Past Events

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.

Philip Fisher, English and American Literature, Harvard University

“Thoughtful Wonder: The Aesthetics of Rare Experiences”
Una's Lecture
| Alumni House

Philip Fisher is Felice Crowl Reid Professor of English and American Literature at Harvard University. Professor Fisher’s research interests include cultural theory, modernism, American art and its cultural institutions, the philosophy and literature of the passions, narrative theory, and game theory and the novel.

| Institute for East Asian Studies, Conference Room (6th floor)

Panel Discussants: Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin (University of Washington), Susan Napier (University of Texas, Austin) and John Treat (University of Washington)

Haruki Murakami, Writer & Translator

"Sheep Men, TV people and the Hardboiled Wonderland: Japanese Language and Literature Today"
Una's Lecture
| Alumni House

Haruki Murakami's Una's Lecture was jointly sponsored with the Department of East Asian Languages and the Center for Japanese Studies.

“Perceptual Mimesis”

With Avenali Lecturer Elaine Scarry
| Alumni House

Avenali Lecturer 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.

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.