CLAFI Events
Winter/Spring 2012
Our winter/spring lecture series begins Thursday, February 9, with a lecture on the financial crisis by one of the people at its epicenter, Randall Kroszner, who was a Federal Reserve Governor from 2006 to 2009. He will be followed in March by James Muller, Chair of the Board of Academic Advisors of The Churchill Centre. In May, our last winter/spring lecturer will be UCLA's own Robert Winter, of the Musicology Department.
The lectures will be held Thursday evenings. You can also interact with these lecturers in a less formal setting, as each of them will participate in a seminar discussion the following Saturday. All these events are free and open to the public. Participation in the seminars will be limited, meaning you will need to register in advance. Registration requires only sending an e-mail to the person listed under the seminar you would like to attend. Registration is not required for the lectures.
To receive updates on future CLAFI events, you can request to be placed on the CLAFI e-mail distribution list. Send an e-mail to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
The Saturday seminars are co-sponsored by the Agora Foundation, which has been conducting great books seminars in Southern California for more than a decade. The lectures and seminars are made possible by a grant from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. Here is information on the remaining Winter/Spring schedule, followed by a brief preview of the fall lectures and seminars:
Lecture
Beethoven and the Heroic Ideal
Thursday, May 17, 7:30 p.m. Orchestra Rehearsal Hall, Schoenberg Music Building
It is no secret that modern Western notions of heroism are inextricably bound up with the music of Beethoven: fate knocking at the door, the artist who shakes his fist at fate, the composer transcending the cruel fate of his deafness, etc.. However, rather than responses to actual conditions of Beethoven's age or his particular life course, most of our attitudes are the by-products of cultural reception, in which each generation recasts Beethoven's image to further its own critical and political agendas. Drawing upon a wealth of works by Beethoven (many played, in Winter's characteristic style, at the piano), Prof. Winter will re-visit this iconic subject with an eye (and ear) to a series of snapshots of Beethoven: during his lifetime, as the titular godfather of nineteenth-century Romanticism, as the captive of both sides in the Second World War, and finally as the hero of the 1989 uprising that brought about the end of Communism as a dominant world force.
The lecture by Robert Winter is free and open to the public. No RSVP or advance registration is necessary.
Seminar
Is Classical Music on Life Support?
Saturday, May 19, 10:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. Law School Building, Room 2442.
This seminar with Robert Winter is free and open to anyone. However, because attendance will be held to twenty people, advance registration for the seminar is necessary. Participants will be expected to be ready to discuss readings that Professor Winter will select by authors on both sides of the question. A pizza lunch will be delivered following the two-hour discussion. To register for the seminar, write to Professor This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Registration will generally be first-come, first-served, but some spaces may be held to assure access for UCLA students and faculty member.
Robert Winter is Distinguished Professor of Music and holder of the Presidential Chair in Music and Interactive Arts at UCLA. He enjoys a career as scholar, performer, teacher and perpetual student. Recognized by UCLA with both the Distinguished Teaching Award and selection as a Faculty Research Lecturer, Winter has tackled complex subjects such as Beethoven's compositional process always seeking to illuminate these subjects for general audiences as well as for specialists. Whether in hundreds of pre-concert lectures, his nationally broadcast radio series on Beethoven and Mozart (currently being prepared for re-issue on iPads and iPhones), sold-out General Education courses on the live performing arts for UCLA undergraduates, or in pioneering interactive programs ranging from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony to ragtime, Winter has brought music and the complex issues of meaning that surround it to literally hundreds of thousands of listeners.
Coming in 2012-13
We are currently scheduling public lectures and seminars for the fall quarter. One highlight will be resumption of the series noting the Civil War Sesquicentennial, including a lecture on Thursday, November 8, by James McPherson, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning Battle Cry of Freedom and probably the most celebrated living Civil War historian. The Civil War lectures and seminars this fall will concentrate on events, both military and non-military, in 1862. Watch this space for details on the entire fall series of lectures and seminars, including the ones on the Civil War.
Past Events This Academic Year
Daniel Walker Howe
Lecture
The Secession Crisis of 1861 and the Communications Revolution of the 19th Century
Thursday, October 13, 3:30 p.m. Room 1430 Law School Building.
This lecture inaugurates CLAFI’s five-year lecture series on the Civil War. We anticipate two lectures each year of the sesquicentennial, each lecture dealing with events of the corresponding year of the Civil War. Thus, this year’s lectures deal with events of 1861, next year’s will deal with 1862, and so on. A pizza lunch will be delivered following the seminar.
