Lectures/Talks

Asian Studies Program and the Department of the History of Art are pleased to sponsor: 

Out of Character, Out of Order: Typographic Reforms in Postwar South Korea

Monday, April 13, 2026 at 4:00pm, Arts Screening Room 335

Seungyeon Gabrielle Jung, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Art History and Visual Studies, UC Irvine

 

Out of Character, Out of Order: Typographic Reforms in Postwar South Korea, April 13, 2026 “Out of Character, Out of Order” shows how typographic design was employed to negotiate shifting colonial, postcolonial, and Cold War geopolitical dynamics between 1945 and the early 1960s. United Nations agencies and Korean linguists regarded the Sino-Korean form of writing as an impediment to promoting literacy and democracy; and the scholars also viewed it as a remnant of the ancient World Order that subjected Korea to Chinese power. Linguists and educators introduced various typographic solutions, including reorienting Hangeul from vertical to horizontal writing and deconstructing syllabic characters into phonemes. These efforts to follow what they assumed to be the “universal standards” resulted in deformed letters that merely imitated the Roman alphabet without improving the writing system’s legibility or readability. This paper demonstrates how the attempt to break from the old order inadvertently led to a departure from the inherent character of Hangeul, culminating in its swift absorption into a new order.

Seungyeon Gabrielle Jung is a design historian and media scholar whose research interrogates the politics and aesthetics of design, with the postwar developing world as a critical site of inquiry. Her first book, Utopia of Problems: Nation-Designing  in Postwar South Korea, challenges widely accepted definitions of design as a problem-solving method by analyzing failed state and corporate design projects. Originally trained as a graphic designer, Gabrielle worked in advertising and editorial design before attending graduate school. Currently, she is an assistant professor of Art History and Visual Studies at UC Irvine, where she teaches Korean art and design history, visual culture, and critical theory.

 

 

 

 

 

2026 Getty Graduate Symposium

Friday, February 6, 2026, 9:45am-6pm
Museum Lecture Hall and Online

The Getty Research Institute hosts the 8th annual Getty Graduate Symposium, which showcases the work of emerging scholars from art history graduate programs across California. Organized into three sessions, the symposium includes nine individual presentations, moderated panel discussions, and Q&A sessions with the audience.

Participants include our own PhD candidate, Lily Allen

This event is FREE  free but advance tickets are required. 
To watch online, register via Zoom 

Participants:
Anahit Galstyan, University of California, Santa Barbara
Andrea Jung-An Liu, University of California, Berkeley
Bermet Nishanova, University of California, Irvine
Dejan Vasić, Stanford University
Evelyn Char, University of California, Santa Cruz
Johnnie Chatman, University of California, San Diego
Lily Allen, University of California, Riverside
Margot Yale, University of Southern California
Thomas Duncan, University of California, Los Angeles

 

 

UC Riverside Retirees’ and Emeriti Associations with additional sponsorship by UCR Osher and UCR’s Office of Gift Planning Present
The Edward A. Dickson Emeritus/a Professorship Lecture Series

 

SIGNATURE ROCKS: EMIGRATION AND THE SIGNED LANDSCAPE IN INDIAN COUNTRY: 1830-1860 Conrad Rudolph, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Medieval Art History
SIGNATURE ROCKS: EMIGRATION AND THE SIGNED LANDSCAPE IN INDIAN COUNTRY: 1830-1860

Signature Rocks is the first systematic study of the surviving “signatures” inscribed by the emigrants, as they called themselves, on both the famous and not so famous rock formations that line the overland trails through Indian Country from the Missouri River to the Pacific from the 1830s to 1869.  Once numbering in the hundreds of thousands, only several thousand have survived. Following the overland crossing, we read  hese inscriptions — an unrecognized and vanishing American archive — in light of a number of motivations to signing culled from the over two thousand emigrant journals and other accounts that have come down to us. The result is a new understanding of this completely overlooked  spect of one of the most iconic episodes in the history of the United States.

