webcast.berkeley: UC Berkeley Events

Lunch Poems - Student Reading

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Various) — Thu, 01 May 2008 00:00:00 +0800

One of the year's most lively events, the student reading includes winners of the following prizes: Academy of American Poets, Cook, Rosenberg, and Yang, as well as students nominated by Berkeley's creative writing faculty, Lunch Poems volunteers, and representatives from student publications.

Support for this series is provided by Mrs. William Main, the Library, The Morrison Library Fund, the dean's office of the College of Letters and Sciences, and the Townsend Center for the Humanities. These events are also partially supported by Poets & Writers, Inc. through a grant it has received from The James Irvine Foundation.

Additional information is available at lunchpoems.berkeley.edu.

The Holloway Series in Poetry - Ariana Reines

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Ariana Reines) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0800

Fierce and wild poetry from the winner of Fence Book's Alberta Prize.

Story Hour in the Library - Melanie Abrams

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Melanie Abrams) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0800

Melanie Abrams' novel, Playing, is forthcoming from Grove/Atlantic in April 2008, and has already been acquired for translation in three different languages. Howard Norman says, "In her arresting debut novel Melanie Abrams is disturbingly expert at exhibiting how erotic obsession makes a courtship a dangerous game indeed. Unpredictable and unforgettable. A stunning writer." Melanie received her M.F.A. from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She currently teaches creative writing at UC Berkeley.

For more information see the Story Hour website

Support for this series is provided by the University Library and the Department of English.

Lunch Poems - Jessica Fisher

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Jessica Fisher) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0800

Jessica Fisher's Frail-Craft was the winner of the prestigious 2006 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. Judge Louise Gl�ck writes, "what gives Jessica Fisher's work its sense of form, of repose, is her perfection of ear. That repose, with its strange mobility, its accommodation of surprise, is Fisher's particular genius." She is a doctoral candidate in English at U.C. Berkeley and is coeditor, with Robert Hass, of The Addison Street Anthology, which chronicles Berkeley's rich poetic history.

Additional information is available at lunchpoems.berkeley.edu.

The Holloway Series in Poetry - Linh Dinh

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Linh Dinh) — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0800

Poetry that "raids and reinvents the language with an ardor bordering on delirium" from Linh Dinh.

Story Hour in the Library - Daniel Mason

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Daniel Mason) — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0800

Daniel Mason lives in California, where he received a medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco. His first novel, The Piano Tuner, published in 2002 and translated into 28 languages, was adapted as an opera and a play, and is currently in production as a film. Reviews across the country have lauded its sensuous lyricism, and its intelligent exploration of topics as wide-ranging as history, medicine, nature, and politics. In 2005, he was a Townsend Fellow at UC Berkeley. He has had short stories on prize-fighting and art and mental illness published in Harper's Magazine. His second novel, A Far Country, was published in 2007.

For more information see the Story Hour website

Support for this series is provided by the University Library and the Department of English.

Lunch Poems - Diane di Prima

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Diane di Prima) — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0800

World-renowned poet Diane di Prima, one of the preeminent writers to emerge from the Beat generation, wrote in Manhattan for many years before relocating to San Francisco, where she has been for nearly four decades. In addition to raising five children, di Prima has studied photography, collage, Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, Sanskrit, and alchemy, all of which inform her intensely lyrical writing. Her 43 books of poetry and prose have been translated into over twenty languages.

Additional information is available at lunchpoems.berkeley.edu.

Blackface Then and Now

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Greil Marcus) — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0800

"Somebody has to black hisself / For somebody else to stay white." So wrote Melvin B. Tolson in the 1930s in A Gallery of Harlem Portraits. Though we may think of blackface performance as a relic of the past ("I saw one of the last blackface minstrel shows," Bob Dylan writes of his boyhood in Hibbing, Minnesota, in the early fifties), cultural critic Greil Marcus will take up the persistence of blackface in contemporary culture, as bad conscience, yearning dream, and indecipherable joke.

Greil Marcus was born in San Francisco in 1945 and grew up in the Bay Area. He earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees in the late 1960s from the UC Berkeley in American Studies and Political Science, respectively. In 1969, he began a career-long relationship with Rolling Stone, becoming the magazine's first record review editor. He served as the book columnist from 1975 to 1980 and is currently a contributing editor.

In 1975, Marcus released his first book, Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music, which is widely regarded as one of the finest and most scholarly studies ever published about Rock 'N' Roll. A distinctive feature of Marcus's writing is his ability to connect Rock 'N' Roll to political and social history. "A critic's job," Marcus explains "is not only to define the context of an artist's work but to expand that context." The book, which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, received rave reviews. The New York Times called Mystery Train "a classic... full of passion and intellectual fervor," while The Washington Post called the book "a remarkable study of 'the very idea of America: complicated, dangerous, and extreme.'"

