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Curtis Roads, professor and chair of Media Arts and Technology at UCSB, spoke to a Santa Barbara audience last week about his career in electronic music composition and music software development. During the lecture, he played some of his more recent pieces and updated his audience on future projects.
Ross Melnick, a UCSB Film and Media Studies professor, spoke at the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center’s second Humanities Decanted series event, to discuss his new book Hollywood Embassies: How Movie Theaters Projected American Power Around the World . Melnick also sat down with UCSB student Maxwell Wilkens to talk about his book and the role American cinema played in forging the US image abroad, in the second episode of HFA Speaks: The Podcast.
HFA student intern Maxwell Wilkens moderated a discussion on the painful associations the Thanksgiving holiday holds for Indigenous peoples, to mark Native American Heritage Month. He was joined by panelists Alesha Claveria, a UC Santa Barbara Theater alum who is now an assistant professor of American Indian Studies at Cal State Northridge, as well as UCSB professors of English Amrah Salomón J, and Candace Waid. During this 45-minute Zoom session, the three professors discussed counter-narratives of Thanksgiving that have yet to become prevalent in the US education system.
UC Santa Barbara Theater majors Sophia Papalia and Hannah Froman directed the one-act plays Dash Climbs a Rope and Reunion, both by renowned playwright and department friend James Still, under the mentorship of theater professor Risa Brainin for UCSB’s Fall One-Acts.
Legendary author and illustrator Maurice Sendak confronted his past in the dozens of books he both wrote and illustrated. As a Jewish child growing up in Brooklyn in the mid-20th century, Sendak was constantly sick and had an innate fear of surviving and dying in the world. His parents instilled in him anxiety and shame, which he captured in his books, said Tulane University professor of Jewish Studies Golan Moskowitz at UC Santa Barbara’s Interdisciplinary Humanities Center’s talk last week.
Moskowitz went through Sendak’s life and experiences during an hour-long Zoom talk last week to kick off the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center Global Childhood Ecology series.
Filmmaker and scholar Florence Ayisi gave a talk at UC Santa Barbara titled “Realities, Representations and Reflections” about documentary films on Africa. After moving to the United Kingdom from Cameroon and seeing how her country was being displayed, she became devoted to documenting its people, and culture, exploring in particular the women of Cameroon.
UC Santa Barbara’s Middle East Ensemble collaborated with two student organizations — the Persian Student Group and the Iranian Jewish Student Association — on a Persian music night last week. Students, community members and faculty came together to enjoy a night of cultural music, dancing and singing. Attendees were able to donate to the Center for Human Rights in Iran.
UC Santa Barbara English professor emerita Shirley Geok-lin Lim shared her new poems from “In Praise of Limes,” her 11th poetry collection, at Writers & Wordsmiths of Santa Barbara II, an open mic poem reading event at the UCSB Library. Following Lim, UCSB English professors Stephanie Batiste and Swati Rana as well as Chryss Yost and George Yatchisin of the Gevirtz School of Education, and several members from the Santa Barbara community shared their poems.
Sasha Razor, a Belarus native and international activist, presented an afternoon colloquium at UCSB last week discussing the rise of feminist craftivism and her latest exhibition, “The Code Of Presence: Belarusian Protest Embroideries and Textile Patterns.”
Author Luis J Rodriguez and Memoirist Kenneth Hartman spoke at the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center’s second installment in their TMI Talk series at UCSB to discuss their new book Make a Poem Cry: Creative writing from California’s Lancaster Prison. Both men having gone through the first hand experiences of incarceration, Hartman and Rodriguez spoke about their journey, advocacy, and how writing is a gift of healing and self-exploration for incarcerated individuals.
Eighteen students spent over 40 hours on two paintings during a summer course with Yumiko Glover, a visiting lecturer in UC Santa Barbara’s Art Department. But the long hours motivated them, knowing that their work would be on display in the Glass Box Gallery in the Fall. The exhibit ran for five days last week.
Experts from universities across the globe converged at UC Santa Barbara last weekend for a three-day conference—Satyajit Ray and the Sense of Wonder—to celebrate the centenary of the birth of acclaimed Indian author, graphic artist, and filmmaker Satyajit Ray. Speakers sang Ray’s praises, sharing discoveries they’ve made about his life and how he inspired them.
