The Santa Barbara Chinese School was established in 1985 and has been hosted in a few different spaces over the years. It was held at UCSB in the early 2000s and moved over to the Chinese Evangelical Free Church of Santa Barbara in the 2010s. The COVID-19 pandemic prompted a transition into exclusively online lessons. Now, the Chinese School is back at UCSB in partnership with the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies.

In Edo-period Japan, a growing number of women embarked on long pilgrimages after retiring from household duties — journeys that offered not just spiritual fulfillment, but personal freedom. UC Santa Barbara graduate student Erin Trumble explores how these women used travel and writing to reclaim a sense of identity beyond domestic life.

At the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center’s Faculty Fellows showcase, three UCSB professors presented research that shatters conventional historical narratives. Their work focuses on urgent contemporary questions about power, resistance and the gap between official stories and hidden realities.

At a UCSB Carsey-Wolf Center screening of the documentary Sugarcane, UC Santa Cruz professor Caitlin Keliia emphasized the power of film in preserving the violent histories of Indigenous children who were taken from their families and forced into labor and abuse at residential schools. Drawing from her own research on Native women in domestic labor, Keliia highlighted how remembering these stories through media and discussion is essential for truth, accountability, and healing.

The Carsey-Wolf Center at UC Santa Barbara hosted a screening and panel called Panic!: Social Studies, about a new docuseries by Lauren Greenfield that explores the impact of social media on teens’ mental health, identity, and activism. Featuring candid stories from diverse youth, the series invites critical reflection on how corporate algorithms shape the digital lives of a generation.

Earlier this month, 2025-26 postdoctoral fellow at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, Adam McNeil gave a talk hosted by UCSB History on the importance of podcasting for the study of Black life. McNeil, from Rutgers University, has interviewed over 110 intellectual scholars about their field of study and believes his work as an African American podcast host is changing the world.

At a recent talk, Classics scholar Brett M. Rogers from the University of Puget Sound visited UC Santa Barbara to discuss the seemingly impossible link between Homer’s epic poemThe Odyssey and artificial intelligence. The event was hosted by UCSB’s Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.

As concerns over journalistic freedom and erasure of history grow under the Trump administration, a UC Santa Barbara panel warned that cuts to public broadcasting and higher education threaten the preservation of truth for future generations. Emphasizing the urgent need for digital documentation, panelists highlighted how archives and accessible historical records are vital tools for resisting propaganda, preserving marginalized histories, and empowering communities to challenge injustice.

A presentation hosted by UC Santa Barbara’s Interdisciplinary Humanities Center explored how an Inupiaq folktale about the “Berry People” challenges Western and Catholic views of children as passive or in need of correction, instead presenting children as sacred, wise, and relational beings. Drawing from her Indigenous heritage and personal experience, UCSB Religious Studies postdoctoral fellow, Elisha Chi, used the story to highlight the harm done by colonial religious systems like residential schools and to propose a care-centered, reciprocal approach to understanding childhood.

The Center for Middle East Studies recently held a graduate panel to highlight student’s research, a part of the center’s Spotlight Series. Camilla Falanesca, Giovanni Vimercati, and bridge mcwaid all presented their research, spanning from the film distribution in Beirut, to the fish market in 1950’s Palestine, to the oilfield in El Borma, Tunisia.

This spring, UCSB’s Humanities and Fine Arts Division hosted a creativity contest to highlight the work of creative students across the UCSB campus. The following story won first place in the prose category.

This spring, UCSB’s Humanities and Fine Arts Division hosted a creativity contest to highlight the work of creative students across the UCSB campus. The following story won second place in the prose category.

This spring, UCSB’s Humanities and Fine Arts Division hosted a creativity contest to highlight the work of creative students across the UCSB campus. The following story won third place in the prose category.

This spring, UC Santa Barbara’s Humanities and Fine Arts Division hosted an annual contest to highlight creativity across the campus. The following are winning submissions in the Music category.

UC Santa Barbara alum Nori Muster joined filmmaker Jason Lapeyre and moderator David Gartell, a religious studies expert in the UCSB Library’s Special Research Collections, for a screening and post-screening discussion of docudrama Monkey on a Stick hosted by UCSB’s Carsey-Wolf Center. Muster was recruited by the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) when she was a sociology senior at UCSB in 1978. She was a historical advisor for the film.