After the release of Mystery Train, Marcus continued writing book and music columns for magazines while embarking on a nine-year stint researching and writing his next book, Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century (1989). Unlike Mystery Train, which focused exclusively on the influence and context of American artists from bluesman Robert Johnson to Elvis Presley, Lipstick Traces is about European and English movements, ideas, and artists. In the book, "Marcus proposes a genealogy of anarchistic naysayings from the Dadaists to the [French] Situationist International to the Sex Pistols," observed Interview magazine.

Over the past decade, Marcus has continued to write about music and popular culture for Artforum, Interview, the New York Times, Esquire, Salon.com, and other publications. He has taught American Studies seminars at UC Berkeley, Princeton, and the New School University and has lectured throughout the United States and Europe. He has also served on the Board of Directors of the National Book Critics Circle Award (1983-1989).

The Holloway Series in Poetry - Er�n Moure

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Er�n Moure) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0800

Translation and invention from one of Canada's most celebrated poets.
With Trang Cao

Er�n Moure is a well-known Montreal poet in English, and translator of poetry from Galician, Portugese, French and Spanish. O Cadoiro, influenced by the medieval Iberian lyric cantigas, is her most recent book. Her earlier book, Little Theatres, was shortlisted for the Griffen prize in 2005. She has published many books, including O Cidad�n (2002), Sheep's Vigil by a Fervant Person (2001; a translation from the Portugese of Fernando Pessoa), and Charenton (2007; translation from the Galician of Chus Pato). Along with Robert Majzels, she has also translated Nicole Brossard's Installations (2000), Museum of Bone and Water (2003), and Notebook of Roses and Civilazation (2007). Her most recent work can be seen in Chicago Review and No.

Story Hour in the Library - Vikram Chandra

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Vikram Chandra) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0800

Vikram Chandra's best-selling Sacred Games was published in 2007. His previous works include Love and Longing in Bombay and Red Earth and Pouring Rain. The New York Times has praised "the Dickensian sweep" of his depictions of life in Mumbai, and Kirkus Reviews raves, "Chandra's writing is so elegant and so irresistible, it elevates the classic cops-and-robbers story to new heights." He is the winner of the Crossword Prize for English Fiction, the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book (Eurasia region) and the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book, the David Higham Prize, and the Paris Review Discovery prize. He currently divides his time between Mumbai and Berkeley, California, where he teaches creative writing at the University of California.

The location of this event is UC Berkeley, 190 Doe Library

For more information see the Story Hour website

Support for this series is provided by the University Library and the Department of English.

Lunch Poems - Arthur Sze

webcast@media.berkeley.edu ( Arthur Sze) — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0800

The first Chinese American to graduate from U.C. Berkeley and publish a book of poems, Arthur Sze is an internationally known writer and celebrated translator. Jackson Mac Low describes him as, "truly, a poet of clarity and compassion." A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Sze teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts, and is the first poet laureate of Santa Fe, where he resides.

Additional information is available at lunchpoems.berkeley.edu.

The Holloway Series in Poetry - Nathaniel Mackey

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Nathaniel Mackey) — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0800

NATHANIEL MACKEY

Musical, experimental and inventive poetry from the winner of the 2006 National Book Award
With Craig Santos Perez

Influenced by a wide variety of musical traditions, Nathaniel Mackey's mutable and innovative poetry proposes an audience that has abandoned its expectations for poetry and that, instead, is prepared to "enter a liminal state" in which those expectations can be reimagined. Like musical artists John Cage or Ornette Coleman, Mackey presents his poems not as static aesthetic objects, but as ongoing sites of experiment and invention. This is poetry that feels live-- electric, happening right now-- yet it repays reencouter even more fully by teaching its readers first how to listen, and then how to listen differently.

Nathaniel Mackey is the author of five chapbooks and four books of poetry, the most recent of which, Splay Anthem (New Directions, 2006), won the National Book Award for poetry. In addition, he is writing an ongoing prose work, From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate, of which three volumes have been published; volume four, Bass Cathedral, is forthcoming from New Directions in 2008. He is the editor of the literary magazine Hambone and coeditor (with Art Lange) of the anthology Moment's Notice: Jazz in Poetry and Prose (Coffee House Press, 1993). Mackey is also the author of two books of criticism, including Paracritical Hinge: Essays, Talks, Notes, Interviews (U of Wisconsin Press, 2005). He is the recipient of numerous honors, including a Whiting Writer?s Award in 1993 & election to the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets in 2001. Nathaniel Mackey is currently a professor of Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Story Hour in the Library - Oakley Hall, with Michael Chabon

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Oakley Hall, with Michael Chabon) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0800

A celebrated California novelist and Berkeley alum, Oakley Hall has authored more than twenty works, most notably the recent Ambrose Bierce series, and Warlock, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Love and War in California was published in 2007, and like much of his work, focuses primarily on the historical American West. Hall was director of the writing program at the UC Irvine for twenty years, and in 1969 co-founded the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley. Among his many honors are lifetime achievement awards from the PEN Center and induction into the Cowboy Hall of Fame. Hall will read from his work and be interviewed by Michael Chabon, whose most recent work is The Yiddish Policeman's Union.

