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Humanities Decanted

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HUMANITIES DECANTED: Elisabeth Weber, Kill Boxes: Facing the Legacy of US-Sponsored Torture, Indefinite Detention and Drone Warfare

McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

Join us for a discussion of Elisabeth Weber's new work. Refreshments will be served. Kill Boxes addresses the legacy of US-sponsored torture, indefinite detention and drone warfare by deciphering the shocks of recognition that humanistic and artistic responses to violence bring to consciousness if readers and viewers have eyes to face them. The book provides intensive readings of philosophical texts by Jean Améry, Jacques Derrida, and Christian Thomasius, with poetic texts by Franz Kafka, Paul Muldoon, ...

HUMANITIES DECANTED: Robert Samuels, Educating Inequality: Beyond the Political Myths of Higher Education and the Job Market

McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

Join us for a dialogue between Robert Samuels (Writing) and Heather Steffen (English and Writing) about Samuels’ new work, Educating Inequality. Refreshments will be served. Politicians and school officials often argue that higher education is the solution to many of our social and economic problems. Educating Inequality argues that in order to reduce inequality and enhance social mobility, public policies are needed to revamp the financial aid system and increase the number of good jobs. ...

HUMANITIES DECANTED: Bhaskar Sarkar, “No Man’s (Is)land: Ecology of a Border”

McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

Join us for a dialogue between Bhaskar Sarkar (Film and Media Studies) and Lisa Sun-Hee Park (Asian American Studies) about Sarkar’s new article, “No Man’s (Is)land: Ecology of a Border.” Refreshments will be served. Focusing on a stretch of the international border between Bangladesh and India that coincides with the river Ganges, Sarkar’s new article examines the ambiguous productivities of proliferating borders in the era of globalization. In this overpopulated region of South Asia, the ...

HUMANITIES DECANTED: Lal Zimman, Transgender Language Reform: Some Challenges and Strategies for Promoting Trans-Affirming, Gender-Inclusive Language

McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

Join us for a presentation and discussion with Lal Zimman (Linguistics) about his new work, “Transgender Language Reform.” Refreshments will be served. With a growing societal interest in the experiences of transgender people has come a new kind of awareness about gendered language. Zimman’s recent article, “Transgender language reform: some challenges and strategies for promoting trans-affirming, gender-inclusive language,” takes a linguistic approach to trans-inclusive language by distilling the practices of transgender speakers of English into ...

Humanities Decanted: Carlos Morton, Trumpus Caesar

McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

Join us for a staged reading of a new play by Carlos Morton (Theater and Dance), Trumpus Caesar, followed by a discussion. Refreshments will be served. A bawdy satire in the tradition of Greco-Roman Comedy–Saturday Night Live meets Julius Caesar.  The comic premise is that Trumpus Caesar, having recently been elected emperor by the plebeians, is impeached by a Chorus of Republican satyrs who then fight over the crown.  In this "farce for our times," Caesar doesn't die ...

Humanities Decanted: Mario T. García, Father Luis Olivares: A Biography

McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

Join us for a dialogue between Mario T. García (Chicana and Chicano Studies and History) and Verónica Castillo-Muñoz (History) about García’s new biography, Father Luis Olivares: Faith Politics and the Origins of the Sanctuary Movement in Los Angeles. Refreshments will be served. García‘s latest book is the untold story of the Los Angeles sanctuary movement’s champion, Father Luis Olivares (1934–1993), a Catholic priest and a charismatic, faith-driven leader for social justice. Beginning in 1980 and continuing for most of the ...

Humanities Decanted: Silvia Bermúdez, Rocking the Boat

McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

Join us for a dialogue between Silvia Bermúdez (Spanish and Portuguese) and Cristina Venegas (Film and Media Studies) about Bermúdez’s new book, Rocking the Boat: Migration and Race in Contemporary Spanish Music.  Refreshments will be served. Rocking the Boat is a nuanced account of how popular urban music, produced between 1980 and 2013, shaped the discourse on immigration, transnational migrants, and racialization in the Spanish State borne after the Constitution of 1978. Silvia Bermúdez is Professor of Spanish ...

