Sept . 4
Dr. Roland S. Kamzelak, “The Treasures of the German National Literary Archives”

7:30pm, Colusa 100A

Dr. Kamzelak is Deputy Director and Head of Development of the German Literary Archives. Located high on a hill over the Neckar River in Marbach, a half hour north of Stuttgart, the Archives is the most complete repository of the literary manuscripts of German writers and thinkers, including Hermann Hesse, Franz Kafka, Martin Heidegger, and many others. It is also home to the innovative, interactive, state-of-the-art Museum of Modern Literature

Sept. 12
Guest speaker Daniel Alarcón
7:30 pm in Trinity 100, followed by a reception

Co-sponsored by the Butte County Library, with support from Cal Humanities "California Reads" program (theme: "Searching for Democracy”). Daniel Alarcón is author of a graphic novel, two story collections, including War by Candlelight, a finalist for the 2005 PEN-Hemingway Award, and Lost City Radio, named Best Novel of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Washington Post, among others, and winner of the 2009 International Literature Prize. He is Associate Editor of Etiqueta Negra, an award-winning quarterly published in his native Lima, Peru; Contributing Editor to Granta; and was recently named one of The New Yorker’s 20 under Forty. Daniel lives in Oakland, California, where he is a Visiting Scholar at the UC Berkeley Center for Latin American Studies. His fiction, journalism and translations have appeared in A Public Space, El País, McSweeney’s, n+1, and Harper’s. Alarcón is currently involved with an online journalism/storytelling project Radio Ambulante.

Sept. 27 *

"I wanted to write / a poem / that rhymes / but revolution doesn't lend / itself to [Hip Hopping]", Tracy Butts, English

Humanities Center Talk, 4-5:30, Trinity 100.

Oct. 4

"Should Health Care be Considered a Right in the United States?: Re-examining the Ethics and Constitutionality of the Affordable Health Care Act”
Andrew Flescher

4-5:30, Trinity 100

Dr. Andrew Flescher (Ph.D. Brown University) is an Associate Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University specializing in Religion, Ethics, and Medical Humanities. He directs Stony Brook's Masters Program in Compassionate Care, Bioethics, and Medical Humanities and serves on the Stony Brook Hospital Ethics Committee and Organ Donor Council. Dr. Flescher was previously (2000–2009) Associate Professor of Religion, Ethics, and Society at California State University, Chico. He is the author of three books: Heroes, Saints, and Ordinary Morality (Georgetown University Press, 2003) The Altruistic Species (Templeton Press, 2007) and Four Models of Moral Evil (forthcoming, Georgetown University Press). Dr. Flescher regularly conducts interviews of First Responders from September 11th as part of the World Trade Center Oral History Project and performs on the piano on Thursday afternoons for patients.

Oct. 25 *

"How to Write a Revolution.” “Revolutions” visiting speaker Martin Puchner, Harvard University

PAC 134, 7:30 pm, followed by a reception

Martin Puchner is the Byron and Anita Wien Professor of Drama and of English and Comparative Literature at Harvard University. He is the author of The Drama of Ideas: Platonic Provocations in Theater and Philosophy (Oxford, 2010; winner of the Joe A. Callaway Award), Poetry of the Revolution: Marx, Manifestos, and the Avant-Gardes (Princeton, 2006; winner of the MLA's James Russell Lowell Award) and Stage Fright: Modernism, Anti-Theatricality, and Drama (Hopkins, 2002; 2011), as well as of numerous edited volumes and sourcebooks, including Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: The Communist Manifesto and Other Writings (2005). He is the general editor of the Norton Anthology of World Literature, third edition (2012).

Nov. 8 *

"Revolution in the Head: The Disappearing '60s." Marcel Daguerre, Philosophy. Humanities Center Talk,
Trinity 100, 5:00 pm.

Both liberals and conservatives consider the 1960s a revolutionary era. But what was the nature of that revolution? Did the Sixties represent the triumph of liberalism, or did those volatile times usher in the death of liberalism by sparking a conservative backlash? I will argue that it was neither, and that the revolutionary ideas to arise from the turbulence were mainly libertarian.

Nov. 9
Writer’s Voice. Fred Arroyo, fiction reading,
Trinity 100, 3:00 p.m.

