The institution-shattering forces unleashed by the French Revolution were successfully refocused upon Europe by Napoleon. The French tide swept over the continent, and even across the Mediterranean, leaving the remnants of many ancien regimes refashioned in its wake. The responses to France’s reassertion of cultural preeminence varied from uncritical enthusiasm to repugnance, and from nuanced appreciation to the love-hate affair the Russian aristocracy carried on for the next century. Napoleon invaded Egypt yet crafted enlightened policy sympathetic to Islam, resurrected Roman civil law, inspired Beethoven, challenged Goethe and Tolstoy to think again, and bankrolled a return to grandeur in the fine arts. Only the British successfully resisted both his armies and his cultural influence.

Moderator: Roger Hahn, Emeritus Professor, Graduate School, UC Berkeley

Friday, April 17, 2009

8 pm to 10:15 pm

Napoleon — the Grandeur Restored
Keynote Address by Steven Englund (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and American University of Paris [now part of New York University])
Napoleon the man, Napoleon the general, and Napoleon the Emperor; what elements led to the election and rise to power of the 27-year-old minor Italian nobleman? Napoleon provided the promise of glory for the French following the horrors of the revolution, but many additional factors influenced his ability to mesmerize the world.

Napoleon and the Visual Arts
Michael Marrinan (Stanford University)
Napoleon spent lavishly on the arts of all media: from grand-scale projects of architecture to finely-wrought personal objects; from wall-sized paintings to books and prints; from monumental sculptures to porcelains of extreme elegance. Across this broad spectrum of patronage, no single style can be called emblematic of the Empire. How could it? Napoleon emerged from the ruins of the First Republic to erect a government of social and political elites that mirrored the hierarchies of the old monarchy without renouncing completely the achievements of the Great Revolution. Artists were asked for imagery and symbols to legitimate Napoleonic rule as both a break from the past and an extension of it. Thus, the Emperor’s coronation invoked Charlemagne as historical pedigree to bypass conveniently the line of kings ousted by the Revolution. Public works of classical allusion figured Paris as the new Rome and center of a new Empire. By contrast, history painters were encouraged to break with the Academy’s preference for antiquity by commissioning pictures of contemporary events in modern dress. Sculptors exchanged heroic nudes for military heroes in uniform. Designers of interiors, furnishings, and objects for Napoleon did not eschew the craft and elegance of pre-Revolutionary aristocratic culture, but reshaped them with a functional sobriety in tune with the Emperor’s rationalist pragmatism. A survey of the arts under Napoleon will demonstrate that aesthetic productions of the Empire mirror the myriad political contradictions of their patron.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

10:00 am-12 noon and 1:30 pm to 4:00 pm

Napoleon — Napoleonic Code, Administration Highlights
Laurent Mayali (UC Berkeley Law School)
This lecture focuses on the civil law reforms instituted by Napoleon, and the other positive cultural legacies of his short-lived empire.

Tolstoy’s Napoleon: A Dethronement
Luba Golburt (UC Berkeley)
Napoleon was an enigmatic leader, possessed of great charisma and strategic insight. This is precisely the image that the iconoclast Leo Tolstoy consistently undermines throughout his monumental War and Peace. This lecture traces some of the stages of Napoleon’s dethronement in the novel, examining Napoleon the character’s physique, mannerisms, and his mistaken notions of hero-centered adoration.

Ludwig van Beethoven on Napoleon
Pianist Teresa Yu (San Francisco Conservatory)
A performance of Beethoven’s virtuosic “Eroica Variations,” Op. 35, a set of fifteen variations for solo piano dating from 1802, and based on the same theme Beethoven used in the finale of his “Eroica” Symphony (No. 3), composed the following year and originally dedicated to Napoleon. Typical of the groundbreaking composer, he makes important departures from the standard theme-and-variations form, including a masterful fugue as the finale.

Egyptomania or Orientalism?: Painting Napoleon Bonaparte’s Egypt
Juan Cole (University of Michigan)
The painters who, in subsequent decades, took up the themes of Bonaparte’s Egyptian conquest contrasted splendor and squalor, courage and barbarism, science and fanaticism, masculine vigor and feminine languor. In their stereotypes of East and West, and in the ways that they referred back to traditions of depicting the Orient, some used the expedition as a canvass on which to imagine a Middle East that Europe could and should dominate. Others explored the barbarity of Bonaparte’s own military policies, turning the French expedition into a critique of Western militarism. These differences among the painters reflected European struggles over values of peace versus imperialism as the nineteenth century unfolded.