For more information see the Story Hour website

Support for this series is provided by the University Library and the Department of English.

Lunch Poems - Monica de la Torre

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Monica de la Torre) — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0800

Born in Mexico City, Monica de la Torre came to the United States in 1993 on a Fulbright scholarship to study at Columbia University. Her poetry explores with great depth both the boundaries and the permeability of imposed identity, combining a playful use of form and dry humor with a hint of hopefulness. Talk Shows, her first book in English, was published in 2007 by Switchback Books. De la Torre serves as poetry editor of The Brooklyn Rail.

Additional information is available at lunchpoems.berkeley.edu.

The Holloway Series in Poetry - Rachel Levitsky

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Rachel Levitsky) — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0800

Avant-garde poet and critic Rachel Levitsky is a writer "committed to social and spiritual change." Her poems are often "highly charged, quick-to-read, funny and smart," sometimes vulnerable and bare, and always engrossing.

Before arriving in Berkeley, where she is now a graduate student in the English Department, Gillian Kidd Osborne grew up beside the Hudson River, worked in a bookstore in Paris, finished a B.A. in Comparative Literature at Columbia University, and taught high school English in Japan. Her poetry has appeared in the Threepenny Review.

Lunch Poems - Amiri Baraka

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Amiri Baraka) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0800

Revolutionary poet, playwright, and activist Amiri Baraka is recognized as the founder of the Black Arts Movement, a literary period that began in Harlem in the 1960s and forever changed the look, sound, and feel of American poetry. Baraka (formerly LeRoi Jones) helped to empower African American artists to establish publishing houses, journals, and university ethnic studies programs. His books continue to spark intense political and aesthetic controversy while receiving tremendous critical acclaim.

The Holloway Series in Poetry - Amiri Baraka

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Amiri Baraka) — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0800

Amiri Baraka is a well-known political activist, founder of the Black Arts Movement, and winner of the American Book Award, Amiri Baraka's work is both provocative and thoughtful, aggressive and inquisitive.

Michael Bigley has published, under the surname Zbigley, in Poems Niederngasse, Stickman Review, Triplopia, Gin Bender, Stirring and various other online journals. He has, under his natural surname, also received an MFA from the University of Montana.

The Holloway Series in Poetry - Ted Pearson

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Ted Pearson) — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0800

Ted Pearson's newest work lifts language "into the sphere of pure music, sheer meaningfulness." Come listen to these new works, elaborated over the course of thirty years, but fresh now in their insistence and brilliance.

Sookyoung Lee will also be speaking, coming from the Philly area, the great state of New Jersey, and Seoul. She received her B.A. from Swarthmore College and is currently a graduate student in the English department at UC Berkeley.

Lunch Poems - John Matthias

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (John Matthias) — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0800

Rich in its landscapes and its search for personal discovery, John Matthias' poetry encompasses vast territories of history and culture. Robert Duncan once called Matthias "?one of those wandering souls out of the Dark Age in our own time." He has published more than twenty-five books, twelve of which are poetry, and is the editor of Notre Dame Review. This is his first visit to the west coast in over twenty-five years.

Additional information is available at lunchpoems.berkeley.edu.

California Indian Songs and Stories

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Various) — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0800

Join us for a lively, intelligent evening of storytelling, song, and language. Presenters include Linda Yamane (Rumsien Ohlone), Mike Mirelez (Desert Cahuilla), Ron Goode (North Fork Mono), Clarence Hostler (Hupa/Yurok/Karuk), and Charlie Thom (Karuk).

Supported in part by generous grants from the Fleishhacker Fund and the Consortium for the Arts at UC Berkeley

The Holloway Series in Poetry - Rae Armantrout

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Rae Armantrout) — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0800

Prepare yourself for "transformative and ingenious" work from a highly original and beloved California poet, Rae Armantrout, with graduate poet Charity Ketz.

Rae Armantrout?s poetry occupies a key position in contemporary traditions of experimental lyricism. Angular and ironic, unsettlingly humorous and precise, her work applies deft pressure to the idioms of everyday interaction, consumer culture, and dream. Armantrout?s poems are motivated by an ?activating desire for clarity," and yet it is a clarity that refuses easy certainties or disclosures. Instead, her rigorous lyricism works by way of acute juxtaposition and productive contradictions, creating a thrilling ?vertigo effect?** for its readers.

Her most recent book, Next Life (Wesleyan UP), pushes through narrative surfaces to arrive at the unexpected complexities subtending both language and event. Her "truly philosophical poetry" consistently reveals a "force of mind that contests all assumptions" (NYT Book Review).

