University Forum: Beyond the Middle Passage: Slave Trading within the Americas, 1619-1807
2022-02-24 17:00 - 19:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Virtual Event
During the American slave trade, more than 12 million enslaved African people endured the infamous Middle Passage across the Atlantic. For many, the forced migration didn’t end when they reached an American port. Demand for enslaved labor was so rampant in the Americas that speculators purchased many arriving people only to ship them from colony to colony for resale. This phase of the slave trade within the Americas not only added to enslaved people’s traumatic journeys, it also reveals the centrality of slavery to early American life. Black History Month, celebrated each year during February, is a chance for Americans to learn details of their nation’s history that are far too often neglected and pushed to the wayside. This month’s University Forum is a difficult, yet crucial, conversation about the spread of the slave trade within the Americas and how slavery became an American institution. Join this University Forum with Professor Greg O’Malley, moderated by Professor Vilashini Cooppan, and followed by a question and answer period led by Professor Gina Dent and Professor Cooppan.

Living Writers Series: Yuri Herrera
2022-02-24 17:20 - 18:55 | Virtual Event
Yuri Herrera’s first novel to appear in English, Signs Preceding the End of the World, received great critical acclaim in 2015 and was included in many Best-of-Year lists. Yuri is a political scientist, editor and contemporary Mexican writer who teaches at Tulane University in New Orleans. His prose was described as “stunning” and his novel as an entrance “to the golden gate of Mexican literature” by Elena Poniatowska. Born in Acopan, Mexico, Yuri resides in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Change Me: Stories of Radical Transformation – A Living Writers Series
After a long period of sheltering in place and an even longer period of restricting our daily movements, many of us are ready for change. This winter’s living writers all have stories of radical transformation to tell. TC Tolbert searches for a language to enact his transition from being Melissa to being TC; Jane Wong struggles to reconcile her American present with the transnational ghosts of her past; Yuri Herrera’s heroine embarks on a journey across the Mexican American border; Karen Tei Yamashita tells tales of ever changing demographics & invisible histories; Eric Wat’s protagonist remakes himself as he navigates drug abuse, sexuality, death and family dynamics; the speaker in Sandra Lim’s book of poems transforms not her life but the way she sees her life. All six writers remind us of the power of literature to transform us. They remind us that when we open a book, often what we’re really saying is: change me.
This event is sponsored by the Puknat Literary Endowment, The Porter Hitchcock Poetry Fund, The Laurie Sain Endowment, The Humanities Institute, and Bookshop Santa Cruz.
See the full list of Living Writers Series Events on the Creative Writing Program page.

Undiscovered Shakespeare: The Life and Death of King John
2022-02-24 18:30 - 20:30 | Virtual Event
Join Santa Cruz Shakespeare, UCSC Shakespeare Workshop, and The Humanities Institute, as we launch Undiscovered Shakespeare: King John, the third installment of our annual virtual Shakespeare program. Over the course of three sessions (February 10, 17, and 24), we will immerse ourselves in another rarely performed play and reflect on it both as a point of departure for Shakespeare’s career and as a mirror for the times in which we live.
Session 3: February 24th, 2022 6:30pm-8:30pm
We begin with a dramatic reading of The Life and Death of King John, before turning to a presentation by Jesse Lander, Associate Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame, and an open discussion with Professor Lander, director Charles Pasternak, and the cast of the production.
Register for all sessions here.
The Santa Cruz Shakespeare Playbill for King John may be found here.

King John, Full Play Synopsis:
France threatens England with war, claiming that King John has usurped the throne from its rightful claimant, his nephew Arthur. Armies from both France and England seek support from the town of Angers which proposes that John’s niece marry the dauphin of France to solve the issue. The parties agree, but the wedding and proposed peace are interrupted by the arrival of an emissary of the Pope who, angry at John for his treatment of the church in France, rekindles the war. France invades England and John plots to have Arthur murdered. When Arthur falls from a wall and dies, the English lords, convinced that John is responsible, abandon his cause and join France. John tries to reconcile with the Church to forestall his defeat by the French, but the Dauphin refuses to back down. The English lords, however, learning that the French mean to kill them after the victory, change sides again. France sues for peace, but the news comes too late to John, who dies, poisoned by a monk.
Undiscovered Shakespeare is a public arts and humanities series co-produced by Santa Cruz Shakespeare, UCSC Shakespeare Workshop, and The Humanities Institute. It brings professional actors and scholars together with the public for a staged reading and discussion of works by Shakespeare that are rarely produced. King John is one of only two plays by Shakespeare written entirely in verse (along with Richard II). In it, Shakespeare explores the use of political rhetoric to cloak self-serving ambitions during the reign of the king that saw the birth of the Magna Carta.

Sean Keilen is Professor of Literature and former Provost of Porter College at UC Santa Cruz, where he directs Shakespeare Workshop, a research center of The Humanities Institute that uses Shakespeare’s writing to bring the campus and the community together in conversation about topics of shared concern. He studies Shakespeare and the history of criticism, and is the author or editor of books and essays about early British literature and the classical tradition in England. He was educated at Williams College, Cambridge, and Stanford University.

Bettina Aptheker, Julie Olsen Edwards and Dena Taylor - "Red Diaper Babies: Growing Up During the HUAC Years of the 1950s"
2022-02-24 19:00 | Virtual Event
The 2022 season of Our Community Reads from the Friends of the Aptos Library is featuring a series of special events related to themes in Red Letter Days by Sarah-Jane Stratford. All events aim to create a shared experience that will increase appreciation for our community libraries and for our local bookstores; foster pride in the varied experiences that our area offers; and the enrichment –– culturally, intellectually, and emotionally –– that comes from the joy of reading!
Growing up closer to home than the London scenes depicted in “Red Letter Days,” three “red diaper babies” discuss how their lives were impacted by the McCarthy era and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). They will share some of the lessons learned that they have carried into the present.
Bettina Aptheker: Distinguished Professor Emerita, Feminist Studies Department, UCSC. Intimate Politics: How I Grew Up Red, Fought for Free Speech and Became a Feminist Rebel (2006) and The Morning Breaks: The Trial of Angela Davis (2nd edition, 1999). My book to be published in 2023 is called Communists in Closets; Queering the History, 1930-1990s.
Julie Olsen Edwards: Cabrillo College Early Childhood faculty (retired), writer, Anti Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves (NAEYC), consultant, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC).
Dena Taylor: Cabrillo College Program Manager (retired), author, poet. Dena’s most recent books are Tell Me the Number Before Infinity: the story of a girl with a quirky mind, an eccentric family, and oh yes, a disability (co-authored with Becky Taylor) and Exclamation Points: collected poems.

This event is hosted by the Friends of the Aptos Library as part of their 2022 season of “Our Community Reads.”

Meena Kandasamy - Caste Fanaticism and Misogyny: The Hate Politics of Internet Hindutva
2022-02-25 10:00 - 12:00 | Virtual Event
Meena Kandasamy (b. 1984) is an anti-caste activist, poet, novelist and translator. Her writing aims to deconstruct trauma and violence, while spotlighting the militant resistance against caste, gender, and ethnic oppressions. She explores this in her poetry and prose, most notably in her books of poems such as Touch (2006) and Ms. Militancy (2010), as well as her three novels, The Gypsy Goddess (2014), When I Hit You (2017), and Exquisite Cadavers (2019). Her latest work is a collection of essays, The Orders Were to Rape You: Tamil Tigresses in the Eelam Struggle (Navayana, 2021). Activism is at the heart of her literary work; she has translated several political texts from Tamil to English including the works of Dravidian ideologue Periyar and Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi leader Dr.Thol.Thirumavalavan, and previously held an editorial role at The Dalit, an alternative magazine documenting caste-related brutality and the anti-caste resistance in India. Her novels have been shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the International Dylan Thomas Prize, the Jhalak Prize and the Hindu Lit Prize. She holds a PhD in sociolinguistics, and was Gallatin Global Faculty in Residence at New York University (NYU) in Fall 2018 where she co-taught a course on feminist writers from the neo-colonial world. Her op-eds and essays have appeared in The White Review, Guernica, The Guardian and The New York Times.

Presented by the Center for South Asian Studies and co-sponsored by Stanford University.

The Dickens Project and Santa Cruz Pickwick Club: Bleak House
2022-02-27 14:00 - 16:00 | Virtual and In Person
The Pickwick Book Club is a community of local bookworms, students, and teachers who meet monthly to discuss a nineteenth-century novel. Spontaneous human combustion! Evil lawyers! Detectives! Family intrigue! These all come together in Charles Dickens’s masterwork, Bleak House.

The Dickens Project is a multi-campus research consortium headquartered at UC Santa Cruz and consisting of over 40 colleges and universities from across the United States and overseas. The chief goal of the Dickens Project is to promote research on the life, work, and times of Charles Dickens and to bring the results of this research before both a scholarly audience and the general public. The Project is also an important center for research on nineteenth-century literary and cultural studies more generally.

Craig Haney - Media and Criminal Justice in the U.S.
2022-03-01 19:00 - 20:45 | Virtual Event
Craig Haney is a social psychologist and criminologist whose work leverages interdisciplinary approaches to policy theory and practice in the pursuit of justice and equity within institutions of policing and corrections. Drawing on social histories of crime and punishment, as well as the environments of public media and representation in which opinions and beliefs and crime and justice are formed, Haney and his students examine the personal and social histories, the psychological effects of incarceration, and the complex mechanisms in which criminal justice occurs.

Media and Society is a series of lectures and public conversations on the role of media, journalism, popular culture narrative, and media representation, in the deployment of power in contemporary society.
Each series lasts a full academic year, but the fall quarter of the series is also a component of Kresge 1: Power and Representation, the core course at Kresge College. The series as a whole uniquely serves the UC Santa Cruz community in a vital function of the liberal arts: to cultivate dialogue in the context of public dialogue, and to guard our freedoms in expressing and debating that knowledge.
Kresge College, the University Library, and The Humanities Institute work together each year with an interdisciplinary group of faculty, staff, and students, to build a series of conversations that help fulfill a charge of media literacy and media engagement at UC Santa Cruz. In this year’s series — celebrating Kresge’s 50th year — we focus on creative media, the visual and aural spectacle of race and racism, and dialogues on abolition and transformative justice.
Join the zoom link here.

Mark Nash with Vladimir Seput - Documenta 11 revisited: Platform 6
2022-03-02 12:00 - 13:30 | Virtual and In Person
Following the untimely death in 2019 of curator Okwui Enwezor, Mark Nash was charged with developing a platform for exploring the work of Enwezor’s Documenta11 (2002) for which Mark was a co-curator. This talk will present several related projects including the Platform 6 website. Vladimir Seput, who is visiting scholar at UCSC, is collaborating on the Platform 6 project and will also contribute to the presentation.

Mark Nash is a distinguished independent curator, film historian and filmmaker with a specialization in contemporary fine art moving image practices, avant-garde and world cinema. He is currently a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he founded the Isaac Julien Lab with his partner and long-time collaborator, Isaac Julien. Nash has taught at Birkbeck College, University of London; the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program; New York University; Harvard University; Nanyang Technological University of Singapore’s Centre for Contemporary Art; and the Royal College of Art in London. As a curator, Nash has collaborated with Isaac Julien on numerous film and art projects. He also collaborated regularly with the late Okwui Enwezor, including on Documenta11, on The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945–1994, and most recently on The Arena project at the Venice Biennial 2015 which featured an epic live reading of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital. In addition to his curatorial work, Nash edited and contributed a critical introduction to Red Africa: Affective Communities in the Cold War.
The Center for Cultural Studies hosts a weekly Wednesday colloquium featuring work by faculty and visitors. We gather at 12:00 PM, with presentations beginning at 12:15 PM.
For Winter 2022, the colloquium will take a hybrid format, in which some events are fully remote and others have the option of in-person attendance. Attendees have the option to attend in person in Humanities 210 or to watch the presentation on zoom. Those who attend in person must adhere to the campus mask mandate for all indoor activities and must complete UCSC’s symptom-check form before coming to campus. In person attendees are asked to please arrive at 12pm so that the event coordinators can verify the symptom check has been completed. To attend remotely via zoom, please RSVP in advance, and you will receive a zoom link on the morning of the colloquium. In most cases, speakers will appear remotely so that they will not have to present wearing a mask. To RSVP for the full Winter colloquium series, please use this form. If you have any questions about the colloquium, please contact Piper Milton (cult@ucsc.edu).
Staff assistance is provided by The Humanities Institute.

