BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//Comparative Literature - UCLA - ECPv6.17.0//NONSGML v1.0//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://complit.ucla.edu X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Comparative Literature - UCLA REFRESH-INTERVAL;VALUE=DURATION:PT1H X-Robots-Tag:noindex X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT1H BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Los_Angeles BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0800 TZOFFSETTO:-0700 TZNAME:PDT DTSTART:20230312T100000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0700 TZOFFSETTO:-0800 TZNAME:PST DTSTART:20231105T090000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0800 TZOFFSETTO:-0700 TZNAME:PDT DTSTART:20240310T100000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0700 TZOFFSETTO:-0800 TZNAME:PST DTSTART:20241103T090000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0800 TZOFFSETTO:-0700 TZNAME:PDT DTSTART:20250309T100000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0700 TZOFFSETTO:-0800 TZNAME:PST DTSTART:20251102T090000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0800 TZOFFSETTO:-0700 TZNAME:PDT DTSTART:20260308T100000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0700 TZOFFSETTO:-0800 TZNAME:PST DTSTART:20261101T090000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0800 TZOFFSETTO:-0700 TZNAME:PDT DTSTART:20270314T100000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0700 TZOFFSETTO:-0800 TZNAME:PST DTSTART:20271107T090000 END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260522T140000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260522T170000 DTSTAMP:20260512T170219Z CREATED:20260407T011814Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260512T170219Z UID:8281-1779458400-1779469200@complit.ucla.edu SUMMARY:Roundtable on Banu Bargu's Disembodiment: Corporeal Politics of Radical Refusal | Program in Experimental Critical Theory DESCRIPTION:The UCLA Experimental Critical Theory Program and UC Berkeley Labor\, Philosophy\, and Change Working Group Present:\n  \n\n  \nRoundtable on Banu Bargu’s Disembodiment: Corporeal Politics of Radical Refusal \n  \n  \nFriday\, May 22\, 2026 \n2:00 – 5:00 pm \nKaplan Hall Room #348 (third floor) \n415 Portola Plaza \nLos Angeles\, CA 90095 \nIn person only \n  \nAdvanced registration is required by Wednesday\, May 20\, 2026. \nREGISTER HERE \n  \nDisembodiment examines self-destruction\, self-injury\, and radical self-endangerment as unconventional performances of refusal that are erased\, marginalized\, and distorted by metanarratives of history as progress and agency as freedom. From the death-acts of enslaved Africans\, hunger strikes of woman suffragists\, and Gandhian fasting practices to the self-incineration of Bouazizi\, hunger and thirst strikes in the Maze and Guantánamo\, and lip-sewing practices of migrants and asylum seekers at the borders of the Global North today\, Bargu traces a bleak repertoire of contention performed by the oppressed. As a work in global critical theory whose normative compass is the suffering body\, Disembodiment brings together corporeal enactments of defiance from the Global South with major thinkers of Western modernity and prominent critical-theoretical traditions of the twentieth century. \n  \nPANELISTS \n\nDylan Fagan (Tracing Patterns Foundation)\nEleanor Kaufman (UCLA)\nNejat Kedir (UC Berkeley)\nWarren Montag (Occidental College)\nDavide Panagia (UCLA)\nJoseph Serrano (UC Berkeley)\n\n  \nRESPONSE \n\nBanu Bargu (UC Santa Cruz)\n\nBanu Bargu is professor in History of Consciousness at the University of California\, Santa Cruz\, where she is also affiliated graduate faculty in Politics and the Center for the Middle East and North Africa. Bargu is a political theorist\, whose transdisciplinary research draws upon continental philosophy\, anthropology\, global history\, and Middle East studies around questions of the body\, resistance practices\, exceptional regimes\, violence\, and carcerality. She is the author of two books: Disembodiment: Corporeal Politics of Radical Refusal (Oxford UP\, 2024)\, which is the co-winner of the 2025 David Easton Award\, and Starve and Immolate: The Politics of Human Weapons (Columbia UP\, 2014)\, which was the recipient of the 2015 First Book Award\, both given by the Foundations of Political Theory section of the American Political Science Association. Banu Bargu currently serves as the editor of Political Theory. \n  \nAbout the Program in Experimental Critical Theory \nThe focus of the 2025-2026 Experimental Critical Theory seminar (COM LIT250)\, taught by Professor Eleanor Kaufman\, is “Structure.” \n  \nParking for Campus Visitors \nThe closest parking structures to Kaplan Hall are Structure 2\, Structure 3 North\, Structure 4 and Structure 5. Parking rates vary by structure\, so please refer to the rates here. Guest parking is available on a first come\, first served basis. Please plan on arriving early to the event if you are not familiar with the campus or parking structures. \n  \nThe UCLA Comparative Literature department is not responsible for any tickets or citations received by event attendees. For further assistance\, please contact the UCLA Transportation department directly. \n  \nVISITOR PARKING AREAS: \n♦ Structure 2: Structure 2 has pay stations for visitors on the first and second floors. These floors are the only floors with visitor parking; there are also signs indicating which parking stalls are for visitors. The Google Maps link for the visitor’s section (“Pay Station Parking”) is here. \n♦ Structure 3 North: Parking Structure 3 North\, Visitor’s Section is located at 215 Charles E Young Dr N\, Los Angeles\, CA 90024. The parking structure has visitor parking in levels 1\, 2 and 3. The Google Maps link to the visitor’s section (“Pay Station Parking”) is here. \n♦ Structure 4: Parking Structure 4\, Visitor’s Section is located at 221 Westwood Plaza\, Los Angeles\, CA 90095. The parking structure has visitor parking in level 1\, and the entrance will state “Visitor’s Section” that guests enter through. The Google Maps link to the visitor’s section is here . \n♦ Structure 5: Parking Structure 5\, Visitor’s Section is located at 405 Portola Plaza\, Los Angeles\, CA 90095. The parking structure has visitor parking in both levels 4 and 6\, and the entrance will state “Visitor’s Section” that guests enter through. The link to the visitor’s section is here . \n  \nHOW TO PAY FOR PARKING:\nSelf-service pay stations are located in all visitor parking areas. Visitors must pay for parking BEFORE they leave their vehicles. Visitor parking permits are not valid in parking stalls outside of the visitor parking section of the structure and stalls posted for Blue and X permits or otherwise reserved.  \n\nAll self-service pay stations use pay-by-plate technology.\n2.Once parked\, go to the nearest parking pay station\n3. Enter your license plate number. If you do not have a license plate number\, please enter the last 6 (six) digits of your Vehicle ID Number (VIN). Your VIN can be found on the driver’s side door or the lower driver’s side of the windshield.\n4. Choose the amount of time that you would like to spend on campus.\n5. Pay using the exact cash amount or with a credit card. For those using their VIN\, please place your receipt on your dashboard\, otherwise nothing else is required. Pay stations do not provide change. There are no refunds for pay station purchases.\n\n  \nAdditional visitor parking information can be found on the UCLA Transportation website. URL:https://complit.ucla.edu/event/roundtable-on-banu-bargus-disembodiment-corporeal-politics-of-radical-refusal-program-in-experimental-critical-theory/ LOCATION:Kaplan Hall 348\, 415 Portola Plaza\, Los Angeles\, CA\, 90095\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://complit.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Banu-Bargu-flyer-2-1.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260515T130000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260515T180000 DTSTAMP:20260512T210422Z CREATED:20260109T011755Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260512T210422Z UID:8075-1778850000-1778868000@complit.ucla.edu SUMMARY:Jameson in California – and Beyond DESCRIPTION:Friday\, May 15\, 2026\n1:00 – 6:00 PM\nKaplan Hall Room #193 (first floor) \nIn person only \n  \nAdvance Registration \nAdvance registration is required for catering purposes. \nREGISTER TO ATTEND HERE \n  \nThis day-long event will focus on Fredric Jameson’s intellectual\, educational\, and now archival legacy and engagement in California\, and beyond. The conference will feature scholarly papers\, personal reflections\, archival updates\, and multimedia works. \n  \nSpeakers featured\n\nAditya Bahl\, UCLA\nEric Cazdyn\, University of Toronto\nSaree Makdisi\, UCLA\nAnjali Prabhu\, UCLA\nKim Stanley Robinson\, UCSD\nJason E. Smith\, ArtCenter College of Design\nAudra Eagle Yun\, UCI Critical Theory Archive\n\n  \nCosponsors\nThis event is co-sponsored by the UCLA Program in Experimental Critical Theory\, Department of English\, Department of Political Science\, Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies\, Department of Spanish & Portuguese\, and Department of Comparative Literature\, and by the UC Berkeley Labor\, Philosophy\, and Change Working Group \n  \nParking for Campus Visitors \nThe closest parking structures to Kaplan Hall are Structure 2\, Structure 3 North\, Structure 4 and Structure 5. Parking rates vary by structure\, so please refer to the rates here. Guest parking is available on a first come\, first served basis. Please plan on arriving early to the event if you are not familiar with the campus or parking structures. \nThe UCLA Comparative Literature department is not responsible for any tickets or citations received by event attendees. For further assistance\, please contact the UCLA Transportation department directly. \n  \nVISITOR PARKING AREAS: \n♦ Structure 2: Structure 2 has pay stations for visitors on the first and second floors. These floors are the only floors with visitor parking; there are also signs indicating which parking stalls are for visitors. The Google Maps link for the visitor’s section (“Pay Station Parking”) is here. \n♦ Structure 3 North: Parking Structure 3 North\, Visitor’s Section is located at 215 Charles E Young Dr N\, Los Angeles\, CA 90024. The parking structure has visitor parking in levels 1\, 2 and 3. The Google Maps link to the visitor’s section (“Pay Station Parking”) is here. \n♦ Structure 4: Parking Structure 4\, Visitor’s Section is located at 221 Westwood Plaza\, Los Angeles\, CA 90095. The parking structure has visitor parking in level 1\, and the entrance will state “Visitor’s Section” that guests enter through. The Google Maps link to the visitor’s section is here . \n♦ Structure 5: Parking Structure 5\, Visitor’s Section is located at 405 Portola Plaza\, Los Angeles\, CA 90095. The parking structure has visitor parking in both levels 4 and 6\, and the entrance will state “Visitor’s Section” that guests enter through. The link to the visitor’s section is here . \n  \nHOW TO PAY FOR PARKING:\nSelf-service pay stations are located in all visitor parking areas. Visitors must pay for parking BEFORE they leave their vehicles. Visitor parking permits are not valid in parking stalls outside of the visitor parking section of the structure and stalls posted for Blue and X permits or otherwise reserved.  \n\nAll self-service pay stations use pay-by-plate technology.\n2.Once parked\, go to the nearest parking pay station\n3. Enter your license plate number. If you do not have a license plate number\, please enter the last 6 (six) digits of your Vehicle ID Number (VIN). Your VIN can be found on the driver’s side door or the lower driver’s side of the windshield.\n4. Choose the amount of time that you would like to spend on campus.\n5. Pay using the exact cash amount or with a credit card. For those using their VIN\, please place your receipt on your dashboard\, otherwise nothing else is required. Pay stations do not provide change. There are no refunds for pay station purchases.\n\nAdditional visitor parking information can be found on the UCLA Transportation website. \n  URL:https://complit.ucla.edu/event/ect-jameson-conference/ LOCATION:Kaplan Hall 193\, CA\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://complit.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/51526-Jameson-in-CA-program-6.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260509T180000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260509T210000 DTSTAMP:20260425T000202Z CREATED:20260407T181834Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260425T000202Z UID:8287-1778349600-1778360400@complit.ucla.edu SUMMARY:Women of the World DESCRIPTION:REGISTER TO ATTEND HERE \n  \nUCLA’s Comparative Literature Graduate Student Association is pleased to present Women of the World\, an evening of commemoration for the struggles of women around the world. \n  \nThis event will take place on Saturday\, May 9\, 2026 from 6pm-9pm at: \nBeyond Baroque Literary Arts Center \n681 Venice Blvd. \nVenice\, CA 90291 URL:https://complit.ucla.edu/event/8287/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://complit.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Women-of-the-world-updated-flyer.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260430T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260430T180000 DTSTAMP:20260407T005404Z CREATED:20260109T011620Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260407T005404Z UID:8073-1777564800-1777572000@complit.ucla.edu SUMMARY:Dean’s Lecture in Humanistic Inquiry: Kate Manne on Sensitivity and Survival DESCRIPTION:The Inaugural Dean’s Lecture in Humanistic Inquiry\n  \nThursday\, April 30\n4 p.m. – 6 p.m.\nRoyce Hall Room 314 \n  \nFree admission. Reception with light refreshments to follow lecture. Advance registration strongly recommended. \n  \nPresented by the UCLA College Division of Humanities\nThe Dean’s Lecture in Humanistic Inquiry is a biennial lecture dedicated to exploring cross-cutting topics and ideas in humanistic research and examining how humanistic inquiry connects to the most pressing questions of the day. \n  \nAbout our inaugural speaker\nKate Manne is a professor at the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University. She specializes in moral\, social and feminist philosophy\, and has written three books: DOWN GIRL: The Logic of Misogyny (Oxford University Press\, 2018)\, ENTITLED: How Male Privilege Hurts Women (Crown\, 2020) and UNSHRINKING: How to Face Fatphobia (Crown\, 2024). In addition to her academic work\, she regularly writes opinion pieces and essays for a wider audience\, including in outlets such as The New York Times\, The Cut\, The Washington Post\, The Atlantic\, The Nation and Time. She writes a Substack newsletter\, More to Hate\, exploring misogyny\, fatphobia and their intersection. \n  \nAbout Professor Manne’s lecture\n  \nSensitivity and Survival\nAccusations of oversensitivity are nowadays very common. Are they typically warranted? Is there in fact a scourge of snowflakes? \nIn this lecture\, Kate Manne will distinguish three things that are commonly meant by “oversensitivity”: over-identification of instances\, over-extension of the relevant concepts and over-reactions to the relevant harms or forms of injustice\, such as sexism\, misogyny and racism. Her talk will draw on two rich humanistic traditions: feminist epistemology and non-ideal theory. \nWhile acknowledging that oversensitivity of all three kinds can and does occur\, Manne will highlight and explore the comparatively under-emphasized converse dangers: the under-identification of instances\, the under-extension of concepts\, and under-reactions or the undermining of warranted reactions\, respectively. In view of this\, she concludes that what is called oversensitivity is often simply sensitivity: a normatively valuable and justified way of reacting to harms and injustices that often go under the radar in society as we know it. \nPlease visit this page to register. \n  \nEvent cosponsors\nThank you to our cosponsors: UCLA Department of Philosophy\, UCLA Department of Gender Studies\, UCLA Center for the Study of Women | Streisand Center\, and UCLA Program in Experimental Critical Theory URL:https://complit.ucla.edu/event/ect-kate-manne-talk-in-person/ LOCATION:Royce Hall 314\, 10745 Dickson Court\, Los Angeles\, CA\, 90095\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://complit.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/2026-02-Kate-Manne-graphic-for-event-calendar-1400x936-1-900x600-1.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260414T170000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260414T183000 DTSTAMP:20260317T224116Z CREATED:20260109T011439Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260317T224116Z UID:8071-1776186000-1776191400@complit.ucla.edu SUMMARY:Living on After Failure. A Talk with Irving Goh | Program in Experimental Critical Theory DESCRIPTION:The Program in Experimental Critical Theory presents\nLiving on After Failure\nA Talk with Irving Goh\n\nTuesday\, April 14\, 2026\n5:00pm PDT\nKaplan Hall Room #348\nIn person\n  \n\n\nAdvanced Registration\nAdvanced registration is required by Friday\, April 10\, 2026. \nREGISTER TO ATTEND HERE \n  \n  \nAbout the Talk\nIn this talk\, Irving Goh will present on his latest book\, Living On After Failure (Duke UP\, 2025). He will share his thoughts on failure as failure\, that is\, failure without recuperation\, failure as all negativity. Such a thinking of failure as a thorough impasse not only resists narratives of progress and ideologies of success and their accompanying notions of grit and resilience. It also registers\, at the ontological level\, the affective structure of existence. Professor Goh will also discuss the literary texts that inform his work on failure. \n  \nReadings to be discussed are listed below and are available on the ECT site: \n\nIntroduction and Ch. 3 of Living On After Failure.\n\n  \n  \nAbout the Speaker\nIrving Goh is Professor of Comparative Literature at Emory University. He is the author of The Reject: Community\, Politics\, and Religion after the Subject (Fordham UP\, 2014)\, which won the MLA 23rd Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for French and Francophone Studies\, L’existence prépositionnelle (Galilée\, 2019)\, The Deconstruction of Sex (with Jean-Luc Nancy\, Duke UP\, 2021)\, and most recently\, Living On After Failure (Duke UP\, 2025). His next book\, Touching Literature\, or the Experience of the Limit\, will be published by Cornell UP this summer 2026. For his current book projects\, he is interested in the end(s) of work\, world literature and the question of citizenship\, and theorizing the Asian figure. \n  \n  \nAbout the Program in Experimental Critical Theory\nThe focus of the 2025-2026 Experimental Critical Theory seminar (COM LIT250)\, taught by Professor Eleanor Kaufman\, is “Structure.” \n  \n  URL:https://complit.ucla.edu/event/ect-irving-goh-zoom-talk/ LOCATION:Kaplan Hall 348\, 415 Portola Plaza\, Los Angeles\, CA\, 90095\, United States END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260306T143000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260306T160000 DTSTAMP:20260305T220437Z CREATED:20260218T184749Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260305T220437Z UID:8204-1772807400-1772812800@complit.ucla.edu SUMMARY:Forms of Mobility: Genre\, Language and Media in African Literary Cultures DESCRIPTION:Waiting on Forever by Franco The Creator Mbilizi. Image courtesy of Stephanie Bosch Santana. \n  \n  \nFriday\, March 6\, 2026 \n2:30pm \nKaplan Hall Room #348 (third floor) \nIn person \n  \nREGISTER TO ATTEND HERE \n  \n  \nAbout the Talk \nIn this talk\, Stephanie Bosch Santana discusses her first monograph\, Forms of Mobility: Genre\, Language\, and Media in African Literary Cultures\, published by Northwestern University Press in 2025. Based on an unstudied archive of texts in English and Chichewa/Nyanja from Malawi\, South Africa\, Zimbabwe\, and Zambia\, Forms of Mobility proposes alternate categories of fiction—migrant forms\, township tales\, weekend stories\, pan African time machines\, and digital diaries—through which to examine how writers envisaged the region’s changing literary and political terrains. By reading these forms “in motion\,” as they travel across space\, time\, genre\, language\, and between publications and platforms\, this study limns multiple centers of literary influence and relation across the southern African and Black diasporas and reveals forms of literary mobility and space-making that are occluded by current models of world literature. \n  \n  \nAbout the Author \nStephanie Bosch Santana is the co-editor of Digital Africas\, a special issue of Postcolonial Text (2020)\, and has contributed essays on digital and print literatures and reading cultures to the Routledge Handbook of African Literature (2019) and A Companion to African Literatures (Wiley-Blackwell\, 2021). From 2006-2008\, she assisted with South Africa’s BTA/Anglo Platinum short story competition and is co-founder of the Malawian Girls’ Literary Competition\, which celebrates young women’s writing in English and Chichewa. \n  \n  URL:https://complit.ucla.edu/event/forms-of-mobility-genre-language-and-media-in-african-literary-cultures/ LOCATION:Kaplan Hall 348\, 415 Portola Plaza\, Los Angeles\, CA\, 90095\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://complit.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Waiting-on-Forever.