Humanities Decanted: Ruth Hellier-Tinoco, Performing Palimpsest Bodies: Postmemory Theatre Experiments in Mexico

McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

Join us for a dialogue between Ruth Hellier-Tinoco (Music) and Jessica Nakamura (Department of Theater and Dance) about Hellier-Tinoco’s new book, Performing Palimpsest Bodies: Postmemory Theatre Experiments in Mexico. Refreshments will be served. Performing Palimpsest Bodies proposes the concept of palimpsest bodies to interpret provocative theatre and performance experiments that explore issues of cultural memory, bodies of history, archives, repertoires and performing remains. Combined with ideas of postmemory and rememory, palimpsest bodies are inherently trans-temporal as they ...

Humanities Decanted: Migrant Longing: Letter Writing across the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

Join us for a dialogue between Miroslava Chávez-García (History) and John S.W. Park (Asian American Studies) about Chávez-García’s new book, Migrant Longing: Letter Writing across the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. Refreshments will be served. Migrant Longing draws upon Miroslava Chávez-García’s personal collection of 300 letters exchanged by family members across the U.S.-Mexico border, illuminating what migrants experienced in their everyday lives both “here” and “there” (aqui y alla). Chávez-García uses these private, firsthand accounts to demonstrate not ...

Humanities Decanted: Borges, Buddhism and World Literature: A Morphology of Renunciation Tales

McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

Join us for a dialogue between Dominique Jullien (French and Comparative Literature) and Sowon Park (English) about Jullien’s new book, Borges, Buddhism and World Literature: A Morphology of Renunciation Tales. Refreshments will be served. Jullien’s latest book follows the renunciation story in Borges and beyond, arguing for its centrality as a Borgesian compositional trope and as a Borgesian prism for reading a global constellation of texts. The renunciation story at the heart of Buddhism, that ...

Humanities Decanted: Queering Black Atlantic Religions: Transcorporeality in Candomblé, Santería, and Vodou

McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

Join us for a dialogue between Roberto Strongman (Black Studies) and Jennifer Tyburczy (Feminist Studies) about Strongman’s new book, Queering Black Atlantic Religions: Transcorporeality in Candomblé, Santería, and Vodou. Refreshments will be served. In Queering Black Atlantic Religions, Roberto Strongman examines Haitian Vodou, Cuban Lucumí/Santería, and Brazilian Candomblé to demonstrate how religious rituals of trance possession allow humans to understand themselves as embodiments of the divine. In these rituals, the commingling of humans and the ...

Humanities Decanted: Transgenerational Remembrance: Performance and the Asia-Pacific War in Contemporary Japan

Zoom

Free to attend; registration required to receive Zoom webinar attendance link Join us online for a dialogue between Jessica Nakamura (Theater and Dance) and Catherine Nesci (French and Italian, Comparative Literature) about Nakamura’s new book, Transgenerational Remembrance: Performance and the Asia-Pacific War in Contemporary Japan. Audience Q&A will follow. In Transgenerational Remembrance, Jessica Nakamura investigates the role of artistic production in the commemoration and memorialization of the Asia-Pacific War (1931–1945) in Japan since 1989. During this ...

Humanities Decanted: Antigone Rising: The Subversive Power of the Ancient Myths

Zoom

Free to attend; registration required to receive Zoom webinar attendance link Join us online for a dialogue between Helen Morales (Classics) and Vilna Bashi-Treitler (Black Studies) about Morales’ new book, Antigone Rising: The Subversive Power of the Ancient Myths. Audience Q&A will follow. A witty, inspiring reckoning with the ancient Greco-Roman myths and their legacy, from what they can illuminate about #MeToo to the radical imagery of Beyoncé. The picture of classical antiquity most of ...

Humanities Decanted: The Musical Heritage of Al-Andalus

Zoom

Click here for a 20% publisher's discount on The Musical Heritage of Al-Andalus   Join us online for a dialogue between Dwight Reynolds (Religious Studies) and Debra Blumenthal (History) about Reynolds’ new book, The Musical Heritage of Al-Andalus. Audience Q&A will follow. The Musical Heritage of Al-Andalus is a critical account of the history of Andalusian music in Iberia from the Islamic conquest of 711 to the final expulsion of the Moriscos (Spanish Muslims converted ...