Panel Discussion
A discussion with questions from the Audience.

Presenters

Juan Cole, History, U Michigan

Steven Englund, History, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences

Luba Golburt, Slavic Studies, UC Berkeley

Roger Hahn, History, UC Berkeley

Laurent Mayali, Law, UC Berkeley

Michael Marrinan, Art History, Stanford

Teresa Yu, Dean, Santa Clara University

India’s artists, in pace with their country’s rapid modernization, have adopted many contemporary techniques. Yet past traditions remain strong. Familiar themes and modern modes of expression interplay with fruitful creative tension. Abstract and surrealist artists incorporate images of legendary gods and heroes in their work, and musicians create exciting new sounds in collaboration with Western jazz and classical performers. Literature and cinema with rural village scenes compete with others featuring urban landscapes, Indian-American cultural fusion, and the seductive joys of Bollywood. The result: unique new delights for the eye, the ear, and the spirit.

Moderator: Raka Ray (Sarah Kailath Chair in Indian Studies, Chair of the Center for South Asia Studies, and Associate Professor of Sociology and South and Southeast Asian Studies, UC Berkeley)

Friday, February 27, 2009

7:30 pm – 8:00 pm
Special Pre-program Performance:
Indian Classical Musicians Joanna Mack and Tim Witter

Joanna Mack began her pursuit of Classical North Indian Music in 1997. While studying Neuroscience at UCSD, she attended a Classical Indian Music class with sitar virtuoso Kartik Seshadri, a senior disciple of Pandit Ravi Shankar of the Maihar Gharana. She had been involved in Western music since childhood but was immediately drawn to Indian music. She abandoned her plan for medical school and devoted herself to Indian Classical Music. Kartikji recommended her to Pandit Deepak Choudhuri, another senior disciple of Pandit Ravi Shankar. That year, Joanna traveled to India where she studied under him through 2005. Joanna then returned to the United States, promising Deepakji that she would continue her studies and pass on the values and ideas of the Maihar Gharana. She teaches private and group classes and performs in a variety of venues. She continues her studies with classes under Ustad Ali Akbar Khan at the Ali Akbar College of Musicand is under the guidance of Maestro Kartik Seshadri.

Tim Witter began his tabla training with Ustad Alla Rakha in 1980. He has studied since 1985 with Pandit Swapan Chauduri, the resident tabla teacher at the Ali Akbar College of Music. He has made numerous trips to India for study and performance, and in 1994-1995 completed a research/performance grant awarded to him by the American Institute of Indian Studies. Tim has taught at the Ali Akbar College of Music in Basel, Switzerland and has performed throughout Europe. Currently he is a staff teacher at the Ali Akbar College of Music in San Rafael, California as well as being an active performer and composer in Bay Area Indian classical and contemporary music scenes. In addition to studying tabla, Tim has lived in Madras, India and studied South Indian drumming from T.H. Subash Chandran. Tim was a co-recipient of the 1997 Isadora Duncan Award for Best Original Music for a New Dance Piece for his work in creating the score for “Sacred Text.”

8:00 pm – 10:15 pm
India Rising: the Soft Power of an Ancient Land in the 21st century
Keynote Lecture by Shashi Tharoor, Chairman, Afras Ventures
Many thinkers and writers in recent years have spoken of India’s geo-strategic advantages, its economic dynamism, political stability, proven military capabilities, its nuclear, space and missile programmes, and the country’s growing pool of young and skilled manpower as assuring India “great power” status as a “world leader” in the new century. Dr Shashi Tharoor, author and former UN Under-Secretary-General, argues that it these not these elements that represent India’s greatest potential as it seeks to play its role in our globalizing world. Instead, he focuses on the “soft power” of India, its attributes and limitations and the challenges it faces, as he outlines India’s true place in Asia and the world and what it could mean for the country’s future in the 21st century.

