UCLA Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies

Registration is now open for the first conference in the Center & Clark 2024-25 Core Program! Organized by Carla Gardina Pestana (UCLA) and Gabriel de Avilez Rocha (Brown University), "Early Global Caribbean: Convergences" considers the historical constructions of Caribbean space, the waves of people who moved through it across different temporalities before 1700, and the results—both violent and otherwise—that followed these contacts.

The conference will be held at the Clark Library on October 18-19, 2024 and is free of charge to attend with advance registration. The proceedings will also be livestreamed on the Center's YouTube channel.

Learn more, view the program schedule, and register at https://www.1718.ucla.edu/events/early-global-caribbean-1/

Congratulations to Center & Clark Library Core Faculty member Nile Green, whose newest book, "Empire's Son, Empire's Orphan:
The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah," was just published by W. W. Norton.

Professor Green tells the story of two literary fabulists, father and son Ikbal and Idries Shah, who spread seductive accounts of a mystical Middle East. Claiming to come from Afghanistan, they parlayed their assumed identities into careers full of drama and celebrity, writing dozens of books that influenced the political and cultural elite. The Shahs told Western readers what they wanted to hear: audacious yarns of eastern adventure and harmless Sufi mystics—myths that, as the century wore on and the Taliban seized power, became increasingly detached from reality.

"Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan" follows the Shahs from their origins in colonial India to literary London, wartime Oxford, and counterculture California via the Levant, the League of Nations, and Latin America. Nile Green unravels the conspiracies and pseudonyms, fantastical pasts and self-aggrandizing anecdotes, high stakes and bold schemes that for nearly a century painted the defining portrait of Afghanistan.

Learn more and purchase your copy at https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324002413

Have you ever wondered how we change the light bulbs in the chandeliers at the Clark Library? Maybe you have other questions about our rare book collection, our fellowships, academic and cultural programs, or our five acre property in the heart of Los Angeles? Find answers to your questions at our annual Open House and Adopt-A-Book Fair on Saturday, September 28!

At this event, you can meet our staff and learn more about what we do, view recent acquisitions and other highlights, and consider adopting a book in the Clark Library’s collection. Guests are welcome to explore and enjoy the expansive grounds and historical rooms, take part in our scavenger hunt and win prizes while supplies last, play lawn games, plant heirloom seeds from the Clark Library’s Seed Library in peat pots to take home, and enjoy other activities for the entire family!

This event is free to attend with advance registration. Capacity is limited, so register today at https://www.1718.ucla.edu/events/open-house-2024/

Laura Clennon, the Center & Clark Library's Assistant Director and Chief Administrative Officer, was recently interviewed for a feature that focuses on career development at UCLA. See the full interview here: https://humanities.ucla.edu/news/laura-clennon-career-tips-staff/

We have a very exciting slate of public programming planned for 2024-25 at the Clark Library! In addition to presenting a cycle of conferences and events around this year's Core Program, Early Global Caribbean, we'll also be hosting an Open House and Adopt-A-Book Fair, arts events, lectures, and conferences, and we'll be celebrating the 30th anniversary of Chamber Music at the Clark! Read all about it in our 2024-25 Programs Preview: https://t.e2ma.net/message/uh7s8i/qilpaj

The Center for 17th-& 18th-Century Studies is a proud co-sponsor of the La Escena Festival of Hispanic Classical Theater, organized by Diversifying the Classics. This year’s festival will be held at the newly renovated UCLA Nimoy Theater in Westwood from September 12-17, 2024. Check out full details and get your FREE tickets here: 1718.ucla.edu/events/la-escena-2024

Many thanks to everyone who joined us in person and via livestream for the 2024 Henry J. Bruman Summer Chamber Music Festival! We are grateful to the festival's Artistic Director, Ambroise Aubrun, who curated a magnificent series of concerts, and to all of the incredible artists who shared their talents with us over the past two weeks.

If you missed this year's festival or would like to re-watch any of the concerts, visit our Center's YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/-c1718cs . Each concert video will be available to watch for three weeks after the date of the performance.

It's not too late to make a donation to the festival! Help us sustain the festival and keep the concerts free of charge by donating here: https://www.1718.ucla.edu/giving/ . Click Donate and choose Bruman Summer Chamber Music Festival Fund. Thank you!

