EVENT DETAILS

50th Anniversary Conference: Creativity, Cognition, Critique

Celebrating UCI's 50th anniversary, Arts + Humanities present “Creativity, Cognition, Critique.” The conference will probe the flow among acts of artistic and technological making, forms of interpretation and reflection, and the cognitive processes that they share. Speakers are major and emerging figures in the arts, the humanities, and their intersection. This event is linked to the 2016 Wellek Lectures, the School of Humanities’ premier lecture event and an important part of UCI’s history. The speaker for the Wellek Lectures is Katherine Hayles, Professor of English at Duke University and a leader in the fields of digital humanities, electronic literature, and literature and science. The week will also be enriched by a residency with Georgina Born, a prominent musicologist from the UK who has done research on UCI’s digital arts program and legacy. Major guests include filmmaker Charles Burnett, architect and urbanist Teddy Cruz, and media theorists Anne Balsalmo and Jodi Dean.

SCHEDULE: SATURDAY, May 21

10:00: Round table 2 | Creativity, Cognition, Critique?
HG1010
Catherine Malabou (KIngston/UCI), Simony Penny (UCI), and David Bates (UCB).
Moderated by Daniel Gross, Department of English, UCI

11:30: Keynote 3 | Anne Balsamo
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“Digital Humanities Catalyzes Technological Innovation: You’ll never believe what happened next….”
Introduced by Peter Krapp

Anne Balsamo is a groundbreaking national leader in media studies, a scholar and media-maker whose work links cultural studies, digital humanities, and interactive media. In 2011, she published Designing Culture: The Technological Imagination at Work, a transmedia book that synthesizes and theorizes the links between her cultural studies scholarship and digital media projects.

1:00: Lunch, HG1030

2:00-3:15: Keynote 4 | Jodi Dean
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"A View From the Side: The Natural History Museum"
Introduced by Keith Topper, Political Science,UCI

Jodi Dean is the Donald R. Harter '39 Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. She is the author or editor of numerous book, including Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies (Duke), Blog Theory (Polity), The Communist Horizon (Verso), and Crowds and Party, forthcoming from Verso in 2016.

3:30-6:00: Screening of Killer of Sheep followed by a conversation with filmmaker Charles Burnett
McCormick Screening Room
Arlene Keizer, Ed Dimendberg, Desha Dauchan, and Jamie Rogers, presiding

Charles Burnett is a film director, film producer, writer, editor, actor, photographer, and cinematographer. His most popular films include Killer of Sheep (1978), My Brother's Wedding (1983), To Sleep with Anger (1990), The Glass Shield (1994), and Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation (2007).

Event website