Representations’s Saba Mahmood on the Paris attacks

Saba Mahmood, Professor of Anthropology and member of the Representations Editorial Board, will participate in a panel on the attacks that occurred in Paris on November 13. The event, part of the “Expert Lectures” series sponsored by the Institute for International Studies, will take place on Wednesday, December 2 from 5-7 p.m. in the Booth Auditorium at the UC Berkeley School of Law.

The panel, moderated by Tyler Stovall (Distinguished Professor of History and Dean of Humanities at UC Santa Cruz), will also include Hatem Bazian (Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley), Judith Butler (Comparative Literature, UC Berkeley), Bartolomeo Conti (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales), Jean-Pierre Filiu (Sciences Po, Paris), Christopher Kutz (UC Berkeley School of Law), and Soraya Tlatli (French Department, UC Berkeley).

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Representations’ Michael Lucey in conversation with Rita Felski

Michael Lucey, Professor of French and Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley and member of the Representations editorial board, will participate in a conversation with Rita Felski, William R. Kenan Professor of English at the University of Virginia and editor of New Literary History, on “Attachment Theory,” following Felski’s lecture on the topic.

Felski.Nov.19.20

 

The event will take place on Thursday, November 19 at 5:30 p.m., in the Maude Fife Room (315 Wheeler Hall) at UC Berkeley.

 

Felski will also participate in a colloquium the following day on her recent book, The Limits of Critique, which engages in ongoing debates about modes of reading in which Representations has been central (see Representations 108, “The Way We Read Now” [Fall 2009]). The colloquium will take place in 300 Wheeler Hall on Friday, November 20 from 12-2 p.m.

James Davies presents “Romantic Anatomies of Performance”

Davies_book_Oct_chatJames Q. Davies, Associate Professor of Music Scholarship at UC Berkeley, will present a talk at UC Berkeley entitled “Romantic Anatomies of Performance.” Part of the Berkeley Book Chats series sponsored by the Townsend Center for the Humanities, the event will take place on Wednesday, October 14, from noon to 1pm in the Geballe Room, 220 Stephens Hall.

Davies’s essay, “On Being Moved/Against Objectivity,” is forthcoming in Representations 132. Part of a special forum on “Quirk Historicism,” the essay identifies the ‘‘soft modernist’’ provenance of recent scholarship through an account of musical rocks named and mythologized in the nineteenth century.

 

Still Time to Apply for Representations-Townsend Center Event Grant

Deadline fast approaching: October 15, 5:00 pm.

Representations-Townsend Center Collaborative Grant Competition

Starting in the 2015–2016 academic year, Representations will be collaborating with the Townsend Center for the Humanities to present an annual event—a lecture, colloquium, or symposium—to be held on the UC Berkeley campus.

The event will bring together a small number of people from UC Berkeley and beyond, around a focused theme. It is the hope of the sponsors that the events will lead to a special section in, or a special issue of, Representations and/or result in a volume in the Townsend Center’s Berkeley Forum in the Humanities book series.

Up to $5,000 is offered per proposal. Accepted proposals for Spring 2016 will be announced by November 20.

Call for Proposals

Who may apply: All UCB faculty
What to submit: A detailed proposal of up to 750 words, including names of proposed participants and a rough budget
How to submit: Proposals may be sent via email to Representations: reps@berkeley.edu.
Deadline: October 15

The Problematic Future of Higher Education

rsEUva6TiKzV6x129r9ybVVwx8aFfHapHBRwdSFCQUMKWV9ISAvYxv0wB-emHlIzQqV7fogqDbtzIsr9Pca6YOwWndfWk7Yy7R5xov-8UlH4zJvHTCRu8i8ngfZdJPzvBbyp9biYnJ9U9A=s0-d-e1-ftThe Center for Public Scholarship at The New School for Social Research presents The Problematic Future of Higher Education, a discussion on the ways in which higher education is changing with the demand for outcome-based education, the shift to MOOCs, and the challenging financial landscape students and universities face. The panel discussants include David Bromwich (Sterling Professor of English, Yale University), Andrew Delbanco (Alexander Hamilton Professor of American Studies, Columbia University), Richard Kahlenberg (Senior Fellow, Century Foundation), and Marina Warner (Professor of English and Creative Writing, Birkbeck, University of London). The discussion will be moderated by Kenneth Prewitt (Carnegie Professor of Public Affairs, School of International and Public Affair, Columbia University).

