Events

In a time where indigenous literatures are becoming more distinguishable, it is crucial to explore, challenge, and reformulate preexisting notions of spaces, identity, and knowledge. For the first time at UCSB, renowned indigenous poets of Mexico and the Basque country will establish an international dialogue with top scholars from all over the world to discuss the topic of the poetic act as a factor of visibility for marginalized cultures and political action. For the First ...

Nubian studies scholar, punctum books co-director, and philologist Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei will discuss how community-focused, scholar-led open access publishing can help launch fields of inquiry and study that otherwise would not have adequate resources to establish themselves, because most publishers would consider the discipline too "small," and thus too risky to commit publishing resources. Part of Vincent’s work focuses on the study of the Old Nubian language, and the development of a new ...

Michael P. Breen is the author of Law, City, and King: Legal Culture, Municipal Politics and State Formation in Early Modern Dijon (2007) and numerous articles on lawyers and legal culture in early modern France. In this talk, he will address the following question: “Historians have long believed that lawyers played a central role in the dissemination of legal knowledge and the ideal of the ‘rule of law’ in early modern Europe. Recent scholarship, however, ...

Reception for the Department of Art MFA Thesis Exhibition, curated by Bruce Ferguson, President of Otis College of Art & Design. "Duchamp, following Wittgenstein, understood that the world as we know it is a language game. He used chess as a metaphor for “pure” art – a set of endlessly iterated and re-iterated “moves” which together constitute a language of sorts. Not language as a set of fixed or final rules or as a vehicle ...

In “'I am fragile and small'”: Versions of Masculinity in Soviet Unofficial Poetics," Ainsley Morse will examine the presentation of masculinity (usually that of the lyric speaker) in the work of several unofficial poets of the late Soviet period. As an institution, unofficial literature occupied a powerless position vis-a-vis officially published literature; yet, unofficial poets drew on the tradition of predecessors including Vladimir Mayakovsky and Daniil Kharms to construct a lyric presence that combined exaggerated weakness (“loserdom”) ...

Chancellor Henry T. Yang, Executive Vice Chancellor David Marshall, and University Librarian Kristin Antelman will hand out free copies of the UCSB Reads 2019 book to UCSB students while supplies last. The 2019 selection is the graphic novel The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui. Sponsored by Arts & Lectures, Carsey-Wolf Center, College of Creative Studies, College of Engineering, College of Letters & Science, English Department, Gevirtz Graduate School of Education, Graduate Division, Graduate Student ...