Solidarities for Justice - Necessary Trouble: Thinking with the Legacy of John R. Lewis
2022-03-02 16:00 - 17:00 | Virtual Event
“We are one people, one family, the human family, and what affects one of us affects us all.” ― John Lewis
Ready for some Necessary Trouble? In anticipation and in honor of the dedication of John R. Lewis College at the University of California, Santa Cruz, the Division of Social Sciences, Colleges Nine and Ten, the Institute for Social Transformation, and the Center for Racial Justice are organizing five events centered on topics exemplified by the life of Representative John Lewis.
Featured Speakers:
John Brown Childs
Steve McKay
Christine Hong
Sylvanna M. Falcón
Daniel “Nane” Alejandrez
Chisato Hughes
At UC Santa Cruz, we believe that the real change is us. This series will highlight the efforts of faculty, students, staff, community leaders, and alumni in their commitments to social and racial justice, civic engagement and democracy. It is an opportunity for us all to reflect on how we can help carry John R. Lewis’ legacy forward in the future.

Guineanismos y el español de Guinea Ecuatorial
2022-03-03 09:30 - 11:30 | Humanities 1, Room 210, 1156 high st, Santa cruz, CA, 95060, United States
The Department of Languages and Applied Linguistics presents Práxedes Rabat Makambo, Secretary of Academic Ecuatoguineana de la Lengua Española, and Daniel Owono Sima, Dean of the School of Linguistics and Information Sciences at the National University of Equatorial Guinea, speaking on “Guineanismos y el español de Guinea Ecuatorial.”
Ecuatorial Guinea is the only country in Africa where Spanish is the official language since 1982. However, this variety remains understudied and overlooked by L2 Spanish-language textbooks. This presentation seeks to highlight the unique features of of Equatorial Guinean Spanish, and to bring attention to the country’s sociocultural history and sociolinguistic reality.

PhD+ Workshop – THI Public Fellowship Information Session
2022-03-03 15:00 - 16:00 | Virtual Event
Curious about becoming a THI Public Fellow? Not sure how to find the right partner organization? If you’re thinking about applying your expertise in the public sphere or exploring career opportunities beyond academia, then you may be interested in THI’s Public Fellowship program.
Public fellowships provide opportunities for doctoral students in the Humanities to contribute to research, programming, communications, and fundraising at non-profit organizations, cultural institutions, or companies and expand their skills in a non-academic setting while engaged in graduate study.
Please join us for an information session about the 2022-2023 THI Public Fellows program on March 3, 2022, and learn about summer and year-long opportunities.
All THI Public Fellow applicants are required to attend an Info Session or meet with THI Staff by March 25, 2022. Final applications are due on April 14, 2022
About the PhD+ Workshop Series
Join us for the sixth year of PhD+ Workshops, hosted by The Humanities Institute. We meet monthly to discuss possible career paths for PhDs, internship possibilities, grants/fellowships, work/life balance, elements of style, online identity issues, and much, much more.
RSVP here:
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LASER Talks with Paula Arai, Kyle Robertson, and Ruth Murray-Clay
2022-03-03 17:00 - 18:30 | Virtual Event
Join us for an online LASER Talk ​featuring Buddhist scholar Paula Arai, astrophysicist Ruth Murray-Clay, and public philosophy scholar Kyle Robertson. The wide-ranging presentations will explore subjects including the science of Buddhist painting, the formation and evolution of planetary systems and the search for life, and the interconnections between philosophy and social justice.

Paula Arai received her Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from Harvard University, specializing in Japanese Sōtō Zen. She is author of Women Living Zen: Japanese Buddhist Nuns (Oxford University Press), and Bringing Zen Home: The Healing Heart of Japanese Buddhist Women’s Rituals (University of Hawai’i Press), and Painting Enlightenment: Healing Visions of the Heart Sutra––The Buddhist Art of Iwasaki Tsuneo (Shambhala Publications). Her research has received a range of support, including from Fulbright and the American Council of Learned Societies. She trained at Aichi Senmon Nisōdō under the tutelage of Aoyama Shundō Rōshi. Arai is currently a professor of Buddhist Studies at Louisiana State University, holding the Urmila Gopal Singhal Professorship in Religions of India.
Ruth Murray-Clay is a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz who studies the formation of planetary systems, including our solar system. Her theoretical work investigates the birth of planets in gas disks orbiting young stars, dynamical evolution of planetary orbits, and the evolution of atmospheres due to escape over cosmic time. Her goal is to determine the processes that shape the diversity of planetary systems we see today and to place our solar system in cosmic context.
Kyle Robertson is a lecturer in the UC Santa Cruz philosophy and legal studies departments. In 2015 he co-founded the Center for Public Philosophy at UC Santa Cruz. An attorney, he has a passion for all things public philosophy. He is involved with high school Ethics Bowl programs, teaching as part of Mount Tamalpais College in San Quentin State Prison, and philosophy for children. He regularly speaks on public philosophy and publishes on the challenges of doing public philosophy.
Leonardo Art & Science Evening Rendezvous (LASER) is an international program bringing together artists, scientists, and scholars for presentations and conversations. This event is sponsored by the Institute of the Arts and Sciences in collaboration with the Center for Innovations in Teaching and Learning and The Humanities Institute.

Living Writers Series: Student Reading
2022-03-03 17:20 - 18:55 | Virtual Event
Change Me: Stories of Radical Transformation – A Living Writers Series
After a long period of sheltering in place and an even longer period of restricting our daily movements, many of us are ready for change. This winter’s living writers all have stories of radical transformation to tell. TC Tolbert searches for a language to enact his transition from being Melissa to being TC; Jane Wong struggles to reconcile her American present with the transnational ghosts of her past; Yuri Herrera’s heroine embarks on a journey across the Mexican American border; Karen Tei Yamashita tells tales of ever changing demographics & invisible histories; Eric Wat’s protagonist remakes himself as he navigates drug abuse, sexuality, death and family dynamics; the speaker in Sandra Lim’s book of poems transforms not her life but the way she sees her life. All six writers remind us of the power of literature to transform us. They remind us that when we open a book, often what we’re really saying is: change me.

Sponsored by the Puknat Literary Endowment, The Porter Hitchcock Poetry Fund, The Laurie Sain Endowment, The Humanities Institute, and Bookshop Santa Cruz.
See the full list of Living Writers Series events on the Creative Writing Program page.

Aslı Bâli - "From Revolution to Devolution? Dilemmas of Decentralization in the Middle East"
2022-03-04 11:30 - 13:00 | Virtual Event
This seminar engages in a qualitative comparison of four experiences with decentralization in the Middle East to explore the ways in which decentralized governance arrangements might address governance crises, identity-based conflict and self-determination demands in the Middle East. I argue that the failure to engage with these and other experiences in the MENA region in the growing literature on decentralization in comparative politics and law produces gaps in both the institutional design strategies available in the prescriptions derived from the literature, and also in our accounts of the region that focus exclusively on the macro politics of authoritarianism without paying attention to experiments on the ground that have sought to formulate alternative governance strategies.

Aslı Bâli is Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law, where she is a core faculty member of the International and Comparative Law Program and the Critical Race Studies Programs. She previously served as the Faculty Director of the Promise Institute for Human Rights and, before that, Director of the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies. Bâli’s research focuses on two broad areas: public international law—including human rights law and the law of the international security order—and comparative constitutional law, with a focus on the Middle East. Her scholarship has appeared in the American Journal of International Law, Cornell International Law Journal, International Journal of Constitutional Law, University of Chicago Law Review, ICLA Law Review, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, Virginia Journal of International Law and Yale Journal of International Law among others; her edited volume Constitution Writing, Religion and Democracy was published by Cambridge University Press in 2017 and a second edited volume, From Revolution to Devolution: Experiments in Decentralization in the MENA Region is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press in 2022. Her current research examines questions of federalism and decentralization for the purposes of addressing identity-based conflict and self-determination demands in the Middle East. Recently, she has served as the Samuel Rubin Visiting Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, the Florence Rogatz Visiting Professor of Law at the Yale Law School, and was a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study.
This event is presented by the Center for the Middle East and North Africa in collaboration with the UCSC Legal Studies Seminar.

War in Ukraine: Background, Context, Prospects and Implications
2022-03-04 12:00 - 13:30 | Virtual Event
On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded its neighbor Ukraine, a former republic of the USSR and today an independent, democratic country. Join a panel of UC Santa Cruz faculty, PhD students, and alumni who will discuss the historical and political context for Russia’s war in and on Ukraine, tension with NATO, broader Russian efforts at territorial expansion and destabilization, and responses by Ukrainians and the global community. Topics include the geopolitical history of the region, Russian media politics, the legacy of Soviet ideals of multinationalism and “brotherhood,” shifting registers of “Europeanness,” and responses by the European Union, other formerly Soviet republics, and China. Speakers include Jonathan Beecher, Rikki Brown, Melissa L. Caldwell, Peter Kenez, Tanya Merchant, Lincoln Mitchell, Ben Read, April L. Reber, Daria Saprynika, and Roger Schoenman.
For more information, please visit: https://transform.ucsc.edu/event/war-in-ukraine/

Co-sponsored by the Institute for Social Transformation, The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz, and the Arts Research Institute.

Digital Humanities Workshop Series: Digital Mapping
2022-03-04 13:00 - 14:00 | Virtual Event
Join us for the second meeting of the Digital Humanities Workshop series 2022 — “Digital Mapping” — on March 4 from 1-2 PM. The workshop will explore an open-source geospatial analysis tool, Kepler.gl, to create maps to support research and pedagogy. In the hour-long workshop, you will get hands-on experience creating interactive maps such as line maps, arc maps, and cluster maps. No prior computer knowledge is required. Please see the flyer for more details or register for the event.
We want to hear from you! Please fill out this quick survey to let us know what digital humanities topics are of interest to you.
Thank you for your support and we look forward to seeing you at the workshops.

Xiao Li is a historian and digital humanist. She works as the digital humanist in the Humanities Computing Service in the humanities division. Before joining UC Santa Cruz, Xiao was a digital humanities specialist at Phillips Academy at Andover, preserving historical archives on Asian history in the U.S.: Chinese Students at Andover (1878-2000) and was a digital humanities intern at the Smithsonian preserving the destroyed cultural heritage sites in Syria, Mali and Bosnia. She also worked with Reuters and the Associate Press for four years on international news reporting.

Okinawa Memories Initiative, "Mobilizing the Reversion: A Geo-Political Perspective"
2022-03-04 16:30 - 18:00 | Virtual Event
The Okinawa Memories Initiative is pleased to invite you to our upcoming event, “Mobilizing the Reversion: A Geo-Political Perspective,” a roundtable discussion featuring Professor Mike Mochizuki from George Washington University and Dr. Fumi Inoue, a recent doctoral graduate from Boston College, in conversation with OMI Directors, Professors Alan Christy and Dustin Wright. This is the second event in our series on Okinawan Reversion, in which the speakers will be focusing on Reversion from a geo-political perspective, and the politics behind the Reversion Agreement between the United States and Japan.

This year’s programming is focused on the 50th Anniversary of Okinawa’s return to Japan. After 27 years of U.S. Occupation, and 66 years of being a Japanese semi-colony, Okinawa was formally returned to Japan on May 15, 1972. But this was not simply a singular moment. When we say ‘Reversion’, we envision the lived experiences of thousands of Okinawans across the country who experienced a major political, economic and social shift.
At OMI, we believe that speaking about Okinawa is to speak about the world. The political ramifications of Okinawa’s new status as a Japanese Prefecture rippled across the world’s waters. Beyond that, the everyday lives of Okinawans changed irrevocably, not only in large ways, but in small ways as well.
This event is co-sponsored by The Humanities Institute.

Erik Larson, The Splendid and the Vile
2022-03-06 16:00 - 18:00 | Cowell Ranch Hay Barn, Ranch View Rd, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
Bookshop Santa Cruz welcomes author Erik Larson for a discussion of his #1 New York Times bestseller The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz. Larson will be in conversation with UC Santa Cruz Politics Professor Daniel Wirls. This event is cosponsored by The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz and will take place at the Cowell Ranch Hay Barn. This event is ticketed and tickets includes entry to the event and a paperback copy of The Splendid and the Vile (publication date: February 15, 2022).