Seminar
Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address
Saturday, October 15, 10:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m., Room 2442 Law School Building
Registration for the seminar is free. Lunch will be served following the discussion. Registrants will be expected to have read Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address and to participate actively in the discussion. To register for the seminar, contact Professor Daniel Lowenstein.
Daniel Walker Howe is a historian of the early national period of American history. He is Rhodes Professor of American History Emeritus at Oxford University in England and Professor of History Emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles. He received the Pulitzer Prize for History for What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (Oxford University Press). His other books include The Political Culture of the American Whigs (University of Chicago Press) and Making the American Self: Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (Harvard University Press). He was president of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic in 2001 and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
Howe received his Bachelor of Arts at Harvard University, magna cum laude in American History and Literature in 1959, and his Ph.D. at University of California, Berkeley in 1966. In addition to UCLA and Oxford, where he helped found the Rothermere American Institute, he has taught at Yale and, in the spring of this year, was Jones Visiting Professor at Wofford College. He has written for the New York Review of Books, Newsweek, and the Wall Street Journal, and has served as historical advisor to the History Channel’s series, America: The Story of Us.
Robin Goodrin Nordli
Theatrical Performance
Henrik Ibsen, Hedda Gabler
Thursday, October 27, 7:30 p.m., Room 1457 Law School Building
(Please note room change. Because of remodeling in Room 1447, the performance has been moved to Room 1457.)
The award-winning Interact Theatre Company will present a staged reading of one of Ibsen’s best-regarded plays. Hedda Gabler will be the subject of Robin Nordli’s seminar on November 5. Those who register for the seminar may want to take advantage of this opportunity to see the play performed. Admission to the reading is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be available. No registration is necessary.
Lecture
Pleasures and Pitfalls of Playing Shakespeare’s Women
Thursday, November 3, 3:30 p.m. Room 1430 Law School Building.
The lecture by Robin Goodrin Nordli is free and open to the public. No advance registration is required.
Seminar
Henrik Ibsen, Hedda Gabler
Saturday, November 5, 10:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m., Room 2442 Law School Building
Registration for this event is free. Lunch will be served following the discussion. Registrants will be expected to have read Hedda Gabler and to participate actively in the discussion. We recommend the translation by Jerry Turner, the late Artistic Director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. OSF, which holds the copyright, has generously granted permission for us to use the Turner translation, which will be provided to persons who register for the seminar. To do so, contact Professor Daniel Lowenstein.
Robin Goodrin Nordli, at the time of her lecture, will have just completed her eighteenth season with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. She holds an MFA from the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco. Prior to and during her time with OSF, she has performed at South Coast Repertory Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Mark Taper Forum, Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, Arizona Theatre Company, The American Conservatory Theatre, The Vita Shakespeare Festival, The Grove Shakespeare Festival, and five seasons with The California Shakespeare Festival. She has played leading roles in plays by Chekhov, Moliere, Shaw, Coward, and Ibsen as well as in contemporary works. Her performance as Rebecca West in Ibsen’s Rosmersholm can be viewed at the Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center. In 2009 she added Lady Macbeth at OSF to a body of work which includes 50 productions of 28 different plays by William Shakespeare.
In 2000 she created a one-woman show Bard Babes, an exploration of the joys and challenges of playing Shakespeare’s female characters, which she has performed not only at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, but also for the Shakespeare Theatre Association of America, Cincinnati Playhouse-in-the-Park, and on the Holland America Cruise Line, in addition to numerous benefit performances.
Nordli is one of 21 actors chosen for inclusion in North American Players of Shakespeare, A Book of Interviews. She appears on the cover of and her work is discussed in the book Women Direct Shakespeare in America. The article she wrote for the Ibsen Society of America’s Journal entitled “Creating Hedda” is a reflection of her experiences of performing the title role in Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler and was published in 2004.
Ethan S. Rafuse
Lecture
Missouri, Manassas, and the 'People's Contest':
1861 as a Military Problem
Thursday, November 10, 3:30 p.m. Room 1430 Law School Building.
The lecture by Ethan Rafuse is free and open to the public. No advance registration is required.
