AMERICAN COMMUNITIES PROGRAM
Fall 2023
The American Communities Program at California State University, Los Angeles promotes humanities-based inquiry into the formation of individual and communal identities in American society.
All events are in-person unless otherwise noted. Covid protocols will be followed to ensure safety.
Faculty are welcome to bring their classes to any and all events. If you would like to do so, please contact Dr. Maria Karafilis, ACP Director, at [email protected] to ensure adequate seating.
TIME AND TEMPORALITY
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 11
INDIGENOUS TRIBES OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA: NATIVE PLANTS, PLACE, AND CULTURE
1:30 PM ● Golden Eagle Ballroom
Join us for a talk by Aaron Saubel, Board Member of the Malki Museum (Banning, CA), on ethnobotany and the endurance of traditional indigenous knowledges of native plants in our region.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13
& WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27
ACP READING GROUP: MAGGIE NELSON’S THE ARGONAUTS
3 PM ● Engineering and Technology Building, A631
Join us as we read and discuss Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts. Nelson is the author of several acclaimed works of poetry and prose, including the forthcoming collection Like Love: Essays and Conversations (2024), the national bestseller On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint (2021), and the National Book Critics Circle Award winner The Argonauts (2015). Nelson also received a 2016 MacArthur “genius” Fellowship. The reading group is in preparation for Nelson’s on-campus talk on October 5 (see description below for more information). We will have a limited number of copies of the book available free to reading group participants, on a first-come, first served basis. Contact Dr. Juan Lamata for a copy of the book at [email protected].
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20
ACP FACULTY FELLOWS: THEORIZATIONS OF TIME AND TEMPORALITY
1:45 PM ● Library Community Room, Library North B131
Join us as the 2023-24 ACP fellows analyze how the humanities can help us explore our current ACP theme of time and temporality. Presenters: Prof. Tanya Kane-Parry (Theater Arts), Dr. Bryan Thornton (Charter College of Education), Dr. Gabriela Valenzuela (Chicana[o] and Latina[o] Studies).
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 5
MAGGIE NELSON: WRITING ACROSS DIVIDES
6 PM ● Music Hall, Theater Arts Building 116
Join us for a talk by award-winning poetry and prose writer Maggie Nelson, whose work reaches across and interrogates genres, disciplines, audiences, and more. (See above for information on the ACP reading group on Nelson’s work).
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 7
ACP READING GROUP
HANNAH ARENDT’S EICHMANN IN JERUSALEM: A REPORT ON THE BANALITY OF EVIL
6 PM ● Library Community Room, Library North B131
Hannah Arendt’s 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem remains one of the most controversial and philosophically insightful treatments of the Holocaust and its aftermath. In it, Arendt develops the categories “crimes against humanity” and “banality of evil,” both of which have had a lasting effect on our political discourse and collective imagination. She raises important challenges to scholarship and practice in multiple fields, including philosophy, political science, journalism, English, genocide studies, and more. Join the ACP Interdisciplinary Working Group as we take up these challenges in the first of a series of events focusing on Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem in its 60th anniversary year. We will have a limited number of copies of the book available free to reading group participants, on a first-come, first served basis. Contact Dr. Sarah Minslow for a copy of the book at [email protected].
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13
TIME AND NARRATIVE
6 PM ● Library Community Room, Library North B131
Join us for a dialogue on Time and Narrative and the intersection of storytelling/futurisms/ climate change/speculative literature. Scheduled to appear: Dr. Ayana Jamieson (Ethnic Studies, Cal Poly Pomona) and Dr. Jasmine Wade (Ethnic Studies, Sacramento State University).
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 28
"WE ARE ALL IN THE SAME BOAT": ARENDT ON SOLIDARITY AND EICHMANN'S PRINCIPLE
A TALK BY DR. DAVID KIM
6 PM ● Library Community Room, Library North B131
REGISTRATION REQUIRED FOR THIS EVENT:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/a-talk-by-dr-david-kim-60th-anniversary-of-eichmann-in-jerusalem-tickets-764112409787?aff=oddtdtcreator
Acclaimed scholar Dr. David Kim (Vice Provost, International Institute and Professor, European Languages and Transcultural Studies, UCLA), examines how, for Hannah Arendt, the aftermath of the Holocaust brought renewed urgency to the murky concept of solidarity. She was dismayed to discover that more and more appeals to unity equated perpetrators and victims or hung onto Christian notions of original sin as new political futures were imagined. The aim of this lecture is to examine Arendt's catchphrase "We are all in the same boat" and its implications for Holocaust Studies as well as contemporary global political movements.
To view past American Communities Program events, click here.