Posts Tagged ‘UCLA School of Law’

LOS ANGELES, CA, November 4, 2009 – UCLA will host four days of theater, music, lectures and panel discussions in celebration of this year’s bicentennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln. The Lincoln celebration is the inaugural public event of UCLA’s new Center for the Liberal Arts and Free Institutions. It will be held November 18-21, 2009 on the UCLA campus, and is co-sponsored by UCLA School of Law.

The award-winning Interact Theatre Company opens the celebration on Wednesday, November 18 at UCLA School of Law with a reading of “The Rivalry,” a play by Los Angeles

President Lincoln

resident Norman Corwin about the Abraham Lincoln-Stephen A. Douglas debates. A two-part concert at UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall follows on Thursday, November 19. The concert will begin with the UCLA Philharmonia and the 100-voice UCLA Chorale performing “A Canticle of Freedom,” by Aaron Copland, and the world premiere of the choral work, “Lincoln Echoes,” by UCLA Professor David S. Lefkowitz.  Tony Award-winner John Rubinstein will direct the second half of the concert, the dramatization “I, Abraham Lincoln,” which is based on a script by UCLA graduate Brett Ryback ’06 and integrates period popular music and the events leading to Lincoln’s decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.

An academic conference on Lincoln will follow on Friday, November 20 and Saturday, November 21 at the UCLA Faculty Center. Featured conference lecturers include Daniel Walker Howe, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and emeritus professor at both UCLA and Oxford, and noted Lincoln biographer and scholar Allen Guelzo, a professor at Gettysburg College.

The Center for the Liberal Arts and Free Institutions (CLAFI) is an interdisciplinary center created in 2009 as part of the UCLA Division of Humanities.  CLAFI exists to assist students and faculty who would like to make the great works and achievements of western and other civilizations a more central part of their studies.

According to CLAFI Director Daniel Lowenstein, a professor at UCLA School of Law, “While part of CLAFI’s emphasis will be on curriculum, it will also promote research that contributes to knowledge and understanding and is accessible to non-specialists. During this inaugural event celebrating Lincoln, leading scholars will present their ideas in a forum that is open and accessible to all people interested in American history, not just Ph.D.s or Lincoln experts.”

For a complete schedule of Lincoln celebration events or for registration information, please visit www.law.ucla.edu/clafi/lincolncelebration. For additional information about the event or CLAFI, please contact Daniel Lowenstein at 310-825-5148 or 818-781-3022, or by e-mail at lowenstein@law.ucla.edu.