Rae Armantrout has published nine books of poetry, including: Up to Speed (Wesleyan 2004), a finalist for the PEN USA Award in Poetry; Veil: New and Selected Poems (2001), also a finalist for the PEN Center USA Award, and The Pretext (2001). In 1998, Atelos Press published her prose memoir, True. She is a professor in the literature department at the University of California, San Diego, where she teaches writing.

Charity Ketz is a recent graduate of the MFA program at Cornell and the recipient of fellowships from the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has published a chapbook, Locust in Bloom, through Poet's Corner Press, and has poems forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Colorado Review, DIAGRAM, New Orleans Review, and Artful Dodge.

Berkeley Writers at Work

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Professor Bonnie Wade, Department of Music) — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0800

Bonnie Wade, Richard and Rhoda Goldman Chair in Interdisciplinary Studies and Chair of the Department of Music, will read from her work, be interviewed about her writing process, and take questions from the audience. Among Prof. Wade's books are "Music in Japan"; "Thinking Musically: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture"; "Imaging Sound: An Ethnomusicological Study of Music, Art and Culture in Mughal India." This is an opportunity to hear from an experienced writer how she researches, drafts, and revises her work.

Strictly Speaking with Garry Wills

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Garry Wills) — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0800

Famed for the depth of his thought and the gracefulness of his writing, Garry Wills has penned more than 30 celebrated and sometimes contentious books on American culture, Catholicism, and politics. His Lincoln at Gettysburg?a close textual analysis of the Gettysburg Address?won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. One of today's most prominent cultural historians, he is also a frequent contributor to the nation's foremost newspapers and magazines. In spellbinding language, Wills moves with ease between American politics, ancient history, and medieval philosophy, and "his thinking often takes him, and us, to unexpected and delightful places" (New York Newsday).

Presented in association with the College of Letters & Science's On the Same Page program.

Lunch Poems - Series Kick-off

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Multiple) — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0800

Hosted by Robert Hass and university librarian Thomas Leonard, the kickoff features distinguished faculty and staff from a wide range of disciplines introducing and reading a favorite poem. This year's participants: Aftab Ahmad (South & Southeast Asian Studies), Ben Braun (Men's Basketball), Janet Broughton (Dean of Letters & Science, Philosophy), Jennifer Dorner (Library), E. Bond Francisco (Physical Plant), Cecil Giscombe (English), Lucia Jacobs (Psychology), Kathleen McCarthy (Classics and Comparative Literature), Paul Parish (Faculty Club), Kay Richards (East Asian Languages and Cultures, Center for Korean Studies).

Additional information is available at lunchpoems.berkeley.edu.

The Holloway Series in Poetry - Annual Faculty Reading

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Multiple) — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0800

The Holloway kicks off its 2007 - 2008 Series with the always lively and wonderful faculty reading. Featuring our troupe of prizewinning professors: Cecil Giscombe, Robert Hass, Lyn Hejinian, Geoffrey G. O'Brien, and John Shoptaw.

Lunch Poems - Student Reading

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Multiple) — Thu, 03 May 2007 00:00:00 +0800

One of the year's most lively events, the student reading includes winners of the following prizes: Academy of American Poets, Cook, Rosenberg, and Yang, students nominated by Berkeley's creative writing faculty, Lunch Poems volunteers, and representatives from student publications.

The Holloway Series in Poetry: Jorie Graham

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Jorie Graham) — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0800

A reading from a Pulitzer Prize winner and "remarkable voice" in contemporary poetry. With graduate poet Jennifer Reimer.

In poems that blend sensuous lyricism with intellectual rigor, Jorie Graham "press[es] language to the breaking point" and forms it into a poetics "so personal that the poems seem to have no author at all: they exist as self made things" (The Nation). Her imaginitive rhetoric investigate a world that keeps slipping, shifting and rearranging itself into a new set of puzzles. It is with curiosity that we follow her down these unexpected portals, emerging into a particular poetry marked by the "charge of the ecstatic and the restraint of the ruminative." Reading Graham's work, what one finds is a poetry full of "clarity, ambition, heart" (jubilat).

Jorie Graham is the author of many books of poetry including Overlord (2005), Never (2002), Swarm (2000), The Errancy (1997) and many others. In 1996 she recieved the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974-1994. In addition, she was appointed as the Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 1997, whee she served until 2003. She has been honored with numerous fellowships and awards, including a MacArthur "Genius" grant. A long-time teacher at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, Grahm is currently the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard.

Lunch Poems: Joanne Kyger

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Joanne Kyger) — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0800

A prominent figure in California?s poetry scene for decades, Joanne Kyger writes poetry influenced by her practice of Zen Buddhism and her ties to the poets of Black Mountain, the San Francisco Renaissance, and the Beat Generation. Her latest collection, About Now: Collected Poems is forthcoming from National Poetry Foundation. She frequently teaches at New College and the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics.

