Jenna Gray-Hildenbrand (UC Graduate Fellow in The Humanities) Wednesday, May 23 / 12:00 PM IHC Seminar Room, 6056 HSSB "I believe in obeying the laws of the land, but when they are contrary to God’s law we will have no part," Reverend Liston Pack stated in 1973 after...
Yanoula Athanassakis (IHC Research Fellow) Wednesday, May 16 / 1:00 PM McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB This talk centers on Bich Minh Nguyen’s memoir, Stealing Buddha’s Dinner (2008). In unpacking the scenes of consumption of “foreign,” “native,” and “junk” foods, the talk explores Nguyen’s veiled engagement with...
Sarah Hirsch (IHC Research Fellow) Wednesday, May 16 / 12:00 PM McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB In Cities of the Dead (1996), Joseph Roach observes that New Orleans is a place "where the dead remain more gregariously present to the living, materially, and spiritually, than they do...
Shalini Kakar (IHC Research Fellow) Wednesday, April 18 / 12:00 PM McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB This talk examines the contemporary ritual practices of fans who worship film stars as gods. Focusing on public display of devotee-fan worship of South Indian film star Rajinikanth in India, and...
Jessica L. Ambler (IHC Research Fellow) Wednesday, April 18 / 1:00 PM McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB The Roman rebuilding of Carthage as Colonia Concordia Iulia Karthago in the early first century CE has typically been described by scholars as an act of Roman hegemony, wiping...
Shalini Kakar, (Art History, UCSB) Wednesday, March 14 / 3:00 pm IHC Seminar Room, 3041 HSSB This presentation explores the devotional fandom centered around images of Bollywood film star Amitabh Bachchan in the Amitabh Bachchan Fan Association (ABFA) in Kolkata, India. Kakar will investigate the ways in which...