 

The free event will take place on October 13, from 6:15–8:15 pm, at The New School, 55 West 13th Street, New York, NY, in the Theresa Lang Community and Student Center, 2nd Floor.

 

A related discussion can be found in the Representations special issue, “The Humanities and the Crisis of The Public University” (116, Fall 2011).

 

 

Call for Proposals

Representations-Townsend Center Collaborative Grant Competition

Starting in the 2015–2016 academic year, Representations will be collaborating with the Townsend Center for the Humanities to present an annual event—a lecture, colloquium, or symposium—to be held on the UC Berkeley campus.

The event will bring together a small number of people from UC Berkeley and beyond, around a focused theme. It is the hope of the sponsors that the events will lead to a special section in, or a special issue of, Representations and/or result in a volume in the Townsend Center’s Berkeley Forum in the Humanities book series.

Up to $5,000 is offered per proposal. Accepted proposals for Spring 2016 will be announced by November 20.

Call for Proposals

  1. Who may apply: All UCB faculty
  2. What to submit: A detailed proposal of up to 750 words, including names of proposed participants and a rough budget
  3. How to submit: Proposals may be sent via email to Representations: reps@berkeley.edu.
  4. Deadline: October 15

 

Representations’ Stephen Greenblatt on the Humanities

0_GreenblattStephen Greenblatt, Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University and a member of the founding board of Representations, will present a lecture entitled “In the Cave: The Humanities and the Human Condition.” The lecture will take place at 5:00pm on Thursday, September 3 in 315 Wheeler Hall (Maude Fife Room).

One of the oddest features of the Humanities is their almost complete lack of progress. With technology, science, and medicine, we expect and indeed demand the latest, most advanced version; with the Humanities the latest is not necessarily the best, and the aging of work–that is, distance from the immediate circumstances of our lives–simply does not matter. How is that possible? In this lecture, Greenblatt will talk about the paintings in the cave de Chauvet, from 30,000 years ago, and then turn to Gilgamesh, Genesis, and the Iliad. What do these artifacts, among the earliest that survive, have to tell us about the ways that the Humanities make us human?

Ramie Targoff presents “Untying Love’s Knots: Transforming Eros in the Sonnets of Vittoria Colonna”

Ramie Targoff, Professor of English and Director of the Mandel Center for the Humanities at Brandeis University, will present a talk at UC Berkeley entitled “Untying Love’s Knots: Transforming Eros in the Sonnets of Vittoria Colonna.“ The event will take place on Thursday, September 3 at 5:00pm in 300 Wheeler Hall.

Targoff

Targoff’s article, “The Performance of Prayer: Sincerity and Theatricality in Early Modern England,” is available in Representations 60 (Fall 1997). More recently, she also published “Mortal Love: Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and the Practice of Joint Burial” in Representations 120 (Fall 2012).

UC Conference Honors Thomas Laqueur

Conference in Honor of Thomas Laqueur

Helen Fawcett Distinguished Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley

Saturday-Sunday, September 5-6, 2015 | All Day
Social Science Matrix, 8th Floor, Barrows Hall, UC Berkeley

A pioneer of the new cultural history, Thomas Laqueur is a historian who has set intellectual landmarks across a number of fields; he is also a former director of UC’s Townsend Center for the Humanities and one of the founding editors of Representations. Students, friends, and colleagues will gather to celebrate Thomas Laqueur and his contributions to the University of California and his fields of study. Free and open to the public.

Representations’ Lorna Hutson on Henry V

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Lorna Hutson, Berry Professor of English at the University of St. Andrews and corresponding editor of Representations, will present the keynote lecture at the Renaissance and Early Modern Studies Designated Emphasis Annual Conference at UC Berkeley. The conference takes place from 12:30-5pm on Friday, April 24, in the Geballe Room at the Townsend Center for the Humanities. Hutson’s keynote address, entitled “‘Impounded as a Stray’: History, Law and Scottish Sovereignty in Henry V,” will begin at 3:30pm.

Hutson’s most recent essay for Representations, “Imagining Justice: Kantorowicz and Shakespeare,” appeared in the Spring 2009 issue (106) as part of a special forum that she edited, “Fifty Years of The King’s Two Bodies.”