ATTENTION: Political, international affairs and arts writers and editors

WHAT: "America and its Wars," a two-day University of California, Berkeley, conference of scholarly talks and artistic presentations and performances exploring the relationship between the United States and war -- internal and external, declared and undeclared -- and the relationship between violence and war.

The event is free and open to the public.

WHEN: 9:30 a.m.-6 p.m., Friday, April 13
9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m., Saturday, April 14

WHERE: Wurster Hall Auditorium, on campus near the intersection of Bancroft Way and College Avenue. A map is online at http://www.berkeley.edu/map/.

WHO: Participants will include artists and scholars from the fields of anthropology, art, geography, rhetoric, history, performance studies, film studies and English at UC Berkeley, Rutgers University in New Jersey, the Cooper Union School of Arts in New York, the California College of the Arts and Birzeit University, the first institution of higher education to be established in Palestine. Artists at the conference will include Walid Raad, whose recent works include "The Atlas Group," a 15-year project about violence in contemporary Lebanon.

DETAILS: Some specific topics to be addressed include the Iraq war, post-war Vietnam, racial panic and World War I, violence and death and Moroccan youth, the Lebanese wars, and the origins of the Black Panther Party. A complete schedule is online at http://americaanditswars.net/. For more information, e-mail potluri@berkeley.edu.