In honor of Black History Month, human rights activist Ericka Huggins spoke in the opening event of the Black Student Union’s annual two-day series, Heart and Soul Case. In her talk, “An Evening with Ericka Huggins: Identity, Activism, and Change,” she urged students to step out of the boxes society places them in.
Performing songs from the Jazz Age like “Ladybird,” by Tadd Dameron, and “My Shining Hour,” by John Coltrane, The Matt Perko Quintet captivated a UC Santa Barbara audience during a recent performance for the weekly World Music Series, put on by the UCSB Department of Music and the MultiCultural Center. Wednesdays, outside at the Bowl, or inside when it rains.
Students and faculty filled nearly all of UC Santa Barbara’s Studio Theater for award-winning playwright and actor Petrona de la Cruz Cruz’s recent performance of her play, Bittersweet Dreams/Dulces y amargos sueños . The play deals with heavy topics such as sexual assault and both de la Cruz Cruz and director Doris Difarnecio discussed that in a question and answer session after the performance. “Theater has brought me so many places and because of this, I know that my path has many less thorns and stones, and many more flowers,” said de la Cruz Cruz.
As part of the debut of the library exhibition “In Her Own Image,” a panel discussion about women in comics was held to highlight the feminist implications of the UCSB Reads 2019 selection "The Best We Can Do," by Thi Bui. Panelists also described how women have built their own underground movements through the use of comics.
“A lot of people gravitate towards different musical genres,” Mallory Alvarez said. “Punk music gave me a feeling of freedom where I can express myself freely.”
Alvarez identifies as transfemme Chicanx. They came out as queer their freshman year at UC Santa Barbara and began their trans journey in their sophomore year. Punk music became an innovative way for Alvarez to channel their anger towards a system that they believe was not built for them. So, when they learned of an art exhibit titled “Vexed: The East L.A. Chicano Punk Scene” displaying in the Multicultural Center, they enthusiastically showed interest in attending.
Word Magazine explores life in Isla Vista, the neighborhood next to campus. As current art director of the magazine, Alaska Yokota is one of a team of students who writes for the magazine and designs its layout. In a recent interview, Yokota discussed her experience with Word Magazine and her views on the future of digital humanities.
Drum Corps International, or DCI, is essentially the major league equivalent of marching band. Thousands of marching arts enthusiasts under the age of 21 join one of the 44 active drum corps and go on a nationwide tour, performing at high schools, colleges, and even NFL stadiums for thousands of fans across the country.
Michael Hall, one of those many drum corps members, recalls the elation that he felt when his team won the title of “World Champion” at the 2018 Drum Corps International World Championships and how he has sought to recapture the joy that he found through music in the music and film departments at UCSB.
Judy Shepard visited UCSB to discuss the significance of her son’s murder and how it inspired the play “The Laramie Project,” which UCSB is now staging, directed by Eric Jorgensen, a PhD candidate in Theater and Dance. In 1998 when Matthew Shepard was just 21 years old, he was beaten, tortured and left to die in Laramie, Wyoming—a violent act fueled by anti-gay hatred. The wound of Matthew Shepard’s death has now been open for 20 years and produced a legacy that continues today.
Space architect and researcher Barbara Imhof spoke at UCSB about her current and past projects exploring human habitation of space. Her talk “The Stars Look Very Different Today (David Bowie)” was part of the Seminar series hosted by Media Arts & Technology.
Dance and Psychology major Yuna Choi has been planning the Mini Beach Ball hosted by UC Santa Barbara’s cotillion club. The Mini Beach Ball, a collegiate dance competition, will be held later in May. In a recent interview, Choi talked about her experience planning the upcoming dance competition and what she hopes to accomplish by coordinating this year’s Mini Beach Ball.
Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and human rights advocate Jose Antonio Vargas visited UC Santa Barbara to speak about the challenges undocumented immigrants faced. He urged undocumented immigrants to stand up for legal recognition of their status in the United States. “When our presence is broadly criminalized, our very existence is an act of resistance,” said Vargas in a recent talk at Campbell Hall.
In an interview, UCSB writing professor Ilene Miele discusses Starting Lines, a yearly compilation of student work used to teach future writing students. Miele describes the motivation behind the launch of the publication and its impact on the lives of hundreds of students and alumni alike.
“Although I enjoyed experiencing the diverse culture and people on campus, a sense of homesickness would always strike me when I talked to my parents on the phone. I felt lost and disconnected from my own culture,” says Au Yu Hsiao of what led him to try to rediscover his home country, Taiwan, in a literature course in the East Asian Cultural Studies department.
Jennifer Holt, a Film and Media Studies professor at UC Santa Barbara, researches media policy and the digital infrastructure that underlies modern communication. In this interview, she provides crucial insight on how to be a properly informed citizen without losing sight of our basic rights when it comes to digital usage.
Sociology major Tomas Palpallatoc shares his passion for poetry and his success at the UCSB Poetry in Performance Poetry Slam. In April, Palpallatoc will advance to the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational in Houston, Texas with the UCSB slam team.
At the Active Shooter Preparedness Training hosted earlier this month by the Walter H. Capps Center, emergency physician Dr. Scott Sherr recounted the hurdles his team faced during the Las Vegas Music Festival shooting. Drawing from his experience, Sherr offered a major piece of advice for the general public to better prepare for future mass shootings.
A curtain of floating ginkgo-tree leaves, which once sprinkled Sarah Dahl’s front yard, fluttered overhead as visitors stopped by UC Santa Barbara’s Glass Box Gallery to admire the hovering city maps of places Dahl has called home. Dahl, a senior Physical Geography and Art double major, displayed her installation, titled “Please Forward, No Longer at This Address,” in the Art department’s student-run gallery exhibit “Body of Proof.” The installation was created as an ode to all of the places where Dahl has lived, and who she has become as the memories have begun to fade.
In a recent interview, Dahl spoke about her work, where she plans to take it, and what receiving an award as a Honors in Art student meant to her.
The 22nd U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith came to visit UC Santa Barbara to share her poems and writing process. Before her talk in UCSB’s Campbell Hall, she spoke to poets and aspiring student poets at the Old Little Theatre in The College of Creative Studies, where Writing, English and Literature students asked questions about her inspiring poetry journey.
UC Santa Barbara’s Asian Resource Center (ARC) hosted a celebration for Lunar New Years last week with different Asian Pacific Islander clubs organizing activities and performances that showed off traditional aspects of different Asian cultures. “Lunar New Year is not only about family reunion and local communities. It is also about cultural diversity when celebrated globally such as today in this building,” said East Asian Studies professor Xiaorong Li.
How many college students have been lucky enough to be within two feet of actor Hugh Jackman at a black-tie gala to cover the event on social media?
Taylon Faltas interns at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF) headquarters and had the incredible opportunity to attend the 2019 festival as a member of the press. The festival’s mission includes film education to the community, ranging from bringing local elementary school students to free movie screenings to the comprehensive internship experience offered to college students like Taylon.