The Art of Political Cartooning: Kevin "Kal" Kallaugher

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Kallaugher, Kevin) — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0800

The UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy Welcomes The Economist's political cartoonist, Kevin "Kal" Kallaugher to discuss the iterpretation of news through drawing cartoons. Learn how to draw George Bush in five minutes and discover how to draw like a professional cartoonist.

Alfred Brendel in Conversation

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Alfred Brendel) — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0800

Alfred Brendel is recognized by audiences the world over for his legendary ability to communicate the emotional and intellectual depths of whatever music he performs. A supreme master of his art, his accomplishments as an interpreter of the great classical and romantic composers--Mozart, Schubert, and others--have earned him a place among the world's most revered musicians. A man of wide-ranging talents, Brendel is also an acclaimed essayist and a published poet. The Townsend Center is pleased to present such a celebrated pianist in conversation with director Anthony J. Cascardi, offering a unique opportunity for audiences to hear Brendel's reflections on music and culture prior to his campus performance on Sunday, March 18.

This event is part of the Townsend Center's inaugural Forum on the Humanities and the Public World. It is presented in association with Cal Performances.

The Holloway Series in Poetry: Joshua Clover

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Joshua Clover) — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0800

Joshua Clover

Lively, stylish and "totally great" poetry from a poet of "fierce power." With graduate poet Colin Dingler.

Clover's work has been praised by theorist Judith Butler for the way that it "brilliantly queries our historical moment in and as form" and it is with an intellectual clarity and linguistic sharpness that he undertakes these poetic investigations. Stylish, textured, intricate, irreverant-- Clover's work is studded with intensity, "social passion" and delight. This is what Wallace Stevens would have called the "never-resting mind" at work, observing, collating and challenging the trappings of "late and lost modernity" and demanding more from the reader, more from the world.

The Totality for Kids is Clover's second book of poems; he received the Walt Whitman Award for his first collection, Madonna anno domini. The excellence of his work has been recognized with inclusion in the Best American Poetry series, two Pushcart Prizes and a fellowship from the NEA.

An associate professor of Literature and Critical Theory at UC Davis, Joshua Clover is an accomplished poet, journalist and cultural critic. His journalism frequently appears in the New York Times and he is the poetry editor for the Village Voice Literary Supplement.

Torture, Human Rights and Terrorism

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Various) — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0800

A panel discussion sponsored by the University of California, Berkeley's Center of Latin American Studies in conjunction with the center's exhibit of Abu Ghraib paintings by famed Colombian artist Fernando Botero.

Panelists include:
- Aryeh Neier, president of George Soros' Open Society Institute, adjunct professor of law at New York University, and founder of Human Rights Watch.
- Jose Zalaquett, president of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, law professor and co-director of the Human Rights Center at the University of Chile Law School, and a writer about the arts in Latin America.
- Jenny S. Martinez, an associate professor of law at Stanford University who defended alleged dirty bomb suspect Jose Padilla in arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2004.
- Philip Zimbardo, former president of the American Psychological Association, the professor emeritus of psychology at Stanford who conducted a famed experiment pitting students posing as guards against those posing as prisoners, and author of a book on Abu Ghraib due out in March.

Lunch Poems: Myung Mi Kim

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Myung Mi Kim) — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0800

Born in Seoul, Korea, Myung Mi Kim travels to the root of language, connecting speech and culture in a rich web of immaculate phrases. Kim strips words to the bone, using fragments and white space to enhance her themes of dislocation and first language loss. She is the author of four books of poetry, including Under Flag, winner of the 1991 Multicultural Publishers Book Award, and Commons (2002).

The Holloway Series in Poetry: Cole Swensen

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Cole Swensen ) — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0800

New poetry from "One of the most assured voices in contemporary poetry"*
With graduate poet Rachel Beck.

Swensen's poetry is filled with delicate and precise illuminations. The ordinary things to which the poet turns her gaze are revealed to be astonishing, full of the withheld, or at least the under-observed.

In her newest collection, The Glass Age (Alice James Books, 2006), she explores the perceptive space of the transparent-- of glass-- revealing, as John Ashbery puts it that "seeing is believing sometimes, but believing is almost always seeing." Her poetry is described as scholarly, meticulous, daring, assured, thoughtful--and like the reflective and penetrable surfaces she describes the poems manage to hold all of these qualities and yet remain utterly luminous.

Cole Swensen is the author of eleven books of poetry, including Goest, which was a National Book Award finalist. She is the recepient of the San Francisco State Poetry Center Book Award, two Pushcart Prizes, a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, and her work was a National Poetry Series Selection. She is on the permenant faculty of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and she divides her time between Iowa, Washington DC and Paris.

*From Library Journal

Does Humor Belong in Buddhism?