Indian Art: Tradition Meets Modernity
Santhi Kavuri-Bauer (Assistant Professor, Art History, San Francisco State University)
This illustrated lecture will trace the development of modern art in India starting with the adaptation of the academic style by Raja Ravi Varma in the 1880s through the period of creative tension among those seeking to reconcile Western styles with traditional subject matter and practice, including Abindranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose, Amrita Sher Gil. After Independence, artists like M.F. Hussain, Jamini Roy and F.N. Souza began to explore more abstract and personal themes. Professor Kavuri-Bauer concludes by focusing on several contemporary artists, who combine traditional symbols, forms and processes with modern media techniques, such as digital photography, and address the important social issues facing India today.

Saturday, February 28, 2009

10 am to noon and 1:30 to 4 pm

Sacred Games: A Reading
Vikram Chandra (Senior Lecturer, UC Berkeley)
One of modern India’s greatest novelists will read from and describe his best known work, the epicSacred Games, a Victorian-Indian-gangster-spy-family saga, placing his work into the broad context of Indian literature today.

Indian Music: Traditions and Transitions
Dard Neuman (Kamil and Talat Hasan Endowed Chair in Classical Indian Music, UC Santa Cruz) lectures on Indian music and demonstrates the sitar, with rare recordings.

Special Performance:
Indian Classical Musicians Joanna Mack and Tim Witter

Joanna Mack began her pursuit of Classical North Indian Music in 1997. While studying Neuroscience at UCSD, she attended a Classical Indian Music class with sitar virtuoso Kartik Seshadri, a senior disciple of Pandit Ravi Shankar of the Maihar Gharana. She had been involved in Western music since childhood but was immediately drawn to Indian music. She abandoned her plan for medical school and devoted herself to Indian Classical Music. Kartikji recommended her to Pandit Deepak Choudhuri, another senior disciple of Pandit Ravi Shankar. That year, Joanna traveled to India where she studied under him through 2005. Joanna then returned to the United States, promising Deepakji that she would continue her studies and pass on the values and ideas of the Maihar Gharana. She teaches private and group classes and performs in a variety of venues. She continues her studies with classes under Ustad Ali Akbar Khan at the Ali Akbar College of Musicand is under the guidance of Maestro Kartik Seshadri.

Tim Witter began his tabla training with Ustad Alla Rakha in 1980. He has studied since 1985 with Pandit Swapan Chauduri, the resident tabla teacher at the Ali Akbar College of Music. He has made numerous trips to India for study and performance, and in 1994-1995 completed a research/performance grant awarded to him by the American Institute of Indian Studies. Tim has taught at the Ali Akbar College of Music in Basel, Switzerland and has performed throughout Europe. Currently he is a staff teacher at the Ali Akbar College of Music in San Rafael, California as well as being an active performer and composer in Bay Area Indian classical and contemporary music scenes. In addition to studying tabla, Tim has lived in Madras, India and studied South Indian drumming from T.H. Subash Chandran. Tim was a co-recipient of the 1997 Isadora Duncan Award for Best Original Music for a New Dance Piece for his work in creating the score for “Sacred Text.”

Mirrors of Tradition and Modernity:
Cinema of Satyajit Ray, Independent Cinema and Bollywood
Dilip Basu (Founding Director, Archives and Study Center on Satyajit Ray, University of California Santa Cruz, and Associate Professor of History).
This lecture with film clips will argue that the cinema of Satyajit Ray and his cohorts in post-independent India remain quintessentially modern; popular cinema, both past and present, use the modern cinematic medium to the fullest while following the traditional Indian dramaturgy in form and content.

Reality Television and the New India
Raka Ray
The Indian Idol phenomenon, in which the women and the rich men were voted off first in support of upward mobility for the poor Nepalese boy who eventually wins, in a sense causes the upward mobility of his whole community, generating pride within the regionally underserved.

Panel Discussion
Led by Moderator Raka Ray.

