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Focus on Faculty
UCSB film lecturer Wendy Jackson brings her industry expertise and passion for storytelling to the screen with Facing the Falls, a documentary short about one woman’s courageous journey through the Grand Canyon while battling a rare muscle disease. Balancing her roles as a producer and educator, Jackson uses the film to highlight themes of resilience, accessibility, and the transformative power of perseverance.
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.
UC Santa Barbara literature and film professor Eloi Grasset, who has taught at Harvard and the University of Barcelona, now brings his expertise in Spanish and Iberian culture to a new course open to all majors: Soccer in the Hispanic World.
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.
Writing Program professor Victoria Houser draws upon her teaching experiences to create an inclusive learning environment that engages students of diverse backgrounds. Houser prioritizes class discussions and encourages students to set clear goals for their writing. In a recent interview, she spoke about strategies to support multilingual students.
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.
As both an accomplished poet and a Continuing Lecturer in UC Santa Barbara’s Writing Program, Robert Krut balances his career passions, finding inspiration in both his teaching and creative pursuits. He says his work with students is a source of motivation which fuels his enthusiasm for writing, which he explains in a conversational Q & A.
From Netflix, PBS, Discovery, The History Channel, and more, film professor Chris Jenkins brings his professional documentary experience to the classroom to teach students the art of film production. The poplular, two-term course Crew Production teaches pitching, networking, and all that goes into workting with a production team.
Cheri Steinkellner has had a successful career in television, film, and theater and is now writing a novel. She continues to be a legend in the storytelling world, sharing her expertise with UCSB film students and insider stories from the industry. In an HFA interview, Steinkellner discusses her experiences working on iconic projects like Cheers and her unique creative teaching methods.
Euskara, the oldest language of the Basque Country, is a symbol of cultural survival. At UC Santa Barbara, lecturer Maitane Murumendiaraz Arana teaches students in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese about the language and culture of her own heritage. Through her classes and events, she keeps the Basque spirit alive and growing at UCSB.
UCSB Film and Media Studies professor Mona Damluji recently discussed her journey into children's literature and the inspiration behind her socially-conscious works. Damluji published her debut children’s book, Together, in 2021, emphasizing the power of collective action. Her upcoming book, I Want You to Know, dives deeper into personal and political narratives. Written as a poem for her children, the book reflects on the generational effects of war, particularly in the Middle East, and explores themes of displacement and resilience. Damluji aims to open dialogue about complex histories, colonialism, and intergenerational trauma.
Howard Chiang, Lai Ho and Wu Cho-liu Endowed Chair in Taiwan Studies and professor of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies at UC Santa Barbara discusses Sinophone studies and the newly published reader he co-edited with Shu-mei Shih. “Sinophone Studies Across Disciplines: A Reader” compiles essays that showcase the interdisciplinary potential of Sinophone studies as a nexus for marginalized global topics.
UC Santa Barbara faculty member Sarah Hirsch has turned her passion for New Orleans into a cornerstone of her academic and teaching career. In an interview, she discusses her journey from growing up in California to discovering a deep connection with the city while researching seaports and literature of the sea for her doctoral dissertation. Now a Continuing Lecturer in UCSB’s Writing Program, Hirsch desribes how her fascination with New Orleans inspired her signature course, “The Cross-Cultural Mapping of New Orleans,” and how she brings the vibrant city to life for her students.
Ian Kellett, a UC Santa Barbara professor co-leads the Coastal Media Project. It’s a nine-week, 12-credit intensive summer course focused on environmental media production and documentary studies, offered through UCSB’s Carsey-Wolf Center. It combines a passion for film with environmentalism as students adventure through nature, telling meaningful stories.
George Legrady is director of UC Santa Barbara’sn Experimental Visualization Lab in the Media Arts Technology (MAT) graduate program. He discusses artificial intelligence's positive and negative impacts on art and art engineering in an interview with Humanities and Fine Arts.
Writing program faculty member Patricia Fancher has published a book titled “Queer Techné: Bodies, Rhetorics, and Desire in the History of Computing,” which explores the role of relationships, sexuality and gender in the computing community during its early years of invention, specifically surrounding Alan Turing. Her work was supported in 2023 by the Bazerman Fellowship, given to a Writing Program lecturer, which offered her the opportunity to edit her manuscript. In an interview, she discusses her process and challenges that came up.
There is a direct connection from slavery to colonialism to contemporary Italian culture and politics, says Stephanie Malia Hom, an associate professor of Transnational Italian Studies at UC Santa Barbara.
Screenwriter, producer, and UCSB educator Wendy Eley Jackson speaks to a student from the campus' Film and Media Studies department about her experiences within Hollywood’s film industry. Having gained acclaim working on several well-known films and television shows, Jackson uses her knowledge and resources to mentor her students towards successful careers in the film industry.
UC Santa Barbara's Interdisciplinary Humanities Center hosted Swati Chattopadhyay, a History of Art and Architecture professor at UCSB, to discuss her book Small Spaces: Recasting the Architecture of Empire. She spoke on servant quarters and other small spaces throughout the British Empire in India and how these marginalized spaces held together the Empire's infrastructure.
UCSB professor and artist Sarah Rosalena uses computer programming and hand crafting to interpret the stars. In an interview, she discusses representing Indigenous values and anti-colonialism through her art and her work at UCSB.