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260304T163000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260304T173000 DTSTAMP:20260224T000646Z CREATED:20260109T011205Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260224T000646Z UID:8067-1772641800-1772645400@complit.ucla.edu SUMMARY:Good Vibes Only. A Book Presentation by Robin James | Program in Experimental Critical Theory DESCRIPTION:Wednesday\, March 4\, 2026\n4:30pm\nHershey Hall Salon\, Hershey Hall\nIn person \n  \nAdvance Registration \nPlease note there is limited seating available\, and advance registration is required. \nRegister to attend here. \n  \nThe UCLA Livescu Initiative on Neuro\, Narrative\, and AI (NNAI) is partnering with the Program in Experimental Critical Theory\, the Department of Political Science\, and the Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies\, to host a talk by renowned independent scholar and editor Dr. Robin James about her upcoming book\, “Good Vibes Only“. \n  \nPlease contact marranz@socgen.ucla.edu for any questions.  \n  \n\n  \nA follow-up to The Sonic Episteme\, this book attends to the relationship between biopower’s quantitative and qualitative dimensions. My previous book demonstrated the ways sound\, as a frequency\, was used to translate statistical normalization\, or the measurement of the most frequent frequencies in a population\, into qualitative terms. This book argues that phenomenological orientation or horizon has a similar function in contexts such as recommender algorithms and the density models used in contemporary AI and Machine Learning where probability is modeled as something other than a normalized distribution. Phenomenology is uniquely well-suited to theorize these models that as Amoore\, Cooper\, Joque\, and others have argued\, blend hard math with subjective intuition\, as (per philosophers like Shiloh Whitney)\, phenomenology\, unlike affect theory\, rejects the strict separation between what we can very loosely call “mind” and “body” (cognitive content and felt sense). \n  \nThese mathematical models have been vernacularized as “vibes”\, which are qualitative categories that everyone from 2020s social media users to music streaming services use to define the same sorts of orientations or tendencies that vectors model mathematically. “Vibes” are a lay term for more or less the same phenomenon philosophers call phenomenological orientations or horizons. Studying late 2010s and early 2020s internet culture and American popular music from the 1970s through today\, the book shows how orientations are policed not for their normativity\, but for their lineage – or rather\, their capacity to carry forward the patriarchal racial capitalist distribution of wealth and personhood into presently-counterfactual realities. Then\, in the final chapter\, I argue that although my theory and critique of the biopolitics of algorithmic legitimation is grounded in 21st century Anglophone feminist of color phenomenology\, the fact of orientation not inherently or necessarily critical of patriarchal racial capitalist power relations—Heidegger’s whole project is oriented towards what he calls “spiritual National Socialism.”  In order to orient ourselves otherwise\, what matters is to whom we collectively choose to orient ourselves toward\, and from whom we orient ourselves away. In this respect\, Beauvoir’s existential phenomenology\, which frames (re)orientation or (re) “situation” as a matter of choosing some people and some values over (and against) others\, is a helpful theoretical model for imagining how we might do phenomenology otherwise. \n  \n  \n  \n  URL:https://complit.ucla.edu/event/ect-robin-james-talk-in-person/ LOCATION:Hershey Hall Salon ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://complit.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Poster-1-720x960-1.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260303T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260303T170000 DTSTAMP:20260227T230244Z CREATED:20260220T232928Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260227T230244Z UID:8223-1772553600-1772557200@complit.ucla.edu SUMMARY:AT CAPACITY | A Presentation with Director Glorimar Marrero DESCRIPTION:Image courtesy of director Glorimar Marrero Sánchez. \n  \nTuesday\, March 3\, 2026\n4:00pm\nLydeen Library\, Rolfe Hall Room #4302\nIn person. Advance registration required. \n  \nAdvance Registration Required \nSeating is limited and advance registration is required. \nPlease note that this event is at capacity and we can no longer accept RSVPs. The event organizers will reach out to confirm attendance with individuals who already RSVPd on Friday\, February 27. We will be checking names of confirmed attendees at the event and will not be able to accommodate you if you are not on the list. Thank you for your understanding! \n  \nFor questions or concerns\, please contact Lisset at lisset@humnet.ucla.edu \n  \n  \nThis talk is co-sponsored by the Department of Comparative Literature and the Department of Spanish & Portuguese.  \n  \nAbout the Talk \nPuerto Rican filmmaker and interdisciplinary artist Glorimar Marrero Sánchez works across fiction\, hybrid cinema\, installation\, and photography to explore the intersections of colonialism\, environment\, embodiment\, and health in the Caribbean. This event will feature excerpts from her award-winning debut feature La Pecera (The Fishbowl)\, which premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and became the first Puerto Rican film nominated for the Goya Award for Best Ibero-American Film\, followed by presentations of her current projects. \nMarrero Sánchez’s work engages the ongoing health and environmental crisis in Vieques\, where decades of U.S. military activity left a legacy of contamination and chronic illness. Her interdisciplinary project UNDERWATER / BAJO AGUA examines these afterlives through questions of ecological justice\, colonial violence\, and community survival. \nA response by Ana Ugarte\, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature\, will follow the presentation and lead into audience discussion. \n  URL:https://complit.ucla.edu/event/a-presentation-with-director-glorimar-marrero/ LOCATION:Rolfe Hall 4302\, Lydeen Library ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://complit.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/La-pecera-poster.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260225T133000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260225T143000 DTSTAMP:20260218T184928Z CREATED:20260109T010905Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260218T184928Z UID:8065-1772026200-1772029800@complit.ucla.edu SUMMARY:CANCELLED Undergraduate Research Resources DESCRIPTION:  \nTHIS EVENT IS CANCELLED\n  \nWednesday\, February 25\, 2026\n1:30-2:30 pm\nKaplan Hall Room #348 (third floor)  \n\n  \n\nJoin us for an event highlighting undergraduate research resources and opportunities\, featuring guest speaker Dr. Jacquelyn Ardam\, Director of the Undergraduate Research Center for the Humanities\, Arts\, and Social Sciences. URL:https://complit.ucla.edu/event/undergraduate-research-event/ LOCATION:Kaplan Hall 348\, 415 Portola Plaza\, Los Angeles\, CA\, 90095\, United States END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260223T150000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260223T163000 DTSTAMP:20260203T232837Z CREATED:20260109T010801Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260203T232837Z UID:8063-1771858800-1771864200@complit.ucla.edu SUMMARY:Psychoanalysis and Structure. A Talk with A. Kiarina Kordela | Program in Experimental Critical Theory DESCRIPTION:The Program in Experimental Critical Theory presents\nPsychoanalysis and Structure \nA Talk with A. Kiarina Kordela\n\nMonday\, February 23\, 2026\n3:00-4:30pm PST\nVia Zoom\n\n  \nAdvanced Registration\nAdvanced registration is required by Friday\, February 20\, 2026. The Zoom meeting link will be sent end of day on February 20. \nREGISTER TO ATTEND HERE \n  \nAbout the Talk\nBased on the introduction to Epistemontology\, its third chapter\, “Psychoanalysis and Structuralism\,” shows the necessary interconnection between capitalist economy and psychoanalytic thought. It does so by reading together (a) Spinozian monism—as the first philosophical system that conceived of being (substance) in structural terms; (b) Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism—as the groundwork for a secular epistemontological theory; (c) Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis—as instrumental in the formulation of properly structuralist thought; and (d) Deleuze’s account of structuralism—as presented in his “How Do We Recognize Structuralism?” (1967/1973). While Laplanche and Pontalis serve as background for teasing out the structuralist epistemology of psychoanalysis\, I set Deleuze in dialogue with Alexandre Kojève in order to reveal Deleuze’s theoretical trajectory as an attempt to preempt possible objections (of Hegelian origin) to all three: Spinoza\, structuralism\, and psychoanalysis. \n  \nReadings to be discussed are listed below and are available on the ECT site: \n\nA. Kiarina Kordela\, “Psychoanalysis and Structuralism” from Epistemontology in Spinoza-Marx-Freud-Lacan: The (Bio)Power of Structure (Routledge\, 2018)\nJean Laplanche and J. B. Pontalis\, “Fantasy and the Origins of Sexuality” (1964)\n\n\n\n  \nAbout the Speaker\nA. Kiarina Kordela is Professor of German Studies and founding Director of the Crit­ical Theory Program at Macalester College\, St. Paul\, Minnesota\, USA. She has pub­lished in fields that range from intellectual history\, philosophy\, critical and political theory to literary\, film\, and cultural analysis. She is the author of numerous articles\, as well as of Epistemontology in Spinoza\, Freud\, Marx\, Lacan (Routledge\, 2018)\, Being\, Time\, Bios: Capitalism and Ontology (SUNY Press\, 2013)\, and Surplus (SUNY Press\, 2007)\, and the co-editor of two volumes on Spinoza’s Authority (Bloomsbury\, 2018) and one on Freedom and Confinement in Modernity: Kafka’s Cages (Palgrave-Macmillan\, 2011). \n  \n\nAbout the Program in Experimental Critical Theory\nThe focus of the 2025-2026 Experimental Critical Theory seminar (COM LIT250)\, taught by Professor Eleanor Kaufman\, is “Structure.” URL:https://complit.ucla.edu/event/ect-kiarina-kordela-zoom-talk/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://complit.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/BTB-CoverNoTitle.