Events

Professor Jaś Elsner, Oxford University

With Justin L. Mann

Register for Thinking Gender — April 17 Feminist and Queer Ecologies Date: Friday, April 17, 2026 Location: James West Alumni Center Cost: Free to attend Join us for a day of graduate student presentations highlighting innovative research at the intersections of gender, sexuality, and the environment. The conference will feature keynote speaker Cutcha Risling Baldy (California Polytechnic State University,...

A sweeping account of how we are at our most human when we turn away from the pains of the world.  “This is a book that makes a difference, not only in our grasp of human visuality but in all the mixed feelings of love and hate, attraction and repulsion, thought and feeling that make...

Wood, Cloth, Plaster: Marisol’s Surface Work

Free Event

Join UCLA Department of English for a poetry reading by Eugene Ostashevsky and Aditya Bahl, followed by a discussion with Danny Snelson about poetics, experiment, and politics. Light refreshments will be served. Eugene Ostashvesky is a Russian-American poet, translator, and critic who teaches at New York University. He is the author of numerous books of...

With Dr. Jonathan Howard

UCLA English and The 20/21 Working Group Present: Spring Paper Workshop Feat. Michael Meagher Wednesday, May 6 at 4:00pm in Kaplan Hall 193 All are welcome for an informal discussion of Michael’s dissertation chapter on Edward Said’s memoir Out of Place, modernism, and postcolonial life writing. Snacks will be provided! RSVP: bit.ly/4sLiwxc

Join us for our annual Academic Conference for English Students! ACES 14th Annual Conference Friday, May 8 at 1 pm – 6 pm Kaplan Hall 193 Zoom livestream link here. The full conference schedule is now available: ACES 2026 Conference Program. The Academic Conference for English Students provides a collaborative forum for students of literature...

Join us Tuesday (5/12) for a book talk by Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg writer and artist Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. Organized by the Department of American Indian Studies (DAIS) as part of its Special Speaker Series, this event will highlight her recent Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead (2025). Book sales and signing to...

Join UCLA Department of English to celebrate the publication of UCLA alum Woody Brown's debut novel, Upward Bound. Register here to attend. A light reception will follow the event. The reading will be followed by a Q & A moderated by Mona Simpson, Professor of English at UCLA. Upward Bound is not a place anyone...

Jameson in California – and Beyond Friday, May 15 at 1:00-7:00 pm Kaplan Hall 193 This day-long event will focus on Fredric Jameson’s intellectual, educational, and now archival legacy and engagement in California, and beyond. The conference will feature scholarly papers, personal reflections, archival updates, and multimedia works. Register here to attend. An RSVP is...

Tues. May 19 - Thurs. May 21

A.E. Stallings, forty-seventh Oxford Professor of Poetry and winner of the MacArthur Fellowship, has published five volumes of poems (most recently This Afterlife), as well as distinguished translations of Lucretius, Hesiod, and the pseudo-Homeric Battle between the Frogs and the Mice. Her new book Frieze Frame: How Poets, Painters, and their Friends Framed the Debate...

2026 Spring Athenaeum Wednesday, May 20 at 4-6pm in Kaplan 193 Featuring Presenters Enrique Olivares-Pesante and Jonathan Grossman, with Yogita Goyal as Respondent. Please join us in Kaplan 193 for scholarship, refreshments, & conversation. The Athenaeum brings together one dissertation-stage graduate student and one faculty member to present their research, providing a venue for grad...

Co-presented with the UCLA Department of Media Arts and the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. To celebrate the 75th anniversary of Rachel Carson’s award-winning and widely influential book, The Sea Around Us, an interdisciplinary group of Indigenous culture bearers, scientists, artists, and ocean storytellers will address the legacy of DDT+, industrial, and radioactive...

"Ambivalence and the Politics of Form: Literary Experiment and the Question of Representation, 1970-2000."

Gil Hochberg is Ransford Professor of Hebrew, Comparative Literature and Middle East Studies at Columbia University.  She discusses her new memoir in conversation with UCLA colleagues, Hannah Jakobsen (Comp Lit), Rachel Lee (English/Gender Studies/Institute of Society & Genetics) & Michael Rothberg (English/Comp Lit). Sponsored by the Working Group in Memory Studies & the Abolition Medicine &  Disability...

Post-screening conversation with UCLA English Professor Elizabeth DeLoughrey, UCLA Design Media Arts Professor Rebeca Méndez, and the film’s co-director, investigative journalist Rosanna Xia. Co-presented with the UCLA Department of Media Arts and the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. From the Los Angeles Times and Pulitzer Prize-finalist Rosanna Xia, Out of Plain Sight is...

The UCLA Medieval Texts Reading Group welcomes undergraduate students, graduate students, staff, and faculty interested in medieval literature. Once each term, we get together to discuss a text in English translation from across the Global Middle Ages, to think about what it tells us about its cultural and literary context. Each discussion will be led...

Join us for a screening of Cymbeline, Refinished, directed by Michael Sexton and produced by Red Bull Theater. This event is part of the Revelation Reading Series. Cymbeline, Refinished Friday, May 22nd 4:00 PM (approx. 2 hours 15 minutes) Kaplan Hall 193 The reading will feature Shakespeare's original play, with Shaw's reimagined final act, giving...

Join UCLA English on Tuesday, May 26 and Thursday, May 28 for the Barbara L. Packer lectures featuring Caleb Smith, professor of English and American Studies at Yale University. In addition to his formal lectures, Professor Smith will lead a graduate workshop on Wednesday, May 27. All events include a light lunch. An RSVP is...

Join UCLA English on Tuesday, May 26 and Thursday, May 28 for the Barbara L. Packer lectures featuring Caleb Smith, professor of English and American Studies at Yale University. In addition to his formal lectures, Professor Smith will lead a graduate workshop on Wednesday, May 27. All events include a light lunch. An RSVP is...

The Barthes Fantastic: John Lurz in conversation with Louise Hornby Wednesday, May 27 at 4:00 pm Kaplan 193 John Lurz explores the intersection of literature and everyday life in the work of Roland Barthes. Doing so allows him to develop an expanded understanding of the fantastic as a conceptual category—a way of thinking—in which the...

Join UCLA English on Tuesday, May 26 and Thursday, May 28 for the Barbara L. Packer lectures featuring Caleb Smith, professor of English and American Studies at Yale University. In addition to his formal lectures, Professor Smith will lead a graduate workshop on Wednesday, May 27. All events include a light lunch. An RSVP is...

The English and Writing Programs Honors and Awards Reception will take place at the UCLA University Club on Friday, May 29 at 5:00pm to 7:00pm. Questions about the event? Contact Marta Wallien, Programs and Media Manager mwallien@english.ucla.edu

Looking for a fun way to celebrate the end of spring quarter? Come hang out with us at the Creative Writing Prose Reading Tuesday, June 2 at 5 PM in Kaplan 193. Students from the Creative Writing Program will read from their work. Bring your friends, grab some pizza and drinks, and enjoy the party....

Fri. June 5 – Sat. June 6

Jonathan Swift, Edward Said, and the Profession of Literature

Congratulations, class of 2026! We look forward to celebrating with you at our departmental commencement event in June. EVENT DETAILS AND EXPECTATIONS: The departmental event is a smaller, more personal ceremony for our graduates and their families. You will be able to celebrate your accomplishment with your fellow classmates and the English department's faculty and...