Humanities Decanted: Making Art Work: How Cold War Engineers and Artists Forged a New Creative Culture

Zoom

Free to attend; registration required to receive Zoom webinar attendance link Join us online for a dialogue between Patrick McCray (History) and Alan Liu (English) about McCray’s new book, Making Art Work: How Cold War Engineers and Artists Forged a New Creative Culture. Audience Q&A will follow. Despite C. P. Snow’s warning, in 1959, of an unbridgeable chasm between the humanities and the sciences, engineers and scientists of that era enthusiastically collaborated with artists to ...

Humanities Decanted: Violentologies: Violence, Identity, and Ideology in Latina/o Literature

Zoom

Free to attend; registration required to receive Zoom webinar attendance link Join us online for a dialogue between Ben Olguín (English, UCSB) and María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo (Social and Cultural Analysis, NYU) about Olguín’s new book, Violentologies: Violence, Identity, and Ideology in Latina/o Literature. Audience Q&A will follow. Violentologies: Violence, Identity, and Ideology in Latina/o Literature, explores how various forms of violence undergird a wide range of Latina/o subjectivities, or Latinidades, from 1835 to the present. ...

Humanities Decanted: Race Characters: Ethnic Literature and the Figure of the American Dream

Zoom

Free to attend; registration required to receive Zoom webinar attendance link Join us online for a dialogue between Swati Rana (English) and Stephanie L. Batiste (English) about Rana’s new book, Race Characters: Ethnic Literature and the Figure of the American Dream. Audience Q&A will follow. A vexed figure inhabits U.S. literature and culture: the visibly racialized immigrant who disavows minority identity and embraces the American dream. Such figures are potent and controversial, for they promise ...

Humanities Decanted: Plato and the Mythic Tradition in Political Thought

Zoom

Free to attend; registration required to receive Zoom webinar attendance link Join us online for a dialogue between Tae-Yeoun Keum (Political Science) and Andrew Norris (Political Science) about Keum’s new book, Plato and the Mythic Tradition in Political Thought. Audience Q&A will follow. Plato’s use of myths—the Myth of Metals, the Myth of Er—sits uneasily with his canonical reputation as the inventor of rational philosophy. Since the Enlightenment, interpreters like Hegel have sought to resolve this ...

Humanities Decanted: Irwin Appel, Naked Shakes

Zoom

Join us online for a dialogue between Irwin Appel (Theater and Dance) and James Kearney (English) about Appel’s theater company, Naked Shakes, and their recent production of Twelfth Night, staged outside at UCSB’s Commencement Green in front of the lagoon. Audience Q&A will follow. Naked Shakes derives its rather provocative name from the principle that an actor in a bare theatrical space, along with meticulous attention to language, few technical elements, and the collective imagination ...

Humanities Decanted: The First Black Archaeologist

McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

Proof of full vaccination required for all attendees. READ MORE TO VIEW ACCEPTABLE FORMS OF VACCINATION DOCUMENTATION. Join us for a dialogue between John W. I. Lee (History) and Krzysztof Janowicz (Geography) about Lee's new book, The First Black Archaeologist: A Life of John Wesley Gilbert. Audience Q&A will follow. The First Black Archaeologist reveals the untold story of a pioneering African American classical scholar, teacher, community leader, and missionary. Born into slavery in rural ...

Humanities Decanted: The Bones of Contention

McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

Join us for a dialogue between Leo Cabranes-Grant (Spanish and Portuguese, Theater and Dance) and Juan Pablo Lupi (Spanish and Portuguese) about Cabranes-Grant’s new play, The Bones of Contention. Refreshments will be served. The Bones of Contention describes the efforts of Yitipaka (an imaginary California town) to regain its economic and social stability after the COVID pandemic. Constructed as two collective latinx murals (one dedicated to the older generation, one dedicated to younger people), the ...

Humanities Decanted: Hollywood’s Embassies

McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

Join us for a dialogue between Ross Melnick (Film and Media Studies) and Charles Wolfe (Film and Media Studies) about Melnick’s new book, Hollywood’s Embassies: How Movie Theaters Projected American Power Around the World. Refreshments will be served. Beginning in the 1920s, audiences around the globe were seduced not only by Hollywood films but also by lavish movie theaters that were owned and operated by the major American film companies. These theaters aimed to provide ...