We look forward to seeing you tomorrow, Thursday, August 8, for the final Henry J. Bruman Summer Chamber Music Festival concert featuring ensemble132. The free concert, featuring Maria Ioudenitch (violin), Zhanbo Zheng (viola), and Zachary Mowitz (cello) will be held in person at UCLA's Lani Hall and livestreamed on the Center's YouTube channel at 12 noon Pacific. Complete details, including the program, can be found here: https://www.1718.ucla.edu/events/bruman24-august8/

We look forward to seeing you tomorrow, Tuesday, August 6, at the Henry J. Bruman Summer Chamber Music Festival concert featuring Jennifer Kloetzel (cello) & Robert Koenig (piano). The free concert, featuring works by Haydn, Beethoven, Boulanger, Beach, and Popper will be held in person at UCLA's Lani Hall and livestreamed on the Center's YouTube channel at 12 noon Pacific. Complete details, including the program, can be found here: https://www.1718.ucla.edu/events/bruman24-august6/

The first half of the Henry J. Bruman Summer Chamber Music Festival is complete! Our thanks to the talented artists who performed in the first two concerts: Violin, Viola & Piano Recital (Andrew McIntosh and Steven Vanhauwaert) and Piano Quintets (Ambroise Aubrun, Katrin Stamatis, Virginie d’Avezac, Jonathan Ruck, and Zachary Deak).

If you missed attending in person, you can watch full videos of both concerts on the Center's YouTube channel for a limited time: http://www.youtube.com/-c1718cs

Be sure to join us next week for the second half of the festival, featuring concerts on August 6 (Cello & Piano Recital) and August 8 (ensemble132). Concerts will be held in person in Lani Hall inside Schoenberg Music Building on the UCLA campus at 12 noon Pacific, and livestreamed on our YouTube channel. All concerts are free of charge, and no reservations are required.

Join us tomorrow, August 1 at 12 noon Pacific in Lani Hall on the UCLA campus or via livestream for the second FREE concert in the Henry J. Bruman Summer Chamber Music Festival! The Piano Quintets recital features Ambroise Aubrun (violin), Katrin Stamatis (violin), Virginie d’Avezac (viola), Jonathan Ruck (cello) and Zachary Deak (piano) performing a program of Ottorino Respighi and César Franck. Full details here:

Piano Quintets, Henry J. Bruman Summer Chamber Music Festival - The Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies Ambroise Aubrun, violin; Katrin Stamatis, violin; Virginie d’Avezac, viola; Jonathan Ruck, cello; Zachary Deak, piano - Piano Quintets, Henry J. Bruman Summer Chamber Music Festival

TOMORROW, July 30 at 12 noon, join us at Lani Hall on the UCLA campus or via livestream for the first FREE concert in the Henry J. Bruman Summer Chamber Music Festival! The Violin, Viola, and Piano Recital features Andrew McIntosh and Steven Vanhauwaert performing a program of Clara Schumann, Robert Schumann, and Paul Hindemith. Full details here:

Violin, Viola & Piano Recital, Henry J. Bruman Summer Chamber Music Festival - The Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies Andrew McIntosh, violin, viola & Steven Vanhauwaert, piano - Violin, Viola & Piano Recital, Henry J. Bruman Summer Chamber Music Festival

We are pleased to announce that Professor Carla Gardina Pestana, Distinguished Professor and Joyce Appleby Endowed Chair of America in the World (Department of History), will serve as Director of the Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies and the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library for Academic Year 2024-25. Professor Pestana studies the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Atlantic worlds, especially the English Atlantic; the Caribbean; and religion and empire. In addition to serving as the Director of the Center and Clark, Professor Pestana will hold the position of Clark Professor in 2024-25, along with Professor Gabriel de Avilez Rocha, Vasco da Gama Assistant Professor of History and Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, Brown University. Together they are organizing the annual Core Program, "Early Global Caribbean."

Professor Pestana received her Ph.D. at UCLA in 1987 in early American history. Before joining UCLA’s faculty in 2012, she taught at The Ohio State University, Canterbury University in Christchurch, New Zealand, and Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Professor Pestana has published books on religion and empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, most notably "Protestant Empire: Religion and the Making of the British Atlantic World" (2009). On the subject of empire, she authored "The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution, 1640-1661" (2004) and "The English Conquest of Jamaica: Oliver Cromwell’s Bid for Empire" (2017). She is also the co-editor with Sharon V. Salinger of "Inequality in Early America" (1991) and a multi-volume collection of primary texts on early English engagement in the Caribbean, "The Early English Caribbean, 1570-1700." Her most recent books are "The World of Plymouth Plantation" (2020) and, co-edited with Eliga Gould and Paul Mapp, volume 1 of the "Cambridge History of America and the World, 1500-1820."

Please join us in welcoming Professor Pestana to this significant leadership role at the Center & Clark, and in thanking her for her willingness to contribute to UCLA and the Humanities in this capacity.

Bronwen Wilson, Professor of Art History and Edward W. Carter Chair in European Art, has served as Director of the UCLA Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies and the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library since Winter 2021. She has recently concluded her initial term as Director and is taking a long-overdue sabbatical for Academic Year 2024-25. We are most grateful to Professor Wilson for her many exemplary contributions to date and are thrilled to share that she will serve another term as Director effective July 1, 2025, through June 30, 2028.