UC Santa Barbara’s AlloSphere hosted the premiere of “Musics Of The Spheres,” an experimental work by eclectic composer Robert Morris. His piece uses the full surround-sound capabilities of the AlloSphere to feature music from all across the globe.
UC Santa Barbara religious studies professor Juan Campo and Arabic language lecturer Magda Campo spoke last week on Jewish kosher food and Islamic halal food, and they prepared a chicken and couscous meal for a CalFresh enrollment party co-hosted by UCSB Health & Wellness, Thrive, and the Educational Opportunity Program. The event publicized the CalFresh program and UCSB’s Halal and Kosher Grocery Program for food-insecure students who observe these religions’ dietary laws.
UC Santa Barbara’s Religious Studies librarian David Gartwell explores Western esoteric traditions and their movement into publishing and modern spiritual practices in his new exhibit “Lifting the Veil.” The exhibit, created using publications from UCSB’s American Religious Collection, in now open to the public at the UCSB Library.
As part of UC Santa Barbara's Migration Initiative, the Mellon Sawyer Seminar hosted Unsettling California, a student-curated art exhibition at the Glass Box Gallery. The exhibition, which ran through September, featured 11 artists and built dialogues on race and migration in California. The project continues to display art virtually.
Wolf D. Kittler, a professor in UCSB’s department of Germanic and Slavic Studies, delivered the inaugural lecture for Interdisciplinary Humanities Center’s new series: Too Much Information, which explores the implications of our access to abundant information.
UCSB’s department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies organized a two-day internationally-attended symposium on Zoom titled “Translatability/Transmediality: Chinese Poetry In/And the World.” Hangping Xu of the East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies department and Yunte Huang of the English department organized the symposium to promote a special edition of a scholarly journal they wrote along with 10 scholars from around the world.
After two years of pandemic-related prohibitions the UC Santa Barbara Theater and Dance Program ‘s a Naked Shakes company returned indoors this fall with its production of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Performances were packed for the in-person audience experience. Director Irwin Appel discusses the show and the theater experience of recent years.
By Denise Shapiro
Exciting news this June is coming from UC Santa Barbara’s Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.
For starters, 13 Graduate Teaching Fellows are wrapping up this year’s courses in Foundations in the Humanities prison correspondence program. In this IHC initiative, incarcerated individuals engage in a correspondence in literary studies with graduate student mentors. It has over 150 participants in California prisons. The program gives participants the opportunity to continue their education and stimulate their intellectual capabilities, while giving the graduate students the chance to reflect on their education privileges.
The IHC will also be busy this summer hosting student veterans from across the UC system in the 2022 UC Student Veterans Summer Writing Workshop. This workshop is a bonding experience for veterans as they share their stories and experiences, allowing them to relate to one another and move forward in their civilian lives. Narrative writing can act as a form of therapy and this program acts as a writing retreat where like-minded people can reflect, relate, and restore their souls.
Finally, a big congratulations goes out to the winners of the 2022-23 IHC Dissertation Fellowship competition. The following Fellows will be awarded $7,000 to support their research in the upcoming school year:
Christopher Erdman, Classics: “Voting Culture and Political Theater in Late Republican Lawmaking.”
Addison Jensen, History: “Blowin’ in the Wind: Media, Counterculture, and the American Military in Vietnam.”
Nicky Rehnberg, History: “White Roots, Redwoods: Racializing German and U.S. Conservation, 1920-1945.”
Isabella Restrepo, Feminist Studies: “Transcarceral Care: Racialized Girlhood, Behavioral Diagnosis, and California’s Foster Care System.”
Reem Taha, Comparative Literature: “‘Of Here and Everywhere’: (Re)Mapping Mediterranean Identities at the Ibero-African Frontier.”
Denise Shapiro is UC Santa Barbara student graduating this spring with a double major in Communication and Film and Media Studies. She has has spent the past two years as a Web and Social Media Intern, with an emphasis on video journalism, for the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.
