Category Archives: Events

Book Chat with D. A. Miller

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Join a discussion with Berkeley professor D. A. Miller about his recent book Hidden Hitchcock 

Wednesday, Mar 8, 2017 | 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm
Geballe Room, 220 Stephens Hall, UC Berkeley

Presented by the Townsend Center for the Humanities

No filmmaker has more successfully courted mass-audience understanding than Alfred Hitchcock, and none has been studied more intensively by scholars. In Hidden Hitchcock, D. A. Miller discovers what has remained unseen in Hitchcock’s movies, a secret style that imbues his films with a radical duplicity.

Focusing on three films—Strangers on a Train, Rope, and The Wrong Man—Miller shows how Hitchcock anticipates, even demands, what he terms a “Too-Close Viewer.” Dwelling within us all and vigilant even when everything appears to be in good order, this “Too-Close Viewer” attempts to see more than the director points out.

author photo in colorD. A. Miller is Professor of the Graduate School and the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley. His recent books include 8 ½ and Jane Austen, or the Secret of Style. In 2013, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Miller has published on Hitchcock twice in Representations: “Hitchcock’s Understyle: A Too-Close View of Rope“ (121, Winter 2013) and “Anal Rope“ (31, Fall 1990).

Talk on the Future of the Public University

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The Future of the Public University – Christopher Newfield and Carol Christ in Conversation

Sibley Auditorium, UC Berkeley, 2-4 pm, February 1, 2017

Presented by the Berkeley Faculty Association

Open to the Public

The public university is facing unprecedented challenges: mounting budgetary pressures and a more hostile political climate. Two distinguished commentators will discuss the path the public university has taken so far, and possible roads ahead.

CHRISTOPHER NEWFIELD is Professor of Literature and American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His most recent book, The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them, focuses on the post-2008 struggles of public universities to rebuild their social mission.

CAROL CHRIST is the Interim Executive Vice-Chancellor and Provost of the University of California, Berkeley. A Professor of English specializing in Victorian literature, she is Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

For more on the issues facing the public university, see our special issue The Humanities and the Crisis of the Public University (Representations 116), edited by Christopher Newfield, Colleen Lye, and James Vernon, and in particular see their critical introduction “Humanists and the Public University.”

“Time Zones” Launch Event

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MINDING TIME: HOLIDAY CELEBRATION OF TIME ZONES

A UC Berkeley Arts Research Center Upcoming Event

You’re Invited! Sunday, December 4, 2016
3:00pm to 6:30pm

3pm: Tour of Mind over Matter Exhibition
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive Galleries 

4:00-5:30pm: Celebrating Time Zones
Dwinelle Annex, Room 126, UC Berkeley campus

5:30pm: West Coast Preview of In Terms of Performance Website
and Holiday Reception
Dwinelle Annex, Room 126, UC Berkeley campus

Join a time-based (and time-sensitive) tour of Mind over Matter at the Berkeley Art Museum with curator Constance Lewallen.

Converse with Shannon Jackson and Julia Bryan-Wilson about their special issue of Representations, “Time Zones: Durational Art and Its Contexts,” including substantive essays on contemporary Croatian dance practice, Uruguayan art under dictatorship, the work of the Brazilian artist Helio Oiticica, and the visual and sound arts of China, along with reflections on durational art by Berkeley faculty, including Natalia Brizuela, Jeffrey Skoller, Suzanne Guerlac, Winnie Wong, and more.

Engage with the Arts Research Center’s new online anthology of keywords in contemporary art and performance, In Terms of Performance, coproduced with Paula Marincola and the Pew Center for Art & Heritage, with contributions from a range of Bay Area artists, critics, and curators such as Rudolf Frieling, Paul Dresher, Judith Butler, and Claudia La Rocca.

Launch the holiday season with a celebration of the Arts Research Center as a think tank for the arts, at Berkeley and beyond. See the full afternoon program here.

Indirect Discourse–Today!

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What Does Free Indirect Discourse Mean Now?

a roundtable discussion

220 Stephens Hall, UC Berkeley

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 29
5:00 PM

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Roundtable participants are UCB faculty Robert Alter (Near Eastern Studies and Comparative Literature), Dorothy Hale (English), David Marno (English), Alan Tansman (East Asian Languages and Culture), and Dora Zhang (Comparative Literature and English). Moderator: Victoria Kahn (Comparative Literature and English).

Alan Tansman is a member and former co-chair of the Representations editorial board. In addition to contributing several essays to the journal, Victoria Kahn has also edited two special issues for us: Early Modern Secularism (Winter 2009, no. 105) and Mimesis East and West (Spring 2006, no. 94). Dora Zhang‘s “A Lens for an Eye: Photography and Proust” was published in Representations 118 (Spring 2012).

Description Across Disciplines Event

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Description Across Disciplines

Tuesday, November 15, 5 pm
D37 Hearst Field Annex
University of California, Berkeleydescription-across-disciplines2

A symposium extending the ideas presented in the Representations special issue “Description Across Disciplines.”

Featuring speakers Mark Greif (founding editor n + 1, The New School), Mary Ann Smart (UC Berkeley), Georgina Kleege (UC Berkeley), Sharon Marcus (Columbia University), Heather Love (University of Pennsylvania), and Stephen Best (UC Berkeley).