Seminar
Military History and the Opening of the Civil War
Saturday, November 12, 10:30 p.m. – 12:30 p.m., Room 2442 Law School Building
Registration for this event is free. Light refreshments will be available. Registrants will be expected to have read a diverse set of readings totaling 60 to 70 pages to participate actively in the discussion. The readings will be made available to those who register. To register for the seminar, contact Professor Daniel Lowenstein at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
Ethan S. Rafuse is a professor at the U.S. Army Command General Staff College. He grew up in northern Virginia, received his BA and MA degrees in history at George Mason University, and did his doctoral work at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
He is the author, editor, or co-editor of eight books and monographs on Civil War and military history, including McClellan’s War: The Failure of Moderation in the War for the Union; Antietam, South Mountain and Harpers Ferry: A Battlefield Guide; Robert E. Lee and the Fall of the Confederacy; The Ongoing Civil War: New Versions and Old Stories (with Herman Hattaway), and A Single Grand Victory: The First Campaign and Battle of Manassas, as well as articles, essays, and reviews in various academic and popular history publications.
He taught Civil War and military history at the U.S. Military Academy in 2001-2003. He lives with his wife and daughter in Platte City, Missouri.
Randall S. Kroszner
Governor, Federal Reserve System, 2006-2009
Lecture
Response and Leadership at the Federal Reserve
During the Financial Crisis
Thursday, February 9, 7:30 p.m. UCLA Faculty Center, Sequoia Room.
Please note: This is a different room in the Faculty Center than previously posted. Because of apparent interest in this event, it appeared prudent to move to a larger room.
The lecture is free and open to the public.
Seminar
Central Bank Responses in 1929-1933 and 2007-2009
Saturday, February 11, 10:30 p.m. - 12:30 a.m. Bunche Hall, Room 9383.
Registration for the seminar is free and open to the public. However, because there is a maximum capacity, registration is required. You may register by sending an e-mail to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Readings for the seminar, which include remarks by Ben Bernanke and a chapter of "The Great Contraction: 1929-1933," by Milton Friedman & Anna Jacobson Schwartz, will be sent to you promptly. A pizza lunch will be delivered following the discussion.
Randall S. Kroszner, Norman R. Bobins Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, served as a Governor of the Federal Reserve System from March 2006 until January 2009. During his time as a member of the Federal Reserve Board, he chaired the committee on Supervision and Regulation of Banking Institutions and the committee on Consumer and Community Affairs. In these capacities, he took a leading role in developing responses to the financial crisis and in undertaking new initiatives to improve consumer protection and disclosure, including rules related to home mortgages and credit cards, and was director of NeighborWorks America. He represented the Federal Reserve Board on the Financial Stability Forum (now called the Financial Stability Board), the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, and the Central Bank Governors of the American Continent. Dr. Kroszner chaired the working party of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), composed of deputy central bank governors and finance ministers, on Policies for the Promotion of Better International Payments Equilibrium. As a member of the Fed Board, he was also a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee.
James W. Muller
Lecture
Churchill's World of Paper and Ink:
The Statesman as Author
Thursday, March 8, 7:30 p.m. Law School, Room 1447.
The lecture is free and open to the public.
Winston Churchill’s career as a writer was even longer than his career in politics, beginning with his first book on Queen Victoria’s “little wars” in 1898 and ending with his History of the English-Speaking Peoples six decades later. He wrote more than forty books and in 1953 won the Nobel Prize for Literature. What kind of books did he write, what was his purpose in writing them, and what did he achieve as a writer?
Seminar
Thoughts as Adventures: Churchill's Interwar
Saturday, March 10, 10:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. Law School, Room 2442.
Registration for the seminar is free and open to the public. However, because there is a maximum capacity, registration is required. You may register by sending an e-mail to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it " data-mce-href="mailto: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ">Professor Daniel Lowenstein. Readings for the seminar will be will be selected essays from Churchill's Thoughts and Adventures. These will be provided to those who register. A pizza lunch will be delivered following the discussion.
James W. Muller is a professor of political science at the University of Alaska Anchorage. He is the chair of the Board of Academic Advisors of The Churchill Centre. At Anchorage, Professor Muller has been one of the founders and directors of the Forty-Ninth State Fellows Program, whose objectives parallel those of CLAFI. In addition to extensive writings on Churchill, Professor Muller has written on other authors including Montesquieu (the subject of his dissertation), Tocqueville and, however improbably, P.G. Wodehouse. He has edited two of Churchill's books, The River War and Thoughts and Adventures. Professor Muller received his Ph.D. in political science at Harvard in 1982.