Erik Larson is the author of six New York Times bestsellers, most recently The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz, which examines how Winston Churchill and his “Secret Circle” went about surviving the German air campaign of 1940-41. Larson’s The Devil in the White City is set to be a Hulu limited series; his In the Garden of Beasts is under option by Tom Hanks for a feature film. He recently published an audio-original ghost story, No One Goes Alone, which has been optioned by Chernin Entertainment, in association with Netflix. His Thunderstruck has been optioned by Sony Pictures Television for a limited TV series. Larson lives in Manhattan with his wife, who is a writer and retired neonatologist; they have three grown daughters.
Daniel Wirls is a Professor of Politics at UC Santa Cruz. He received his PhD in Government from Cornell University in 1988 and has been teaching at UC Santa Cruz ever since. Dan’s research interests range across American politics, institutions, public policy, and political history. His five books include The Senate: From White Supremacy to Government Gridlock (2021); Irrational Security: The Politics of Defense from Reagan to Obama, and The Federalist Papers and Institutional Power in American Political Development. Dan served as a congressional fellow in 1993-94, working for a member of the House and the Senate, and currently serves on the board of the Council for a Livable World, the nation’s oldest anti-nuclear weapons political action committee.
Tickets include entry to the in-person event, plus a paperback copy of THE SPLENDID AND THE VILE (signed or with bookplate—see below)
-This event will be hosted on the The University of California, Santa Cruz campus, which requires that all visitors must complete UCSC’s COVID-19 Symptom Check Questionnaire the day of the event. Attendees must also provide proof of vaccination at the door, and remain masked for the duration of their time at the event.
The event is in-person only; no streaming option is available at this time and the event will not be recorded.
BOOKS:
Books will become available for pickup beginning on publication date and may be picked up at Bookshop Santa Cruz prior to the event if desired, however:
-PLEASE NOTE that due to COVID-19 there will be no public signing line at the event; the author will be pre-signing books (with optional personalization) on the day of the event.
-If you would like your book to be signed and/or personalized, it cannot be collected before the event. (Indicate personalization request on the Order screen when purchasing.)
-If you would like to collect your book ahead of time, you’ll receive a signed bookplate, and personalization will not be available.

Karen Joy Fowler, Booth
2022-03-08 18:00 - 20:00 | Cowell Ranch Hay Barn, Ranch View Rd, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
Bookshop Santa Cruz welcomes Man Booker finalist and bestselling local author Karen Joy Fowler (We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves) for a discussion of her highly-anticipated novel Booth—an epic and intimate novel about the family behind one of the most infamous figures in American history: John Wilkes Booth. Fowler will be in conversation with award-winning writer Elizabeth McKenzie. This event is cosponsored by The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz and will take place at the Cowell Ranch Hay Barn.
All attendees must complete UCSC’s COVID-19 Symptom Check Questionnaire on the day of the event, provide proof of vaccination at the door, and remain masked for the duration of their time at the event.
This event is ticketed–masks and proof of vaccination are required.

About the book:
In 1822, a secret family moves into a secret cabin some thirty miles northeast of Baltimore, to farm, to hide, and to bear ten children over the course of the next sixteen years. Junius Booth—breadwinner, celebrated Shakespearean actor, and master of the house in more ways than one—is at once a mesmerizing talent and a man of terrifying instability. One by one the children arrive, as year by year, the country draws frighteningly closer to the boiling point of secession and civil war.
As the tenor of the world shifts, the Booths emerge from their hidden lives to cement their place as one of the country’s leading theatrical families. But behind the curtains of the many stages they have graced, multiple scandals, family triumphs, and criminal disasters begin to take their toll, and the solemn siblings of John Wilkes Booth are left to reckon with the truth behind the destructively specious promise of an early prophecy.
Booth is a startling portrait of a country in the throes of change and a vivid exploration of the ties that make, and break, a family.
Karen Joy Fowler is the New York Times bestselling author of six novels, including The Jane Austen Book Club and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, which was the winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. She lives in Santa Cruz, California.

Elizabeth McKenzie’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and the Pushcart Prize Anthology, and recorded for NPR’s Selected Shorts. Her collection, Stop That Girl, was short-listed for The Story Prize and her novel, The Portable Veblen, was long listed for the National Book Award. She is the senior editor of the Chicago Quarterly Review and the managing editor of Catamaran Literary Reader.

Noel Q. King Annual Lecture: "People Love Dead Jews"
2022-03-09 17:30 - 19:30 | Cultural Center at Merrill, Merrill Cultural Center, UC Santa Cruz, Merrill College, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
Please note: this event has been rescheduled for March 9th, 2022.
The King Lecture Series, preserving the work of UCSC History and Comparative Religion professor Noel Q. King, promotes and explores the dialogue between faiths. This year’s lecture features award-winning author Dara Horn. You are invited to join us in person or virtually this year.

Dara Horn is the award-winning author of six books and, most recently, an essay collection, People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present. One of Granta magazine’s Best Young American Novelists, she is the recipient of two National Jewish Book Awards, the Edward Lewis Wallant Award, the Harold U. Ribalow Award, and the Reform Judaism Fiction Prize. Her books have been selected as New York Times Notable Books, Booklist’s Best 25 Books of the Decade, and San Francisco Chronicle’s Best Books of the Year, and have been translated into eleven languages. Her nonfiction work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Smithsonian, and The Jewish Review of Books. Horn received her doctorate in Yiddish and Hebrew literature from Harvard University. She has taught courses in these subjects at Sarah Lawrence College and Yeshiva University, and has held the Gerald Weinstock Visiting Professorship in Jewish Studies at Harvard. She has lectured for audiences in hundreds of venues throughout North America, Israel and Australia. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and four children.
About Noel Q. King
Noel Q. King was a “founding father” of Merrill College. Born in India and educated in England, he spent 14 years in Africa heading departments of religious studies before being hired to do the same at UC Santa Cruz, where he was a prominent and beloved figure until his death in 2009. The Noel Q. King Memorial Lectures help keep religious studies, and Noel King’s idiosyncratic spirit, alive at UCSC.

*Please note that UC Santa Cruz has COVID-19 guidelines for in-person events. When you arrive, please provide proof of vaccination OR a recent negative COVID-19 test result taken within 72 hours of the start of the event (must be a lab PCR test; home tests/antigen tests are not valid). Parking attendants will be onsite selling permits in lot 119.
Questions? Please contact the University Events Office at specialevents@ucsc.edu.

Living Writers Series: Sandra Lim
2022-03-10 17:20 - 18:55 | Humanities Lecture Hall, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
Sandra Lim is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection The Curious Thing (W.W. Norton, 2021). Her previous books of poetry are The Wilderness (W.W. Norton, 2014), winner of the Barnard Women Poets Prize selected by Louise Glück, and Loveliest Grotesque (Kore Press, 2006). Her writing has appeared in a range of literary journals, including The New York Review of Books, Poetry, The New Republic, The Baffler, and The New York Times Magazine, among others. Her poems and essays are anthologized in Counterclaims (Dalkey Archive Press, 2020), The Poem’s Country (Pleiades Press, 2018), The Echoing Green (The Modern Library, 2016), and Among Margins (Ricochet Editions, 2016).
Sandra’s honors include a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2020 Arts and Letters Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the 2015 Levis Reading Prize for The Wilderness, as well as residency fellowships from MacDowell, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Getty Foundation. She is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and also serves on the poetry faculty in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers.
Sponsored by The Puknat Literary Endowment, The Porter Hitchcock Poetry Fund, The Laurie Sain Endowment, The Humanities Institute, and Bookshop Santa Cruz (where the authors’ books are available for purchase)
Please note: this event is scheduled to be in-person in Humanities Lecture Hall and the location/in-person feature is subject to change.

Change Me: Stories of Radical Transformation – A Living Writers Series
After a long period of sheltering in place and an even longer period of restricting our daily movements, many of us are ready for change. This winter’s living writers all have stories of radical transformation to tell. TC Tolbert searches for a language to enact his transition from being Melissa to being TC; Jane Wong struggles to reconcile her American present with the transnational ghosts of her past; Yuri Herrera’s heroine embarks on a journey across the Mexican American border; Karen Tei Yamashita tells tales of ever changing demographics & invisible histories; Eric Wat’s protagonist remakes himself as he navigates drug abuse, sexuality, death and family dynamics; the speaker in Sandra Lim’s book of poems transforms not her life but the way she sees her life. All six writers remind us of the power of literature to transform us. They remind us that when we open a book, often what we’re really saying is: change me.
See the full list of Living Writers Series events on the Creative Writing Program page.

PhD+ Workshop - Careers in Academic Publishing, featuring Mellon University Press Diversity Fellows
2022-03-11 11:00 - 12:30 | Virtual Event
Join the 2021 cohort of the Mellon University Press Diversity Fellowship to hear more about their career trajectories in publishing. The six panelists will discuss topics including their experiences in graduate school, their journeys into the academic publishing world, and their broader experiences with careers beyond the tenure track. A moderated question and answer period will follow the panel presentation.
Chad M. Attenborough, University of Washington Press
Chad M. Attenborough joined the University of Washington Press from Vanderbilt University, where he is a PhD candidate studying black responses to the British abolition of the slave trade in the Caribbean. While completing his research, Chad worked for Vanderbilt University Press as a graduate assistant where his passion for publishing developed in earnest and during which he helped process works for VUP’s Critical Mexican Studies series, their Black Lives and Liberation series, alongside their Anthropology and Latin American list. Chad received his MA from Vanderbilt in Atlantic History and his BA from Bowdoin College in French. His areas of interest include black diaspora studies, imperial and intellectual histories, global migration studies, and critical geographies.
Fabiola Enríquez, University of Chicago Press
Fabiola Enríquez joined the University of Chicago Press after having served as Managing Editor for the Cambridge University Press journal International Labor and Working-Class History. She received her BA in History from the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez. She is currently pursuing a PhD in History at Columbia University, where she is writing a dissertation on the intersection between religion and politics in late-nineteenth century Cuba and Puerto Rico. Her interest in publishing comes as a continuation of these academic pursuits, seeing in acquisitions editing a platform from which to facilitate the global dissemination of knowledge and rescue perspectives that have thus far been underrepresented in historical discussions. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, she has been living in Chile for the past two years, and is the proud human to a reformed Chilean street dog.
Suraiya Anita Jetha, MIT Press
Suraiya Anita Jetha is a former contributing editor of the Association for Political and Legal Anthropology’s AnthroNews column. She has extensive experience in academic programming, most recently with the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California-Santa Cruz. She received a BA in Anthropology from Yale University, an MA in Migration and Diaspora Studies from SOAS University of London, and an MA in Anthropology from the New School for Social Research. She is currently writing a dissertation to complete a PhD in Anthropology and Feminist Studies at the University of California-Santa Cruz. Her research interests include anthropology, science and technology studies, feminist studies, and ethnography.
Robert Ramaswamy, Ohio State University Press
Robert Ramaswamy joined the Ohio State University Press from the University of Michigan, where he is a PhD candidate in American Culture. He recently completed an internship with Michigan Publishing, during which he worked on title selection and user access for the American Council of Learned Societies’ Humanities Ebook Collection (HEB). At HEB, he coordinated with scholars in learned societies across the humanities to include more work from scholars, subfields, and presses that have historically been excluded from “the canon.” His scholarly interests include feminist theory, histories of capitalism, and twentieth-century African American history. He lives in Ann Arbor with his partner, Anna, two dogs, and nine chickens.

Jacqulyn Teoh, Cornell University Press
Jacqulyn Teoh joined Cornell University Press after working as an apprentice at the Feminist Press at CUNY and a part-time acquisitions assistant at the University of Wisconsin Press, where she was a member of UW Press’s Equity, Justice, and Inclusion working group and helped to prepare a demographic survey of authors as a baseline understanding of diversity, representation, and inclusion. She holds a BA from Pennsylvania State University, an MA from the University of Leeds, and a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her dissertation looked at the structures of the contemporary literary marketplace with a focus on Southeast Asian and Southeast Asian American writing.
Jameka Williams, Northwestern University Press
Jameka Williams is a MFA candidate at Northwestern University in poetry. She received her BA in English from Eastern University in St. Davids, PA. After supporting herself as a pastry chef during her graduate studies, she is transitioning into pursuing a career in book publishing, having interned with independent publisher, Agate, in Evanston, IL. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and she is a Best New Poets 2020 finalist, published by University of Virginia Press annually. She is currently completing her first full-length poetry collection.

RSVP here:
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About the PhD+ Workshop Series
Join us for the sixth year of PhD+ Workshops, hosted by The Humanities Institute. We meet monthly to discuss possible career paths for PhDs, internship possibilities, grants/fellowships, work/life balance, elements of style, online identity issues, and much, much more.

Latino Role Models Virtual 2022 Conference: Dolores Huerta
2022-03-12 09:00 - 12:30 | Virtual Event
We are honored that Dolores Huerta, Founder and President of the Dolores Huerta Foundation and co-founder with Cesar Chavez of the United Farm Workers Union will be our keynote speaker this year.

Senderos specializes in teaching Latino culture and history through the artistic expression of dance and music, hosts an annual Guelaguetza, and offers other performances in local and far-reaching places. Our organization serves children, youth and adults of all ages, including English Language Learners and economically disadvantaged people, free of cost. We keep alive our native cultures and languages, represent our countries of origin with pride, share our culture and contribute to the larger community, promote harmony, and break stereotypes. We are healthy, successful, focused on fulfilling our dreams, and safe from gang influence. We create a college going culture by providing tutoring, awarding scholarships, fostering youth leadership, promoting bi-literacy, and creating opportunities for community service. We work together to create a thriving, welcoming, family-oriented community that values all contributions, provides help when needed, and engages all participants in group decisions.

