Events

In curatorial practices today, asking the question “What is art?” leads to a clear lack of a singularly “correct” answer. Expand the question to “What is African art?” and the territory becomes even murkier in that both the terms “art” and “Africa” resist definition. The navigation toward mutual understanding becomes an almost impassable quagmire of […]

Dion Farquhar is a poet and fiction writer with recent poems in The Southeast Review, Shampoo, and/or, Dark Sky Magazine, etc. Her chapbook, Cleaving, won first prize at Poets Corner Press in 2007, and her first poetry book was published in November by Evening Street Press.  She works as a Lecturer of literature and creative […]

This presentation will explore the use of the chocolate tree (Theobroma cacao L.) in Mesoamerican communities with a focus on the ancient Maya polity of Copan in Honduras. While the areas where cacao thrived in Mesoamerica were limited, the seeds were easily transportable and became a valued source of stimulants. By 1900 B.C. cacao was […]

This talk is presented as part of the Philosophy Graduate Student Works in Progress series.

Morphological case systems are frequently described in terms of distinctions related to transitivity. To a first approximation, the case system of Nez Perce nicely fits this bill: one case (ergative) marks transitive subjects, a distinct case (objective) marks transitive objects, and intransitive subjects remain in an unmarked (nominative) form. (1) Transitive: ERG subject, OBJ object […]

Every year, we honor Helen Diller, whose generous endowment continues to provide crucial support to Jewish Studies at UC-Santa Cruz, by hosting a public lecture on campus by an internationally recognized scholar.  This year's lecture will be presented by Dr. Robert Alter, and is entitled "Translating the Bible: The Wisdom Books."  The lecture will take […]

Full of mysteries, theatrical effects, unexpected violence and unexpected compromises, recent Italian history is probably difficult to understand, but surely is not boring. It was 32 years ago when Aldo Moro, the most prominent Italian politician, was killed by the Red Brigades in the center of Rome, after a kidnapping that lasted 55 days. Thirty two […]

Drawing on the narratological theories of Genette (“voice”) and Mieke Bal (“focalization”), Professor Jordan’s talk offers a new approach to understanding the illustrations to Dickens’s Bleak House (1852- 53) that emphasizes elements of retrospection, fantasy, and multiple temporality. John Jordan is Professor of Literature, UCSC.

In this talk, I argue for a particular logic by which agreement (in particular, agreement between a verb or tense/aspect/mood-marker and a noun-phrase) is related to grammaticality, and show how this conclusion illuminates certain longstanding questions in the theory of syntax. In particular, I argue that agreement is best captured in terms of an operation. […]

Language comprehension seems fast, effortless and error-free -- at least, to the extent that we can introspect about it. Underneath this apparently seamless part of our day-to-day experience lies a complex working memory system. To avoid overwhelming our limited processing capacity, information is constantly being shuffled back and forth between states of accessibility and storage, […]