Past Events

Mary Louise Pratt, Spanish and Portuguese, New York University

“English Only vs. National Security: Language and Contemporary Geopolitics”
Una's Lecture
| Morrison Reading Room, Doe Library

Mary Louise Pratt is Silver Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at New York University.

Donna Haraway, History of Consciousness, UC Santa Cruz

“From Cyborgs to Companion Species: Dogs, People, and Technoculture”
Avenali Lecture
|

Donna Haraway is a prominent theorist of the relationships between people and machines, and her work has incited debate in fields as varied as primatology, philosophy, and developmental biology. Haraway’s The Cyborg Manifesto, first published in 1985, is now taught in undergraduate classes at countless universities and has been reprinted or translated in numerous anthologies in North America, Japan, and Europe.

Frederick Wiseman: Una Panel Discussion

“Ethnography on Film”
| Geballe Room, 220 Stephens Hall

Panel Discussants: Frederick Wiseman, Laura Nader (Anthropology), Candace Slater (Spanish & Portuguese) and Loïc Wacquant (Sociology)

Frederick Wiseman, Documentary Filmmaker

“The Making and Reading of a Documentary Film”
Una's Lecture
| Wheeler Auditorium

Documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman uses the “direct cinema” tradition of documentary filmmaking—continued filming of human conversation and the routines of everyday life with no music, interviews, or voice-over narration—to powerfully examine social institutions in America.

| Maude Fife Room, 315 Wheeler Hall

Panel Discussants: Michael Pollan, Catherine Gallagher (English), Ignacio Chapela (Environmental Science, Policy and Management) and Patricia Unterman (restaurant critic, the San Francisco Examiner)

Michael Pollan, Journalist and Author

“Cannabis, the Importance of Forgetting, and the Botany of Desire”
Avenali Lecture
| Morrison Reading Room, Doe Library

Michael Pollan's work examines the intersections between science and culture, focusing most specifically on food. Pollan is the author of In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, winner of the James Beard Award, The Omnivore's Dilemma, which was named one of the ten best books of the year by both The New York Times and The Washington Post, and The Botany of Desire, among others.

“The Lost Art of the Newspaper”

With Una's Lecturer Nicholson Baker
| Geballe Room, 220 Stephens Hall

Baker with David Henkin (History) and Carla Hesse (History).

Nicholson Baker, Writer

“Bombs and Bibliographies: The Secret Life of the Library of Congress”
Una's Lecture
| Morrison Reading Room, Doe Library

Novelist and nonfiction writer Nicholson Baker is the author of The Mezzanine; Room Temperature; Vox; The Fermata; and The Everlasting Story of Nory, among others. Often addressing provocative topics such as voyeurism and planned assassination, Baker’s work is known for its focus on minute details and careful characterizations through the exploration of his characters' and narrators' stream of consciousness.

| Maude Fife Room, 315 Wheeler Hall

Panel Discussants: Sebastião Salgado, T.J. Clark (Art History), Orville Schell (Dean, Graduate School of Journalism), Nancy Sheperd-Hughes (Anthropology), Candace Slater (Spanish and Portuguese) and Michael Watts (Geography)