Graduate Student Spotlight: Sylvia Tongyan Qiu

Congratulations to Sylvia, a member of the Graduate Certificate in Early Modern Studies cohort, who has been awarded a Summer Mentorship from the UCLA Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies for her project entitled “Between Mountains and Seas: Korallenberge from the Ambras Kunstkammer in the 16th Century.”

The Summer Mentorship program will allow Sylvia to develop her project into a conference paper, which she will be presenting at the Sixteenth Century Conference in October and the conference of the Renaissance Society of America in 2025.

Graduate Student Spotlight: Sofia Yazpik

Congratulations to Sofia, a member of the Graduate Certificate in Early Modern Studies cohort, who has been awarded a Summer Mentorship from the UCLA Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies. Sofia’s research during the summer will encompass a comprehensive study of the Codex Osuna, an early colonial codex, or manuscript, produced in 1565. Sofia's project is mentored by UCLA Professor of History Kevin Terraciano .

Graduate Student Spotlight: Emily Ostlander

Congratulations to Emily, a member of the Graduate Certificate in Early Modern Studies cohort, who has been awarded a Summer Mentorship from the UCLA Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies.

Emily is a first year Ph.D. student in the UCLA Department of Art History. Her research focuses on representations of the body that evade categorization in early modern European art. At UCLA, she completed her M.A. in Art History in 2023. Her M.A. thesis demonstrates the political efficacy of iterative imagery to promote human-made landscapes through the analysis of seventeenth-century Italian thesis prints. Prior to arriving at UCLA, she completed her B.A. in both Art History and Urban Design & Architectural Studies at New York University.

During the Graduate Certificate in Early Modern Studies Summer Mentorship, Emily plans to work with UCLA Professor of Art History Bronwen Wilson to explore questions related to the fantastic and metamorphic construction of seventeenth-century glassware designed for the Medici court. In the space between whimsical, organic forms and extant glass vessels, designs for Medici glassware speak to the circulation of ideas in Florentine artistic circles and court culture. She seeks to develop a conference paper on the subject through the EMC mentorship.

Graduate Student Spotlight: Erin Severson

Congratulations to Erin, a member of the Graduate Certificate in Early Modern Studies cohort, who has been awarded a Summer Mentorship from the Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies. This summer, Erin will work on her project, “Accustomed to Caliban”: Black Humor in Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda, under the mentorship of UCLA Professor of English Helen Deutsch. Erin's research forms part of their dissertation project, which constructs a history of black
humor through the lens of transatlantic book history.

The Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies awards competitive summer mentorships that provide financial support in the form of a $6,000 award to participating certificate program students for the completion of this requirement, based on the strength of their proposed projects. To learn more about the Graduate Certificate in Early Modern Studies, visit https://www.1718.ucla.edu/research/ucla-graduate/graduate-certificate/

Join us at UCLA's Lani Hall inside Schoenberg Music Building and via livestream on July 30, August 1, 6, and 8, 2024 for the Henry J. Bruman Summer Chamber Music Festival, featuring concerts by acclaimed artists. FREE, no reservations required! Full details at https://www.1718.ucla.edu/events/

The long eighteenth century sits as a pivotal point between the early-modern and modern worlds. By actively encouraging an international focus for the series over all, both in terms of wide-ranging geographical topics and authorial locations, Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Cultures and Societies aims to feature cutting-edge research from established and recent scholars, and capitalize on the breadth of themes and topics that new approaches to research in the period reveal.

The editors seek proposals for book-length studies from individual or multiple authors that focus on aspects of British, European or transnational culture and society for the period c.1680–1850. While proposals for regional/national case studies are welcome, all authors in the series will be expected to situate their research, historically and historiographically, in a wider international framework in order to ensure that it is accessible to students as well as scholars.

Find additional details here: https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Studies-in-Eighteenth-Century-Cultures-and-Societies/book-series/RSECCS

Image Credit: Agostino Brunias, Linen Day, Roseau, Dominica - A Market Scene, c.1780

Last week, the Center was pleased to host "Oscar Wilde, Sexuality, and the State," a brilliant two-day conference organized by UCLA Distinguished Professor Joseph Bristow. You can watch videos of the stellar presentations on our YouTube channel now: https://www.youtube.com/-c1718cs

📷 Evening News Extra Special Edition: Wilde Released. [London]: [Evening News], [1897]. ff PR5828. E93 W6*.

On Thursday, June 13, 2024, staff from libraries with holdings of interest to early modern researchers will present on their collections in a webinar hosted by The Renaissance Society of America. Presenters include Ikumi Crocoll, the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library's Instruction and Engagement Librarian.