Read the introduction to the special issue, “Building a Better Description,” here.

Sponsored by Representations, the Townsend Center for the Humanities, and the Florence Green Bixby Chair in English, UC Berkeley.

Fiery Cinema

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Fiery Cinema: The Emergence of an Affective Medium in China, 1915-1945

by Weihong Bao

Berkeley Book Chats

Wednesday, Oct 19, 2016 | 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm
Geballe Room, 220 Stephens Hall, UC Berkeley

Mapping the changing identity of cinema in China in relation to Republican-era print media, theatrical performance, radio broadcasting, television, and architecture, in Fiery Cinema Weihong Bao constructs an archaeology of Chinese media culture. She grounds the question of spectatorial affect and media technology in China’s experience of mechanized warfare, colonial modernity, and the shaping of the public into consumers, national citizens, and a revolutionary collective subject.Bao_large

A major contribution to the theory and history of media, Fiery Cinema rethinks the nexus of affect and medium to offer key insights into the relationship of cinema to the public sphere and the making of the masses.

Weihong Bao is associate professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures and Film and Media at UC Berkeley. Her short essay “From Duration to Temporization: Rethinking Time and Space for Durational Art” will appear in the fall issue of Representations (the special issue “Time Zones: Durational Art and Its Contexts”), available next month.

After an introduction by Andrew Jones (East Asian Languages and Cultures, UC Berkeley, and Representations editorial board member), Bao will speak briefly about her work and then open the floor for discussion.

D. A. Miller on Hitchcock

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HIDDEN HITCHCOCK BY D. A. MILLER
a University Press Books event
University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA 94704

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 13
5:30 PM — 7:00 PM

unnamedHidden Hitchcock, D. A. Miller does what seems impossible: he discovers what has remained unseen in Hitchcock’s movies, a secret style that imbues his films with a radical duplicity.

Focusing on three films—Strangers on a Train, Rope, and The Wrong Man—Hidden Hitchcock shows how Hitchcock anticipates, even demands a “Too-Close Viewer.” Dwelling within us all and vigilant even when everything appears to be in good order, this Too-Close Viewer attempts to see more than the director points out, to expand the space of the film and the duration of the viewing experience. And, thanks to Hidden Hitchcock, that obsessive attention is rewarded. In Hitchcock’s visual puns, his so-called continuity errors, and his hidden appearances (not to be confused with his cameos), Miller finds wellsprings of enigma.

Hidden Hitchcock is a revelatory work that not only shows how little we know this best known of filmmakers, but also how near such too-close viewing comes to cinephilic madness.

Rope, dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1948

Rope, dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1948

About The Author

D. A. Miller is Professor of the Graduate School and the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley. His recent books include 8 ½ and Jane Austen, or the Secret of Style. In 2013, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Miller has published on Hitchcock twice in Representations: “Hitchcock’s Understyle: A Too-Close View of Rope“ (121, Winter 2013) and “Anal Rope“ (31, Fall 1990).

Upcoming UCB Workshop on Bodies and Political Configurations

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Rethinking Political Bodies: A Workshop

Oct 7 – Oct 8, 2016
Faculty Club, University of California Berkeley

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Featuring Representations editorial board members Alexei Yurchak and David Bates, along with Camille Robcis, Nima Bassiri, Ethel Matala de Mazza, Danilo Scholz, Rebecca Gaydos, and Stefanos Geroulanos

The relationship between biological concepts and political concepts is longstanding — the “body politic” has always been a dominant metaphor for theorizations of political community. However, organicist models of the state have been thoroughly tainted by 19th and early 20th century ideas of unity, homogeneity, and racial purity. Today, bio-politics is a ubiquitous frame for analysis, yet the biological dimension is often underdeveloped. This workshop takes as its starting point the idea that modern biological concepts provide important resources for thinking about organization, order, control, and other key political problems. Papers will explore new links between bodies and political configurations, on the ground and within theoretical discourses. For more information, visit the workshop web page.

Supported by the UC Berkeley Department of Rhetoric

T. J. Clark Lecture

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NASSR 2016 poster finalOn Friday, August 12, T. J. Clark will give one of two keynote lectures for the 24th Annual Conference of the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism (NASSR). The lecture, “Too Deep for the Vulgar: Hazlitt on Turner and Blake,” will take place at 6 pm in room 2050 of the Valley Life Sciences Building at UC Berkeley.

Clark is Professor Emeritus of Modern Art at Berkeley and was a long-time member of the Representations editorial board. His books and other writings, several of which found form originally in Representations, have influenced a generation of scholars.

The NASSR conference will take place from August 11 to 14 at various venues in Berkeley. More information and a full program are available at http://nassrberkeley2016.wordpress.com/.

“Maroons and World History”

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maroon-web-urlRepresentations board members Stephen Best and Elisa Tamarkin, Associate Professors of English at UC Berkeley, will participate in an upcoming conference on “Maroons and World History.” The conference will take place on Thursday, May 5, at the Bancroft Hotel. Papers will be pre-circulated and registration is free, but required. More information and schedule details can be found here.

 

Other participants in the conference include Bryan Wagner (Associate Professor of English at UC Berkeley), whose essay “Disarmed and Dangerous: The Strange Career of Bras-Coupéé” appeared in Representations 92 (Fall 2005).