Humanities Decanted: Jody Enders, Translating Medieval Farce

McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

Join us for a dialogue between Jody Enders (French and Italian) and Leo Cabranes-Grant (Spanish and Portuguese, Theater and Dance) about Enders' two new edited and translated volumes of medieval French comedies. Refreshments will be served. Trial by Farce: A Dozen Medieval French Comedies in Modern English (University of Michigan Press, 2023) In Trial by Farce, prize-winning theater historian Jody Enders brings twelve of the funniest legal farces to English-speaking audiences in a refreshingly uncensored but ...

Humanities Decanted: The Virus Touch

McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

Join us for a dialogue between Bishnupriya Ghosh (English and Global Studies) and Elena Aronova (History) about Ghosh’s new book, The Virus Touch: Theorizing Epidemic Media. Refreshments will be served. In The Virus Touch, Ghosh argues that media are central to understanding emergent relations between viruses, humans, and nonhuman life. Writing in the shadow of the HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 global pandemics, Ghosh theorizes “epidemic media” to show how epidemics are mediated in images, numbers, and ...

Humanities Decanted: Giuliana Perrone

McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

Join us for a dialogue between Giuliana Perrone (History) and Jeannine DeLombard (English) about Perrone's new book, Nothing More than Freedom: The Failure of Abolition in American Law. Refreshments will be served. Nothing More than Freedom: The Failure of Abolition in American Law (Cambridge University Press, 2023) Nothing More than Freedom explores the long and complex legal history of Black freedom in the United States. From the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 until ...

Humanities Decanted: Daughter of the Dragon

McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

Join us for a dialogue between Yunte Huang (English) and Constance Penley (Film and Media Studies) about Huang’s new book, Daughter of the Dragon: Anna May Wong's Rendezvous with American History. Refreshments will be served. Daughter of the Dragon is a trenchant reclamation of the Chinese American movie star, whose battles against cinematic exploitation and endemic racism are set against the currents of twentieth-century history. Born into the steam and starch of a Chinese laundry, ...

Humanities Decanted: Liz Carlisle

McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

Join us for a dialogue between Liz Carlisle (Environmental Studies) and Peter Alagona (Environmental Studies) about Carlisle’s new book, Healing Grounds: Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming. Refreshments will be served. A powerful movement is happening in farming today—farmers are reconnecting with their roots to fight climate change. For one woman, that has meant learning her tribe’s history to help bring back the buffalo. For another, it has meant preserving forest purchased ...

Humanities Decanted: Janet Afary

McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

Join us for a dialogue between Janet Afary (Religious Studies) and Dwight Reynolds (Religious Studies) about Afary’s new book, Mollā Nasreddin: The Making of a Modern Trickster, 1906-1911. Refreshments will be served. In the early twentieth century, a group of artists and intellectuals reinterpreted the Middle Eastern trickster figure Nasreddin in their periodical Mollā Nasreddin. They used folklore, visual art, and satire to disseminate a consciously radical and social democratic discourse on religion, gender, sexuality, ...

Humanities Decanted: Thomas Mazanec

McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

Join us for a dialogue between Thomas Mazanec (East Asian Languages & Cultural Studies) and Xiaorong Li (East Asian Languages & Cultural Studies) about Mazanec’s new book, Poet-Monks: The Invention of Buddhist Poetry in Medieval China. Poet-Monks focuses on the literary and religious practices of Buddhist poet-monks in Tang-dynasty China to propose an alternative historical arc of medieval Chinese poetry. Combining large-scale quantitative analysis with close readings of important literary texts, Mazanec describes how Buddhist ...

Humanities Decanted: Swati Chattopadhyay

McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

Join us for a dialogue between Swati Chattopadhyay (History of Art and Architecture) and Cristina Venegas (Film and Media Studies) about Chattopadhyay's new book, Small Spaces: Recasting the Architecture of Empire. Chattopadhyay recasts the history of the British empire by focusing on the small spaces that made the empire possible. Her book takes as its subject a series of small architectural spaces, objects, and landscapes of the British empire in India and uses them to ...