Cultural

Are you looking for a safe and supportive space to practice your English conversation skills? Check out Dashew Center's English Language Circle (ELC)! Here you will have an opportunity to practice your English with other language learners. The circle is led by a native English speaker, who will help you become more confident in your speaking skills and who can answer your language and grammar questions. While this week's ELC session will take place in person, please note that our program for Fall 2026 will operate on an alternating hybrid schedule. ELC meet virtually during odd weeks (weeks 3, 5, 7, and 9) and in-person during even weeks (weeks 2, 4, 6, and 10.) Please be sure to check the full description before registering. Space is limited to 20 participants per session, and participants are welcome to bring and enjoy their lunch during these meetings.

#Cultural #Multicultural

The Dashew Center invites you to join our quarterly International Scholar Lunch Hour this Fall! Meet other members of the UCLA International Scholar community to socialize, connect, and expand your network. The event will be held on Wednesday, November 4th from 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM PT @ Bradley 300. Registration is recommended to assist us with estimating attendance.

#GraduateProfessional #FacultyStaff #Alumni #Cultural #Multicultural

In 1901, Eva Palmer abandoned her life as a privileged New York socialite, moving to Paris with her lover, the writer and salonist, Natalie Barney. The two Americans became the center of a wild tangle of lesbian love affairs and backyard performances based on intentional reimaginings of Sappho’s work and life. A chance encounter led Eva to Greece, where she married Angelos Sikelianos, a visionary poet who would become a Greek national hero. Celebrated American poet Eleni Sikelianos grew up knowing little of these illustrious ancestors, her great grandparents, who, in the early 20th century staged a revival of the ancient Delphic festivals, convinced that it would open a path to world peace. It was not until the age of 20, on her first trip to Greece, that she encountered the breadth of their legacy. In her new book, "Memory Rehearsal" (City Lights, 2026), Sikelianos unearths the story of her search for these pioneering ancestors, in a text that shifts between prose, poetry, imaginary performance texts, fiction, and nonfiction, with archival and family photographs. Eleni will read from and discuss "Memory Rehearsal," which "Kirkus" calls a “moving family memoir and a triumph of cultural archaeology.” Eleni Sikelianos was born into a family of tree workers, bohemians, poets, ne’er-do-wells, visionaries, and smalltime sort-of hustlers. She is a poet, writer, collaborator, and “master of mixing genres.” As a student of the poets of Naropa, she is a lineage-holder in the Outrider poetics family tree. Deeply engaged with ecopoetics, her work takes up urgent concerns of environmental precarity and ancestral work. She has published ten books of poetry (most recently, "Your Kingdom," 2023) and a trilogy of unclassifiable hybrid works, sometimes called nonfiction, sometimes memoirs, sometimes fiction: "The Book of Jon" and "You Animal Machine," and, most recently, "Memory Rehearsal" (City Lights, 2026). "Memory Rehearsal," called “a triumph of cultural archaeology” in a starred Kirkus review and named One of "Publishers Weekly’s" Most Anticipated Books for 2026, is a genre-busting encounter between a poet and her ancestral past documenting a startling intersection of queer history, ancient theater, utopian visions, and modern poetry. Among other honors, she has been awarded two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, a Fulbright Artists fellowship, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Award in nonfiction. She grew up in earshot of the ocean, in small coastal towns near Santa Barbara, and has since lived in San Francisco, New York, Paris, Athens (Greece), Boulder (Colorado), and Providence. "Memory Rehearsal" will be available for purchase at the event! All major credit cards, Apple Pay, and Google Pay are accepted. Cash is also accepted with exact change only. This program is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).

#Cultural #IdentityBased