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Donald Lopez) — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0800

The Buddha Shakyamuni is said to have asked, "How can anyone laugh who knows of old age, disease, and death?" Despite the severity of this rhetorical question, Buddhists through the centuries and across cultures have incorporated humor into their religious lives. The literary, ritual, and artistic traditions of the Buddhist world contain a variety of humorous and comedic elements that challenge the representation of Buddhism as a humorless doctrine of detached austerity. As a result of this image of Buddhism, scholars have tended to view humorous elements of Buddhist texts and practices as anomalous or marginal rather than as vibrant and vital aspects of Buddhist traditions. This workshop will explore the role of humor in Buddhism from early canonical theories of humor and the unexpectedly robust comedy of the rules for monks and nuns to the outrageous behavior of tantric gurus and Zen Masters.

For more information, see the IEAS website for this event.

Sponsored by the Center for Buddhist Studies.

The Holloway Series in Poetry: Aaron Kunin

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Aaron Kunin) — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0800

A rising star in the poetry world, Kunin is also a literary critic and a novelist. His formally innovative work has been described as "tragicomic," and it is with a certain thrill that one realizes his poems have managed to bundle shame with hilarity, high tension with the highly ridiculous, sharp wit with ominous portents.

His first book, Folding Ruler Star (Fence Books, 2005), was devised as a "value-neutral Paradise Lost" in which the structures of belief, shame, and hierarchy are explored by an agile mind that draws from Hegelian logics, myth, spatial relations and sharp observation of the human.

Aaron Kunin grew up in Minneapolis, was educated at Brown, John Hopkins and Duke, and is an Assistant professor of 18th-century English Literature at Pomona College in Claremont, California. His work has appeared in Boston Review, FENCE, The Germ, No: A Journal of the Arts, The Poetry Project Newsletter, The Poker, and elsewhere.

Lunch Poems: Dunya Mikhail

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Dunya Mikhail) — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0800

DUNYA MIKHAIL

Iraqi poet Dunya Mikhail immigrated to the United States in 1996 after increasing harassment over her poetry, which confronts war and exile with subversive depictions of suffering. In 2001 she was awarded the UN Human Rights Award for Freedom of Writing. The War Works Hard, won PEN?s Award for Poetry in Translation and was selected as one of New York Public Library?s twenty five best books of 2005.

Art and Violence

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (T.J. Clark, Thomas W. Laqueur and Francine Masiello) — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0800

Three Berkeley professors place Botero's "Abu Ghraib" exhibit in historical and artistic context.

T.J. Clark is the George C. and Helen N. Pardee Chair, and a Professor of Art History at UC Berkeley.
Thomas W. Laqueur is the Helen Fawcett Professor of History at UC Berkeley.
Francine Masiello is the Sidney and Margaret Ancker Distinguished Professor in the Humanities and a member of the Departments of Spanish and Portuguese and Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley.

Fernando Botero's "Abu Ghraib" - A Conversation with the Artist

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Fernando Botero) — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0800

Fernando Botero, Artist

in conversation with
Robert Hass, Professor of English, UC Berkeley
Poet Laureate of the United States (1995-1997)

Fernando Botero, the most famous living Latin American artist, will display his Abu Ghraib paintings at the University of California, Berkeley. These 47 paintings and drawings belong to a long tradition of artistic statements against war and violence that include Goya's Caprichos and Picasso's Guernica.

Organized by the Center for Latin American Studies, these paintings have never been displayed in a public institution in the United States. The exhibit was "proposed to many museums in the U.S," according to the artist, but all declined to show it.

The New York Times said the images "do something the harrowing photographs of the naked, blindfolded and tormented prisoners do not: they restore their dignity and humanity without diminishing their agony or the absolute injustice of their situation."

The Financial Times reported, "Full of vivid primary colours, they [the oil paintings and drawings] are reminiscent of the work of socially conscious Mexican muralists such as Jose Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera, artists who fascinated the young Botero in Medellin."

Lunch Poems: Jack Marshall

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Jack Marshall) — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0800

JACK MARSHALL

Born in Brooklyn to an Iraqi father and a Syrian mother, Jack Marshall explores the cultures and cities that shaped his artistic awakening. He is the author of Gorgeous Chaos: New and Selected Poems 1965-2001; Sesame (1993), winner of the PEN West Award and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and From Baghdad to Brooklyn (2005). He resides in the Bay Area.

Naomi Schwartz photo

The Holloway Series in Poetry: Bob Perelman

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Bob Perelman) — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0800

Bob Perelman has been one of the key figures in the Language Writing movement since its incipience in the early 1970s. As editor of Hills magazine, as curator of a long-running Talks series in the Bay Area, and as the author of over ten books of poetry, two major collections of essays on literary culture and poetics, his stance as a major writer and theorist is of indisputable importance. His writings reflect an astute sense of human folly and strong sympathy for the pathos of the human condition.