Fred Arroyo is the author of Western Avenue and Other Fictions (University of Arizona Press, 2012), as well as the novel The Region of Lost Names (U of Arizona P, 2008). Named one of the Top Ten New Latino Authors to Watch (and Read) in 2009 by LatinoStories.com, Fred is a recipient of an Individual Artist Grant from the Indiana Arts Commission. He has published fiction, poetry, and essays various literary journals and the anthologies The Colors of Nature (Milkweed 2011) and Camino del Sol: Fifteen Years of Latina and Latino Writing (University of Arizona 2010). Currently, he is completing a book of essays in which he lyrically meditates on work, reading and writing, migration and place—sources of creativity arising from his life and work in the Midwest, growing up bilingual on the east coast, and then being caught between urban and rural worlds. He is also working on a novel set primarily in the Caribbean. Fred lives in Vermillion, South Dakota, where he teaches fiction and creative nonfiction in the MA/PhD Program in Creative Writing, as well in the undergraduate program, at the University of South Dakota.

Nov. 29 *

“The Fate of (Cuban) Revolutionary Idealism: Translating ‘The Bleeding Wound.’”
Sara Cooper, Foreign Languages and Literatures.

Humanities Center Talk, Trinity 100, 5:00 pm.

The Cuban Revolution of 1959 and the subsequent political/economical system in Cuba under the Castro family has long been a bone of contention in the United States. What remains anathema for political conservatives, including the powerful Cuban exile community, also has been a powerful symbol of rebellion against the most powerful nation in the world. Now the heroic halo of the revolutionaries is losing its shine, most of all on the island itself, where the once idealistic generation coming of age in the late fifties is now asking what went wrong.  I'll talk about my current translation project, supported by a NEA grant, of Sangra por la herida, the most recent novel by Mirta Yáñez, who has been lauded for daring to expose the complex and emotional perspective of her own revolutionary cohort. Of course part of the process under discussion is how to deal with the inevitable ramifications on my own idealistic, radical tendencies.

Feb. 6 

The Adventure of Adventure: History of an Obsession in Western Culture.

Laird Easton, History. Department of History Lecture Series.

Free and open to the public. PAC 134, 7:30 pm.

Adventure, as a concept, emerged in Europe in the Middle Ages and gradually became one of the central tropes of modern Western culture. Laird Easton, History Department Chair, traces the strange story of its influence in economics, politics, art and intellectual life.

Feb. 28 *

Revolution in Shia Political Thought and the Making of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Najm Yousefi, History.

Humanities Center Talk, 5-6:00 pm, Trinity 100.

Historically, the eschatology of mainstream Shia has dictated an accommodationist approach to political action in the face of unfavorable political situation controlled by the Sunni majority. Thus, the arrival of the Shia Messiah (al-Mahdi) was long regarded as the necessary step toward a positive political change. However, during the decades leading up to the 1979 Iranian Revolution, a minority of Shia jurists, exemplified by Ayatollah Khomeini, articulated an alternative view to advocate an Islamic revolution. Dr. Yousefi will delve into this historic change in Shia political thought, which proved instrumental in the making of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

March 12 *

“James Madison and the American Revolution of 1787.”

Alan Gibson, Political Science. Humanities Center Talk

5–6 pm, Trinity 100. Reception will follow.

Dr. Gibson will explore the revolutionary—that is to say radical—character of Madison’s constitutional reform program of 1787, arguing that Madison’s vision was for the creation of an impartial republic. He will explore Madison’s understanding of the meaning of impartiality, how he hoped the constitutional architecture would help secure this goal, and the policy implications of impartiality.

April 11 *

In the Name of Revolution

Dan Edelstein, Stanford University.

Trinity 100, 7:30 pm.

Dan Edelstein, Associate Professor of French and, by courtesy, of History at Stanford University, is an expert on eighteenth-century France, with research interests at the crossroads of literature, history, and political theory. His talk will focus on how revolutionary authority functions, which is the topic of his book currently in progress, In the Name of Revolution. Dr. Edelstein’s previous books include The Terror of Natural Right: Republicanism, the Cult of Nature, and the French Revolution (University of Chicago Press, 2009), which won the 2009 Oscar Kenshur Book Prize, and The Enlightenment: A Genealogy (University of Chicago Press, 2010). Dr. Edelstein has also published articles on such topics as the Encyclopédie, antiquarianism, Orientalism, the Idéologues, political authority, and structuralism, as well as on writers including Jean-Sylvain Bailly, Balzac, Roland Barthes, Lévi-Strauss, Michelet, Mallarmé, Georges Sorel, Emmerich de Vattel, and Voltaire.

April 18 *

Animal Liberation at 40.

Robert Jones, Philosophy. Humanities Center Talk.

Trinity 100, 5:00 pm.

2013 marks 40 years since Peter Singer’s NY Review of Books article that ignited the modern animal rights movement, and 30 years since the publication of Tom Regan’s groundbreaking work The Case for Animal Rights. In celebration of the Humanities Center theme, revolutions, Robert Jones will discuss the ethical and cultural impact of these two works as well as their influence on his own research on animal ethics.

*The Humanities Center's theme for this year is "Revolutions."