Agnes Callard - "Inquisitive Politics"
2022-03-14 17:30 - 19:00 | Cowell Ranch Hay Barn, Ranch View Rd, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
The public intellectual space seems to be dominated by various forms of bullying, in various kinds of disguise. One person wants to “call out” your bad assumptions; another commands you to concede their point of view. The overall effect, for participants, is of being in a tug of war for one’s attentions, emotions, allegiance. Is there another way to conduct public intellectual activity? When the matters under discussion are of pressing, vital importance, is it really possible to be inquisitive about them?
Agnes Callard is an Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Chicago and the author of Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming (Oxford University Press, 2018). She is a regular contributor to the New York Times and is also noted for her popular writings and work in public philosophy.
The Peggy Downes Baskin Ethics Lecture Series is a lively forum for the discussion and exploration of ethics-related challenges in human endeavors. The Ethics Lecture is made possible by the Peggy Downes Baskin Humanities Endowment for Interdisciplinary Ethics which enables the Humanities Division to promote a dialogue about ethics and ethics related challenges in an interdisciplinary setting. The endowment was established in honor of Peggy Downes Baskin’s longtime interest in ethical issues across the academic spectrum.
Register here for in-person attendance.
Register here for virtual attendance via Zoom.

Linguistics Colloquia: Mara Breen
2022-03-18 13:20 - 15:00 | Virtual Event
About eight times each year, the Linguistics department hosts colloquia by distinguished faculty from around the world.
For full speaker and event information, please visit: https://linguistics.ucsc.edu/news-events/colloquia/index.html

The 35th Annual Conference on Human Sentence Processing
2022-03-24 - 2022-03-26 | Virtual Event
HSP2022 will interrogate the connection between prosody, gesture and meaning. We are delighted to welcome the following researchers to address questions related to the perception and production of prosody and the planning and interpretation of co-speech gesture. By what mechanisms are these multimodal communication channels integrated with, or segregated from, other aspects of linguistic cognition, such as syntax, compositional semantics and pragmatics? How does our ability to process gestural or prosodic features develop in first- and second-language?
Speakers include:
Mara Breen Psychology and Education – Mt Holyoke
Aoju Chen Languages, Literature and Communication – Utrecht
Kathryn Davidson Linguistics – Harvard
Jesse Harris Linguistics – UCLA
Sotaro Kita Psychology – Warwick
Pilar Prieto ICREA and Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Dept of Translation and Language Sciences), Catalonia

HSP2022 will operate as a virtual conference.
Virtual core
There will be a virtual “core” scientific program organized centrally by UC Santa Cruz. It will consist of invited presentations, peer-reviewed plenary presentations, and poster sessions. Anyone will be able to participate fully just virtually.
Self-organized satellite gatherings
Although we have canceled the in-person events in Santa Cruz, folks may wish to gather with other HSP-ers in-person. We encourage any individual or group to self-organize a gathering local to themselves, where safe and feasible. These can be of any size and scope and formality.
We will maintain and publish a clearinghouse of known self-organized satellite gatherings. We’ve also created a sourcebook of ideas.
For more information, please visit: hsp2022@ucsc.edu or contact chusp@ucsc.edu

Santa Cruz Pickwick Club: "Night Walks" by Charles Dickens
2022-03-27 13:00 - 15:00 | Virtual Event
For its next meeting, the Santa Cruz Pickwick Club will read Dickens’s short, semi-autobiographical essay, “Night Walks.” Professor John Jordan will lead the discussion. Originally published in 1860 in Dickens’s weekly magazine All the Year Round, the essay is a good example of Dickens’s work as a journalist, social activist, and observer of the modern metropolis. It is also a powerful piece of writing in its own right.
In “Night Walks,” Dickens assumes the identity of a man who suffers from insomnia and whose remedy for this affliction is to walk at night through the streets of the city until dawn before returning home exhausted to fall asleep. The essay describes the people he encounters and the places he sees on these walks.
A nocturnal walking tour through the heart of London, “Night Walks” engages our sympathies and enlarges our social vision. It invites the reader to look at familiar places with fresh eyes, to see people who might otherwise remain invisible, and to imagine what we may have in common with those less fortunate than ourselves.
Short, accessible, and highly relevant to social problems still facing us today, “Night Walks” for these reasons may interest schoolteachers in particular as a useful text for introducing Dickens to their students.
The Dickens Project has produced an electronic version of this essay. A link to this edition is included below. Only a dozen or so pages long, the essay comes with notes, a map of London indicating principal landmarks mentioned in the essay, and a brief introduction by Professor Jordan.

Recommended Edition: Click here to download a PDF of the Dickens Project’s edition of this essay.

John W. Reid, "Ever Green: Saving Big Forests to Save the Planet"
2022-03-29 18:00 - 20:00 | Virtual Event
Five stunningly large forests remain on Earth: the Taiga, extending from the Pacific Ocean across all of Russia and far-northern Europe; the North American boreal, ranging from Alaska’s Bering seacoast to Canada’s Atlantic shore; the Amazon, covering almost the entirety of South America’s bulge; the Congo, occupying parts of six nations in Africa’s wet equatorial middle; and the island forest of New Guinea, twice the size of California.
These megaforests are vital to preserving global biodiversity, thousands of cultures, and a stable climate, as economist John W. Reid and celebrated biologist Thomas E. Lovejoy argue convincingly in Ever Green. Megaforests serve an essential role in decarbonizing the atmosphere–the boreal alone holds 1.8 trillion metric tons of carbon in its deep soils and peat layers, 190 years’ worth of global emissions at 2019 levels–and saving them is the most immediate and affordable large-scale solution to our planet’s most formidable ongoing crisis.
Reid and Lovejoy offer practical solutions to address the biggest challenges these forests face, from vastly expanding protected areas, to supporting Indigenous forest stewards, to planning smarter road networks. In gorgeous prose that evokes the majesty of these ancient forests along with the people and animals who inhabit them, Reid and Lovejoy take us on an exhilarating global journey.

John W. Reid is a conservationist and economist whose writing has appeared in outlets including the New York Times and Scientific American. He is the founder and former head of Conservation Strategy Fund, winner of the MacArthur Foundation Award for Creative and Effective Institutions. He currently serves as senior economist for the nonprofit Nia Tero and lives in Sebastopol, California.
This event is co-sponsored by Bookshop Santa Cruz and The Humanities Institute.

Social Movements for a Just Society - Necessary Trouble: Thinking with the Legacy of John R. Lewis
2022-03-30 16:00 - 17:00 | Virtual Event
“A democracy cannot thrive where power remains unchecked and justice is reserved for a select few. Ignoring these cries and failing to respond to this movement is simply not an option — for peace cannot exist where justice is not served.” — John Lewis said of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act
Ready for some Necessary Trouble? In anticipation and in honor of the dedication of John R. Lewis College at the University of California, Santa Cruz, the Division of Social Sciences, Colleges Nine and Ten, the Institute for Social Transformation, and the Center for Racial Justice are organizing five events centered on topics exemplified by the life of Representative John Lewis.
Featured Speakers:
Veronica Terriquez
Hiroshi Fukurai
Elizabeth Beaumont
Rekia Gina Jibrin
At UC Santa Cruz, we believe that the real change is us. This series will highlight the efforts of faculty, students, staff, community leaders, and alumni in their commitments to social and racial justice, civic engagement and democracy. It is an opportunity for us all to reflect on how we can help carry John R. Lewis’ legacy forward in the future.

Sensoria of al-Andalus & the Western Mediterranean
2022-04-01 - 2022-04-02 | Virtual and In Person
The Spain North-Africa Project is pleased to announce “Sensoria of al-Andalus & the Western Mediterranean,” a multidisciplinary workshop and conference to be held at the University of California, Santa Cruz. This two-day conference will explore the medieval, early modern, and modern legacy of al-Andalus and its afterlives across the world through historical, cultural, sociological, and aesthetic approaches towards human sensoria.
Themes include auditory, visual, gustatory, olfactory, tactile, and proprioceptive perception in soundscapes, music, language, foodways, smellscapes, visual culture, and architecture. The goal of this conference is to deepen our understanding of the cultural history of these complex and multifarious cultural formations and to draw connections across time, place, and sensory channels by sharing and discussing the work of historians, art historians, anthropologists, scholars of literature, ethnomusicologists, and others.
The in-person event will occur in Room 210, Humanities 1. Join Zoom link here for virtual attendance.
Click here to download the Sensoria of al-Andalus & the Western Mediterranean Digital Program
This event is supported by UCHRI, The Humanities Institute, The Center for the Middle East and North Africa (CMENA), the Center for Jewish Studies, and the UC San Diego Humanities Division.

PhD+ Workshop - Publishing
2022-04-01 12:30 - 14:00 | Virtual Event
As co-editors of the recently published special issue of Critical Ethnic Studies on Borderland Regimes and Resistance in Global Perspective, we invite you to join us for a workshop focused on academic journal article publishing. We will cover: adapting elements from your dissertation into journal articles; creating your own publication pipeline; navigating the journal submission, review, and publishing process; and dealing with rejections. We will also discuss the process of submitting to journal special issues, such as ours–including how to pitch your work to a special issue, how to work with editors on your piece during revise-and-resubmit, and how to propose a guest-edited special issue.

Panelists:

Camilla Hawthorne (Assistant Professor, Sociology)
Jenny Kelly (Assistant Professor, Feminist Studies)

Presented by The Humanities Institute’s Border Regimes and Resistance in Global Perspective Cluster

About the PhD+ Workshop Series
Join us for the sixth year of PhD+ Workshops, hosted by The Humanities Institute. We meet monthly to discuss possible career paths for PhDs, internship possibilities, grants/fellowships, work/life balance, elements of style, online identity issues, and much, much more.

Linguistics Colloquia: Maria Gouskova
2022-04-01 13:20 - 15:00 | Virtual Event

Rosa Vallejos, "Heritage Languages and the Outcomes of Revitalization Efforts in the Amazon"
2022-04-04 15:00 - 17:00 | Virtual and In Person
Rosa Vallejos is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of New Mexico. In her talk, she examines the role of two indigenous languages in higher education in the Amazon of Peru. It looks at efforts to implement Kukama and Kichwa as key components in the teacher training model developed by the Programa de Formación de Maestros Bilingües de la Amazona Peruana (www.formabiap.org). At present, Kukama and Kichwa are at different points of UNESCO’s endangerment scale. Teaching them in higher education is part of a more comprehensive commitment to build culturally and linguistically appropriate education for Amazonian indigenous groups. The study looks at a sample of eight participants, five Kukamas and three Kichwas, to reflect on the outcomes of their learning process. An important finding of this study is that endangered languages can be relearned by heritage speakers in a combination of naturalistic and well-structured instructional settings. We conclude that the assessment of these relearning processes needs to be holistic, going far beyond linguistic proficiency. In the Amazonian context, at the center of it all are language attitudes, sense of cultural membership, and the learners’ positioning with respect to the aspirations of their communities and indigenous organizations. Although the general teaching components can be planned for several groups, the implementation of the proposals and the evaluation of the outcomes must capture the uniqueness of each sociolinguistic context.

This talk is presented by the Department of Languages and Applied Linguistics at UC Santa Cruz.
This event can be attended remotely via Zoom, as well as in-person in Humanities 1, Room 210.

The Hayden V. White Distinguished Annual Lecture: Debating Holocaust Memory: The Politics of Comparison in Contemporary Germany
2022-04-04 18:00 | University Center, Bhojwani Room, CA, United States
Over the past two years, the German public sphere has been roiled by a series of debates concerning the uniqueness and comparability of the Holocaust. These debates have called up older controversies, especially the Historikerstreit (the Historians’ Debate) of the 1980s in which the left-liberal philosopher Jürgen Habermas took on conservative historians who sought to relativize the Nazi genocide. Despite certain similarities, however, the new debates cannot be reduced to a repetition of that earlier moment. The Historikerstreit turned on the relation between Nazi and Stalinist crimes and the question of German responsibility for the Holocaust; today’s controversies involve instead the relation between colonialism and the Holocaust and between racism and antisemitism as well as the ongoing crisis in Israel/Palestine. In this talk, Michael Rothberg will reflect on these ongoing debates, including the particular place in them of his book Multidirectional Memory, which was translated into German in early 2021. As the current debates reveal, the dominant Holocaust memory regime in Germany is based on an absolutist understanding of the Holocaust’s uniqueness and a rejection of relational and multidirectional approaches to the genocide. While that memory regime represented a major societal accomplishment of the 1980s and 1990s, it has reached its limits in Germany’s “postmigrant” present. Yet, as examples of migrant engagement with the Holocaust illustrate, German society already includes more relational models of memory that have the potential to transform the German model of coming to terms with the past in productive ways.
*Please note that UC Santa Cruz has COVID-19 guidelines for in-person events. When you arrive, please provide proof of vaccination OR a recent negative COVID-19 test result taken within 72 hours of the start of the event (must be a lab PCR test; home tests/antigen tests are not valid). Guests are also required to complete a symptom check form online the day you arrive on campus. Masks are required indoors.
Click here to register for in-person attendance.
Click here to register for remote attendance via Zoom.