Tuesday, October 21, 2025
3:00 – 4:30 p.m. with Reception to follow
In-person at University Extension Building 1101 in the University Village
Livestreamed via Zoom

 

Huntington Library Open House @UCR
Wednesday, October 1, 2025 3pm to 5:30pm

The Huntington Comes to UCR!

Join Huntington Library Director of Research Susan Juster, members of her staff, and Huntington curators for an Open House event at UC Riverside. Juster and her team will share insights into the Huntington’s fellowship program, the application process, and what makes for a strong application.

The Huntington is a word-class research institution, which promotes humanities scholarship on the basis of its library holdings and art collections. 

Whether you are a graduate student or a faculty member, please mark your calendar. This is a unique opportunity to learn and connect. An informal reception with drinks and snacks will follow the presentations.

Schedule

3:00-4:30 – Presentations from Huntington programming team, with Q&A
4:30-5:30 – Reception

RSVPs appreciated: https://bit.ly/HuntingtonUCR

Speakers

Susan Juster oversees the Research division that hosts more than 150 long- and short-term research fellows each year, selected through a competitive, peer-review process that provides $1.4 million in awards.

Brett Rushforth is editor-in-chief of the Huntington Library Quarterly, a peer-reviewed academic journal featuring original research and new perspectives on early modern art, literature, history, science, medicine, and material culture.

Shannon McHugh, the assistant director of research, helps connect the research of Huntington fellows with broader audiences while making connections between The Huntington’s historical collections and the present.

Vanessa Wilkie, Ph.D., is the head of the Library Curatorial department and curates the Library’s renowned collections of medieval manuscripts and British history.

Diva Zumaya, Ph.D., the associate curator of European art, researches The Huntington’s collection of European art, finds new connections between objects, and collaborates with Library and Botanical colleagues.

Sponsored by the UCR Department of History and the Being Human initiative at the Center for Ideas and Society.

 

UC Riverside Retirees’ and Emeriti Associations with additional sponsorship by UCR Osher and UCR’s Office of Gift Planning Present
The Edward A. Dickson Emeritus/a Professorship Lecture Series

 

Dickson Flyer Malcolm BakerMalcolm Baker, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Art History
THE ART-HISTORICAL GENRE THAT DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME?  Authorship, Objects and Reconfiguring the Sculptural Catalogue Raisonné

Tuesday, June 3, 2025
3:00 – 4:30 p.m. with Reception to follow
In-person at University Extension Building 1101 in the University Village
Livestreamed via Zoom

https://events.ucr.edu/event/the-art-historical-genre-that-dare-not-speak-its-name-authorship-objects-and-reconfiguring-the-sculptural-catalogue-raisonne

Vera Molnar’s Drawing Machines: A Media Archaeology of Early Computer Graphics

Zsofi Valyi-Nagy, Ph.D Visiting Assistant Professor in Art History at Scripps College
Wednesday, May 14 at 5:30pm, INTS 1128

How do you draw a line with a computer? When the Hungarian-born, Paris-based artist Vera Molnar (1924-2023) began exper-imenting with electronic computers in 1968, this task was not as simple as the click of a mouse or the swipe of a finger. Molnar had to translate her visual language of geometric abstraction into alphanumeric instructions that a computer would understand. Though she generated thousands of computer plotter “drawings” over the next two decades, she left behind limited technical documentation from this period, leaving it up to viewers to imagine the algorithms behind her compositions. This lecture presents a media archeology of the artist’s work –– a hands-on approach that engages not only with her drawings but also her process of drawing with a computer. I will recount my “reenactment” of Molnar’s series Lettres de ma mère (My mother’s letters, 1988) using obsolete hardware and software that the artist once used. This practice-led approach foregrounds the artist’s process and historically contextualizes the material history and user experience of early interactive computing, which have been all but forgotten.