UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy

Film Screening and Director Q&A: Agniia Galdanova’s queer dissident documentary film “QUEENDOM”
2024-04-19 18:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | James Bridges Theater, 235 Charles E. Young Drive E, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
The UCLA Department of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Languages and Cultures (SEEELC), in collaboration with the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television, the UCLA Center for European and Russian Studies (CERS), and the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy, invites you to a screening of Agniia Galdanova’s dissident Russian documentary film “Queendom,” which will be followed by a Q&A session with the director. View the trailer here.

Film Synopsis
Gena, a queer artist from a small town in Russia, dresses in otherworldly costumes made from junk and tape, and protests the government on the streets of Moscow. Born and raised on the harsh streets of Magadan, a frigid outpost of the Soviet gulag, Gena is only 21. She stages radical performances in public that become a new form of art and activism. By doing that, she wants to change people’s perception of beauty and queerness and bring attention to the harassment of the LGBTQ+ community. Their performances – often dark, strange, evocative, and queer at their core – are a manifestation of Gena’s subconscious. But they come at a price.

About the Director
Agniia Galdanova is a Sundance and IDFA-supported documentary film director. Her previous film, “One Step Forward, One Step Back,” about a family’s dream to live far from civilization in the Altai Mountains, premiered at the Message to Man International Film Festival. Her work focuses on complex human relationships told through immersive observational language. Her new film QUEENDOM about a young queer artist Gena Marvin premiered at SXSW 2023 in Documentary Competition.

How European Wars End - and What This Might Tell Us About the Conditions for Peace in Ukraine
2024-05-15 16:00 - 18:00
Stella Ghervas (Assistant Professor, UCLA)

Stella Ghervas is Professor of History and the Eugen Weber Chair in Modern European History at UCLA. She has held teaching, research and visiting positions in Australia, France, Georgia, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Switzerland, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Her main interests are in intellectual and international history of modern Europe, with special reference to the history of peace and peace-making, and in Russia’s intellectual and maritime history. She is the author or editor of six books, most notably Réinventer la tradition: Alexandre Stourdza et l’Europe de la Sainte Alliance (2008), which won the Guizot Prize from the Académie Française, A Cultural History of Peace in the Age of Enlightenment (co-ed., 2020), and Conquering Peace: From the Enlightenment to the European Union (2021), which won the 2023 Laura Shannon Prize. She is now working on a new book Calming the Waters? A New History of the Black Sea, 1774-1920s, and an anthology of essential texts on peace from the Antiquity to the present day.
Check out a recent interview featuring Professor Ghervas, “Pondering Peace: A Q&A with Professor Stella Ghervas”, available on the UCLA College website.

Violence in the Suburbs of France: A Tragic Cycle of Déjà Vus
2024-06-05 16:00 - 18:00 | Bunche 6275, Charles E Young Dr E, Los Angeles
Luuk Slooter (Professor, Utrecht University)

On 27 June 2023 a 17-year-old boy, Nahel Merzouk, is shot dead by the police in Nanterre, a suburb north of Paris (France). The same night collective violence erupts: cars burn down, buildings are set on fire and there are heavy clashes between young people and the police. The unrest spreads across the French Republic and lasts for 8 days.
The death of Nahel was not a one-off incident, but part of a longer history of suburban unrest in France’s marginalized suburbs. It was a déjà-vu. A tragic play that has been staged multiple times over the past four decades. Although the play has been performed in different forms, at different locations, and by different actors, it has remained loyal to a script in three acts.
In this talk I will bring you to the disadvantaged suburbs (banlieues) of France and disaggregate this three act drama. Drawing on ethnographic research I will show how the cycle of car burning protests and police brutality is rooted in the structural violence of a socially and spatially divided society.

Luuk Slooter is an Assistant Professor Conflict Studies at Utrecht University. His research focuses on urban uprisings, violence, policing, polarization and spatial segregation. He conducted ethnographic research in the French banlieues and disadvantaged neighborhoods in the Netherlands. He obtained his PhD from Utrecht University (the Netherlands) and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (France). His book publications include ‘The Making of the Banlieue: An Ethnography of Space, Identity and Violence’ (Palgrave, 2019) and ‘Geweld’ [Violence] (Athenaeum, 2021 – in Dutch – co-authored with Prof. Jolle Demmers).
Luuk Slooter is currently visiting Professor at UCLA’s Center for European and Russian Studies (Dutch Studies Program).

