Welcome to the web page of the UC Santa Cruz Society of the AIA.
UC Santa Cruz has launched a society of the Archaeological Institute of America. The AIA is the North American organization of professional archaeologists. Local societies such as ours sponsor lectures and events of interest to their members, and provide a local forum for people with an interest in archaeology to meet and talk. The national organization also sponsors a series of three lectures for each local society a on a broad range of topics. See some of the lecturers we've had in the past years here.
The UCSC society is now a local AIA society "in formation;" that is, we have more than twenty-five members of the AIA. A society in good standing must have at least fifty members, of whom no more than twenty percent can be student members. This is where you can help! Both basic and student membership in the AIA include a subscription to its popular magazine, Archaeology. For slightly more, you can choose to receive the AIA's professional journal, the American Journal of Archaeology. If you would like to support the formation of this local society by joining the AIA, further information on membership can be found here. If joining online, please be sure to specify that you want to be an affiliate of the UCSC Society! And let Charles Hedrick know that you have joined, so he can make sure that you're listed with our members and that you receive all our emails. But whether you join the AIA or not, you are always welcome to attend lectures of the society.
Our 2011-12 season is now in full swing:
Our first talk of the year was given on October 22, 2011, by Professor Kathleen Lynch of the University of Cincinnati: “Sex Sells, But Who’s Buying? Erotic Imagery on Athenian Vases.”Many thanks to UCSC's own J. Cameron Monroe, who stood in at relatively short notice on February 28, 2012, with his lecture, "Elephants for Want of Towns? New Light on Old Cities in West Africa's Atlantic Age."
Next up is a double-header by Charles W. Hedrick, Sr., a member of the UNESCO team of scholars who reconstructed and translated the Nag Hammadi Codices, and both a translator and editor of texts in the critical edition of the collection. He is the author of numerous articles and several books including Unlocking the Secrets of the Gospel of Thomas: A Radical Faith for a New Age (Wipf and Stock, 2010), The Gospel of the Savior: A New Ancient Gospel (Polebridge, 1999), and Many Things in Parables: Jesus and his Modern Critics (Westminster, 2004). He is a Fellow of the Jesus Seminar and a retired U.S. Army Chaplain; today he explores the thin line that separates faith from apostasy in writings published on his blog, www.charleshedrick.com. He will be delivering two separate lectures on April 2 and 5, 2012:
“Secret Mark: second edition or forgery?”
Monday, April 2 at 5 p.m.
“Secret Mark: the scholarly firestorm that followed...”
Thursday, April 5 at 5 p.m.
Both lectures will be held in Humanities 1, room 210
Coffee will be served before and a reception will follow each lecture
We very much hope to see you all there!