Vikram Seth is a poet, novelist, travel writer, librettist, children’s writer, and memoirist. His acclaimed first novel, The Golden Gate, is written entirely in Onegin stanzas after the style of Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin. His 1474-page novel A Suitable Boy, an epic of Indian life set in the 1950s, won both the WH Smith Literary Award and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.
The World Novel, Narrative Form, and International Law
The Berkeley Human Rights Seminar invites distinguished scholars across disciplines to present their recent research on human rights. This seminar features Joseph Slaughter (Columbia), discussing his book Human Rights, Inc.: The World Novel, Narrative Form, and International Law in conversation with UC Berkeley faculty members Kent Puckett (English), Donna V. Jones (English), and Robert Kaufman (Comparative Literature).
Litquake
Faculty from Stanford and UC Berkeley examine how language affects politics and vice versa. What are the conditions that make political language possible, and what are the conditions that render language political? From a racially-inflected "rhetoric of contempt" to shades of totalitarian references in contemporary political discourse, the participating faculty members of both universities will engage in a wide-ranging and spirited discussion at the Book Club of California.
Bill Cunningham, a pillar of New York Fashion photography for the last three decades, becomes himself the subject of the camera’s gaze in Richard Press’s documentary. The film captures both Cunningham’s clear familiarity with an elite level of celebrity as well as the unassuming humility he brings to his own work and personal life.
The Berkeley Human Rights Seminar invites distinguished scholars across disciplines to present their recent research on human rights. This seminar features Dirk Moses (European University Institute), discussing "How and Why Did Genocide Become a Non-Political Crime?"
The Course Threads Symposium is a capstone forum for students who have completed all requirements of the Course Threads Program. Students will present on the topics they studied within their thread, discussing the ways in which interdisciplinary course work informed their knowledge of the topic.
Exit Through the Gift Shop focuses on Thierry Guetta, a French immigrant and aspiring filmmaker in Los Angeles who infiltrates the underground street art community and befriends the talented and elusive Banksy. As Guetta documents Banksy’s exploits, he slowly establishes an artistic profile of his own as “Mr. Brainwash,” leaving the audience to wonder who is subject and who is filmmaker.
Panel Discussants: Anthony Cascardi (Dean, Arts & Humanities), Carla Hesse (Dean, Social Sciences), AnnaLee Saxenian (Dean, School of Information) and Thomas Leonard (University Librarian)
Lisbet Rausing, Senior Research Fellow, Imperial College
Dr. Lisbet Rausing is a Senior Research Fellow at Imperial College’s Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine. She is also the founder of the Arcadia Fund, which since 2001 has made grant commitments of over $181 million to preserve endangered treasures of culture and nature. Dr. Rausing is the author of Linnaeus: Nature and Nation as well as numerous scholarly articles, including “Toward a New Alexandria,” (The New Republic, March 2010), which addresses the future of libraries and public access to scholarly resources.
"Apsu and Underworld: Worlds Beneath our Feet"
Part of the lecture series “Return to Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography: New Studies on Heaven and Earth.”
In this series of lectures Avenali Resident Fellow Wayne Horowitz discusses specific aspects of Mesopotamian cosmology, from the heavens above to underworld below. Each of these lectures is open to the public and may be attended separately.