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California State University, Chico

Humanities Center

2025-2026 Theme: Retrospection

As the Humanities Center celebrates over 25 years as the interdisciplinary heart of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, our theme for this year is Retrospection. When we pause to deeply consider the past – through history, art, storytelling, and film – we can recognize a lifetime’s worth of achievements, finally able to trace the full scope and development of a body of work. Sometimes, our look back requires us to reevaluate what we thought we understood about the past. What has been left out? What has been misunderstood? What wasn’t clear in the moment but emerges with the passage of time? We must reckon with how we remember in the present because it will impact our future. The Humanities Center’s purpose is to create and nurture a culture of ideas at Chico State and to engage our diverse intellectual community through public events. During the 2025-26 year, the Humanities Center will host a series of lectures and films that grapple with our relationship to and understanding of the past.

2026 Events

Works-in-Progress
Clara Bergamini

Ph.D Candidate, Department of History

University of California, Santa Cruz

"The 1923 Kanto Earthquake in Japan and its Aftermath"

Friday, May 1 at 12 p.m., PAC 113

 Clara Bergamini

This presentation explores the legacy of the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake and Firestorm, the most destructive naturally induced disaster in Japan’s history. In the years following the catastrophe, news commentators and the Japanese government used the disaster’s annual memorial events to educate the public about disaster preparedness, morality, national identity, and, in the 30s and 40s, wartime preparedness. Attendees will learn a little about the disaster itself before hearing more about how the catastrophe’s memory was used up until the end of the Pacific War.