Highlights in the Life of the Mind

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Welcome to Pages and Sages, The Independent’s brand-new Books & Lectures column featuring upcoming book-signings and releases, author appearances, and luminary speakers. Check in here for a weekly rundown of some of the most exciting literary happenings and educational opportunities around town.

INTERROGATING IMAGERY: What are the possibilities of knowledge in the visual field? That’s a broad, difficult question, and UCSB's Interdisciplinary Humanities Center addresses it in detail with a combined symposium and art exhibition, The Limits of Knowledge: Doubt, Skepticism, and the Visual. Opening Thursday, February 19, and running through that day and the next, the show features pieces from Jean-Pierre Hébert (artist in residence at UCSB's own Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics), Lisa Jevbratt, and Gail Wight that explore the role of truth, objectivity, and certainty in visual representation. Probing similar issues on Friday, February 20, are keynote speakers Peter L. Galison, Joseph Pellegrino University Professor at Harvard University; and Wight, conceptual artist and associate professor of art and art history at Stanford University. Both the exhibition and symposium take place in UCSB's McCune Conference Room. Call 893-3907 or visit ihc.ucsb.edu to learn more.

Jean-Pierre Hébert

TWO DAYS, TWO LUMINARIES: Whether they consider it a quagmire, a liberation, or a liberating quagmire, foreign policy aficionados may never finish dissecting and pondering George W. Bush's execution of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Chances are former Washington Post senior Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks won't: following up his bestselling Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, Ricks recently published The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq 2006-2008. Ricks is an outspoken critic of the Iraq War, its troubled conception, its underlying strategy (or lack thereof), and its thorny realization. He speaks at UCSB's Campbell Hall on Sunday, February 22, at 4 p.m. On Monday, UCSB Arts & Lectures brings children's rights activist Marian Wright Edelman to Campbell Hall. The founder and president of the Children's Defense Fund, an advocacy organization for kids in need, Edelman has written nine books on children's issues, including the bestselling The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours. She speaks at 7:30 p.m. Call 893-3535 or visit artsandlectures.ucsb.edu for details.

RACE AND PLACE: Prejudice against Jews is an ancient issue, but it’s also one that’s as current as ever given the crisis in Israel and the international response. On Monday, February 23, at 7:30 p.m., Robert Wistrich of Jerusalem’s Hebrew University will deliver a lecture on confronting anti-Semitism in the 21st century. The lecture and book-signing takes place at Congregation B’nai B’rith, on San Antonio Creek Road. Call 893-3217 or visit cappscenter.ucsb.edu for more information.

Nadia Kim

On Tuesday, February 24, Nadia Kim will give a reading from her new book Imperial Citizens: Koreans and Race from Seoul to L.A., an examination of where and how Koreans fit socially in both their birth country and in the city that has drawn so many of them to the United States. Kim's study deals not only with racial ideas about Koreans and East Asians in general known and promulgated here, but also those in Korea itself. The reading takes place at UCSB's MultiCultural Center at 6 p.m. Call 893-8411 or visit mcc.sa.ucsb.edu for details.

THINK SMALL: Delivering this year's Frank Kelly Lecture at La Casa de Maria is Frances Moore Lappé, author of Diet for a Small Planet, a classic example of the now-common genre one might call "food awareness." She'll speak about ending world hunger and facilitating world social movements on Wednesday, February 25, at 7 p.m. For more information, call 969-2759 or visit lacasademaria.org.

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