On May 4, 2022, we hosted a discussion about Yaa Gyasi’s Transcendent Kingdom with campus faculty and the Deep Read community at the 2022 Deep Read Faculty Salon. UC Santa Cruz Chancellor Cynthia Larive—an accomplished bioanalytical chemist—joined Professors Vilashini Coopan (Literature and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies) and Gina Athena Ulysse (Feminist Studies) for an evening of discussion and depth.
Watch the video of the event here.
Salon Faculty Lineup
Chancellor Cynthia Larive not only leads our campus, but also is an accomplished bioanalytical chemist and first-generation college graduate. Her academic experience closely tracks to the professional story arc of the novel’s narrator-protagonist.
Vilashini Cooppan is Professor of Literature and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at UC Santa Cruz. She’ll bring her scholarly approach to comparative and world literature, postcolonial studies, memory studies, affect theory, and genre theory to our reading and understanding of Transcendent Kingdom.
Gina Athena Ulysse is an artist-scholar and Professor of Feminist Studies at UC Santa Cruz. She will focus on how the novel negotiates the narrator’s cultural divide as a young Ghanian-born immigrant to the US, discussing howshe is seeking to self-actualize from a Black feminist standpoint.
About The Deep Read
This salon is part of The Humanities Institute’s Deep Read Program that invites curious minds to think deeply about literature, art, and the most pressing issues of our day. We read books from a wide range of genres, exploring their implications on our politics, inner lives, and communities.