The Una’s Lectures were endowed in 1969 as part of the Una’s Gift by Mr. Edward Hunter Ross in honor of his wife, Una Smith Ross. In keeping with her wishes, the Una’s Gift is an endowment for inviting distinguished scholars in the field of the humanities to Berkeley for the purpose of delivering one or more lectures, meeting with faculty and students in their fields of study, and conducting or participating in seminars and colloquia. The gift also supports graduate student fellowships, awarded to female students working on historical projects.
The Una’s Lectures have been administered by the Townsend Center since 1987.
More on Una's Lectures
Past Lectures
Filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the 2022-23 Una’s Lecturer, is joined in conversation by writer and UC Berkeley teaching professor Hilton Als.
Amanda Anderson is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Humanities and English and director of the Cogut Institute for the Humanities at Brown University.
Jeannie Suk Gersen is a feminist legal scholar and contributing writer at the New Yorker. She is joined in conversation by political theorist Wendy Brown.
Artist Paul Chan is the winner of the 2014 Hugo Boss Prize, awarded biennially by the Guggenheim Foundation to an artist who has made a visionary contribution to contemporary art.