RSVP Here by June 3

The Nexus of Education Non-Profits, Corporations, and Philanthropy: The Pressures of the Past and Reimagining the Future (The Pasts and Futures of Higher Education in the U.S. Seminar)
2024-11-04 12:00 - 13:30 | Bunche 6339
Abbie Cohen (PhD Student, UCLA)

The University in Ruins? The Past and Futures of Today's Higher Ed Crisis
2024-11-18 12:00 - 13:30 | Bunche 6339
Davarian Baldwin (Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of American Studies and Founding Director of Smart Cities Research Lab, Trinity College)

Beyond Neutrality: The University President as Teacher in Turbulent Times
2024-12-09 12:00 - 13:30 | Bunche 6339
Michael Roth (President, Wesleyan University)

The Original DEI: The Protestant Establishment and the Secularization of the University
2025-01-22 16:00 - 17:30 | Bunche 6339
Nomi M. Stolzenberg (Nathan and Lily Shapell Professor of Law, USC)

Once More Unto the Breach: The Neutrality Debate and the American University, 1967 and 2025
2025-02-10 12:00 - 13:30 | Bunche 6339
Malick Ghachem (Professor, MIT)

Why History Matters in an Age of Polycrisis
2025-03-06 18:00 - 19:00 | Wende Museum, 10808 Culver Blvd, Culver City, CA, 90230
Wende Museum

The Legacy of Impunity: A Book Talk with Philippe Sands
2025-03-12 12:15 - 13:30 | ULCA Law Room 1447
UCLA Law Room 1447

Black for the First Time: Race, Admissions, and Socialization in the Historically White Institutional Context
2025-04-07 12:00 - 13:30 | Bunche Hall 6339, Charles E Young Dr E, Los Angeles
Jamaal Muwwakkil (Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow, UCLA)

Borders within Borders: Service Provider Voices across America's Patchwork of Immigration Policies
2025-04-21 16:00 - 17:30 | Bunche Hall 6339, Charles E Young Dr E, Los Angeles
Tatiana Londoño (UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs)

Why History Matters: L.A. Wildfires Past, Present and Future
2025-04-30 18:00 - 20:00 | Lenart Auditorium, Fowler Museum at UCLA, 308 Charles E Young Dr N, Los Angeles, CA, 90024
Hitoshi Abe, Gerald Clark Jr., Char Miller, with moderator Stephen Aron

The Future of History
2025-11-03 15:00 - 18:00 | Legacy Room, Luskin Conference Center, 425 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095

"Teach Truth: The Struggle for an Antiracist Education" with Jesse Hagopian
2025-11-10 18:30 - 19:30 | 3312 Murphy Hall

Higher Education in Peril: A Conversation with Prof. Kim Scheppele and Prof. David Kaye
2025-12-02 12:00 - 14:00 | Bunche 6275, Charles E Young Dr E, Los Angeles
RSVP here by November 24

The Law and Politics of the Federal Assault on Higher Education: A Conversation with Prof. Joseph Fishkin
2026-02-03 12:00 - 13:30 | Bunche 6339
Joseph Fishkin, UCLA Law

Antisemitism and the Law in the Second Trump Administration: Perspectives from UPenn
2026-04-06 12:00 - 13:30 | Zoom
Amanda Shanor, Sigal Ben-Porath, and Serena Mayeri

Borders in Times of Instability: A Cross-Disciplinary Conversation with Luwei Ying and Hiroshi Motomura
2026-04-14 12:00 - 13:30 | Bunche 6339
Luwei Ying and Hiroshi Motomura

Decoding Deschênes: New Insights into Canadian Government's Troubled War Crimes Investigation
2026-05-18 12:00 - 13:30 | Bunche 6275, Charles E Young Dr E, Los Angeles
Jared McBride and UCLA Undergraduate Students

RSVP Required

2025-26 LCHP Grantee Final Reports
2026-05-20 16:00 - 18:00 | Bunche 6275, Charles E Young Dr E, Los Angeles
RSVP Required

The Future of History: Have We Reached the End of History Again?
2026-05-24 10:30 - 13:00 | Wende Museum, 10808 Culver Blvd, Culver City, CA, 90230
Miloš Jovanović, David N. Myers, Natasha Piano, and Terry Tang