Michael Rothberg is the 1939 Society Samuel Goetz Chair in Holocaust Studies, Chair of the Department of Comparative Literature, and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. His latest book is The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators (2019), published by Stanford University Press in their “Cultural Memory in the Present” series. Previous books include Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (2009), Traumatic Realism: The Demands of Holocaust Representation (2000), and, co-edited with Neil Levi, The Holocaust: Theoretical Readings (2003). The translation of Multidirectional Memory into German in 2021 helped launch a national debate about the current state of German Holocaust memory. With Yasemin Yildiz, he is currently completing Memory Citizenship: Migrant Archives of Holocaust Remembrance for Fordham University Press.
For more information, please visit: The Hayden V. White Distinguished Annual Lecture

Nasser Zakariya - Questions on "Anthroperiphery"
2022-04-06 12:15 - 13:30 | Virtual and In Person
Taking recent discussions of “Copernican Forecasting” as a point of departure, this talk will look to historical and probabilistic arguments representing science in terms of ongoing demonstrations of the increasingly marginal position of humanity. A sketch of some of the genealogies of these arguments and their representations suggest how ill-fitting they might be when set against varying historical conceptions of centrality, probability, and forecasting.

The Center for Cultural Studies hosts a weekly Wednesday colloquium featuring work by faculty and visitors. We gather at 12:00 PM, with presentations beginning at 12:15 PM.
For Spring 2022, the colloquium will take a hybrid format, with the option of in-person or virtual attendance. Attendees have the option to attend in person in Humanities 210 or to watch the presentation on zoom. To attend remotely via zoom, please RSVP in advance, and you will receive a zoom link on the morning of the colloquium. In most cases, speakers will appear remotely so that they will not have to present wearing a mask. To RSVP for the full Spring colloquium series, please use this form. If you have any questions about the colloquium, please contact Piper Milton (cult@ucsc.edu).
Staff assistance is provided by The Humanities Institute.

Pathways to Thriving Communities - Necessary Trouble: Thinking with the Legacy of John R. Lewis
2022-04-06 16:00 - 17:00 | Virtual Event
“These young people are saying we all have a right to know what is in the air we breathe, in the water we drink, and the food we eat. It is our responsibility to leave this planet cleaner and greener. That must be our legacy.” ― John Lewis
Ready for some Necessary Trouble? In anticipation and in honor of the dedication of John R. Lewis College at the University of California, Santa Cruz, the Division of Social Sciences, Colleges Nine and Ten, the Institute for Social Transformation, and the Center for Racial Justice are organizing five events centered on topics exemplified by the life of Representative John Lewis.
Featured Speakers:
Alicia Riley
Nancy N. Chen
James Doucet-Battle
At UC Santa Cruz, we believe that the real change is us. This series will highlight the efforts of faculty, students, staff, community leaders, and alumni in their commitments to social and racial justice, civic engagement and democracy. It is an opportunity for us all to reflect on how we can help carry John R. Lewis’ legacy forward in the future.

Thomas Haigh - Becoming Universal: A New History of Modern Computing
2022-04-07 12:15 - 13:30 | Humanities 1, Room 210, 1156 high st, Santa cruz, CA, 95060, United States
Join us for a talk about Becoming Universal: A New History of Modern Computing (MIT Press, 2022), co-authored by Thomas Haigh and Paul Ceruzzi. Professor Haigh will introduce the book and discuss the challenges involved in creating a comprehensive, synthetic narrative about the history of computing between 1945 and 2020.
For more about Becoming Universal, visit: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/new-history-modern-computing.
This event is co-sponsored by the History Department, The Humanities Institute, the Department of Computational Media, the Baskin School of Engineering, and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Reyna Grande, "A Ballad of Love and Glory"
2022-04-07 19:00 - 21:00 | Cowell Ranch Hay Barn, Ranch View Rd, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
UC Santa Cruz alumna Reyna Grande will be in conversation with Micah Perks and Sylvanna Falcón about her highly-anticipated new novel, A Ballad of Love and Glory, at an in-person event at the Cowell Ranch Hay Barn.
The event is in-person only; no streaming option is available at this time, and the event will not be recorded.
Reyna Grande is an award-winning author, motivational speaker, and writing teacher. As a young girl, she crossed the US-Mexico border to join her family in Los Angeles, a harrowing journey chronicled in The Distance Between Us, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. Her other books include the novels A Ballad of Love and Glory, Across a Hundred Mountains, and Dancing with Butterflies, the memoirs The Distance Between Us: Young Readers Edition, and A Dream Called Home, and the anthology Somewhere We Are Human: Authentic Voices on Migration, Survival, and New Beginnings. She lives in Woodland, California, with her husband and two children. Visit ReynaGrande.com for more information.
Tickets:
A limited number of complimentary tickets will be available for UCSC students, please use this link:
Tickets for UCSC students
All other community members can purchase their tickets at the link below:
General Tickets
Free event parking will be available on campus. The book signing will take place at the end of the event and will be outdoors (weather permitting).

Tickets are final sale and do not qualify for Bookshop Reader’s Club Credit.
This event is co-sponsored by Bookshop Santa Cruz, The Research Center for the Americas and The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz.

Rohit De - Lawyering in Times of Lawlessness: Defending Dissenters in India and Sri Lanka (1947-1971)
2022-04-08 10:00 - 12:00 | Virtual Event
Rohit De is an Associate Professor of History at Yale University and an Associate Research Scholar at Yale Law School. A lawyer and a historian of South Asia and the common law world, he is the author of A People’s Constitution: Law and Everyday Life in the Indian Republic (Princeton University Press, 2018). He is currently working on two book projects. The first is a history of decolonization and rebellious lawyering and the second, co-authored with Ornit Shani, looks at how thousands of ordinary Indians, read, deliberated debated, and substantially engaged with the anticipated constitution at the time of its writing. In 2020, Rohit De was elected a Carnegie Fellow. He has held fellowships from the Social Science Research Council, the Davis Centre for Historical Studies at Princeton University, the Melbourne Law School, and the Centre for Asian Legal Studies at the National University of Singapore. Prior to starting at Yale, he was a Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for History and Economics at the University of Cambridge. He clerked for Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan of the Supreme Court of India and has worked with constitution reform projects on Nepal and Sri Lanka

Presented by THI’s Center for South Asian Studies.

James H. Mills - South Asia's Lost Cocaine? Coca Leaf and Colonialism in India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka), c. 1870-1894
2022-04-08 12:00 - 13:30 | Humanities 2, Room 259
Doctors and officials in Britain’s South Asian colonies were quick to spot the potential of cocaine. Carl Koller’s influential experiments with the substance in Vienna were first reported in print in October 1884 and yet by December it was already being used in medical practice in Indore. Further experiments with it followed early in 1885, and by the end of the year druggists across the country were supplying the growing local market for the drug. As the 1880s proceeded it was put to an increasing range of uses, within colonial hospitals and clinics but also beyond their boundaries. Almost as quick to respond to the appearance of cocaine in south Asia were British officials and others involved in the colonial economy. This paper explores their efforts to establish the coca plant as a crop and to establish a processing capability to produce South Asian cocaine for the global market. Previous explanations have tended to focus on the competing strains of the coca plant and the environmental difficulties of establishing them in local ecologies. However, this paper examines the more complex forces driving the decisions that meant that the British colonisers lost their early advantage and failed to commit to cocaine production, leaving the path open for the better-known Dutch operation in Java.
James H. Mills is Professor of Modern History at the Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare (CSHHH) Glasgow at the University of Strathclyde. He has research interests in the histories of Asia, of psychoactive medical commodities, and of modern imperialism and colonialism. He is currently completing a Wellcome Trust funded research project with the title, The Asian Cocaine Crisis: Pharmaceuticals, consumers & control in South and East Asia, c.1900-1945, and recently co-edited Cannabis: Global Histories (2021) with Lucas Richert. His publications include Cannabis Nation: Control and Consumption in Britain, 1928–2008 (2012), Cannabis Britannica: Empire, Trade, and Prohibition (2003) and (edited with Patricia Barton), Drugs and Empires: Essays in Modern Imperialism and Intoxication, c.1500 to c.1930 (2007).
This event is co-sponsored by the Center for World History.

Watsonville is in the Heart: Digital Archive Launch & Community Talk Story
2022-04-09 19:00 - 22:00 | Museum of Art & History, 705 Front Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95060, United States
On April 9, come celebrate the launch of the Watsonville is in the Heart Digital Archive. The new archive features oral history recordings, original documents, and family artifacts that capture the rich history of Filipino life and labor in California’s Pajaro Valley. Learn more about the UCSC Watsonville is in the Heart research initiative and its partnership with The Tobera Project, and share in conversation with Watsonville community members working to uplift stories of the manong generation, the first wave of Filipino workers to arrive in the United States at the start of the twentieth century.
The digital archive launch will include a Talk Story panel, “Women of the Pajaro Valley,” to highlight three community members at the forefront of this memory-preservation work: Juanita Sulay Wilson, Eva Alminiana Monroe, and Antoinette DeOcampo Lechtenberg.

The evening will include pop-up exhibits, interactive archive stations, and a chance to meet with members of the Watsonville is in the Heart team and of The Tobera Project. For more information, contact wiith@ucsc.edu.
This event is sponsored by the University Library, California Humanities, The Humanities Institute, and the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History.

Slugs & Steins: David Brundage - The Easter Rising and New York: How Ireland's Revolution Triggered a Fight Against Empire
2022-04-11 18:30 - 20:00 | Virtual Event
This talk will assess the impact of the 1916 Easter Rising on a variety of anticolonial movements beyond Ireland and the Irish diaspora, focusing on New York City, long recognized as the overseas capital of Irish nationalist agitation and mobilization. But New York played a similar role for a variety of other descent groups and diasporas as well. After an overview of some of these non-Irish groups in the city (including African Americans and South Asians), this topic will be placed in the context of World War I and post-war efforts to end colonialism and foster self-determination for nations around the world. While some historians have emphasized the role of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s ideas in these efforts, this talk will demonstrate the centrality of the Easter Rising and the subsequent Irish Revolution, as understood by both Irish and non-Irish intellectuals and political activists in the increasingly cosmopolitan city of New York.

David Brundage is Professor of History at UC Santa Cruz and is currently Chair of UCSC’s Academic Senate. He has published widely in the areas of U.S. immigration and labor history and the history of the Irish diaspora, and is the author, most recently, of Irish Nationalists in America: The Politics of Exile, 1798–1998 (Oxford University Press, 2016), selected as a Choice Magazine “Outstanding Academic Title” of the year and described by the Irish Times as a major work that “challenges us to rethink the history of Irish nationalism and its far-flung supporters, and to ponder its present and future.” He is finishing up a new book, tentatively entitled New York Against Empire: Challenging British Colonialism in a Time of War and Revolution, 1910–1927, which investigates New York City as a “contact zone” that brought together anticolonial activists from across the globe.

Robert Alter - The Psalms as Literature
2022-04-13 12:00 - 13:30 | Virtual Event
This is the first event of Shakespeare’s Psalms: A community seminar series.
Shakespeare cited the Psalms more than any other book of the Bible. What did the psalms mean to him? This series, co-hosted by Sean Keilen (UCSC) and Julia Lupton (UCI) explores the presence of psalms in Shakespeare’s poetic imagery, psychological insights, and contributions to wisdom. The series consists of seven Wednesday meetings, starting at 12:00 PT, and is free and open to all. The series launches with a special appearance by Prof. Robert Alter, the foremost modern translator of the Hebrew Bible into English and the author of several books on the Bible as literature.

Robert Alter is Professor in the Graduate School and Emeritus Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California at Berkeley, where he has taught since 1967. He has written widely on the European novel from the eighteenth century to the present, on contemporary American fiction, and on modern Hebrew literature. He has also written extensively on literary aspects of the Bible. His twenty-four published books include two prize-winning volumes on biblical narrative and poetry and award-winning translations of Genesis and of the Five Books of Moses. He has devoted book-length studies to Fielding, Stendhal, and the self-reflexive tradition in the novel. Books by him have been translated into ten different languages. Among his publications over the past twenty-five years are “Necessary Angels: Tradition and Modernity in Kafka, Benjamin, and Scholem” (1991), “The David Story: A Translation with Commentary of 1 and 2 Samuel” (1999), “Canon and Creativity: Modern Writing and the Authority of Scripture” (2000), “The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary” (2004), “Imagined Cities” (2005), “The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary” (2007), “Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible” (2010), “The Wisdom Books: A Translation with Commentary” (2010), and “Ancient Israel: The Former Prophets.”
Co-sponsored by The Shakespeare Workshop, UC Santa Cruz, and UCI Jewish Studies.