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260220T150000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260220T163000 DTSTAMP:20260212T174250Z CREATED:20260203T232828Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260212T174250Z UID:8192-1771599600-1771605000@complit.ucla.edu SUMMARY:Marx’s Late Writings: Theories of revolutionary change and of alternatives to capitalism. A talk with Kevin Anderson\, in conversation with Aditya Bahl and Emeer Hassanpour | Program in Experimental Critical Theory DESCRIPTION:The Program in Experimental Critical Theory presents\nMarx’s Late Writings: Theories of revolutionary change and of alternatives to capitalism \nA Talk with Kevin Anderson\, in Conversation with Aditya Bahl and Emeer Hassanpour\n\nFriday\, February 20\, 2026\n3:00-4:30pm\nKaplan Hall Room #348\nIn Person\n  \nAdvanced Registration\nAdvanced registration is required by Wednesday\, February 18\, 2026. \nREGISTER TO ATTEND HERE \n  \nThis talk is co-sponsored by the Department of Comparative Literature and the Department of Political Science. \n  \n\nAbout the Talk\nIn his last years (1869-83)\, Marx sketches three types of revolutionary change. (1) In 1869-70\, he speculates that a British workers uprising might be sparked by the peasant-based Fenian nationalist movement in Ireland. These writings build upon his 1860s work on race\, class\, and revolution during the US Civil War. (2) In the 1870s\, Marx clarifies and deepens his concept of communism\, as in the Civil War in France (1871)\, where he sketches non-statist forms of free and associated labor that go far beyond the more statist notions put forward in the Communist Manifesto. (3) In his 1877-82 writings on Russia\, Marx suggests that the directionality of revolution was moving from Eastern to Western Europe. The struggle of Russia’s communal villages could lead to a form of modern communism. He made similar links to struggles in Algeria\, India\, and Latin America\, sometimes with gender as an important element. \n  \nReadings to be discussed are listed below and are available on the ECT site: \n\n\n\nKevin Anderson\, “Marx on Communal Villages as Loci of Revolution” from New Politics 79\, vol. XX\, no 3 (summer 2025)\n\n\n\n  \nAbout the Speakers\nKevin B. Anderson (PhD Sociology\, City University of New York Graduate Center\, 1983) is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology at University of California\, Santa Barbara\, with courtesy appointments in Feminist Studies and Political Science. His main areas of specialization include Marxism\, Critical Theory\, and History of Social Thought. He is the author of several books\, including Lenin\, Hegel\, and Western Marxism (1995); Foucault and the Iranian Revolution (with Janet Afary\, 2005); Marx at the Margins (2010); and The Late Marx’s Revolutionary Roads (2025). He is also an editor of the forthcoming English edition of the late Marx’s notebooks on non-Western and precapitalist societies. \n  \nAditya Bahl is Assistant Professor in English at UCLA. His writings on culture and politics have appeared in The Nation\, New Left Review\, and London Review of Books. \n  \nEmeer Hassanpour is a Ph.D. student in Comparative Literature at UCLA. His research examines anger and violence in the Global South\, with a focus on the Mesopotamian region. URL:https://complit.ucla.edu/event/marxs-late-writings-theories-of-revolutionary-change-and-of-alternatives-to-capitalism-a-talk-with-kevin-anderson-in-conversation-with-aditya-bahl-and-emeer-hassanpour-program-in-experim/ LOCATION:Kaplan Hall 348\, 415 Portola Plaza\, Los Angeles\, CA\, 90095\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://complit.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Kevin-Anderson-book.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260211T163000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260211T183000 DTSTAMP:20260115T191602Z CREATED:20260115T191547Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260115T191602Z UID:8092-1770827400-1770834600@complit.ucla.edu SUMMARY:A Talk with Shazia Jagot: Chaucer’s “Ioveris maladye / Of Hereos\,” Avicenna’s Treatise on Love\, and an Arabic-Islamic Metaphysics of Love DESCRIPTION:Wednesday\, February 23\, 2026 \n4:30-6:30pm \nKaplan Hall Room #348 (third floor) \n  \nThe CMRS Center for Early Global Studies\, the Near Eastern Languages and Cultures department\, and the Comparative Literature department are pleased to present a talk with Shazia Jagot (York University) titled Chaucer’s “Ioveris maladye / Of Hereos\,” Avicenna’s Treatise on Love\, and an Arabic-Islamic Metaphysics of Love. \n  \nThe talk will take place on Wednesday\, February 11\, 2026 from 4:30-6:30pm in Kaplan 348. \nPlease register to attend here. \n  URL:https://complit.ucla.edu/event/a-talk-with-shazia-jagot-chaucers-ioveris-maladye-of-hereos-avicennas-treatise-on-love-and-an-arabic-islamic-metaphysics-of-love/ LOCATION:Kaplan Hall 348\, 415 Portola Plaza\, Los Angeles\, CA\, 90095\, United States END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260210T123000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260210T133000 DTSTAMP:20260105T225929Z CREATED:20260105T225929Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260105T225929Z UID:8040-1770726600-1770730200@complit.ucla.edu SUMMARY:The Edward W. Said Series Presents: A Brownbag Lunch Seminar with Roxanne Euben DESCRIPTION:Tuesday\, February 10\, 2026\nKaplan Hall Room #348 (third floor)\n12:30pm PST\nIn-person only. Please feel free to bring your lunch.\n\n\nAdvanced Registration\nAdvanced registration is required by Friday\, February 6th. \nPLEASE REGISTER TO ATTEND HERE. \n\n  \nThis talk is part of the Edward W. Said Series organized by Dr. Anjali Prabhu\, Professor and Edward W. Said Chair in Comparative Literature. \n\n\nAbout the Talk\nWhat does humiliation mean and how does it work in and on our political world? From Trump’s rhetoric to ISIS video propaganda to recent images of deportees in El Salvador’s CECOT prison\, humiliation pervades our politics\, speaking through images and bodies as well as words. Drawing from her new book\, Roxanne Euben provides an understanding of humiliation built up from the ground\, from how people actually invoke\, enact and resist it. \n  \nAbout the Speaker\n\nWhat does humiliation mean and how does it work in and on our political world? From Trump’s rhetoric to ISIS video propaganda to recent images of deportees in El Salvador’s CECOT prison\, humiliation pervades our politics\, speaking through images and bodies as well as words. Drawing from her new book\, Roxanne Euben provides an understanding of humiliation built up from the ground\, from how people actually invoke\, enact and resist it. URL:https://complit.ucla.edu/event/the-edward-w-said-series-presents-a-brownbag-lunch-seminar-with-roxanne-euben/ LOCATION:Kaplan Hall 348\, 415 Portola Plaza\, Los Angeles\, CA\, 90095\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://complit.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Roxanne-Euben-Driven-To-Their-Knees.jpeg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260126T150000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260126T163000 DTSTAMP:20260126T174621Z CREATED:20260109T010151Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260126T174621Z UID:8057-1769439600-1769445000@complit.ucla.edu SUMMARY:Structuralism to Poststructuralism: Derrida on Lévi-Strauss. A Talk with Jonathan Culler │ Program in Experimental Critical Theory DESCRIPTION:The Program in Experimental Critical Theory presents\nStructuralism to Poststructuralism: Derrida on Lévi-Strauss\nA Talk with Jonathan Culler\n\nMonday\, January 26\n3:00-4:30pm PST\nVia Zoom\n\n  \nAdvanced Registration\nAdvanced registration is required by Friday\, January 23. The Zoom meeting link will be sent end of day on January 23\, 2026. \nREGISTER TO ATTEND VIA ZOOM HERE \n  \n  \n\nAbout the Talk\nDerrida’s critique of Claude Lévi-Strauss in “Structure\, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” is often seen as the decisive moment in a shift from structuralism to post-structuralism. A closer reading of Derrida’s argument here reveals a more complex relation between these two major movements in French thought and in critical theory generally. \n  \n\nReadings to be discussed are listed below and are available on the ECT site: \n\nJacques Derrida\, “Structure\, Sign\, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” in Writing and Difference\nJonathan Culler\, Structuralist Poetics\, chapters 10 and 11\n\n  \n  \n\nAbout the Speaker\nJonathan Culler (BA. Harvard; B.Phil and D.Phil\, Oxford) came to Cornell in 1977 as Professor of English and Comparative Literature and in 1982 succeeded M.H. Abrams in the Class of 1916 Chair.  He is the author of Flaubert: The Uses of Uncertainty (1974) and numerous books on contemporary critical theory and literature\, including Ferdinand de Saussure (1976)\, The Pursuit of Signs (1981)\, On Deconstruction (1983)\, Barthes (2002)\, The Literary in Theory (2006)\, and Theory of the Lyric (2015). His Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism\, Linguistics\, and the Study of Literature (1975)\, which we will be reading selections from\, won MLA’s Lowell Prize.  He has served as Secretary of the American Council of Learned Societies\, President of the American Comparative Literature Association\, and Chair of the New York Council for the Humanities\, and he has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences\, the American Philosophical Society\, and the British Academy. \n\n\n  \nAbout the Program in Experimental Critical Theory\nThe focus of the 2025-2026 Experimental Critical Theory seminar (COM LIT250)\, taught by Professor Eleanor Kaufman\, is “Structure.” URL:https://complit.ucla.edu/event/ect-jonathan-culler-talk/ LOCATION:Kaplan Hall 348\, 415 Portola Plaza\, Los Angeles\, CA\, 90095\, United States END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260116T143000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260116T160000 DTSTAMP:20260109T005656Z CREATED:20260109T005656Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260109T005656Z UID:8053-1768573800-1768579200@complit.ucla.edu SUMMARY:Finding and Applying for Fellowship Funding DESCRIPTION:Friday\, January 16\, 2026 \n2:30-4:00pm PST \nKaplan Hall Room #348 (third floor) and via Zoom \n  \nAdvanced registration \nAdvanced registration is required by Wednesday\, January 14th. The Zoom meeting link will be sent on Thursday\, January 15th.  \nREGISTER TO ATTEND IN PERSON AND VIA ZOOM HERE \n  \n  \nPresented by Lika Balenovich (PhD Candidate\, Graduate Writing Center Consultant) and Drew Fleshman (PhD Candidate & former Graduate Writing Consultant). \n  \nPlease join us on January 16th for a presentation & discussion about fellowship resources at UCLA. The presentation will offer strategies for finding funding opportunities in the humanities to support your research efforts at different stages of the PhD. We will discuss both intramural and extramural funding opportunities\, including sources for research travel and dissertation research and writing fellowships. Additionally\, the presentation will address how to organize your application and writing efforts and how to navigate your funding eligibility. Presenters will also share some of their strategies for locating other types of jobs and funding sources on campus (e.g.