Introducing a new multi-part series on “The Future of History,” co-presented by the Wende Museum and the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy.
This panel revisits the conclusion of political scientist Francis Fukuyama in his 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man, that we have reached “the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” Today, we are forced to ask whether the rise of illiberal authoritarianism marks a new end of history.
How should we think about the next phase of history? As part of an unfolding journey into the future, or as the beginning of the end?
Miloš Jovanović is Assistant Professor of History at UCLA. His first book, Cities of Dust and Mud: Urbanism and Bourgeois Fantasy in the Balkans (Stanford University Press, 2026), explores the social costs of elite-led urban change. His new research project, Spaces of Empire: The Habsburg World and its Afterlives, examines the diverse trajectories of urban spaces after imperial collapse.
David N. Myers is Distinguished Professor of History and holds the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History at UCLA. He is the founding director of the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy. He also directs the UCLA Initiative to Study Hate, the UCLA Dialogue Across Difference Initiative, and the UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute. He is the author or editor of more than fifteen books, including American Shtetl (winner of the 2022 National Jewish Book Award).
Natasha Piano is Assistant Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Political Science at UCLA. She specializes in democratic theory and the history of political thought, focusing on realist and empirical traditions in political science and Italian political theory. Her book, Democratic Elitism: The Founding Myth of American Political Science (Harvard University Press, 2025), examines how misinterpretations of elite theory shaped American political systems.
Terry Tang is Executive Editor of the Los Angeles Times. Appointed in 2024, she is the first female editor in the paper’s history. Before joining the Los Angeles Times in 2019, she served as director of publications and editorial at the American Civil Liberties Union and held multiple editorial roles at The New York Times. She holds a BA from Yale and a JD from New York University School of Law.
As the Wende’s galleries will be open during this program, you may enter through the front doors of the museum. Theater doors open 15 minutes before the start time. Seating is first come, first served. An RSVP does not guarantee admission once capacity is reached. No late entry.

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The Future of History in the Public Sphere
2026-08-23 10:30 - 12:30
Program update: Anthea Hartig is no longer able to appear. Justin Jampol, our founder and executive director, will take her place on the panel. The program is on as scheduled and is sold out.
The third installment of The Future of History series, presented through the Meyer and Renee Luskin Public History Program at the Wende in conjunction with the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy.
History does not only live in books and classrooms. It lives in museums, libraries, and archives, where institutions work to keep the past within reach of everyone. That work now faces real threats: growing indifference and inattention, misinformation and disinformation, bold revisionism, and the rising specter of artificial intelligence as the final arbiter of historical truth.
This conversation will feature renowned leaders of local and national institutions committed to imparting historical knowledge to a wide public. What are the challenges of the current political, cultural, and technological moment? Can the work of producing reliable and meaningful historical knowledge weather the storm?
Stephen Aron is President and CEO of the Autry Museum of the American West and Professor of History, Emeritus, at UCLA. A historian of frontiers, borderlands, and the American West, he has long worked to bridge academic and public history.
Anthea M. Hartig is the Elizabeth MacMillan Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, the first woman to hold the post since the museum opened in 1964. An award-winning public historian, she previously led the California Historical Society.
Jessie Kornberg is President and CEO of the Skirball Cultural Center, which she has led since 2020. She came to the role after two decades in civil rights and public-interest law, including as CEO of the legal aid organization Bet Tzedek.
David N. Myers (moderator) is Distinguished Professor of History at UCLA and served as founding director of the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy (2017-2026). He convenes The Future of History series.
Tawny Paul (opening remarks) is Director of the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy and a social and economic historian of Britain and the Atlantic World. Her public history work focuses on collaborative history-making and reaching wide audiences.
About the Meyer and Renee Luskin Public History Program at the Wende: This series is made possible through the extraordinary generosity of Meyer and Renee Luskin, visionary philanthropists whose support has advanced groundbreaking research and community engagement across Los Angeles and beyond. Through their commitment to education, policy innovation, and public history, the Luskins have transformed institutions such as UCLA, where the Luskin Center for History and Policy is pioneering efforts to apply historical analysis to contemporary challenges. Their dedication to fostering knowledge and civic dialogue ensures that history remains a vital resource in shaping a more just and informed society.
RSVP required.
