Past Events

Homer: The Very Idea

James Porter
Berkeley Book Chats
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| Online

The identity of Homer is shrouded in mystery, including doubts that he was an actual person. James Porter explores Homer’s mystique, approaching the poet not as a man, but as a cultural invention.

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| Online

Kate Heslop approaches Viking Age poetry through an innovative interpretive framework that considers the texts as pieces in a premodern multimedia landscape. 

Cheerfulness: A Literary and Cultural History

Timothy Hampton
Berkeley Book Chats
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| Online

Exploring cheerfulness as a theme and structuring element in the work of major artists, Timothy Hampton (Comparative Literature and French) casts new light on literary history, the intersections of culture and psychology, and the history of emotions.

Behaviorism, Consciousness, and the Literary Mind

Joshua Gang
Berkeley Book Chats
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| Online

What might behaviorism, that debunked school of psychology, tell us about literature? Joshua Gang argues for its enormous critical value for thinking about why language is so good at creating illusions of mental life.

Permanent Crisis: The Humanities in a Disenchanted Age

Paul Reitter and Chad Wellmon
Berkeley Book Chats
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| Online

The humanities, underfunded and popularly devalued, seem to be in a perpetual state of crisis. Paul Reitter and Chad Wellmon show how the modern humanistic disciplines made crisis a core part of their project.

The Invention of Humanity, East and West

In Dialogue with China: Art, Culture, Politics
Wednesday, Mar 16, 2022 4:00 pm
| 820 Social Sciences Building

Li Wai-yee and Siep Stuurman explore the Eastern and Western roots of the notion that all the world’s inhabitants — regardless of ethnic origin, native place, or status — constitute a single human community.

Thursday, Mar 10, 2022 12:00 pm
| Online

Scholars and intellectuals share their perspectives on the trajectory of Ukrainian culture over the longer arc of history and in the contemporary post-Soviet era.