\, TA ships outside of the department and other ASE positions). \n  \nThe presentation will be followed by a Q & A with time for group discussion so that students can share knowledge and resources with one another. We hope to see you there! \n  \nImportant note: If you are further along in our program and/or have already received many fellowships\, you are encouraged to attend the session\, participate in the discussion\, and share your specific fellowship knowledge with colleagues in Comparative Literature. URL:https://complit.ucla.edu/event/finding-and-applying-for-fellowship-funding/ LOCATION:Kaplan Hall 348\, 415 Portola Plaza\, Los Angeles\, CA\, 90095\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://complit.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Screenshot-2026-01-08-at-4.43.28-PM.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251205T140000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251205T160000 DTSTAMP:20251120T232544Z CREATED:20251120T232544Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251120T232544Z UID:8020-1764943200-1764950400@complit.ucla.edu SUMMARY:End of Year Gathering DESCRIPTION:The UCLA Comparative Literature department invites faculty and students to the annual Holiday Celebration on Friday\, December 5th from 2-4pm in Kaplan 348. Join fellow faculty and students as we mark the end of the year with hot chocolate & cookies\, and an optional book swap. \nInterested in participating in the optional book swap? Please bring one book (can be new or used) wrapped in paper (or a bag\, or any other material). We will place all the book swap participant names in a cup. At 2:30pm\, each person will pick a name and you will gift your book to the person you selected. \nFresh baked cookies\, hot cocoa\, coffee and tea will be provided\, and feel free to add a treat of your own to the mix. URL:https://complit.ucla.edu/event/end-of-year-gathering/ LOCATION:Kaplan Hall 348\, 415 Portola Plaza\, Los Angeles\, CA\, 90095\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://complit.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/12-5-25-Coffee-Hour-Book-Swap.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251113T153000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251113T170000 DTSTAMP:20251112T202352Z CREATED:20251112T202352Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251112T202352Z UID:8013-1763047800-1763053200@complit.ucla.edu SUMMARY:Working Group in Memory Studies: First Reading Group Meeting DESCRIPTION:  \nFounded in fall 2018\, the Working Group in Memory Studies brings together faculty and graduate students from across the humanities and social sciences who are interested in the interdisciplinary field of cultural memory studies. \n  \nCultural memory studies focuses on the dynamic interplay between the past and the present in local\, national\, and transnational contexts and can involve the study of works of art and literature; memorials and monuments; processes of reparation\, reconciliation\, and transitional justice; activist movements; media; and more. In recent years the field has grown rapidly and there is now an international Memory Studies Association. \n  \nThe Working Group plans to hold regular reading group meetings this academic year where they will discuss important work in the field. In the past they’ve met with visiting speakers; hosted works-in-progress sessions; and organized conferences. \n  \nThe first reading group meeting of the quarter will take place on Thursday\, November 13 from 3:30-5:00 pm in 348 Kaplan. Light refreshments will be provided. \n  \nThe reading group will be discussing Astrid Erll’s “The Hidden Power of Implicit Collective Memory” (2022) and Ben Ratskoff’s “Prosthetic Trauma at the Nova Exhibition: Holocaust Memory\, Reenactment\, and the Affective Reproduction of Genocidal Nightmares” (2025). The essays are available in the group’s Box folder and should be read in advance. \n  \nAll are welcome to attend regardless of whether you are already familiar with the field or are interested in discovering a new theoretical and methodological approach. \n  \nIf you would like to be added to the group’s mailing list so that you are aware of future events or have any questions about the group\, please contact Michael Rothberg (mrothberg@humnet.ucla.edu). URL:https://complit.ucla.edu/event/working-group-in-memory-studies-first-reading-group-meeting/ LOCATION:Kaplan Hall 348\, 415 Portola Plaza\, Los Angeles\, CA\, 90095\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://complit.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/DT1494-scaled.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251112T163000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251112T163000 DTSTAMP:20251103T201612Z CREATED:20251103T201612Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251103T201612Z UID:8000-1762965000-1762965000@complit.ucla.edu SUMMARY:Interocepción insular: Lo patológico en la imaginación literaria del laboratorio Caribe DESCRIPTION:When: Wednesday\, November 12\, 4:30 PM\nLocation: Rolfe Hall 4302 – Lydeen Library \n  \nInterocepción insular (UNC Press\, 2025) examines literary representations of disease and disability to reconceptualize the Hispanic Caribbean as a site of scientific\, economic\, and political experimentation. Exploring how individuals subjected to various forms of testing—eugenic\, medical\, neoliberal\, or otherwise—hyper-monitor a corporeality that is at once their own and alien. By theorizing the “Caribbean laboratory” as distinct from the concentration camp or the plantation\, Ugarte investigates how test subjects apprehend their own bodies within ongoing regimes of experimentation\, while discussing how disease and disability are imagined\, recounted\, and experienced inside and outside medical and colonial diagnoses. \n  \nAna Ugarte (Ph.D.\, Duke U) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at UCLA. Both a scholar of Health Humanities\, with a focus on twentieth- and twenty-first-century Latin American fiction and cultural production\, as well as global Latinx studies. Ugarte’s work has appeared in journals including Cultural Dynamics\, Journal for the Study of Gender and Sexuality\, Revista de Estudios Hispánicos\, and Voces del Caribe. URL:https://complit.ucla.edu/event/interocepcion-insular-lo-patologico-en-la-imaginacion-literaria-del-laboratorio-caribe/ LOCATION:Rolfe Hall 4302\, Lydeen Library ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://complit.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Interocepcion-Insular.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20251017 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20251019 DTSTAMP:20251008T231444Z CREATED:20250919T010940Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251008T231444Z UID:7932-1760659200-1760831999@complit.ucla.edu SUMMARY:Modern French Thought and the History of Philosophy DESCRIPTION:October 17\, 2025: 4:00-7:00 pm PST\nOctober 18\, 2025: 10:30 am-6:30 pm PST\n\nKaplan Hall Room #348 (third floor)\nIn person and Zoom hybrid\n\n  \nREGISTER TO ATTEND HERE\n\nIn person attendance is encouraged but Zoom attendance also available. Your advance registration will help determine the event catering order. The Zoom meeting link will be sent EOD on October 15. For any questions or concerns\, please contact Lisset at lisset@humnet.ucla.edu. \n\n  \n\nSchedule\n\nFriday\, October 17\, 2025 (Pacific Standard Time)\n\n\n\n\n 4:00 pmOpening reception and welcome\n\n\n 4:30 pm Alan Schrift\, Grinnell College\n“The Institutionalization of History of Philosophy in Recent French Thought” \nIntroduced and moderated by Eleanor Kaufman\n\n\n\n 6:00 pm After talk reception for all participants and guests\n\n\n\n\n  \nSaturday\, October 18\, 2025 (Pacific Standard Time)\n\n\n\n\n 10:30 amJacob Schmutz (Zoom)\, University of Louvain\n“Is Metaphysics Dangerous for the Republic? The Debate for a Unique Course of Philosophy in Enlightenment France” \nIntroduced and moderated by Calvin Normore\n\n\n 12:00 pmConference lunch\, attendees welcome\n\n\n 1:00 pmSteven Mailloux\, University of California\, Irvine and Loyola Marymount University \n“Jesuitical Philosophy in Paris: Ignatian Spirituality and Political Theology in the Twentieth Century”\nIntroduced and moderated by Austin Webster \n\n\n 2:30 pm Davide Panagia\, University of California\, Los Angeles \n“Mimesis\, the explication de texte\, and State Thinking” \nIntroduced and moderated by Grant Hussong\n\n\n\n 4:00 pmJoe Hughes\, University of Melbourne \n“Jean Hyppolite: Philosophy\, Non-Philo-sophy\, and the History of Philosophy” \nIntroduced and moderated by Jessica Marian\n\n\n 5:30 pm Closing reception for all participants and guests \n\n\n\n\n  \n  \n\nParking for Campus Visitors:\n\nThe closest parking structures to Kaplan Hall are Structure 2\, Structure 3 North\, and Structure 4. Parking rates vary by structure\, so please refer to the rates here. Guest parking is available on a first come\, first served basis. Please plan to arrive early if you are not familiar with the campus or parking structures.  \n  \nVISITOR PARKING AREAS: \n♦Structure 2: Structure 2 has pay stations for visitors on the first and second floors. These floors are the only floors with visitor parking; there are also signs indicating which parking stalls are for visitors. The Google Maps link for the visitor’s section (“Pay Station Parking”) is here. \n♦ Structure 3 North: Parking Structure 3 North\, Visitor’s Section is located at 215 Charles E Young Dr N\, Los Angeles\, CA 90024. The parking structure has visitor parking in levels 1\, 2 and 3. The Google Maps link to the visitor’s section (“Pay Station Parking”) is here. \n♦ Structure 4: Parking Structure 4\, Visitor’s Section is located at 221 Westwood Plaza\, Los Angeles\, CA 90095. The parking structure has visitor parking in level 1\, and the entrance will state “Visitor’s Section” that guests enter through. The Google Maps link to the visitor’s section is here. \n\n  \n  \n\nHOW TO PAY FOR PARKING:\nSelf-service pay stations are located in all visitor parking areas. Visitors must pay for parking BEFORE they leave their vehicles. Visitor parking permits are not valid in parking stalls outside of the visitor parking section of the structure and stalls posted for Blue and X permits or otherwise reserved.  \n1. All self-service pay stations use pay-by-plate technology.\n2. Once parked\, go to the nearest parking pay station\n3. Enter your license plate number. If you do not have a license plate number\, please enter the last 6 (six) digits of your Vehicle ID Number (VIN). Your VIN can be found on the driver’s side door or the lower driver’s side of the windshield.