Register for the free webinar here: https://www.rsa.org/events/EventDetails.aspx?id=1860821

Congratulations to two Core Faculty members from the Center for 17th- and 18th-Century Studies, Raphaëlle Burns and Javier Patiño Loira, who have received fellowships at Villa i Tatti!

https://itatti.harvard.edu/people/rapha%C3%ABlle-burns

https://itatti.harvard.edu/people/javier-pati%C3%B1o-loira

Did you miss Tuesday's talk by Art History PhD Student, Sylvia Tongyan Qiu? We've got you covered!

You can view this and many other lectures on our YouTube page!

Imaging Diplomacy: The Meridian Gate and the Making of European Perspectives on China (1655–1795) Lecture by Sylvia Tongyan Qiu, Ph.D. Student in Art History, University of California, Los Angeles. Recipient of the 2023–24 Kenneth Karmiole Endowed Graduat...

Are you a UCLA undergrad who used the resources at the Clark Library for a course paper or independent project within the last 12 months?

You could be eligible for a UCLA Library Research Prize! There is a prize specific for the Clark!

Learn more at the link below and apply by March 27th.

Library Prize for Undergraduate Research | UCLA Library The Library Prize for Undergraduate Research recognizes and honors excellence in undergraduate research at UCLA.

TOMORROW! TUES 3/12 @ 1PM PST
Online!

Imaging Diplomacy: The Meridian Gate and the Making of European Perspectives on China (1655–1795)

Presented by PhD Student in Art History, Sylvia Tongyan Qiu.

Imaging Diplomacy: The Meridian Gate and the Making of European Perspectives on China (1655–1795) - The Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies Tuesday, March 12, 2024 @ 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm - Lecture by Sylvia Tongyan Qiu, Ph.D. Student in Art History, University of California, Los Angeles. Recipient of the 2023–24 Kenneth Karmiole Endowed Graduate Research Fellowship In 1692, Evert Ysbrants Ides, a Danish merchant living in the German qu...

Tomorrow's talk by Joseph Bristow on Oscar Wilde is AT CAPACITY.

But did you know we have a YouTube channel?

Livestream the event tomorrow and view our past events:

UCLA Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies - YouTube This channel was created for the Center to distribute video of our events. Our events cover a wide gamut from academic conferences, to lectures, to arts prog...

Joseph Bristow, Distinguished Professor of English at UCLA and a member of our Core Faculty, will correct the record of Oscar Wilde's death next Wednesday, February 21, 2024 at 4:00 PM PST.

Dr. Bristow's research was recently featured in UCLA News!

Oscar Wilde’s final hours: UCLA’s Joseph Bristow to correct the record in lecture at Clark Library Could the common story that the Irish writer and bon vivant died of syphilis be wrong?

Attendees to last week's conference, Eco Edo: Ecological Perspectives on Early Modern Japanese Art, had the opportunity to view early modern books in UCLA's William Andrews Clark Memorial Library collection related to Japan.

Join us for our last conference in our core program, Open Edo: Diverse, Ecological, and Global Perspectives on Japanese Art, 1603–1868, in April.

https://www.1718.ucla.edu/events/open-edo3/

Join us for the second conference as part of the 2023-24 Core Program: Open Edo: Diverse, Ecological, and Global Perspectives on Japanese Art, 1603–1868, organized by Kristopher Kersey.

Today's conference, Eco Edo: Ecological Perspectives on Early Modern Japanese Art, interrogates the massive changes to the natural and built environments during the highly urbanized Edo period.

📅 Friday, February 2, 2024
⏰ 10:30 AM - 5:30 PM PST

Open Edo: Diverse, Ecological, and Global Perspectives on Japanese Art, 1603–1868, Conference 2: Eco Edo: Ecological Perspectives on Early Modern Japanese Art - The Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies In an effort to countervail the enduring stereotypes of early modern Japanese art, Open Edo will present a suite of conferences addressing three interlinked themes: the representation and agency of marginalized groups, the ecological horizons of artistic production, and the ongoing need to counter t...

Registration closes TONIGHT at 5:00 PM PST for our film screening and Q&A with director Edo Avant Garde and Producer Linda Hoaglund.

As part of the Center & Clark’s 2023-24 Core Program, Open Edo: Diverse, Ecological, and Global Perspectives on Japanese Art, 1603-1868.

Walk-ins are welcome, space permitting.

📅 Saturday, February 3, 2024
⏰ 2:00-4:00 PM PST

Edo Avant Garde: Film Screening and Q&A with Director and Producer Linda Hoaglund - The Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies Saturday, February 3, 2024 @ 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm - In conjunction with the Center & Clark's 2023-24 Core Program, Open Edo: Diverse, Ecological, and Global Perspectives on Japanese Art, 1603-1868, we are pleased to present a screening of Linda Hoaglund’s film, Edo Avant Garde. This film reveals th...