The symposium will examine how the study of a person’s facial features and expressions, as indicative of ethnicity or character, has evolved from the crossroads of magic, religion, and primitive medicine to our present-day preoccupation with wellness and beauty. The presentations will follow a chronological and intertwining sequence to encompass physiognomic expressions in art, literature,...

Journalist and author Alice Hasters is a major contemporary Black German voice. Her bestselling 2019 book Was weiße Menschen nicht über Rassismus hören wollen, aber wissen sollten (What White People Don’t Want to Hear About Racism, But Should Know Anyway) led to animated public debates about race and racism in Germany. In her lecture, Hasters...

War and flight endanger the literature of affected countries. Authors struggle to survive. They are unable to write. They lose their libraries, manuscripts, pictures and other valuable objects. In response to these political and social challenges, how can we build up an archive for asylum and offer these literatures the place they serve in research?...

UCLA Professors Laure Murat and Efrain Kristal will host a talk and Q&A with Marjorie Perloff.  Marjorie Perloff is Sadie D. Patek Professor of Humanities Emerita at Stanford University. She is also Florence Scott professor Emerita of English at the University of Southern California. Marjorie Perloff, author of numerous books on topics ranging from 20th...

Is it possible to be the historian of one's own family, when one already serves as its archive? What resources exist to enable this undertaking? How might one craft a story from it all? In her talk, Annette Wieviorka will discuss these and related questions, which she grappled with herself upon deciding to tell the intersecting...

Please RSVP here by Friday, May 19th