Classics departments often struggle against the perception that they are stuck in the past. Focusing on ancient stories has nothing to do with us today, right? Visiting professor Stephen Trzaskoma argues otherwise, and his efforts are among the many ways UCSB Classics is engaging with contemporary life.
American journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winner Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste: The Origins of our Discontents has received global praise and became a New York Times best-seller last year. But it has been met with harsh criticism from some in academia. As part of its “Tertulia” series, the Latin American and Iberian Studies (LAIS) department hosted a live Zoom event in which UC Santa Barbara faculty had the opportunity to give their own critique of Wilkerson’s work.
History professor Hillary N. Green, of the University of Alabama, spoke at a UC-Santa Barbara History department event, to describe how she is bringing her university’s long-hidden history of slavery back into the school’s attention with her “Hallowed Grounds” campus tour.
UC Santa Barbara English professor Melody Jue challenges terrestrial-based ways of knowing and reverses our perception of the world by presenting the ocean as a media environment. Jue draws on her experience as a scuba diver to challenge people to consider the ocean itself as a media framework in her book, “Wild Blue Media: Thinking Through Seawater,” which was published in February of last year.
The Sent-Down Youth Movement was a defining period in China’s Cultural Revolution. From 1968 to 1980, nearly 17 million urban students were forcibly relocated to rural Chinese villages in an organized effort to bridge the gap between China’s rural and urban populations. UC Santa Barbara Asian American Studies professor Xiaojian Zhao presented a talk on this movement called Crime and Punishment: Revisiting the Sent-Down Youth Movement in Mao’s China, to a UCSB virtual audience.
UCSB’s Carsey-Wolf Center hosted a virtual roundtable discussion titled Television in the Age of Pandemic about the changing landscape of entertainment in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and the political tensions in 2020. The panel included media experts from UC Irvine, CUNY Staten Island, Cornell, and University of Alabama.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an NYU professor of History and Italian Studies talked about her new book Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present at a webinar hosted by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center last week. Ben-Ghiat discussed the content of her book, that analyzes who authoritarian leaders from Mussolini to Donald Trump gain power and maintain power.
Director of the Getty Research Institute, Mary Miller virtually visited UCSB to speak about new insights she has gained by studying 8th-century Maya figurines. In her talk, she shared images of exquisite sculptures that revealed a complex and little-known side of Maya civilization that likely included slavery.
With the coronavirus pandemic still in full swing, the 2021 Reel Loud Film and Arts Festival is reimagining its existence outside of UC Santa Barbara’s Campbell Hall, its home for the past 30 years.
Vidhisha Mahesh, producer for Reel Loud, and director Jeffrey Peepgrass, are working to adapt this year’s festival to the pandemic, and carry on the festival’s legacy of fostering collaboration among the arts through video and socially-distanced activities.
Emily Hu is a third-year UC Santa Barbara student double minoring in Chinese and Religious Studies. Soon after arriving at UC Santa Barbara in 2018, Hu got a better understanding of her own family’s culture and history. She says that growing up in a predominantly Hispanic community never gave her the chance to fully cherish her Chinese heritage. After taking several UCSB courses, Hu has developed a strong connection to her Chinese identity.
Swarthmore College anthropologist Sa’ed Atshan discussed LGBTQ movements across the Middle East and North Africa region in a virtual talk sponsored by UC Santa Barbara’s Center for Middle East Studies. Atshan focused on the story of late Egyptian activist Sarah Hegazi and said hope is necessary for social change.
UCSB professor Stephanie Hom is applying her research background in Italian colonialism to probe how the experience of Blackness is translated in literature. In a recent virtual interview, Hom discussed her new course, The Art of Translation, in the Department of French and Italian, and how language and translation can be used to evaluate complex cultural issues.
Sara Shahgholian, a fourth-year UCSB dance major, has turned to social media to share her choreography, which combines modern dance and Armenian traditional dance, in order to raise awareness of and donations for the unfolding war in Armenia.
Journalist Tristan Ahtone and historian Robert Lee presented their research into stolen and underpaid indigenous lands that were granted to universities as real estate speculation to raise money. The event “Land-Grab Universiites” was co-hosted by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center (IHC) and the IHC’s American Indian and Indigenous Collective Research Focus Group.
Smith College historian Marnie Anderson joined UCSB’s East Asia Center in a follow-up to discuss her virtual talk, “Starting Over in Meiji Japan: The Lives of a Former Samurai and his Ex-Concubine.” Anderson recounts how two reform-minded individuals were offered the opportunity to create new identities with the rise of the Meiji era in Japan.
The COVID-19 pandemic has levelled a financial hit to almost every industry, but there is one that often gets ignored: sex work.
UC Santa Barbara’s Multicultural Center hosted an event co-sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center called “Sex Work in the Time of COVID.” The event featured three panelists — Sinnamon Love, Chiqui, and MF Akynos — all sex worker activists working and organizing in the United States and Europe. The conversation was led by Feminist Studies professor Mireille Miller-Young, and Black Studies professor Terrance Wooten.
UC Santa Barbara welcomed Ta-Nehisi Coates, a MacArthur Fellow and author of the National Award-winning book Between the World and Me, in an event sponsored by the Center for Black Studies Research and UCSB Arts and Lectures. Coates spoke in conversation with UCSB professor Terrance Wooten of the Department of Black Studies. Coates voiced his concern about whether recent civil rights protests will lead to meaningful progress in justice for Black Americans.
History of Art and Architecture professor Swati Chattopadhyay was joined by Arijit Sen, a professor of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, to discuss her book, Unlearning the City: Infrastructure in a New Optical Field, as part of an HAA lecture series. In her book, Chattopadhyay explores the power structures of the everyday life of Indian Streets.
Migrants are more than just statistics, said UC Santa Barbara history professor Miroslava Chávez-García as she was discussing her latest book Migrant Longing: Letter Writing Across the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands at a recent virtual event.
Chávez-García shared her parents courting letters from 1961- 1965 when the United States government’s Bracero – “or manual laborer” - program was actively contracting Mexican men to temporarily move to the U.S. as agricultural workers to financially support their families. It caused many young adults to put their dreams aside to help their family escape poverty.
Three University of California professors are lead researchers for the Wayfinding Project, a multi-year study of how writing affects the lives of recent college graduates. UC Santa Barbara Writing Program professor Karen Lunsford discusses the the project’s recent findings, as well as what is in store for the future.
