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Film screening “The Promise” (1995)

East Berlin, 1961: shortly after the Berlin Wall goes up, four friends make a daring escape while one remains behind. For the next 28 years (until 1989) they try to […]

Festschrift presentation in honor of Prof. Humphreys

On October 13, 2007, thirteen of Professor R. Stephen Humphreys' former graduate students at the University of Chicago, the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the University of California, Santa Barbara […]

Artisans of Ancient China

In viewing objects like those found at Mawangdui, their anonymous creators generally remain in obscurity. This lecture focuses on these oft forgotten individuals, the men and women who crafted objects […]

Colossus: The Forbin Project

"Colossus: The Forbin Project" At the height of the Cold War, the United States develops an enormous computer system in a top secret underground facility. The machine's single purpose is […]

Film screening “Goodbye Lenin!” (2003)

East Germany, 1989: While a young man goes to the Oct. 3 40th anniversary ceremonies to protest, his mother suffers a heart attack and falls into coma as she watches […]

Mawangdui as a Pictorial Site of Transition

No archaeological discoveries have provided more striking examples that demonstrate the excellence of early Chinese pictorial art than those at Mawangdui, dated to the second century B.C.E. However, scholars have […]