MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN: A Monstrous Legacy
Associate Professor Alexandra Neel discusses the lasting influence of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, among the earliest examples of science fiction
11AM – 12PM
FRANKENSTEIN’S PROMETHEAN AMBITIONS
Professor Gideon Manning will discuss the scientific and medical background to Mary Shelley’s novel, the timeless philosophical and ethical questions she raised, and the long reception of Frankenstein in our cultural imagination.
NOON – 1PM
HIDDEN IN THE SHELVES
Sammy Jay of Peter Harrington’s Frankenstein. Discovery
1pm – 2pm
WRITING THE GOLDEN STATE
Exploring the New Literary Terrain of California with Romeo Guzmán
3PM – 4PM
COMMEMORATING 50 YEARS OF THE MONKEY WRENCH GANG
Antiquarian bookseller Ken Sanders commemorates 50 years of The Monkey Wrench Gang by sharing memories of his friendship with Edward Abbey
2PM-3PM
From Robocop to Renaissance Art with Dr. Peter Weller
The iconic actor discusses the publication of his new book about the first modern treatise on painting
Dr. Weller will discuss the journey from modern film to Renaissance art, which personally led to his PhD and his first book, Leon Battista Alberti in Exile, published by Cambridge University Press.
Weller’s groundbreaking scholarship in “Leon Battista Alberti in Exile” fundamentally challenges the conventional narrative that Alberti’s revolutionary treatise “De pictura” was primarily inspired by Florentine art. With remarkable analytical precision supported by over 200 images, Weller reconstructs Alberti’s intellectual and artistic development during his formative years in Padua, Bologna, northern Europe, and Rome. As Weller incisively argues in his analysis: “Alberti did not go to Florence, see the city’s art, and then write a compendium – on lines, points, mathematics, composition, narrative, portraiture, with ideas, form, style, syntax drawn from Seneca, Cicero, Quintilian, Pliny the Elder, Vitruvius, and Lucian – in a matter of months.” Instead, his work demonstrates that Alberti’s visual vocabulary and theoretical framework had been gestating through years of exposure to art and texts in Padua, Bologna, northern Europe, and Rome.
Best known for his roles in the Robocop films and the screen adaptation of William S. Burroughs Naked Lunch, he has also appeared in Dexter, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, and Star Trek into Darkness. Weller earned a PhD in Italian Renaissance and Roman History from UCLA and has been featured as an expert on a Roman era documentary for the History Channel.
4PM-5PM
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