ALC Department Student and Faculty Seminar

Please join us for the ALC Department Faculty and Graduate Student Seminar. The first seminar of the 2023–2024 academic year will take place on October 25th, 2023 from 12:30–2:30 PM in Royce Hall 243 (ALC Lounge). See below for information on the presentations for this session.

Lunch and refreshments will be provided for attendees who RSVP.

Please RSVP by Tuesday, October 17th, 12:00 PM: https://forms.gle/dFWmRUThq3EJmrpRA

Seminar Information

1. Catering to the Dynamic Demands of Efficacy – The Ritual Cloth as Crafted Object and Crafting Tool of Enlightened Subjectivity in the Mañjuśrīmūlakalpa

Presentation by Arushi Bahugana (PhD Student, ALC), followed by open Q&A

Arushi Bahuguna is a second-year PhD student in Buddhist Studies at the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, UCLA. She is interested in how objects craft religious spaces and identities. She is exploring the role of textiles in Buddhist doctrine and art in ancient and early medieval India.

2. Book Discussion: Almost Futures: Sovereignty and Refuge at World’s End

Presentation by Thu-huong Nguyen-vo (Associate Professor of Southeast Asian and Asian American Studies), followed by open Q&A

Thu-huong Nguyen-vo teaches in Asian Languages and Cultures and Asian American Studies. Her current book (UC Press, 2024) looks to some people who pay the heaviest price for sovereignty and progress in wars and capitalist globalization, among them Vietnamese and refugees, for glimpses of ways to exist at the end of our future’s promise. Her work brings Vietnamese Studies and Critical Refugee Studies into conversation with Colonial Studies, Asian American Studies, Black Studies, Feminist visual and literary Studies, Queer Studies, and Disability Studies.

About the Seminar

The ALC Department Faculty and Student Seminar will bring together students and faculty from different fields, areas of study, and time periods. The seminar fosters a department-wide community, increases graduate student and faculty interface, and facilitates interaction among the area/field specializations in the department.

Thanks to support from the UC Humanities Research Institute and the Division of Humanities, graduate students who present at the Department Seminar during the 2023–2024 Academic Year will receive $500 support for attending a conference where they will be presenting their research. The support will be in the form of reimbursements for transportation and/or accommodations.

Students and faculty who are interested in presenting in subsequent sessions contact Sixiang Wang, (six@ucla.edu) for inquiries. The next seminar is scheduled for November 15, 2023 at 12:30 PM.