At a UCSB Humanities Decanted event, historian Juan Cobo Betancourt discussed his new book The Coming of the Kingdom, which explores how Indigenous leaders in colonial Colombia used Catholic institutions to hold onto power and support their communities. The event was hosted by the Interdisciplinary Center.

L.A. artist Amir H. Fallah paints portraits without faces, telling life stories through objects and symbols instead. Speaking at UCSB, he described how his work reflects his Iranian-American identity and challenges how we define people. From stained glass to sculpture, his art explores memory, culture, and the unseen layers of identity.

The 2025 winners of the UCSB Humanities and Fine Arts Division’s Give Day Creativity Contest joined HFA faculty and donors at a lunch last week to receive awards for their original work in writing, photography, art and music.

Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera visited UC Santa Barbara in in an interdisciplinary event in which he highlighted poetry's power to honor ancestors by sharing their stories with others. He shared poems on social issues such as police violence and immigration.

In a lecture as part of Art Department’s Visiting Artist Speaker Series at UCSB, artist Eamon Ore-Giron explores the fluid movement of cultural narratives across borders, blending ancient traditions with contemporary expression. His work insists that art, like history, is never singular—it's a conversation in motion. Currently on display at the AD&A Museum as half of the art duo Los Jaichackers, Ore-Giron walks the audience through his creative journey.

Authoritarian leaders use fear, crisis, and rebranding to push far-right agendas and erode democracy, NYU professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat told a UCSB audience at the inaugural Charles R. Ross Distinguished Lecture in the Department of Italian Studies. She highlighted how figures like Mussolini, Meloni, and Trump manipulate public perception to justify extreme policies.

A panel held by the Religious Studies Department at UCSB called on the university to strengthen its efforts to return Native ancestors' remains and cultural objects, highlighting the spiritual and human rights importance of repatriation. Panelists stressed that education and understanding are key to addressing the long-standing harm caused by the desecration of Native burial sites.

Christina Han, an associate professor of history at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada, visited UCSB to present on the 17th-century Korean Sihwa ch'ongnim 詩話叢林 Compendium of Poetry Talks and the importance of collaborative, transnational scholarship in digital humanities.

Harvard University professor and filmmaker Vincent Brown spoke at a UCSB Key Passages series talk titled “Black History’s Warning to the World” and gave insights on the past, present, and future of Black history in the United States and internationally.

The newly opened exhibit Creative Currents: Student Expression in the Arts at UC Santa Barbara’s Sara Miller McCune Arts Library showcases decades of student creativity, spanning from 1960 to 2017. Curated by graduate student Carlyle Constantino, the exhibit highlights emotionally resonant works while exploring themes of identity, belonging, and the evolving role of curation in amplifying historically overlooked voices.

University of Washington humanities scholar Kathleen Woodward shared the literary connections she has made between both aging and the Anthropocene last week at a Key Passages talk held by UCSB’s Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.

UCSB English student and actor-turned-director Curran Seth made his directorial debut with Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, collaborating with the UCSB Music Department and Shrunken Heads Production Company to bring the dark, character-driven story to life. Emphasizing emotional depth over technical precision, Seth guided his cast—many of whom were primarily singers—to tap into their characters' psychology, resulting in a raw and immersive production.

Five years after COVID-19’s initial outbreak across the U.S., Letty García, Nomi Morris and Nathan Roberts from the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts gathered to unpack its impacts on film, the performing arts, writing and academia for a UC Santa Barbara audience. While quarantine fostered artistic innovation and collective creativity, it also transformed university students in both positive and negative ways, according to the speakers.

Shane Book, a poet and filmmaker, spoke at An Evening of Film and Poetry with Shane Book last week. Co-sponsored by the College of Creative Studies, Film and Media Studies, and the Center for Black Studies Research, Book spoke about his poetry books, his two short films, and his time spent learning and living in a myriad of different cities.

Sociologist Claudio E. Benzecry explores the blurred boundaries between humans and objects, revealing how people project themselves onto their surroundings and, in turn, become shaped by them. Through studies on opera lovers, shoe models, and museum guards, he uncovers the ways in which passion and perception transform inanimate things into active participants in human experience.