Past Avenali Lectures

Mike Davis, Historian & Social Commentator

“The Literary Destruction of L.A.”
Avenali Lecture
| Alumni House

While urban theorist and social commentator Mike Davis holds degrees in History from UCLA and the University of Edinburgh, his work exceeds and expands the usual definition of historical writing. He is best known for his investigations of power and social class in his native Southern California.

Ivan Klíma, Novelist & Playwright

“Eastern European Literary Scene Before and After Communism”
Avenali Lecture
|

Like Milan Kundera and Josef Škvorecký, novelist, essayist, and critic Ivan Klíma is considered one of the most important Czech writers of his time.

Peter Sellars, Director

“Getting Real: The Arts in Post-NEA America”
Avenali Lecture
| Wheeler Auditorium

Opera and theatre director, teacher, and activist Peter Sellars has been a creative and deeply influential voice in the world of opera and theater for the past 30 years. Noted for his unique, contemporary stagings of both classical and contemporary plays and operas, Sellars is also professor of World Arts and Cultures at UCLA.

Natalie Zemon Davis, History, University of Toronto

“Moors, Christians, and Africans in a Muslim Traveler’s Account of the Renaissance”
Avenali Lecture
| 2050 Valley Life Sciences Building

Natalie Zemon Davis is an important historian of the early modern period, known for her narrative writing style and her use of cross-disciplinary history, which combines history with disciplines such as anthropology, ethnography and literary theory.

Gerald Early, African American Studies, Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri

“Martin Luther King and the Reinvention of Christian Leadership in the United States”
Avenali Lecture
| Alumni House

Gerald Early is Professor of English and African-American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. A noted essayist and American culture critic, Early is the author of several books, including The Culture of Bruising: Essays on Prizefighting, Literature, and Modern American Culture, which won the 1994 National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism.

Maurice Sendak, Writer & Illustrator

“Descent into Limbo...The Creative Process”
Avenali Lecture
| Wheeler Auditorium

Maurice Sendak is the author and illustrator of several noteworthy children’s books including In the Night Kitchen; Where the Wild Things Are; Outside Over There; and We’re All Down in the Dumps with Jack and Guy.

Maya Lin, Sculptor & Architect

“Siteworks”
Avenali Lecture
| Wheeler Auditorium

While an undergraduate in Architecture at Yale University, sculptor and architect Maya Lin won the competition to design and build the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Kwame Anthony Appiah, Philosopher, Cultural Theorist, & Novelist

“Identity Against Culture: Understandings of Multiculturalism”
Avenali Lecture
| Alumni House

Kwame Anthony Appiah is a Ghanaian philosopher, cultural theorist, and novelist. His scholarship addresses political and moral theory, African intellectual history, and philosophical questions of culture and identity.

Dušan Makavejev, Director & Screenwriter

“You Never Know Who Has a Frog in the Pocket”
Avenali Lecture
| Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

Dušan Makavejev is a Serbian film director famous for his films of former Yugoslavia in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Known for blending fiction with reality and drama with humor, Makavejev’s work often contains experimental elements and has been considered controversial for its eroticism and sharp criticism of Eastern European politics.

Elaine Scarry, English, Harvard University

“The Problem of Vivacity”
Avenali Lecture
| Alumni House

Elaine Scarry is Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and General Theory of Value for the Department of English at Harvard University. Her research encompasses many topics, including 20th-century Drama; the 19th-century British novel; theories of representation; language of physical pain; and the structure of verbal and material making in art, science, and the law.