Past Events

A public reading by Una's Lecturer J.M. Coetzee.

South-African novelist, literary critic, and translator J.M. Coetzee is the recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature and a two-time winner of the Booker Prize. His writing often uses his country's apartheid system and its post-apartheid transition as a mirror for the bleakness of the human condition.

A colloquium with Wendy Ewald, Gilles Peress (photojournalist), and Wendy Lesser (The Threepenny Review).

Photographer and educator Wendy Ewald is known for her documentary-style investigations of places and communities, which probe questions of identity and cultural differences. Ewald collaborates with children, families, and women around the world, often encouraging them to use cameras to record themselves, their families, and their communities.

Panel Discussants: Mike Davis, David Reid (writer) and Kerwin L. Klein (History)

While urban theorist and social commentator Mike Davis holds degrees in History from UCLA and the University of Edinburgh, his work exceeds and expands the usual definition of historical writing. He is best known for his investigations of power and social class in his native Southern California. Davis’ City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles won the Issac Deutscher Award from the London School of Economics and the award for Best Book in Urban Politics from the American Political Science Association.

Panel Discussants: Mike Davis, Susanna Elm (History) and Victoria Nelson (writer)

While urban theorist and social commentator Mike Davis holds degrees in History from UCLA and the University of Edinburgh, his work exceeds and expands the usual definition of historical writing. He is best known for his investigations of power and social class in his native Southern California.

Panel Discussants: Ivan Klíma, Poet Czesław Miłosz (Emeritus, Slavic Languages and Literatures, UC Berkeley), Martina Moravcová (Philosophy, Charles University, Prague) and Michael Henry Heim (Slavic Languages and Literatures, UCLA)