moral enquiries into identity, responsibility, and ethics in his more-recent historical studies, Tzvetan Todorov has been one of the foremost contemporary European literary and cultural theorists. While the fields of literary criticism and cultural history continue to relax their boundaries, thereby increasingly accommodating and influencing each other, Todorov ranks among the finest of writers whose works have moved easily between literary theory and its application in critical readings of important historical narratives.

Click here for more information about Tzvetan Todorov.