\n4. Choose the amount of time that you would like to spend on campus.\n5. Pay using the exact cash amount or with a credit card. For those using their VIN\, please place your receipt on your dashboard\, otherwise nothing else is required. Pay stations do not provide change. There are no refunds for pay station purchases. \nAdditional visitor parking information can be found on the UCLA Transportation website. \n  \nParking for UCLA faculty\, students\, and staff: \nActive Bruin ePemit Holders can request a “Transfer Permit” to cross-park in an alternate lot or structure on campus at no additional cost according to the privileges of your permit type. Check the Parking Permit Privileges for details. \n– You can obtain a 1-Day cross-parking permit through the Bruin ePermit Portal\, excluding Night and Weekend permit holders. The 1-Day cross parking permit is valid for same-day use only.\n– Faculty and staff may receive a maximum of five (5) cross-parking permits per quarter.\n– Please note\, Cross Parking (Transfer) Permits will vary depending on parking space availability.\n– To request a “Transfer Permit” please follow these instructions \n\n  \nThe UCLA Comparative Literature Department is not responsible for any parking tickets or citations received by event attendees. Please contact the UCLA Transportation Department directly for assistance with citations.  URL:https://complit.ucla.edu/event/french-theory-and-the-history-of-philosophy/ LOCATION:Kaplan Hall 348\, 415 Portola Plaza\, Los Angeles\, CA\, 90095\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://complit.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Modern-French-Thought-and-the-History-of-Philosophy-1-1.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20250603T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20250603T180000 DTSTAMP:20250521T185103Z CREATED:20250410T201527Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250521T185103Z UID:7788-1748966400-1748973600@complit.ucla.edu SUMMARY:Abolition and Constitution. Program in Experimental Critical Theory Public Talk DESCRIPTION:A Talk with Michael Hardt\n\n[gravityform id=”31″ title=”false” description=”true” ajax=”true”]\nTuesday\, June 3\, 2025\nKaplan Hall Room #193 (First floor)\n4:00-6:00pm Talk\n6:00pm Reception\n  \nThis year’s ECT Seminar\, “Whither Marxism and Psychoanalysis?”\, is led by Professor Nouri Gana in the Spring Quarter of 2025. Guest talks are generously co-sponsored by the Department of Comparative Literature\, the Department of Political Science\, the Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies\, the Department of Art\, and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. \n\n  \nABOUT THE TALK\nAbolitionist politics have become in recent years the focus of some of the most innovative theoretical and activist projects. Drawing on authors in the Marxist and Black Radical traditions\, I will explore some of the philosophical bases and consequences of the abolitionist paradigm. I will argue\, furthermore\, that\, at philosophical and practical levels\, constitution is a necessary complement to abolition. \n  \nABOUT THE SPEAKER\nMichael Hardt teaches political theory in the Literature Program at Duke University. With Antonio Negri\, he co-authored several books\, including Empire. His latest book is The Subversive Seventies. He currently serves as editor of the South Atlantic Quarterly. \n  \nPARKING FOR CAMPUS VISITORS\n\nThe closest parking structure to Kaplan Hall is Structure 2\, followed by Structure 5 and Structure 4. Parking rates vary by structure\, so please refer to the rates here.  \n  \nVISITOR PARKING AREAS: \n♦ Structure 2: Structure 2 has pay stations for visitors on the first and second floors. These floors are the only floors with visitor parking; there are also signs indicating which parking stalls are for visitors. The Google Maps link for the visitor’s section (“Pay Station Parking”) is here. \n♦ Structure 4: Parking Structure 4\, Visitor’s Section is located at 221 Westwood Plaza\, Los Angeles\, CA 90095. The parking structure has visitor parking in level 1\, and the entrance will state “Visitor’s Section” that guests enter through. The Google Maps link to the visitor’s section is here . \n♦ Structure 5: Parking Structure 5\, Visitor’s Section is located at 405 Portola Plaza\, Los Angeles\, CA 90095. The parking structure has visitor parking in both levels 4 and 6\, and the entrance will state “Visitor’s Section” that guests enter through. The link to the visitor’s section is here . \n  \nHOW TO PAY FOR PARKING:\nSelf-service pay stations are located in all visitor parking areas. Visitors must pay for parking BEFORE they leave their vehicles. Visitor parking permits are not valid in parking stalls outside of the visitor parking section of the structure and stalls posted for Blue and X permits or otherwise reserved.  \n1. All self-service pay stations use pay-by-plate technology.\n2. Once parked\, go to the nearest parking pay station\n3. Enter your license plate number. If you do not have a license plate number\, please enter the last 6 (six) digits of your Vehicle ID Number (VIN). Your VIN can be found on the driver’s side door or the lower driver’s side of the windshield.\n4. Choose the amount of time that you would like to spend on campus.\n5. Pay using the exact cash amount or with a credit card. For those using their VIN\, please place your receipt on your dashboard\, otherwise nothing else is required. Pay stations do not provide change. There are no refunds for pay station purchases. \n  \nAdditional visitor parking information can be found on the UCLA Transportation website. \n  URL:https://complit.ucla.edu/event/abolition-and-constitution-program-in-experimental-critical-theory-public-talk/ LOCATION:Kaplan Hall 193 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20250521T150000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20250521T170000 DTSTAMP:20250519T164845Z CREATED:20250513T220138Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250519T164845Z UID:7824-1747839600-1747846800@complit.ucla.edu SUMMARY:CANCELLED Writing History in a Time of Revolutions: The Arab Novel in English and the Quest for a Narrative DESCRIPTION:A Conversation with Alexis Tadié \n\nTHIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED.\nADVANCED REGISTRATION REQUIRED BY 12PM PST ON 5/19/25\n\nWednesday\, May 21\, 2025\n3:00-5:00pm PST\nKaplan Hall Room #348 (third floor)\n  \nThis talk is part of the Edward W. Said Series organized by Dr. Anjali Prabhu\, Professor and Edward W. Said Chair in Comparative Literature.\n\nAbout the Talk\nThis paper focuses on Arab novels in English which address the 2011 Arab revolutions. I will investigate how these novels are caught between the urge to write about the present moment\, and the acknowledgment of its complex temporal nature. By looking in turn at novels from Libya\, Egypt\, and Syria\, I hope to bring to light their quest for a narrative of the revolutions. \n  \nAbout the Speaker\nAlexis Tadié is professor of Anglophone literatures at Sorbonne University and honorary senior research fellow at the Institut Universitaire de France. He specialises in eighteenth-century literature and intellectual history\, as well as in sports studies\, and in postcolonial literatures. His recent publications include Les règles du jeu à l’époque de la première modernité. Eds. Line Cottegnies\, Clara Manco\, Alexis Tadié. Paris : Classiques Garnier\, 2025; Writing from India: Literatures in English. Special issue of Etudes Anglaises 77/2. (2024)\, Edited by Alexis Tadié. \n  \nCampus Parking\n\nThe closest parking structure to Kaplan Hall is Structure 2\, followed by Structure 5 and Structure 4. Parking rates vary by structure\, so please refer to the rates here.  \n  \nVISITOR PARKING AREAS: \n♦ Structure 2: Structure 2 has pay stations for visitors on the first and second floors. These floors are the only floors with visitor parking; there are also signs indicating which parking stalls are for visitors. The Google Maps link for the visitor’s section (“Pay Station Parking”) is here. \n♦ Structure 4: Parking Structure 4\, Visitor’s Section is located at 221 Westwood Plaza\, Los Angeles\, CA 90095. The parking structure has visitor parking in level 1\, and the entrance will state “Visitor’s Section” that guests enter through. The Google Maps link to the visitor’s section is here . \n♦ Structure 5: Parking Structure 5\, Visitor’s Section is located at 405 Portola Plaza\, Los Angeles\, CA 90095. The parking structure has visitor parking in both levels 4 and 6\, and the entrance will state “Visitor’s Section” that guests enter through. The link to the visitor’s section is here . \n  \nHOW TO PAY FOR PARKING:\nSelf-service pay stations are located in all visitor parking areas. Visitors must pay for parking BEFORE they leave their vehicles. Visitor parking permits are not valid in parking stalls outside of the visitor parking section of the structure and stalls posted for Blue and X permits or otherwise reserved. \n  \n1. All self-service pay stations use pay-by-plate technology.\n2. Once parked\, go to the nearest parking pay station\n3. Enter your license plate number. If you do not have a license plate number\, please enter the last 6 (six) digits of your Vehicle ID Number (VIN). Your VIN can be found on the driver’s side door or the lower driver’s side of the windshield.\n4. Choose the amount of time that you would like to spend on campus.\n5. Pay using the exact cash amount or with a credit card. For those using their VIN\, please place your receipt on your dashboard\, otherwise nothing else is required. Pay stations do not provide change. There are no refunds for pay station purchases. \nAdditional visitor parking information can be found on the UCLA Transportation website. URL:https://complit.ucla.edu/event/writing-history-in-a-time-of-revolutions-the-arab-novel-in-english-and-the-quest-for-a-narrative/ LOCATION:Kaplan Hall 348\, 415 Portola Plaza\, Los Angeles\, CA\, 90095\, United States END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20250520T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20250520T180000 DTSTAMP:20250514T185111Z CREATED:20250410T191726Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250514T185111Z UID:7782-1747756800-1747764000@complit.ucla.edu SUMMARY:Peasants in Space: Faulkner\, Guha\, and South to North Criticism. Program in Experimental Critical Theory Public Talk DESCRIPTION:A Talk with Hosam Aboul-Ela\n\n[gravityform id=”30″ title=”false” description=”true” ajax=”true”]\n  \nTuesday\, May 20\, 2025\nKaplan Hall Room #348 (third floor)\n4:00-6:00pm Talk\n6:00pm Reception\n  \nThis year’s ECT Seminar\, “Whither Marxism and Psychoanalysis?”