Ten to One: Selected Poems makes available major work from his first ten books of poetry. His critical works include The Trouble with Genius and The Marginalization of Poetry. Playing Bodies, a mixed media collaboration between Perelman and the painter Francie Shaw, was published in 2002. A resident of the Bay Area from 1976 to 1990, Bob Perelman now teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.

Bob Perelman will be introduced by UC Berkeley English PhD student, Jasper Bernes.

The Holloway Series in Poetry: Heriberto Yepez

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Heriberto Yepez) — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0800

Heriberto Yepez

New work in English from a Tijuana poet, critic and artist.
With graduate poet Dimiter Kenarov.
Introduced by UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies Graduate student, Jennifer Reimer.

Heriberto Yepez is a native of Tijuana, Baja California. He teaches philosophy at the Autonomous University of Baja California (AUBC) and his poetry, as well as his critical and theoretical writings, shows the influence of his philosophical interests, his interest in information systems, and his engagements with cultural clash, as well as cultural theory. Yepez' work is not easily confined within generic boundaries, and his collaborations with other artists and academics reveals an intellecutal and creative fluency in multiple artistic languages. His poetry persuasively challenges the way we might think about the possibilities of a poem or define the category of "poetry".

Already the accomplished author of several books in Spanish, his English work has appeared in journals such as Chain, Tripwire, Shark, and XCP. In his most recent project, Here is Tijuana!, which is due to be published this year in England, Yepez has collaborated with an anthropologist (Fiamma Montezemolo) and an architect (Rene Peralta) to explore and document the ever-changing and often fraught socio-cultural forms of the city. His Babellebab: Non-Poetry on the End of Translation was published in the U.S. by Duration Press in 2003.

Lunch Poems: Will Alexander

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Will Alexander) — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0800

WILL ALEXANDER

Will Alexander has created a contemporary alchemy of surrealist vision in his own electric incandescent language. Coined the C�saire of America, his poetry is full of imagistic and intelligent unraveling. Charles Bernstein calls his latest collection, Exobiology as Goddess, "an exuberant excursion into the hyperreality of the cosmos." A poet, novelist, essayist, and educator, Alexander lives in Los Angeles.

The Holloway Series in Poetry: Fanny Howe

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Fanny Howe) — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0800

FANNY HOWE

With graduate poet Yosefa Raz
Introduced by UC Berkeley English PhD Candidate, Natalia Cecire

One of the most widely read experimental poets today and the author of over twenty books of poetry, fiction, and essays, Fanny Howe hardly requires introduction to the Bay Area poetry community. Howe?s wiry lyrics construct spaces of unsparing sincerity in which to examine and interrogate the embodied qualities of moral abstractions like mercy, guilt, and awe. Scouting through the complex textures of Christian symbolism, she weighs spiritual and political ethics on the same scale, working through their linguistic manifestations in a spirit of true inquiry, an openness to revelation that always remains unflinchingly open. With urgency and subtlety, Howe practices the radicalism of reflectiveness. The meaning of suffering, the thickness of matter, and the prospects of getting cozy in a vertiginous state of spiritual suspension are the grounds of her explorations.

Fanny Howe has won awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Poetry Foundation, the California Council for the Arts, and the Village Voice, among others, and has taught creative writing at several universities, including Tufts, Columbia, Yale, and MIT. She is Professor Emerita of Writing and Literature at the University of California at San Diego. Her most recent publications include On the Ground (Graywolf, 2004), Gone (2003), The Lives of a Spirit / Glasstown: Where Something Got Broken (Nightboat Books, 2005) and a collection of essays, The Wedding Dress: Meditations on Word and Life (University of California Press, 2003).

The Holloway Series in Poetry: Claudia Rankine

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Claudia Rankine) — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0800

CLAUDIA RANKINE

With graduate poet Megan Pugh
Introduced by UC Berkeley English PhD Candidate, Charles Legere

A true poet's poet, Jamaican-born writer Claudia Rankine is sure to engage and arrest even the most jaded of bay area poetry readers. Rankine's poetry is some of the most innovative and thoughful work to emerge in recent years. In a genre-bending and ever fluid set of poems, she continually explores and reanimates the unsettling landscape of contemporary American life, human relationships, media and rhetoric.

In what Robert Creeley calls her "master work" Don't Let Me Be Lonely, (Gray Wolf, 2004), Rankine manages "an extraordinary melding of means to effect the most articulate and moving testament to the bleak times we live in." Blending poetry, images, essay and prose, Rankine's work does more than reflect a disappointing present, it challenges our very way of reading the world, it asks us to see more-- and with her expert guidance, we do.

Winner of the Cleveland State Poetry Prize and recipient of the 2005 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, Claudia Rankine has published 4 books of poetry including Don?t Let Me Be Lonely (Graywolf 2004), PLOT (2001); The End of the Alphabet (1998); and Nothing in Nature is Private (1995). She is also the co-editor of American Women Poets of the 21st Century (Wesleyn UP), and she teaches in the writing program at the University of Houston.

