UC Berkeley History of Art Department

COAPAN: Smuggling, Fire, and Resistance

Wednesday, April 22, 2026
Noon
308A Doe Library

Federico Cuatlacuatl presents a selection of his most recent artistic productions highlighting spatial and temporal emancipatory practices for enduring ongoing displacements. Building on his experience as a formerly undocumented immigrant and DACA holder, and stemming from Nahua histories in Cholula, his work celebrates Nahua diasporic resilience, futurisms, and transborder Indigeneity.

Speaker: Federico Cuatlacuatl, Horace W. Goldsmith Distinguished Teaching Associate Professor Department of Art, University of Virginia

Atreyee Gupta | Non-Aligned: Art, Decolonization, and the Third World Project in India

April 17, 2026
5-6:30 pm PST
10 Stephens Hall
LIVESTREAM: On FB at SAAIatUCBerkeley

A talk by Atreyee Gupta, Associate Professor of Global Modern Art and South and Southeast Asian Art, on her new book, Non-Aligned: Art, Decolonization, and the Third World Project in India (Yale University Press, 2025), that offers a revelatory look at modernism in India, exploring art’s role in decolonization and aesthetic discourse across the Global South.

Aglaya Glebova, Associate Professor of History of Art and Faculty Director of the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies will serve as discussant.

Event moderated by Munis D. Faruqui, Director, Institute for South Asia Studies; Director, Global, International & Area Studies (GIAS); Sarah Kailath Chair of India Studies; Professor, South & Southeast Asian Studies, UC Berkeley.

History of Art Stoddard Lecture: “Murmurations: Lines of Flight between Omnicide, Groundwork and Communism” by Nicholas D. Mirzoeff

Thursday, March 12, 2026
5 p.m.
308A Doe

Abstract: Settler colonialism has always envisaged, erased and extracted land from a single viewpoint in the air, whether that of perspective or the drone. In this presentation, I anticipate that I will think about how to activate and salvage the visible in the time of omnicide from the air. Such activation first enables the common recognition that sustains solidarity. That then allows us to map time-space by means of what I have called “groundwork,” the (re)formation of common ground from what has been made into terra nullius (nothing land). From such ground, a line of flight can be drawn into the air, so as to assemble in murmurations, the spontaneous assemblage of birds. The murmuration’s way of seeing, an other-than-human model for human freedom, is a four-dimensional non-hierarchical convivial democracy.

Speaker Bio: Nicholas Mirzoeff is Professor and Chair in the Dept. of Media, Culture and Communication at NYU. His most recent books include White Sight: Visual Practices and Politics of Whiteness (2023) and To See In the Dark: Palestine and Visual Activism Since October 7th (2025). His writing has also appeared in venues like the Guardian, the Nation and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He often collaborates with the Bay Area Center for Convivial Research and Analysis.

Image: Details from D’Hondecoeter and Weenix. Inspired by Jelena Juresa

Join us for a public lecture: “What the Sailors Sang: Ephemerality in the Mongol-Era Indian Ocean World” by Yusen Yu

Monday, March 2, 2026
5 p.m.
308A Doe Library

Abstract: This talk explores ephemerality as a defining condition of the medieval Indian Ocean world. By focusing on three archives from the Mongol era (13th to 14th centuries), it offers glimpses of subaltern maritime lives that surface only fleetingly in surviving records – perishable goods, seasonal infrastructures, peripatetic labor, and embodied knowledge. How can we write about things meant to circulate, substitute, or disappear rather than endure? And how might we understand the archive itself as shaped by practices of preservation and loss?

Bio: Yusen Yu (PhD, Heidelberg) is Lecturer in Iranian Islamic Art History at the University of St Andrews. Before that, he was a Junior Research Fellow at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. His research spans Islamic and Asian Studies, with a focus on the Mongol empire and its successors across Eurasia (ca. 1200-1500). A more recent interest is the material culture of the medieval Indian Ocean World.

Image: Jonah and the whale, from the Jami‘ al Tawarikh (Compendium of Chronicles) of Rashid al-Din, Tabriz, Iran.

