Cornell University English professor Helena María Viramontes urged students and faculty in UC Santa Barbara’s English department to consider launching a Creative Writing program during her talk called, “Residing, Reciting, Reading: One Writer’s Perspective on the value of Creative Writing.” Currently, the College of Creative Studies is where UCSB students can pursue a Writing and Literature major, while the Writing Program offers courses in creative nonfiction. But Viramontes endorsed the life-changing value creative writing has to offer to a larger population of students.
The Los Angeles landscape does not adapt to the people living there, says Elizabeth Timme, co-founder of urban design non-profit LA-Más. “We have this environment that is friendly to the rules and unfriendly to people.” In her talk at UC Santa Barbara’s Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, Timme discussed efforts to make L.A. more habitable, vibrant, and pedestrian-friendly.
Japanese artist Aisuke Kondo recently spoke about his Diaspora Memoria exhibition from his Matter and Memory series, which explores the idea of reconstructing memories of self and history.
“In doing research about your own history, you come to see how the larger societal history has developed,” Kondo said Thursday in a talk hosted by UC Santa Barbara’s Theater and Dance department. Kondo’s work explores the history of his great-grandfather who immigrated to the United States and was then forced to stay at the Topaz internment camp in Millard County, Utah.
Historian Jane Sherron De Hart’s new book “Ruth Bader Ginsburg: A Life” marks the first full biography written about the second female U.S. Supreme Court Justice. But the biography wasn’t an easy accomplishment. In a talk hosted by the UCSB History Associates last weekend, De Hart spoke about the challenges she faced while writing the biography.
Scholars, activists, and healers discussed the lack of opportunity given to formerly incarcerated students in the education system a colloquium called: The “Outlaw(ED) Intellectuals: Critiquing Structures of Power from Within.” The day-long event in UC Santa Barbara’s McCune Conference room was sponsored by the College of Letters and Science, the UCSB Multicultural Center, the Center for Black Studies Research, and several other organizations across campus.
“Collecting is very expensive but it’s money well spent,” said UC Santa Barbara alum Tomás Sanchez at the walkthrough of his collection, ¡Chicanismo! Sanchez’s collection will be on display until December 8 at UCSB’s Art, Design and Architecture Museum in honor of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Chicano/a Studies Department.
In a two-day International Conference on Chinese Religio-Environmental Ethics and Practice, an array of speakers touched on environmental issues such as the extinction of animals and how traditional Chinese religious cultures view them. Panelists spoke about religious rituals like making trees and forests sacred, the care of animals, preserving sacred sites and native places, and the ethics of these religious practices.
The Carsey-Wolf Center launched Beatles Revolutions, a series showcasing The Beatles’ impact on culture and politics in the US. The series kicked off at Pollock Theater with a screening of A Hard Day’s Night, followed by a conversation with journalist and author Ivor Davis. The next event takes place this Thursday, January 24th from 7:00-9:15 p.m. at Pollock Theater with Let It Be, a documentary directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, followed by a discussion with musician and producer Alan Parsons.
“We hope that those who attend the series will learn more about The Beatles both in the 1960s and beyond,” said Director of the Carsey-Wolf Center Patrice Petro.
The United Nations has warned that there will catastrophic consequences if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced by 2030. Kinari Webb, founder the nonprofit Health in Harmony emphasized the importance of taking action before it becomes to late, at a talk sponsored by the Walter Capps Center last week. “We have 11 years to figure this out on our planet. What we do now matters forever,” Webb said.
At the Center for Information Technology & Society on Monday, University of Duisburg-Essen professor Nicole Krämer addressed the psychology of online opinion formation and its dangers. Krämer discussed fake news, filter bubbles, micro-targeting, and other side effects of online communication.
Linguistics professor Marianne Mithun was recently elected as the 95th President of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA), the latest in a string of high profile UC Santa Barbara Linguistics achievements on the national level. As president, she will lead the meetings of the society, serve as the chair of the Executive Committee and appoint honorary members and non-elective committees. Meanwhile, linguistics professor Anne Charity Hudley received the LSA’s Linguistics, Language and Public award.
