Monsters play a role in the representation of some of the most challenging problems facing our world: matters of race and religion, social justice, and environmental threats. The Center for Monster Studies at UC Santa Cruz aims to explore the role of monsters in culture and humanities. Each year, the Center for Monster Studies presents […]

In the 1930s and 40s, amateur explorers and hardened plant hunters combed the Amazon in a race to unlock the secrets of curare, an Indigenous poison they hoped could cure many diseases. The poison they brought north had a major impact on the practice of medicine as it became routinely used in shock therapy to […]

Bookshop Santa Cruz and The Humanities Institute welcome Min Jin Lee, the National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Pachinko, who returns with American Hagwon—a breathtaking contemporary epic, by turns sweeping and intimate, that reckons with ambition and moderation, lust and loyalty, personal dreams and familial duty. "With her gift for […]

The screening is now sold out, but you can still donate to the fundraiser here. Every contribution helps us get more banned books onto our public school library shelves. Bookshop Santa Cruz and The Humanities Institute present a special Banned Books Week screening of The Librarians documentary in support of Santa Cruz City Schools. Following […]

Synthetic prayer flags have been enthusiastically embraced throughout Tibet, the Himalayas, and Buddhist communities around the world in the last three decades. Originally intended to carry prayers and blessings on the wind and express the responsibility Tibetan and Himalayan communities have toward the land, water, and air, the mass production of synthetic prayer flags have […]

Join us in celebrating Filipino American History Month with a powerful day of culture, art, food, and community—honoring the legacy of the Manong Generation and the stories that shaped the Pajaro Valley. This event is presented by the Tobera Project and co-sponsored by The Humanities Institute and Watsonville is in the Heart. The event will […]

Bookshop Santa Cruz and The Humanities Institute welcome Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Miriam Pawel for a reading and signing of her new book California Dreams: The Making and Remaking of the University of California—an epic story of one of the world's elite public universities, its sweeping social impact, and hopeful lessons about endurance in troubled times. […]