Presenters

Dilip Basu, , UC Santa Cruz

Vikram Chandra, UC Berkeley

Santhi Kavuri-Bauer, Art History, San Francisco State University

Dard Neuman, Musicology, UC Santa Cruz

Raka Ray, History, UC Berkeley

Shashi Thoroor, diplomacy, New York, India

How did 13 weak, fragmented, and isolated colonies governed from across the ocean transform themselves into a new kind of society based on pragmatism, optimism, innovation, and cooperation; a society capable not only of defeating a much larger and stronger foe, but also of inventing entirely new forms of self-government that have stood the test of time? Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), during his long and incredibly productive life, epitomized many aspects of the remarkable transformation that eventually led to the establishment of the first modern constitutional state. With his passion for self-improvement and gift for institutional innovation, Franklin constantly reinvented himself: printer’s apprentice, successful Philadelphia printer, storekeeper, bookshop owner, journalist, writer of Poor Richard’s Almanack and the Autobiography, and social entrepreneur and environmentalist 1731-style. Franklin invented the Franklin stove, swim fins, the glass armonica, and bifocals. He tamed lightning with his kite. He was a politician, diplomat, colonial patriot, ambassador to France, president of the Executive Council of Pennsylvania, signer of the Constitution, and author of an anti-slavery treatise. In one person, Benjamin Franklin helped create the American civil society. He was called, by the time of his death at 84, the “harmonious human multitude.”

Moderator: Dee Andrews (Chair of History, CSU East Bay)

Friday, October 17, 2008

8 pm to 10:15 pm

Benjamin Franklin, Social Revolutionist, in Philadelphia, America’s First City
Gary B. Nash (Emeritus, History, UCLA)
Ben Franklin went to Philadelphia at 17, and became an active leader in its social, political, economic, and cultural life for decades. A passion for self-improvement combined with gift for institutional innovation helped lay the foundation for a very successful civil society. He was instrumental in founding a society for sharing knowledge, a community library, a public hospital, a college, a volunteer fire department, and an efficient postal service. These activities, plus his work as a printer, publisher, and author, helped create a civil society that was increasingly self-confident, self-sufficient, and innovative.

GLASS-ICAL MUSICK
Dennis James, Musica Curiosa
A witty survey of the history of the glass music focusing on the development Benjamin Franklin’s 1761 musical instrument invention, the glass armonica. Original 18th and 19th century compositions specifically composed for glass instruments by such composers as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig von Beethoven, Joseph Schmittbaur and many others are interspersed throughout. The slide-illustrated presentation balances music, scientific and historical information.

Saturday, October 18, 2008

10 am to noon and 1:30 to 4 pm

Benjamin Franklin, Scientist
Jessica Riskin (Associate Professor, History, Stanford)
As a scientist and inventor, Franklin always tried to apply knowledge to practical problems and to ensure that society would benefit from the widespread sharing of knowledge. His discoveries related to electricity led to the invention of the lightning rod. His many household inventions improved the quality of life for the masses, while his founding of the American Philosophical Society encouraged collaboration among leading intellectuals. Partly through his efforts, a culture of pragmatism, optimism, and experimentation took deep root in the American colonies. In addition to a brief discussion of the impressive breadth of Franklin’s activities as a scientist and inventor, Professor Riskin will discuss Franklin’s particular approach to natural science and focus largely on his electrical physics: what he considered to count (or not to count) as a good explanation, what sorts of assumptions he made, and how his natural science was deeply connected with his moral thinking and with the contemporary cultural and political context.

Benjamin Franklin, Democrat and Diplomat
Jack N. Rakove (Professor of History, Stanford University and Pulitzer Prize Winner)
Benjamin Franklin became America’s Ambassador to the World. Much of his later life was spent in England and France, defending the interests of the American colonies first from within the structure of the British Empire, and eventually working with Britain’s enemies to win full independence. For many European intellectual and political leaders, Franklin came to personify the spirit of Colonial America: open, direct, confident, persistent, practical, and trustworthy.

Musical Performance
London Quartet (Marin)
Movements from Benjamin Franklin’s Quartet No. 2 in F major for Three Violins and Cello and from W. A. Mozart’s Quartet No.14 In G Major, K.387. Steve Machtinger on viola, Zina Schiff and Oscar Hasbun on violin, and Louella Hasbun on cello.

The Invention of Ben Franklin
Dee Andrews (Professor and Chair, History, CSU East Bay)
This lecture will explore Franklin’s conscious manipulation of his own image through writings like the Autobiography and images in the elite and popular media in America and Europe, including souvenirs and artifacts from his years as a renowned scientist and as a diplomat in France. It will also touch on the growth of his reputation in America long after his death.

Panel Discussion
The moderator will lead a discussion with audience participation welcome.

Presenters

Dee Andrews, History, Cal State East Bay

Dennis James, glass armonica

London Quartet

Gary Nash, History, UCLA

Jack Rakove, History, Stanford

Jessica Riskin, History, Stanford