\, is led by Professor Nouri Gana in the Spring Quarter of 2025. Guest talks are generously co-sponsored by the Department of Comparative Literature\, the Department of Political Science\, the Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies\, the Department of Art\, and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. \n  \nABOUT THE TALK\nIn this lecture\, South to North reading is proposed as a critical strategy for rethinking the problem of interpretation with a capacious embrace of the global in mind. South to North reading not only embraces the tradition of employing theoretically-informed approaches to the study of literature; it also directly confronts the rise of nativist\, supremacist\, and traditionalist thinking that is currently in ascent in the public sphere. This lecture will suggest several case studies for this approach and focus in particular on one that employs South Asian subaltern studies in a new reading of William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. \n  \nABOUT THE SPEAKER\nHosam About-Ela is Professor of English and AAEF/Burhan and Misako Ajouz Professor of Arab Studies at the University of Houston. He is the translator of four Arabic novels and author of numerous articles in the areas of comparative literature\, literature of the Americas\, and Arab cultural studies. In addition to Other South: Faulkner\, Coloniality\, and the Mariátegui Tradition\, he is author of Domestications: American Empire\, Literary Culture\, and the Postcolonial Lens. For Seagull Books\, he curates the Arab list and co-edits with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak the *Elsewhere Texts* series. URL:https://complit.ucla.edu/event/hosam-aboul-ela/ LOCATION:Kaplan Hall 348\, 415 Portola Plaza\, Los Angeles\, CA\, 90095\, United States END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20250506T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20250506T190000 DTSTAMP:20250430T184954Z CREATED:20250410T184436Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250430T184954Z UID:7774-1746547200-1746558000@complit.ucla.edu SUMMARY:Good Enough Art: A Few Theses on Middling Mediation. Program in Experimental Critical Theory Public Talk DESCRIPTION:A Talk with Anna Kornbluh\n\n[gravityform id=”29″ title=”false” description=”true” ajax=”true”]\n  \nTuesday\, May 6\, 2025\nbUNCHE HALL ROOM #4357 (FOURTH floor)\n4:00-6:00pm Talk\n6:00pm Reception\n  \nThis year’s ECT Seminar\, “Whither Marxism and Psychoanalysis?”\, is led by Professor Nouri Gana in the Spring Quarter of 2025. Guest talks are generously co-sponsored by the Department of Comparative Literature\, the Department of Political Science\, the Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies\, the Department of Art\, and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. \n\nABOUT THE TALK\nThe recent surge of “mid” as an aesthetic judgment paradoxically discloses the missing middle in contemporary cultural arts. Amid the eviction of the middle class\, cultural study of the middlebrow can no longer rely upon the traditional sociological method. Briefly considering architecture\, photography\, fiction\, and television\, this talk experiments with a formalist approach to “good enough art.” \n\nABOUT THE SPEAKER\nAnna Kornbluh is Professor of English and a member of the United Faculty Bargaining Committee at the University of Illinois\, Chicago. She is the author of four books\, including Immediacy\, Or\, The Style of Too Late Capitalism (Verso 2024)\, as well as essays on climate aesthetic. \n  URL:https://complit.ucla.edu/event/good-enough-art-a-few-theses-on-middling-mediation-program-in-experimental-critical-theory-seminar/ LOCATION:Bunche Hall 4357 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20250418T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20250418T180000 DTSTAMP:20250416T013305Z CREATED:20250327T193854Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250416T013305Z UID:7747-1744992000-1744999200@complit.ucla.edu SUMMARY:What can we expect from analysis today? A Talk with Dr. Luis Izcovich DESCRIPTION:[gravityform id=”28″ title=”false” description=”true” ajax=”true”]\n  \nFriday\, April 18\, 2025\nKaplan Hall Room #193 (first floor)\n4:00pm\nLight refreshments will be provided \nThis talk is co-sponsored by the UCLA Department of Comparative Literature\, the UCLA Program in Experimental Critical Theory\, and the California Forum of the Lacanian Field. \nAbout the Talk\nWhen the subject’s encounter with something impossible to bear is added to the social malaise\, there’s often the emergency of a demand\, pushing the subject to find a partner who could be the convenient interlocutor. Among all possible responses to this demand\, there’s one that radically differs from the others: a psychoanalysis. \nThis lecture will discuss the psychoanalytic promise\, its actual results\, and whether its offer meets the subjective demands of our time. And\, by clarifying the aims of psychoanalysis according to Jacques Lacan’s approach\, the ongoing relevance of psychoanalysis will be highlighted. \nAbout the Speaker\nLuis Izcovich is a psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. He currently teaches at the College of the Psychoanalytic Clinic of Paris and practices psychoanalysis in Paris. He is a founding member of the International Forums of the Lacanian Field and its School of psychoanalysis\, the SPFLF. Additionally\, Izcovich is the author of several influential texts\, including The Marks of a Psychoanalysis (2015). \nParking for Campus Visitors\n\nThe closest parking structure to Kaplan Hall is Structure 2\, followed by Structure 5 and Structure 4. Parking rates vary by structure\, so please refer to the rates here.  \n  \nVISITOR PARKING AREAS: \n♦ Structure 2: Structure 2 has pay stations for visitors on the first and second floors. These floors are the only floors with visitor parking; there are also signs indicating which parking stalls are for visitors. The Google Maps link for the visitor’s section (“Pay Station Parking”) is here. \n♦ Structure 4: Parking Structure 4\, Visitor’s Section is located at 221 Westwood Plaza\, Los Angeles\, CA 90095. The parking structure has visitor parking in level 1\, and the entrance will state “Visitor’s Section” that guests enter through. The Google Maps link to the visitor’s section is here . \n♦ Structure 5: Parking Structure 5\, Visitor’s Section is located at 405 Portola Plaza\, Los Angeles\, CA 90095. The parking structure has visitor parking in both levels 4 and 6\, and the entrance will state “Visitor’s Section” that guests enter through. The link to the visitor’s section is here . \n  \nHOW TO PAY FOR PARKING:\nSelf-service pay stations are located in all visitor parking areas. Visitors must pay for parking BEFORE they leave their vehicles. Visitor parking permits are not valid in parking stalls outside of the visitor parking section of the structure and stalls posted for Blue and X permits or otherwise reserved. \n  \n1. All self-service pay stations use pay-by-plate technology.\n2. Once parked\, go to the nearest parking pay station\n3. Enter your license plate number. If you do not have a license plate number\, please enter the last 6 (six) digits of your Vehicle ID Number (VIN). Your VIN can be found on the driver’s side door or the lower driver’s side of the windshield.\n4. Choose the amount of time that you would like to spend on campus.\n5. Pay using the exact cash amount or with a credit card. For those using their VIN\, please place your receipt on your dashboard\, otherwise nothing else is required. Pay stations do not provide change. There are no refunds for pay station purchases. \nAdditional visitor parking information can be found on the UCLA Transportation website. URL:https://complit.ucla.edu/event/what-can-we-expect-from-analysis-today-a-talk-with-dr-luis-izcovich/ LOCATION:Kaplan Hall 193\, CA\, United States END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20250306T180000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20250306T203000 DTSTAMP:20250225T223952Z CREATED:20250225T222606Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250225T223952Z UID:7703-1741284000-1741293000@complit.ucla.edu SUMMARY:Women of the World DESCRIPTION:  \n\n[gravityform id=”27″ title=”false” description=”true” ajax=”true”] URL:https://complit.ucla.edu/event/women-of-the-world/ LOCATION:ELTS third floor balcony\, Royce Hall END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20250228T130000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20250228T150000 DTSTAMP:20250225T003049Z CREATED:20241220T204033Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250225T003049Z UID:7602-1740747600-1740754800@complit.ucla.edu SUMMARY:“The Same Frame of Mind\, but a Different Villain”: Conspiracist Narratology and the Decolonization of Africa DESCRIPTION:A workshop with Christian David Alvarado\n\nKAPLAN HALL ROOM #348\n1:00-2:30pm Workshop\n2:30-3:00pm Reception\n  \nThis workshop is open to UCLA Comparative Literature graduate students\, UCLA English graduate students\, and UCLA African Studies Center students. \n[gravityform id=”26″ title=”false” description=”true” ajax=”true”]\n  \nRelated Document: Workshop Chapter \nThe chapter we will be discussing in this workshop examines a key episode in the history of global conspiracist thought: speculative accounts and narratives regarding the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya across mid-20th century Britain and its empire. In it\, I argue that contemporary allegations about the uprising’s aim of “white genocide\,” the Satanic rituals conducted by those who participated in it\, and its role in global Communist plots should all be read as conspiracy theories which fundamentally shaped its history and attempts to suppress it. Reframing them as such allows us to see how speculative thinking about Mau Mau is part of a longer tradition of reading world events that continues to inform many of the most prominent iterations of conspiracism that shape Western politics and culture today. Developing this chapter also led to my second major research project\, which aims to understand how the history of conspiracist literary production in European and African contexts shaped imperial governance and engagements with processes of decolonization on both of these continents. \n\nAbout the Speaker\nChristian Alvarado received his PhD in History of Consciousness at the University of California\, Santa Cruz and is President’s and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the African American and African Studies Department at the University of California\, Davis. His current book project situates the event most commonly known as the Mau Mau Uprising in late-colonial Kenya within the broader historical and narratological landscape of 20th century Africa. By tracing how understandings of this event circulated across transnational networks and cultural formations\, his work aims to show how the frameworks to which Mau Mau is put illuminate novel insights into the global dimensions of knowledge production regarding African decolonization.