Decades before Colin Kaepernick played for the National Football League, world champion boxer Muhammad Ali publicly opposed the Vietnam War and was stripped of his heavyweight title and banned from boxing for years. Recently, Kaepernick has followed in his footsteps and knelt in silence during the national anthem to protest racial injustice, hoping to garner support and promote change as Ali did in 1971.
To Brown University professor Bonnie Honig, Kaepernick and Ali’s actions that demonstrated their refusal to comply to society’s expectations reflects a “long tradition of American citizenship.”
“The societal changes of the Late Roman Republic’s aristocratic class has implications for how historians compare the past to our current political landscape,” scholar Noah Segal said in a recent talk to faculty and students of the Classics department. A decline in military background among those who serve in office is one trend in ancient Rome that echoes today.
Segal, who specializes in populism in democratic societies, will represent UC Santa Barbara at an international Classics convention in early January.
President Trump’s policies have stirred a lot of criticism from both the public and government officials. Many disagreed with his so-called “travel-ban” policy, his “zero tolerance” immigration policy and his decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accords. Visiting Yale legal scholar and former advisor to the Dept. of State Harold Koh offered some legal grounds for optimism, explaining why these policies won’t last for long.
Julian Saporiti and Erin Aoyama, two PhD students from Brown University, are on a mission to share and perform their musical multimedia project “No-No Boy.” The piece consists of a slideshow and performance of folk songs to tell about Asian-American experiences during WWII and to confront prevailing narratives of that era that are found in textbooks. Saporiti and Aoyama presented their project to a UC Santa Barbara audience.
Prints! The Joan and Stuart Levin Collection showcases contemporary works on paper and printmaking from the 1960s, from artists like Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns who were revolutionary in this form of artistic expression. Sarah Banes, a UCSB PhD student in the History of Art & Architecture, discusses her experience with curating this exhibition in an interview with Writing student Vanessa Tang .
UC Santa Barbara launched a Journalism Certificate Program this fall, the first time the university has offered a credential in that field. The new program grants certification through a combination of courses from the Writing Program and Professional & Continuing Education, formerly known of as UCSB Extension. The program is an opportunity for undergraduate students to gain hands-on journalism experience. Currently, Berkeley is the only UC campus with a journalism school, and it is primarily a graduate school.
The application for the International Reporting course, which includes a trip to Berlin, is due December 5, 2018.
“Museums need to cater to all people,” says Selections from the Permanent Collection at UCSB’s Art Design & Architecture Museum (AD&A) collections manager Susan Lucke.
Approaching its Dec. 2 close, this show makes for a perfect opportunity to learn about art history and how the value of art differs based on the context in which it is shown. It displays art from all reaches of the fine arts collection normally held underground in the archives at UC Santa Barbara. Of the roughly 900 items usually held in storage, the exhibition shows us pieces ranging from Belgian Congo headdresses to modern abstract paintings by UC Santa Barbara alum Richard Serra. This juxtaposition of art across different places and time periods allows visitors to see a Pre-Colombian era sculpture and a still-life painting by Northern Europe’s Cornelis Mahu in the same room.
“It is very necessary to talk about race, and black girls are often left out of the conversation,” said Amoni Jones, who recently facilitated the MultiCultural Center’s first Race and Literature event at UC Santa Barbara. The monthly event explores race using various literary works.
Jones is a Feminist Studies doctoral student, who has worked with underprivileged African-American girls in her hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. She used the novel Shapeshifters, by Aimee Cox, to talk about the struggles young black women face growing up, and to show that society often stereotypes girls of color and forces them into roles they don’t want to be in.
Last weekend, UC Santa Barbara’s Ethics Bowl team secured a first-place victory at the regional championship in Salt Lake City. The Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl engages students in competitive debate of relevant ethical issues, from science to business to media. The UCSB team, composed mainly of undergraduate Philosophy students, will travel to Baltimore in March to compete nationally.