Everyone is invited to a reception for the opening of the exhibit, The Etruscans Uncovered: The Phoebe A. Hearst Collection at UC Berkeley.

March 11, 2026
5 - 7 p.m.
Morrison Library, inside Doe

Tours of the exhibition will be led by student-curators beginning at 6:00 p.m. after brief remarks. Food and drink will be served.

Exhibit Dates
Mar 9 - Aug 31 2026
Bernice Layne Brown Gallery, Doe Library

Sponsor(s): Department of History of Art, UC Berkeley Library, The Mario Del Chiaro Center for the Study of Ancient Italy & the Roman World, Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology

History of Art is at CAA in Chicago.
Photos are from a panel organized by our grads Elizabeth Fair and Kim Yu.

Join us for a public lecture: “Contested Visibility: The Politics of Looking Islamic in 21st-Century Quanzhou” by Sylvia Wu

Thursday, February 26, 2026
5 p.m.
308A Doe

Abstract: The 2009 inauguration of a domed prayer hall beside the Ashab Mosque in Quanzhou, China, marked an architectural and symbolic shift in how the site is perceived. Though archaeological and structural evidence discredits the idea that the medieval mosque ever featured a dome, local Muslim leaders and state-backed narratives celebrate the new prayer hall—sponsored by the late Omani sultan Qaboos—as a restoration of the Ashab Mosque’s former glory. This talk examines the prayer hall as both a product and driver of a fabricated yet persuasive architectural parallel to the site’s medieval monument. Through an analysis of its design, donor influence, and political context, the study argues that the structure represents not historical recovery but a strategic reimagining of Islamic identity. The building offers a case study in how sacred architecture mediates visibility, belonging, and religious continuity, highlighting the complexities of heritage-making and state-Muslim relations in contemporary China.

Bio: Sylvia Wu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin.

Yale University Press has just published a blog post about Atreyee Gupta's new book Non-Aligned: Art, Decolonization, and the Third World Project in India.

Please read the post here: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/2026/02/04/third-worlds-imagined-otherwise/

Photo: Abanindranath Tagore, Khuddur Jatra (detail), ca. 1934–36

Join us for a public lecture: “Insects, Iridescence, and the Adorned Body in Ancient Korea and Japan” by Yingxue Wang

February 12, 2026
5 p.m.
308A Doe Library

Abstract: Between the fifth and eighth centuries, artisans across the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipelago transformed tens of thousands of jewel beetles into resplendent ornaments for royal regalia, horse trappings, and Buddhist icons. Combined with gold, the iridescent exoskeletons of these insects adorned human, equine, and divine bodies with vibrant colors that shimmered and shifted with every movement. Yet the allure of iridescence extended beyond visual brilliance: harvesting large numbers of plant-feeding beetles from their habitats required strenuous labor and intimate knowledge of local flora and fauna, restricting their circulation to elite networks. This talk examines insect-based ornamentation within the visual, material, and environmental contexts of ancient Korea and Japan. The systematic collection of iridescent beetles linked decorative practices to the extractive activities of emerging territorial states, where control over material resources became a means of consolidating political power. At the same time, the glittering surfaces of beetle ornaments obscured their insectile origins, imbuing inert objects with a palpable sense of animacy and transforming them into material embodiments of sacred power. By tracing how insect matter was gathered, manipulated, and displayed, this talk reframes adornment as a vital site for interrogating the entangled relationships between humans and the more-than-human world.

Bio: Yingxue Wang is a Postdoctoral Associate in East Asian Studies and Lecturer in History of Art at Yale University.

SEARCH: Adjunct Professor - Arts of Iran and Central Asia

The Departments of History of Art and Middle East Languages and Cultures, University of California, Berkeley, invite applications for an Assistant, Associate, or Full Adjunct Professor - Arts of Iran and Central Asia, non tenure-track.
Read the entire job description here: https://aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05238

This event has been cancelled. An alternative date to be determined.

History of Art Public Lecture: “An Ecology of Orientation: Art and Sacred Landscape at the Kasuga Shrine in Medieval Japan” by María Salvador.