\n \n  URL:https://complit.ucla.edu/event/the-same-frame-of-mind-but-a-different-villain-conspiracist-narratology-and-the-decolonization-of-africa/ LOCATION:Kaplan Hall 348\, 415 Portola Plaza\, Los Angeles\, CA\, 90095\, United States END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20250227T170000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20250227T200000 DTSTAMP:20250121T200722Z CREATED:20241211T201115Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250121T200722Z UID:7584-1740675600-1740686400@complit.ucla.edu SUMMARY:What is this thing called Mau Mau? The “Storm in Kenya” in Global Perspectives DESCRIPTION:A Talk by Christian David Alvarado\n\nKaplan Hall Room #348\n5:00-8:00 PM\n\n[gravityform id=”25″ title=”false” description=”true” ajax=”true”]\nIn the opening pages of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s 1967 novel A Grain of Wheat\, a European district officer asks a version of the question at the core of discourse about the anticolonial movement that gripped Kenya in the 1950s: “What is this thing called Mau Mau?” As an icon of violent resistance to colonial domination\, one answer regarding the armed struggle that defined late-colonial Kenya has been to read it as an “unfinished revolution” whose decolonial aims remain unfulfilled (or\, more precisely\, betrayed). This talk attends to Mau Mau’s symbolic place in cultural politics in Kenya and beyond by exploring how narratives interpreting it as such have shaped transnational understandings of postcolonialism and decolonization. By tracing the rhetorical politics that cohere around it\, I argue that we should consider the invocation of the idea of Mau Mau — whether it be central to a text or present as an offhand reference — as a catalyst through which broader claims are made. I link how African and diasporic writers have positioned Mau Mau as an episode in the greater “African Revolution” to the challenge it represents to existing racial and ethnic structures. Drawing from Kenyan\, South African\, and American sources\, this talk explores how these dual interpretations have shaped Mau Mau’s prominent position in cultural production and the politics of dissent across the world. \n\nAbout the Speaker\nChristian Alvarado received his PhD in History of Consciousness at the University of California\, Santa Cruz and is President’s and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the African American and African Studies Department at the University of California\, Davis. His current book project situates the event most commonly known as the Mau Mau Uprising in late-colonial Kenya within the broader historical and narratological landscape of 20th century Africa. By tracing how understandings of this event circulated across transnational networks and cultural formations\, his work aims to show how the frameworks to which Mau Mau is put illuminate novel insights into the global dimensions of knowledge production regarding African decolonization. URL:https://complit.ucla.edu/event/christian-alvarado-guest-lecture/ LOCATION:Kaplan Hall 348\, 415 Portola Plaza\, Los Angeles\, CA\, 90095\, United States END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240925T110000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240925T120000 DTSTAMP:20240829T010410Z CREATED:20240821T214903Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240829T010410Z UID:7336-1727262000-1727265600@complit.ucla.edu SUMMARY:Fall 2024 Open House DESCRIPTION:Please join us on September 25th from 11-12pm in Kaplan 348! Light refreshments will be served. \n\nRSVP HERE \n  URL:https://complit.ucla.edu/event/fall-2024-open-house/ LOCATION:Kaplan Hall 348\, 415 Portola Plaza\, Los Angeles\, CA\, 90095\, United States END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240506T120000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240506T130000 DTSTAMP:20240430T233421Z CREATED:20240205T232610Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240430T233421Z UID:7168-1714996800-1715000400@complit.ucla.edu SUMMARY:Experimental Critical Theory (ECT) Seminar: “Relationality as Ternary Structure: On Challenges and Openings for Relational Critical Thinking” DESCRIPTION:Kathrin Thiele (Director of the Netherlands Research School of Gender Studies (NOG); Department of Media and Culture Studies\, Utrecht University) \n\nRSVP to attend in person\nRSVP to attend via Zoom \nIn this talk I want to approach relationality as “ternary structure\,” and explicate what kind of conceptual and practical shifts such onto-epistemological proposition enables. The goal is not to philosophically prove – against dualist traditions – that it is the relation(al) which makes and unmakes worlds. Rather\, the question I pursue is what happens when we situate ourselves as always/already with/in relation(al) matters. With the help of contemporary cultural\, queer feminist thinkers (amongst them Wynter\, Berlant\, Ferreira da Silva\, Barad\, Ettinger\, Kirby)\, I aim to introduce meaningful aspects – challenges and openings – for an alternative to binary\, sequential\, and oppositional critical frameworks. \nKathrin Thiele is Associate Professor of Gender Studies and Critical Theory\, Director of the Graduate Gender Programme (GGeP) at Utrecht University\, and Academic Director of the Netherlands Research School of Gender Studies (NOG). Trained trans-disciplinarily in Gender Studies\, Sociology\, Literary Studies and Critical Theory\, her research engages with questions of critical inquiry\, ethics and politics from queer feminist\, decolonial and posthuman(ist) philosophical perspectives. Thiele’s work aims to intervene in discussions around differences\, in/equality\, de/coloniality\, ecologies and post/humanisms\, and her critical attention lies most of all with the troubling consequences of a relational understanding of the world. She deeply engages with the inherent frictions\, the processes of in/exclusion and the always asymmetrical power relations we inhabit. Thiele has published numerous monographs\, edited volumes\, and articles\, including her forthcoming manuscript\, Intra/Sectional Praxis: How to Think-Practice the World Otherwise (2024) and The Ends of Critique: Methods\, Institutions\, Politics (2022)\, eds. Thiele\, K. C.\, Kaiser\, B. M.\, & O’Leary\, T. \nThis lecture is part of the UCLA Program in Experimental Critical Theory (ECT) and the ECT Spring 2024 seminar on “Ternary Positionality: Relationality\, Decoloniality\, and Interpretation”\, taught by Zrinka Stahuljak (Comparative Literature/ELTS). \nThe Spring 2024 ECT Seminar is generously sponsored by the Deans of Humanities and Social Sciences\, the Department of Comparative Literature and the University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI). URL:https://complit.ucla.edu/event/experimental-critical-theory-ect-seminar-kathrin-thiele-director-of-the-netherlands-research-school-of-gender-studies-nog-department-of-media-and-culture-studies-utrecht-university/ LOCATION:Bunche Hall 6275\, 11282 Portola Plaza\, Los Angeles\, CA\, 90095\, United States END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240502T170000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240502T180000 DTSTAMP:20240429T175415Z CREATED:20240205T232927Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240429T175415Z UID:7172-1714669200-1714672800@complit.ucla.edu SUMMARY:Experimental Critical Theory (ECT) Seminar: “Visualizing Mestizaje through Zapotec Remappings of the Americas” DESCRIPTION:Josefina Saldaña-Portillo (Department of Social & Cultural Analysis (SCA)\, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS)\, New York University) \nInaugural Dean of Humanities’ Lecture in Critical Humanistic Inquiry \n\nThursday\, May 2\, 2024\n5 pm – 6 pm \nHershey Hall Salon \nRSVP to attend in person\nRSVP to attend via Zoom \nFollowed by a Reception in Hershey Hall Courtyard \nThis event inaugurates the Dean’s Lecture in Critical Humanistic Inquiry\, a newly launched annual lecture that showcases boundary-pushing research in the Humanities. This lecture will be delivered by leading scholars and creatives whose work explores critical questions about what it means to be human\, and how Humanities provides innovative frameworks for navigating and understanding literature\, culture\, and society. \nTens of thousands of Indigenous peoples have migrated to the United States since 1994\, the vast majority from Mexico and Mesoamerica. As a consequence\, the U.S. Native American population increased by 86% between 2010 and 2020. Zapotec is now second only to Navajo as the most-spoken Indigenous language in the US\, while bilingual immersion in Mixtec and English is part of NYC public school curriculum. This is challenging how we define Indigeneity in the United States\, but it is also challenging how Latinx Studies will define itself as a field in light of these new constituents. How does the mass migration that we are witnessing of Indigenous peoples require a hemispheric rethinking of Indigeneity? And how should it redefine knowledge production in the fields of Latinx Studies and Native American and Indigenous Studies? \nMaría Josefina Saldaña-Portillo is a Professor in the Department of Social & Cultural Analysis Department & the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at NYU. She is one of four Principal Investigators awarded a Mellon Foundation Higher Learning Initiative Grant for the “Beyond a Boundary: Intersectional Feminist/Queer Studies Collective” in 2022. Her latest book\, Indian Given: Racial Geographies across Mexico and the United States\, received the 2019 Casa de Las Americans Literary Prize in Latino Studies; the 2017 ASA John Hope Franklin Book Prize; and the 2017 National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies Book Award. \nThis lecture is part of the UCLA Program in Experimental Critical Theory (ECT) and the ECT Spring 2024 seminar on “Ternary Positionality: Relationality\, Decoloniality\, and Interpretation”\, taught by Zrinka Stahuljak (Comparative Literature/ELTS). \nThe Spring 2024 ECT Seminar is generously sponsored by the Deans of Humanities and Social Sciences\, the Department of Comparative Literature and the University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI). URL:https://complit.ucla.edu/event/experimental-critical-theory-ect-seminar-josefina-saldana-portillo-department-of-social-cultural-analysis-sca-center-for-latin-american-and-caribbean-studies-clacs-new-york-university/ LOCATION:Hershey Hall Salon END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR