Karla Mallette is currently working on a monograph, tentatively titled Lives of the Great Languages, which is a theoretical study of the cosmopolitan language system: the trans-regional and trans-historical mega-languages that were the literary media of cultural life in the pre-modern Mediterranean.

Karla Mallette is Professor of Italian and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan.

Due to the AFSCME systemwide strike and UAW local academic student employee sympathy strike scheduled for November 20th, this event has been cancelled. We are in the midst of rescheduling Professor Balakrishnan’s talk for later this academic year.

Following on his earlier work on Adam Smith and David Ricardo, Gopal Balakrishnan’s current work on Marx seeks to demonstrate the logical unity of Marx’s mature economic thought, while recognizing its specifically 19th century assumptions, as well as its incompleteness as an account of the history of capitalism.

Gopal Balakrishnan is Associate Professor of History of Consciousness at UC/Sana Cruz. He is also an Editorial Board Member of New Left Review.

“Camping Masculinity”

Kimberly Lau’s work explores some of the ways that World of Warcraft engages masculinity in play through the convergence of player practices, game designers, and the ongoing interaction between the two.  Reading invocations of hypermasculinity, Lau investigates how everyday “camp” practices might open up alternative spaces and forms of masculine sociality.

Kimberly Lau is Professor of Literature at UCSC.

“‘War Is the Force That Gives Us Meaning’: Militarized Queerness, Lieutenant Dan Choi, and Korean War Mascotry”

Offering a historically layered examination of the rights-based battle waged by former Lt. Dan Choi, son of a war orphan, against the now-defunct policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” this talk inquires into the homology between queer masking in the U.S. military and the Korean War practice of child mascotry.

Christine Hong is Assistant Professor of Literature at UCSC.

“Timely and Untimely Politics: Art and Protest in Early 1960s Japan”

William Marotti explores politics and timeliness by examining the advent of a critical art of the everyday in Japan in the 1960s and its links to political action. Out of sync with eventful mass activism, artists sought to create eventfulness against a state-promoted, depoliticized daily life in the high growth economy.

William Marotti is Associate Professor of History and Chair, East Asian Studies MA Interdepartmental Program at UCLA.

“The Rubble and the Ruin:
Spec Ops: The Line as Anti-War Game”

Soraya Murray is an interdisciplinary scholar of contemporary visual culture, with particular interest in new media and globalization in the arts. In her analysis of photography, film and digital media, Murray seeks to illuminate these technological expressions in their cultural contexts.

Soraya Murray is Assistant Professor of Film and Digital Media and Digital Arts and New Media MFA Program at UCSC.

“Goldfinger” and the Decline of the Classical Hollywood Narrative

The 1964 film Goldfinger, released right after the break-up of the Hollywood studio system, presented a new kind of narrative that did not conform to the classical Hollywood three-act model. In this talk, I will examine how Goldfinger differed dramaturgically from the classical Hollywood style and why, fifty years later, the film’s artistic and financial success remains such a strong influence on almost all Hollywood production.

Ken Selden is a film and television writer/director.

“Bhakti Demands Biography: Crafting the Life of a Tamil Saint”

Blake Wentworth’s current work revolves around a central feature of south Indian political life in premodernity, the mapping of sexuality onto the political domain such that lordly power is beautiful. By tracing the genealogy of this trope, he explores the interplay between ancient Tamil poetics and the wider Sanskrit world.

Blake Wentworth is Assistant Professor of South and South EastAsian Studies at UC- Berkley.

“Teaching Natural Philosophy in the Age of Enlightenment”

Michael Nauenberg has published on the foundations of quantum mechanics and has written extensively on the development of calculus in the seventeenth century with particular reference to the work of Isaac Newton, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and John Barrow. His current work is on Newton’s development of celestial mechanics and gravitation.

Michael Nauenberg is Research Professor of Physics at UCSC.

“The Rice Queen’s Brown Boy Dream: On Pedophilic Modernity, Performance and Queer Asia”

Eng-Beng Lim works on transnational, Asian and queer issues through the lens of performance. His current work is on cultural pedagogies of neoliberal Asia that are produced on the one hand by large-scale transnational theatrical productions and on the other hand by global satellite campuses of U.S. universities in Singapore, Shanghai, Abu Dhabi.

Eng-Beng Lim is Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies at Brown University.