Events

Announcements

5/12 GCLR Academic Writing and Development Workshop
This professional writing workshop is designed to equip graduate students with the skills necessary to craft compelling cover letters and persuasive grant proposals. Through targeted instruction and hands-on practice, students will learn to articulate their qualifications, research interests, and professional goals in clear, concise, and impactful ways. Emphasis will be placed on understanding audience expectations, aligning documents with institutional or funding priorities, and developing a confident professional voice
 
Cover letters and grant proposals are essential tools for academic and career advancement. Whether applying for jobs, fellowships, or research funding, graduate students, and early career scholars, must be able to present themselves and their work effectively. This workshop provides practical strategies to help students navigate these high-stakes writing genres with clarity and confidence.
 
Time: Monday May 12th, 2025
 
Place: Phelps 6206C
 
RSVP here!
4/14 Ethnographic Film Workshop with Prof. Meghanne Barker
Prof. Barker will be holding a workshop for faculty and graduate students who are interested in ethnographic film and filmmaking. She will discuss fieldwork on film culture in the former Yugoslavia, which includes following, participating in and organising filmmaking workshops at film clubs and other film camps in the region. She will also facilitate an interactive workshop on our own films in progress. Please see the attached flyer for more details. 
 
Time: Monday April 14th, 10am-12:30pm 
 
Place: HSSB 2001A
4/14 Prof. Meghanne Barker (UCL) "Throw Your Voice: Suspended Animations in Kazakhstani Childhoods"
Please join us for this event in which prof. Barker will be discussing her recently published ethnography of childhood in Kazakhstan, Throw Your Voice.
 
Time: Monday, April 14, 2025 3-4:30PM
 

Place: HSSB 6020 

5/16 Prof. Ilya Kliger (NYU) in Conversation with Prof. Sven Spieker (UCSB)

Join us for a conversation between professors Sven Spieker and Ilya Kliger on Kliger's new book, Sovereign Fictions: Poetics and Politics in the Age of Russian Realism

The nineteenth-century novel is generally assumed to owe its basic social imaginaries to the ideologies, institutions, and practices of modern civil society. In Sovereign Fictions, Ilya Kliger asks what happens to the novel when its fundamental sociohistorical orientation is, as in the case of Russian realism, toward the state. Kliger explores Russian realism’s distinctive construals of sociality through a broad range of texts from the 1830s to the 1870s, including major works by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Pushkin, Lermontov, Goncharov, and Turgenev, and several lesser-known but influential books of the period.
 
Time: May 16th at 12pm
 
Place: Zoom
4/11 Prof. Svitlana Biedarieva "Resistance and Decoloniality in Ukrainian Contemporary Art"

This lecture focuses on the decolonial changes that Ukrainian art has undergone in the last eleven years, following the beginning of Russia's war against Ukraine in 2014 and subsequently, the full-scale invasion in 2022. It examines how collective resistance to Russia's war against Ukraine shaped the reinterpretations of contested memory and divided identities of the past. The focus on politically and socially engaged art practices allows for tracing important societal transformations through the lens of resilience and a quest for epistemic justice. The lecture draws on research findings from two recently published books: the edited volume Art in Ukraine Between Identity Construction and Anti-Colonial Resistance (Routledge, 2024) and the monograph Ambicoloniality and War: The Ukrainian-Russian Case (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025).

Time: Friday April 11th, 5-6pm

Place: Zoom

4/11 "Coralations": A Talk by Prof. Melody Jue (English, UCSB)

Please join us for the next entry in the GCLR co-sponsored Interdiscplinary Brown Bag Lunch Series, this time featuring prof. Melody Jue who will be presenting on her newest book Coralations. A description of the talk can be found here. 

Remember to RSVP for a provided free lunch!

Time: Friday April 11th, 12-2pm

Place: Phelps 6206C and on Zoom