Hannah Zeavin - Hot and Cool Mothers
2022-04-13 12:15 - 13:30 | Virtual and In Person
This event has been cancelled due to illness and will be rescheduled for Fall 2022. “Hot and Cool Mothers” moves toward a media theory of mothering and parental “fitness.” The article begins with an investigation into midcentury pediatric psychological studies on Bad Mothers and their impacts on their children. The most famous, if not persistent, of these diagnoses is that of the so-called refrigerator mother. The refrigerator mother is not the only bad model of maternality that midcentury psychiatry discovered, however; overstimulating mothers, called in this study “hot mothers,” were identified as equally problematic. From the mid-1940s until the 1960s and beyond, class, race, and maternal function were linked in metaphors of temperature. Whereas autism and autistic states have been extensively elaborated in their relationship to digital media, this article attends to attributed maternal causes of “emotionally disturbed,” queer, and neurodivergent children. The author argues that these newly codified diagnoses were inseparable from midcentury conceptions of stimulation, mediation, domesticity, and race, including Marshall McLuhan’s theory of hot and cool media, as well as maternal absence and (over)presence, echoes of which continue in the present in terms like “helicopter parent.”

The Center for Cultural Studies hosts a weekly Wednesday colloquium featuring work by faculty and visitors. We gather at 12:00 PM, with presentations beginning at 12:15 PM.
For Spring 2022, the colloquium will take a hybrid format, with the option of in-person or virtual attendance. Attendees have the option to attend in person in Humanities 210 or to watch the presentation on zoom. To attend remotely via zoom, please RSVP in advance, and you will receive a zoom link on the morning of the colloquium. In most cases, speakers will appear remotely so that they will not have to present wearing a mask. To RSVP for the full Spring colloquium series, please use this form. If you have any questions about the colloquium, please contact Piper Milton (cult@ucsc.edu).
Staff assistance is provided by The Humanities Institute.

Students as Agents of Transformative Change - Necessary Trouble: Thinking with the Legacy of John R. Lewis
2022-04-13 16:00 - 17:00 | Virtual Event
“Every generation leaves behind a legacy. What that legacy will be is determined by the people of that generation. What legacy do you want to leave behind?” ― John Lewis
Ready for some Necessary Trouble? In anticipation and in honor of the dedication of John R. Lewis College at the University of California, Santa Cruz, the Division of Social Sciences, Colleges Nine and Ten, the Institute for Social Transformation, and the Center for Racial Justice are organizing five events centered on topics exemplified by the life of Representative John Lewis.
Featured Speakers:
Xavier Livermon
Student Speakers TBD
At UC Santa Cruz, we believe that the real change is us. This series will highlight the efforts of faculty, students, staff, community leaders, and alumni in their commitments to social and racial justice, civic engagement and democracy. It is an opportunity for us all to reflect on how we can help carry John R. Lewis’ legacy forward in the future.

Aurora Lecture Series: Arvind-pal Mandair - Epistemic Empowerment: Sikh Philosophy and Cognitive Decolonization
2022-04-14 10:00 - 12:00 | Virtual Event
‘Sikh philosophy’ is a nascent field of knowledge in the sense that it has not yet emerged but shows signs of future potential. It lies at the intersection of several fields including World Philosophies, Sikh and/or Asian studies, and Philosophy of Religion. Although literature on Sikh philosophy has existed for over a century (in several languages), it has never been recognized within the Western academy. In this presentation I examine some of the reasons why this has been the case. What can a potential turn towards Sikh philosophy achieve? Why does it matter? To whom? Rather than providing a conventional objective analysis of the history of Sikh philosophy, its literature (etc etc), however, I’d like ask a slightly different question: what is Sikh philosophy for? To do this, I’d like to bring my own scholarly quest for recognition of Sikh philosophy within the academy into dialogue with autotheory. This is to some extent already a hint about the nature of Sikh philosophy and the politics of framing non-Western ideas and concepts within the global knowledge system.
Join Zoom here.
Presented by the Center for South Asian Studies and co-sponsored by The Humanities Institute.

Living Writers: Janice A. Lowe
2022-04-14 17:20 - 18:55 | Virtual Event
LIVING WRITERS UCSC, SPRING 2022 presents: CELEBRANT: SOUND ACTIONS
CELEBRANT: SOUND ACTIONS showcases interdisciplinary writers who deeply engage in various sonic forms, whether the libretto and the operatic, sound and visual art, acoustic music and songwriting, or embodied meditations to explore the possibilities in being attentive to sound, as action and celebrant through writing. This hybrid series features an array of writers and artists who work across several modes (text, multi-media, meditation, and performance) exploring what happens between sound and/as verbal language, rendering its effects and configurations through poetry, prose, and sound inspired and activated interdisciplinary writing practices.

Janice A. Lowe, is a compoer and poet. Her music LIL BUDDA, text by Stephanie L. Jones, was presented by the NAMT Festival of New Musicals and the O’Neill Musical Theater Conference. Lowe’s music-poetry works have been performed with ensembles and collaborations at The Poetry Project, Bop Stop, Jazz Festival Berlin, University of Cambridge and the Arts for Art Peace & Justice Celebration. She composed music for the plays DOOR OF NO RETURN by Nehassaiu DeGannes (Shakespeare & Co.) and Jenni Lamb’s 12th & CLAIRMOUNT (Stage West-Chicago.) Lowe has performed with bands including Anne Waldman & Fast Speaking Music, Digital Diaspora and Julie Ezelle Patton’s Rock, Paper Twister. She composed musical settings for the McKoy Twins section of Tyehimba Jess’s OLIO, (joint Creative Capital award.) She is also the composer of LEAVING CLE SONGS, a song cycle based on her debut poetry collection. Lowe’s poems have appeared in numerous journals including Callaloo, Best American Experimental Writings, Interim Poetics, and Solidarity Texts: Radiant Re-Sisters. Lowe was a co-founding member of The Dark Room Collective. She performs and records with her ensemble, NAMAROON. Her work has been recognized by The Rauschenberg Foundation and City Artists Corps. For more, visit https://www.janicelowe.com/
Sponsored by The Puknat Literary Endowment, The Porter Hitchcock Poetry Fund, The Laurie Sain Endowment, The Humanities Institute, and Bookshop Santa Cruz.

The Universe in Verse: A Charitable Celebration of Science and Nature Through Poetry
2022-04-16 19:00 - 21:30 | Quarry Amphitheater, 1156 High St, Santa Cruz, CA, 95062, United States
Join us for The Universe in Verse—an annual charitable celebration of science and nature, winged with poetry and music, created and hosted by Maria Popova (The Marginalian) in collaboration with astronomer and UC Santa Cruz Director of Astrobiology Natalie Batalha.
In the majestic Quarry Amphitheater in the redwoods, we will explore the marvel and mystery of life, from the creaturely to the cosmic, with stories from the history of science and our search for truth, illustrated with poems about entropy and evolution, trees and mushrooms, consciousness and dark matter, the birth of flowers and the death of stars, performed by a constellation of extraordinary humans: pioneering astronomers Jill Tarter and Natalie Batalha, writers Rebecca Solnit and Roxane Gay, musicians Zoë Keating and Joan As Police Woman, artists Debbie Millman and Wendy MacNaughton, poet Diane Ackerman, cosmologist and jazz saxophonist Stephon Alexander, cognitive scientist and writer Alexandra Horowitz, physicist and writer Alan Lightman, and On Being creator Krista Tippett. There will be live music and stargazing, and some thrilling surprises.
To make The Universe in Verse maximally open to all, tickets are available on a pay-what-you-can basis at three levels. Please contribute the maximum you are able, knowing that it would make the experience possible for someone else of humbler means. All proceeds from the show will benefit The Nature Conservancy and a new scholarship at UCSC honoring the life and legacy of astronomer and search-for-life pioneer Frank Drake.
General Admission:
Contribution level 1: $ 25.00
Contribution level 2: $ 50.00
Contribution level 3: $100.00
—
Student tickets: $ 15.00
(Current students only)

We are grateful for the generous support from the UC Santa Cruz Foundation, UCSC Astrobiology Initiative, the Bond and Gunderson Family Fund, and The Humanities Institute. We appreciate the participation of our local community, including Bookshop Santa Cruz and the Santa Cruz Amateur Astronomy Club.
For additional logistics, including directions and information about parking, please see the event website.

Event News:
UC Santa Cruz Hosts ‘Universe In Verse’ April 16 In The Quarry Amphitheater

Student Success in the Humanities with Dean Jasmine Alinder
2022-04-19 11:30 - 13:00 | Humanities 1, Room 210, 1156 high st, Santa cruz, CA, 95060, United States
Join Humanities Dean Jasmine Alinder for a discussion on her plan to “play offense” in positioning UC Santa Cruz proactively, making strong arguments for the relevance and value of the humanities as an essential, core component of a 21st-century liberal arts education.
Learn more about Dean Alinder’s Employing Humanities Initiative designed to prepare career-ready humanities majors and infuse STEM degrees with meaningful humanities instruction, emphasizing ethics, equity, and racial and social justice.

Your participation is welcome in this open conversation about how we can leverage UCSC’s global reputation as an innovator of interdisciplinary study, rooted in questions of social justice, to educate our students with the critical and creative thinking skills necessary to bolster our democracy and build a future based on equity with students who are culturally competent, globally versed, and historically informed.

Brandi Thompson Summers - Spatial Temporalities: The Future-Pasts of Black Dispossession
2022-04-20 12:15 - 13:30 | Virtual and In Person
In this talk, Dr. Summers explores the history of unhoused populations in Oakland, the cyclical displacements of Black locals, and the appearance and reappearance of parking lots in these stories of disruption. She tells the story of West Oakland, in particular, as a testing ground for speculative urbanism–an urbanism based not in speculator’s profit or the spectacles of a city’s self-branding, but in the utopian and dystopian possibilities that unfold in an ongoing (implicitly and explicitly racialized) housing emergency. This event will be fully remote, with attendance only via Zoom.

The Center for Cultural Studies hosts a weekly Wednesday colloquium featuring work by faculty and visitors. We gather at 12:00 PM, with presentations beginning at 12:15 PM.
For Spring 2022, the colloquium will take a hybrid format, with the option of in-person or virtual attendance. Attendees have the option to attend in person in Humanities 210 or to watch the presentation on zoom. To attend remotely via zoom, please RSVP in advance, and you will receive a zoom link on the morning of the colloquium. In most cases, speakers will appear remotely so that they will not have to present wearing a mask. To RSVP for the full Spring colloquium series, please use this form. If you have any questions about the colloquium, please contact Piper Milton (cult@ucsc.edu).
Staff assistance is provided by The Humanities Institute.

PhD+ Workshop - Stories from the Field
2022-04-22 11:00 - 12:30 | Virtual Event
While humanities doctoral programs tend to focus on training students for tenure track faculty positions, many PhDs pursue jobs outside of a university setting. According to the UC Humanities Research Institute’s recent report, Stories from the Field, more than a quarter of UC humanities doctoral alumni reported that they did not seek a tenure track faculty position when they started their PhD programs, and this percentage increased during the isolation of the dissertation writing process and the challenges of the academic job market. UC humanities PhDs go into a wide range of careers – from positions in the non-profit sector to marketing and communications work and jobs in the tech industry. Stories from the Field considers the economic and professional outcomes of humanities PhDs, to better track where humanists end up, how they apply their expertise, and the ways they are contributing to society. Examining faculty positions alongside other careers, the report promotes a broader definition of what success looks like for humanities PhDs.
Join us for a conversation with Kelly Anne Brown (Literature Ph.D., ’11), Associate Director of UCHRI, and UC Santa Cruz Literature alumni to discuss findings from Stories from the Field and the diverse range of careers that humanities PhDs pursue. Our Literature graduate alumni panelists include J. Josh Guevara (Ph.D. ’12), Warren Hoffman (Ph.D., ’04), Andrea Quaid (Ph.D., ’14), and Cathy Thomas (Ph.D., ’19). Many PhD alumni are eager to keep in touch with graduate program networks as well as support current students and this event provides an opportunity to further those connections. The workshop is being held during Alumni Week to encourage faculty, graduate students, and alumni to all engage in this important discussion and reflection about graduate humanities training at UC Santa Cruz and opportunities beyond.
Panelists:
As the Associate Director of UCHRI, Kelly Anne Brown manages a diverse portfolio of projects, including the UC-wide competitive grants program, Humanists@Work, and Horizons of the Humanities, among others. She holds a BA in English from Lewis & Clark College and a PhD in literature from UC Santa Cruz, where her scholarship centered on modernist publicness and interwar art and performance. Her professional background includes experience in public policy and administration, with a focus on children and family issues at the city, county, and state levels of California government. Her recent scholarship addresses issues of professionalization, the work of the humanities, and the future of graduate education.
Dr. Cathy Thomas is an assistant professor in the English Department at UCSB. She is a creative writer and scholar invested in womanist and black feminist pedagogy, practice, critique, and play. She studies Afrodiasporic Literature across genres, especially speculative fiction, Caribbean literature & culture, comic books, and science & technology studies. Her work agitates against androcentric modernity and antiblack humanism. She received her PhD in Literature at University of California at Santa Cruz and her MFA from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Prior to academia, she work in a genetics lab, at a neuropsychiatric center focused on mindfulness, in Hollywood, and on HIV clinical research.