Lunch Poems: Michael Palmer

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Michael Palmer) — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0800

MICHAEL PALMER

The recent recipient of the prestigious Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens award for "outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry," Michael Palmer is regarded as "one of America's most important poets" by Harvard Review. The voice in his poems shifts between one of passive observation and active resistance, graceful and startling in its lyricism and quiet protest. A crucial figure in international poetic dialogue, Palmer has translated into English from Portuguese, Russian, and French, and has had his collections translated into over 25 languages. The author of ten volumes of poetry, most recently Company of Moths, Palmer frequently collaborates with visual artists and composers, including painter Gerard Richter and the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company. Born in Manhattan, Palmer has lived in San Francisco since 1969, and is currently serving as the Poet in Residence at St. Mary's College.

The Holloway Series in Poetry: Lisa Robertson

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Robertson, Lisa) — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0800

HOLLOWAY POET - LISA ROBERTSON

The University is proud to present a feature poetry reading by the 2006 Holloway Lecturer in the Practice of Poetry, Lisa Robertson. Robertson's poetry is full of delights, each one animated by an agile intelligence and a wry wit. Find out what new worlds have been created by the poet who made us rethink the weather and imagine an "Office for Soft Architecture."

The Holloway Series in Poetry: Faculty Reading

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (UC Berkeley Faculty) — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0800

The Annual UC Berkeley Faculty Poetry Reading
Presented by the Holloway Poetry Series

Lisa Robertson

Geoffrey G. O'Brien

Lyn Hejinian &

John Shoptaw

Lunch Poems: Fall 2006 Kick-Off

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (UC Berkeley Faculty & Staff) — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0800

SERIES KICK-OFF

Distinguished faculty and staff from a wide range of disciplines read and discuss a favorite poem. This year's participants include:
Ani Adhikari (Statistics)
Mary Catherine Birgeneau
Patrick Dillon (California Magazine)
Janette Hernandez (Education)
Davitt Moroney (Music)
Charlotte Rubens (Library)
Jonathan Poullard (Dean of Students)
Harsha Ram (Slavic Languages and Literature)
Clare You (Korean Sudies)

The Elegant Gathering: Art, Politics, and Collecting in China

webcast@media.berkeley.edu (Various) — Fri, 12 May 2006 00:00:00 +0800

The Elegant Gathering: Art, Politics, and Collecting in China

Friday, May 12, 2006 to Saturday, May 13, 2006

UC Berkeley Art Museum, 2621 Durant Avenue, Berkeley

SPONSORS: Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley and the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco

Throughout Chinese history the collection of art, calligraphy, and poetry was a social activity among the culturally refined, providing the framework and the pretext for yaji, the "elegant gatherings" of the literati. Collectors, such as the Yeh family, have played an important role in gathering, evaluating and disseminating Chinese art. The Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, and the Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley, jointly sponsored this conference on the collection of Chinese art, in conjunction with the exhibit The Elegant Gathering: The Yeh Family Collection. Accumulated over three generations, the Yeh Family Collection is a treasure trove of Chinese painting and calligraphy dating as far back as the seventh century. A selection of works from the Yeh Collection is on display at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco between March 24 and September 17, 2006.

Keynote Address

Jonathan Hay, New York University The Effects of Imperial Collecting on the Transmission of Chinese Paintings

Panel 1: The Art of Collecting

This panel will address collecting as an art form and the ways in which the collection of art changed or shifted in the modern era. Why did people collect what they collected? What was the meaning of a family collection and how did it change? Are there noticeable shifts in the approach to or the motivations for collecting? In what ways did art collections serve as magnet for social change, conversation and mode of interchange? To what degree did collecting in the modern era spark reconsiderations of the past?

Panel 2: Calligraphy and Poetry

This panel will look at different forms of calligraphy and writing, with attention towards the revitalization of calligraphy as mode of conversation and act of performative display. We are also interested to look at the context of yaji or elegant gatherings and the ways in which aspects of writing - choice of text, inscribing and re-inscribing - intertwine with concepts of gift exchange, reciprocity and exchange of ideas. How did gatherings provide opportunities for expressing one's views indirectly? And function as arenas for development of connoisseurship? What role did calligraphy play in fostering collective spirit and solidifying social alliances? How did historical objects of calligraphy fit into gift exchange?

Panel 3: "Arts and Politics"

The collection of art and the writing of calligraphy were traditionally associated with literati culture and practiced by members of the educated elite. Often these men of letters were also political figures who were quite active in realms of public service. Thus, the practices of collecting, writing and gathering were not without a political dimension and objective. This panel will address collecting as a political endeavor, its role in forming alliances and allegiances with like-minded individuals and political counterparts. How did those with political careers engage with collecting art and writing calligraphy? How did political changes affect art collections and practices of art collecting? In what ways did art tie people together or pull apart those separated by politics?

Full Event Schedule