Andrea Quaid (she/her) is a writer, editor and teacher. Her work focuses on poetry and poetics, pedagogy, and feminist studies. She is co-editor of Acts + Encounters, a collection about experimental writing and community, and Urgent Possibilities, Writings on Feminist Poetics and Emergent Pedagogies (both from eohippus labs). Currently, she is co-editing a collection called Migrating Pedagogies (Forthcoming). Her work appears in albeit, American Book Review, BOMBlog, Entropy, Feminist Spaces Journal, Full Stop, Jacket2, Lana Turner, LIT, Los Angeles Review of Books, Manifold and Syllabus. With Harold Abramowitz, she curates RAD! Residencies at the Poetic Research Bureau. She teaches in the Bard College Language & Thinking Program and Institute for Writing and Thinking. She also teaches in the Critical Studies Department at California Institute of the Arts. She co-founded and directs Humanities in the City, an education nonprofit that hosts public programs committed to education equity and the transformational power of interdisciplinary humanities study in classrooms and communities.

With more than fourteen years of public sector experience, J. Guevara has a proven record of solving wicked problems, working with diverse, cross-functional teams, and achieving results at scale in local government. J. is an expert in broadband, civic innovation, and protecting the value of infrastructure to catalyze community impact especially through public-private partnerships.

In 2020, he joined the City of San José Public Works Department as Deputy Director, responsible for nearly 150 employees in the Development Services and Engineering Services divisions. His portfolio includes private development such as Google’s 80-acre Downtown West campus and also the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority’s $7-$9 billion dollar expansion of BART rail system with over 5 miles of single-bore tunnel and two new stations in Downtown San José as the biggest public capital investment in the Bay Area in over a generation. J. is also responsible for the San José Small Cell team delivering one of the fastest 5G deployments in the nation through public-private partnerships with AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, where he launched the San Jose Digital Inclusion Fund, dedicated to connect and sustain adoption to 50,000 households over ten years through a collective impact model.

Using Scrum, OKRs, and a multiplier leadership approach, J. coaches new civic innovators and builds transformative teams. He holds a Ph.D. in Literature from UC Santa Cruz with a dissertation all about the unexpected cultural work of the bicycle as a form of equitable technology. You can learn more about J. at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jjoshguevara/

Warren Hoffman currently serves as the executive director for the Association for Jewish Studies in New York where he leads the largest membership organization of Jewish studies scholars, teachers, and students in the world. Warren brings more than 15 years of experience in the Jewish, arts, academic, and nonprofit sectors. In Philadelphia, he was the associate director of community programming for the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia and was also the senior director of programming for the Gershman Y in Philadelphia. Warren also served as the literary manager and dramaturg for Philadelphia Theatre Company and was the associate artistic director of Jewish Repertory Theatre. Warren holds a PhD in American literature from the University of California–Santa Cruz and has taught at multiple universities. He earned rave reviews for his book The Passing Game: Queering Jewish American Culture. The second edition of his critically acclaimed book The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway Musical hit bookstores February 2020. His most recent book, for which he served as co-editor, Warm and Welcoming: How the Jewish Community Can Become Truly Diverse and Inclusive in the 21st Century, was released in late 2021. warrenhoffman.com

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About the PhD+ Workshop Series
Join us for the sixth year of PhD+ Workshops, hosted by The Humanities Institute. We meet monthly to discuss possible career paths for PhDs, internship possibilities, grants/fellowships, work/life balance, elements of style, online identity issues, and much, much more.

Roald Hoffman, "Returning, Remembering, Forgiving"
2022-04-25 10:40 - 12:00 | Virtual Event
Please join us for a lecture featuring Prof. Roald Hoffmann, winner of the 1981 Nobel Prize, and a Holocaust survivor.
This lecture will take place in conjunction with Prof. Nathaniel Deutsch’s course “The Holocaust: A Global Perspective.”

Dickens Day of Writing
2022-04-27 08:00 - 14:00 | Museum of Art & History, 705 Front Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95060, United States
The Dickens Project is the premier center in the United States for the study of Charles Dickens and nineteenth-century studies. Founded in 1981 and based at UC Santa Cruz, the Project is an international consortium made up of over 40 universities and colleges, including universities in Britain, Canada, Australia, and Israel.
As part of our mission to promote the study of Victorian texts, we strive to assist young scholars in examining the cultural relevance of nineteenth-century literature to the twenty-first-century world. The Dickens Day of Writing will focus on “Night Walks,” a Dickens essay that examines the homeless endemic in Victorian England, to cultivate greater awareness about social justice issues like homelessness and housing instability in Santa Cruz County.
The Dickens Day of Writing is both a writing retreat and a writing competition designed to support junior and senior high school students in their futures as college students and professionals. Through reflecting on a short essay by Charles Dickens, the students will reinforce skills learned in the classroom, such as critical reading, analytical reasoning, argumentative writing, creative production, and cultural history to prepare them for life beyond high school.

Learning Objectives:

to strengthen literary analysis skills
to develop strong critical thinking skills
to prepare students for timed writing tests
to foster social engagement between students and the Santa Cruz community

Benefits and support for teachers and schools:

honoraria of $50 to participating teachers
funding for substitute teachers and travel assistance the day of the event
an annotated edition of “Night Walks” by Charles Dickens and lesson plans
a visiting guest lecture by a Dickens Project scholar
writing support for students
free registration to attend the Dickens Universe

Benefits and support for students:

exposure to the campus and culture of a major research university to support college preparation work
the publication of their Day of Writing Essay in a printed volume
individual mentorships with faculty and students at the university level
the chance for extra timed-writing test preparation
writing support to develop strong writing skills
the chance to win a cash prize
the chance to receive a fellowship to attend the Dickens Universe and a corresponding Department of
Literature course for 5 UC credits
free registration to attend the Dickens Universe

The top three essayists will receive cash prizes. 1st Place: $500, 2nd Place: $300, 3rd Place: $150
Additionally, the first place essayist will be invited to attend the Dickens Universe conference (July 24-30, 2022), and will be eligible to receive 5 UC quarter units of undergraduate credit through UCSC Summer Session (upon completion of course assignments).
Collaborators & Co-sponsors: Julie Minnis, The Friends of the Dickens Project, The Jordan-Stern Presidential Chair for Dickens and Nineteenth-Century Studies, Santa Cruz County Office of Education, UCSC’s Department of Literature, Education Department, University Library, The Humanities Institute, Sentinel Printers, and David A. Perdue and The Charles Dickens Page

Michelle C. Velazquez-Potts - Force-Feeding and the Suspended Animation of Torture
2022-04-27 12:15 - 13:30 | Virtual and In Person
Since 2002, prisoners at Guantánamo Bay detention camp have been force-fed as punishment for hunger striking, prompting the question of how to understand the feeding tube’s various uses as both a form of medical treatment and torture instrument. By placing force-feeding practices at Guantánamo Bay within a larger history of medicalized punishment, this talk tracks how the functions of the feeding tube are altered and reimagined by the US military. The talk also explores end-of-life politics at Guantánamo Bay by investigating the recent possibility of palliative care for aging prisoners at the camps. I consider how the military’s plans for hospice is made possible by humanitarian logics of war that continue to centralize care in similar ways to that of force-feeding. Please note: this event will be fully remote, with attendance only via Zoom.

The Center for Cultural Studies hosts a weekly Wednesday colloquium featuring work by faculty and visitors. We gather at 12:00 PM, with presentations beginning at 12:15 PM.
For Spring 2022, the colloquium will take a hybrid format, with the option of in-person or virtual attendance. Attendees have the option to attend in person in Humanities 210 or to watch the presentation on zoom. To attend remotely via zoom, please RSVP in advance, and you will receive a zoom link on the morning of the colloquium. In most cases, speakers will appear remotely so that they will not have to present wearing a mask. To RSVP for the full Spring colloquium series, please use this form. If you have any questions about the colloquium, please contact Piper Milton (cult@ucsc.edu).
Staff assistance is provided by The Humanities Institute.

Living Writers: Samuel Ace
2022-04-28 17:20 - 18:55 | Virtual Event
LIVING WRITERS UCSC, SPRING 2022 presents: CELEBRANT: SOUND ACTIONS
CELEBRANT: SOUND ACTIONS showcases interdisciplinary writers who deeply engage in various sonic forms, whether the libretto and the operatic, sound and visual art, acoustic music and songwriting, or embodied meditations to explore the possibilities in being attentive to sound, as action and celebrant through writing. This hybrid series features an array of writers and artists who work across several modes (text, multi-media, meditation, and performance) exploring what happens between sound and/as verbal language, rendering its effects and configurations through poetry, prose, and sound inspired and activated interdisciplinary writing practices.

Samuel Ace is a trans and genderqueer poet and sound artist. He is the author of several books, most recently Our Weather Our Sea and the newly re-issued Meet Me There: Normal Sex and Home in three days. Don’t wash. He is the recipient of the Astraea Lesbian Writer Award and the Firecracker Alternative Book Award in Poetry, as well as a multi-time finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and the National Poetry Series. Recent work can be found in Poetry, ARC Poetry, PEN America, Best American Experimental Poetry, The Academy of American Poet’s Poem-a-Day, Poetry Daily, We Want it All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics, and many other journals and anthologies.
Sponsored by The Puknat Literary Endowment, The Porter Hitchcock Poetry Fund, The Laurie Sain Endowment, The Humanities Institute, and Bookshop Santa Cruz.

Suryakant Waghmore - Being an Ambedkarite Under Hindu Rashtra
2022-04-29 10:00 - 12:00 | Virtual Event
Suryakant Waghmore is a Public Sociologist, Academic and Writer. Currently a Professor of Sociology at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT-Bombay, he earned his PhD in Sociology as a Commonwealth Scholar from University of Edinburgh (2011). He is author of Civility against Caste (2013) and Co-editor of Civility in Crisis (2020). He was recently awarded the New India Foundation Fellowship (2021) to work on his book tentatively titled, Is a Post Caste City Possible? He was previously Professor and Chairperson at the Centre for Social Justice and Governance, TISS (Mumbai) and has held visiting faculty positions at Fudan University, University of Hyderabad, Stanford University and Göttingen University.

Presented by THI’s Center for South Asian Studies.

Linguistics Colloquia: Nicole Holliday
2022-04-29 13:20 - 15:00 | TBD, CA, United States

The 8th Annual AA/PIRC Comedy Night featuring Maysoon Zayid
2022-04-30 17:00 - 18:15 | Virtual and In Person
The Asian American/Pacific Islander Resource Center, the College Nine & John Lewis College Programs Office and the College Nine Student Senate present: The 8th Annual AA/PIRC Comedy Night Featuring Maysoon Zayid at College Nine and Ten Multipurpose Room!
Our doors open at 4:00 PM. If you are joining in person, we invite you all to arrive early to meet with organizations and departments who will be tabling before the show starts.

Real Time Captioning will be available. If you have a disability-related accommodation for this event, please contact drc@ucsc.edu. Requests should be made as soon as possible to allow time for coordination. To increase access for everyone, please refrain from wearing heavy scents, such as perfume. For more information about scent free inclusion check out this article.
Co-sponsored by: Disability Resource Center, Womxn’s Center, & Center for the Middle East and North Africa.
Maysoon Zayid is an actress, comedian, writer, and disability advocate. She is a graduate of and a Guest Comedian in Residence at Arizona State University. Maysoon is a Princeton University Arts Fellow for 2021-23 and will begin two years of teaching and community collaboration in September. Maysoon is the co-founder/co-executive producer of the New York Arab American Comedy Festival and The Muslim Funny Fest. She was a full-time On Air Contributor to Countdown with Keith Olbermann and a columnist for The Daily Beast. She has most recently appeared on Oprah Winfrey Networks In Deep Shift, 60 Minutes, and ABC News. Maysoon had the most viewed TED Talk of 2014 and was named 1 of 100 Women of 2015 by BBC. As a professional comedian, Maysoon has performed in top New York clubs and has toured extensively at home and abroad. She was a headliner on the Arabs Gone Wild Comedy Tour and The Muslims Are Coming Tour. Maysoon appeared alongside Adam Sandler in You Don’t Mess with the Zohan and has written for VICE. She limped in New York Fashion Week, is a recurring character on General Hospital, and is the author of Audible’s Find Another Dream.

RESCHEDULED - Blossoms into Gold: The Croatians in the Pajaro Valley
2022-05-01 16:00 - 18:00 | Museum of Art & History, 705 Front Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95060, United States
** This event has been rescheduled for July 24th **
Of all the immigrant groups who flocked to California in the last two hundred years, probably the least known are the Croatians of the Dalmatian Coast. Often identified as Austrians, Slavonians, or Dalmatians, they came from a glorious background of international traders, sailors, and political thinkers few people in America knew about, and brought with them knowledge that would change the way the United States did business. At the same time, they transported their customs and beliefs to their new home and established a way of life that was vibrant and rich in traditional folkways. Join the authors of Blossoms into Gold for a discussion of this community’s fabled past and economic innovations in the Pajaro Valley.
Donna F. Mekis holds degrees in both Anthropology and Education from UC Santa Cruz. She had a forty-year career in higher education, working at both UC Santa Cruz and Cabrillo College. At Cabrillo, Donna developed and directed both the Transfer Center and the Honors Transfer Program. Recently, she served as the President of UCSC’s Alumni Association and is currently a Trustee on the UC Santa Cruz Foundation Board.
Kathryn Mekis Miller did her undergraduate and graduate work at UC Berkeley. She and her husband Marshall Miller opened their first retail store in Santa Cruz in 1971. They have developed a number of successful businesses under the umbrella name Sun Shops, which has now become a second-generation Santa Cruz business. In 2009, Sun Shops were honored as the Business of the Year by the Santa Cruz Chamber of Commerce.
For more information, please visit Blossoms into Gold.
Free with museum admission. Sponsored by UC Santa Cruz University Library and The Humanities Institute.

Mieko Kawakami in Conversation with Ruth Ozeki
2022-05-02 18:00 - 20:00 | Virtual Event
Bookshop Santa Cruz welcomes Mieko Kawakami, bestselling author of Breasts and Eggs, for an online discussion of her new, extraordinary novel—All the Lovers in the Night, in which she demonstrates yet again why she is one of today’s most uncategorizable, insightful, and talented novelists. Kawakami will be in conversation with acclaimed author Ruth Ozeki at this special event presented by Europa Editions.
“Her most accomplished novel yet… A contemporary Japanese master continues her meteoric rise into our literary firmament.” —Oprah Daily (A Most Anticipated Book of 2022)
Visit https://www.bookshopsantacruz.com/mieko-kawakami for more information.

Mieko Kawakami is the author of the internationally best-selling novel Breasts and Eggs, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and one of TIME’s Best 10 Books of 2020; and the highly-acclaimed Heaven, her second novel to be translated and published in English, which Oprah Daily described as written “with jagged, visceral beauty.” Born in Osaka, Japan, Kawakami made her literary debut as a poet in 2006, and in 2007 published her first novella, My Ego, My Teeth, and the World. Known for their poetic qualities, their insights into the female body, and their preoccupation with ethics and modern society, her books have been translated into over twenty languages. Kawakami’s literary awards include the Akutagawa Prize, the Tanizaki Prize, and the Murasaki Shikibu Prize. She lives in Tokyo, Japan.
Ruth Ozeki is a novelist, filmmaker, and Zen Buddhist priest. She is the best-selling author of four novels: The Book of Form and Emptiness, longlisted for the UK Women’s Prize for Fiction; My Year of Meats; All Over Creation; and A Tale for the Time Being, winner of the LA Times Book Prize and finalist for the 2013 Booker Prize and the National Book Critics’ Circle Award. Her nonfiction work includes a memoir, The Face: A Time Code, and the documentary film, Halving the Bones. A longtime Buddhist practitioner, Ruth is affiliated with the Brooklyn Zen Center and the Everyday Zen Foundation. She is the Grace Jarcho Ross 1933 Professor of Humanities at Smith College.
TICKETING INFORMATION:
Choose from several ticket options!
entry-only ticket: $5 (no book included)
entry + book ticket package: $32—$62 (book included, with signed bookplate while supplies last)
For entry + book, select IN-STORE PICKUP or have the book SHIPPED to you either in the U.S. or internationally.
EVENT ACCESS:
The link to join the virtual event will be sent to the email address you register upon purchase. It will also be available for ticketholders here on Eventbrite.
Can’t make the event? A replay will be available to customers afterwards!
This event is presented by Europa Editions and Bookshop Santa Cruz and co-sponsored by The Humanities Institute.

Filippo Gianferrari - Dante and Boccaccio vs. Medieval Education: A Lesson in Cross-Cultural Pastoral
2022-05-04 12:15 - 13:30 | Virtual and In Person
Readers have always been fascinated by Dante’s distinctive habit of placing episodes from Scripture side by side with ancient pagan myths, as though the latter had a comparable authority. As my reading shows, a popular medieval school text, known as the Eclogue of Theodulus (Ecloga Theoduli), supplied a fitting precedent and model for this practice and might have suggested some specific series of examples that Dante stages in his Purgatorio. By constructing a system of parallel mythological and biblical examples, the Ecloga Theoduli featured a syncretic account of universal history that suggested mythology was a prefiguration of the events recounted in the Bible. Whereas the Ecloga depicts a clash between Christian and pagan cultures, however, dismissing the latter as a lie, Dante harmonizes the two traditions, providing a syncretic program for the moral instruction of the Christian reader. Although the Purgatorio’s syncretic discourse constituted a remarkable innovation, which exerted long-lasting influence on later authors, it nonetheless retained some of the cultural limitations imposed by the Ecloga—as, for instance, in the representation of Virgil’s inability to cross the river Lethe in Eden. The chapter goes on to argue that first in Paradiso 19 and then in his last work, the second Egloga to Giovanni del Virgilio, Dante obliquely criticizes the Ecloga Theoduli’s condemnation of ancient poetic wisdom. The case of the Ecloga, therefore, well encapsulates Dante’s conflicting attitude toward his own education. The paper ends by showing that Boccaccio’s eclogue Olympia (Buccolicum Carmen 14) provides a sophisticated parody and refutation of the Ecloga Theoduli that takes as its model and interlocutor Dante’s wrestling with the same text in his own oeuvre.

The Center for Cultural Studies hosts a weekly Wednesday colloquium featuring work by faculty and visitors. We gather at 12:00 PM, with presentations beginning at 12:15 PM.
For Spring 2022, the colloquium will take a hybrid format, with the option of in-person or virtual attendance. Attendees have the option to attend in person in Humanities 210 or to watch the presentation on zoom. To attend remotely via zoom, please RSVP in advance, and you will receive a zoom link on the morning of the colloquium. In most cases, speakers will appear remotely so that they will not have to present wearing a mask. To RSVP for the full Spring colloquium series, please use this form. If you have any questions about the colloquium, please contact Piper Milton (cult@ucsc.edu).
Staff assistance is provided by The Humanities Institute.

Deep Read 2022 Faculty Salon
2022-05-04 18:00 - 19:30 | Cowell Ranch Hay Barn, Ranch View Rd, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
Join us for a discussion with campus faculty and the Deep Read community at the 2022 Deep Read Salon where we’ll discuss Yaa Gyasi’s Transcendent Kingdom. UCSC Chancellor Cynthia Larive—an accomplished bioanalytical chemist—will be joined by Vilashini Coopan (Literature and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies) and Gina Athena Ulysse (Feminist Studies), for an evening of discussion and depth.
Community members in Santa Cruz are encouraged to join us in person at the Hay Barn. Everyone else will be able to participate remotely over Zoom.

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.

Harjeet Grewal - Janamsakhis and Sikh Epistemology
2022-05-05 10:00 - 12:00 | Virtual Event
The Sikh tradition produced some of the earliest vernacular prose narratives beginning in the mid-sixteenth century known as Janamsakhis. These accounts of Guru Nanak Sahib’s life remain central to the lives of Sikhs across the globe today. This talk reviews scholarly debates about Janamsakhi’s and argues that examining the Janamsakhis from a critical literary perspective helps better determine their role in Sikh intellectual and ethical life. Their longevity and continuing importance, Grewal argues, is better understood from such a perspective.
Join Zoom here.
Presented by the Center for South Asian Studies and co-sponsored by The Humanities Institute.

Linguistics Colloquia: Katy Carlson
2022-05-06 13:20 - 15:00 | TBD, CA, United States

Santa Cruz Pickwick Club: A Tale of Two Cities
2022-05-09 13:00 - 15:00 | Virtual Event
A Tale of Two Cities is a historical novel set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. It is the story of the French Doctor Manette, his 18-year-long imprisonment in the Bastille in Paris, and his release to live in London with his daughter Lucie whom he had never met. The story details the conditions that led to the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror.
June 22: Book the Second: The Golden Thread, Chapters 6-24
Its central themes–cultural and historical difference, the nature of political revolution and change, the identity and narration of the self, sacrifice, secrecy heroism–find expression through an often weird or gothic concern with bodies and their doubles, split identities, and the uncertain boundaries of life and death.
Join Wayne Batten and the Santa Cruz Dickens Fellowship for a series of discussions about Dickens’s most enduring–and shortest!–novels.

Supplemental Readings are available upon request. Contact Courtney at cmahaney@ucsc.edu.
Recommended Edition: We recommend the Penguin Classics edition of the novel, but other versions are fine. Download the novel to read at Gutenburg.org or to listen at LibriVox.org.
The Santa Cruz Pickwick (Book) Club, a branch of the Dickens Fellowship, is a community of local bookworms, students, and teachers who meet monthly to discuss a nineteenth-century novel. The Santa Cruz Public Libraries provide support for the reading group.

Santa Cruz Pickwick Club
Meets on the fourth Sunday of the month from 1:00-3:00 PM (Pacific).
Questions? Call (831) 459-2103
or email dpj@ucsc.edu.

Kyle Parry - Generativity Across Scales
2022-05-11 12:15 - 13:30 | Virtual and In Person
Toni Morrison said a book is not “This is what I believe,” because that would be “just a tract.” Rather, a book is “I don’t know what it is, but I am interested in finding out what it might mean to me, as well as to other people.” This talk’s “I don’t know” is a concept that has been used to describe everything from language to a life stage to the creative power of the internet: generativity. Arguing against uncritical visions of generative AI, I frame generativity as a fact and a force at work across multiple scales of networked life. It is something people do together, and that might yet be done differently.

The Center for Cultural Studies hosts a weekly Wednesday colloquium featuring work by faculty and visitors. We gather at 12:00 PM, with presentations beginning at 12:15 PM.
For Spring 2022, the colloquium will take a hybrid format, with the option of in-person or virtual attendance. Attendees have the option to attend in person in Humanities 210 or to watch the presentation on zoom. To attend remotely via zoom, please RSVP in advance, and you will receive a zoom link on the morning of the colloquium. In most cases, speakers will appear remotely so that they will not have to present wearing a mask. To RSVP for the full Spring colloquium series, please use this form. If you have any questions about the colloquium, please contact Piper Milton (cult@ucsc.edu).
Staff assistance is provided by The Humanities Institute.

Living Writers: Soham Patel
2022-05-12 17:20 - 18:55 | Virtual Event
LIVING WRITERS UCSC, SPRING 2022 presents: CELEBRANT: SOUND ACTIONS
CELEBRANT: SOUND ACTIONS showcases interdisciplinary writers who deeply engage in various sonic forms, whether the libretto and the operatic, sound and visual art, acoustic music and songwriting, or embodied meditations to explore the possibilities in being attentive to sound, as action and celebrant through writing. This hybrid series features an array of writers and artists who work across several modes (text, multi-media, meditation, and performance) exploring what happens between sound and/as verbal language, rendering its effects and configurations through poetry, prose, and sound inspired and activated interdisciplinary writing practices.

Soham Patel, daughter of immigrants to the U.S. by way of Uganda, India, and the United Kingdom, Patel was born in Lincoln, England and raised in rural North Dakota. She is the author of the poetry collections to afar from afar (The Accomplices), ever really hear it (Subito, [winner of the 2017 Subito Prize, chosen by Mathias Svalina]), the forthcoming all one in the end—water (Delete, 2022), and the chapbooks and nevermind the storm, New Weather Drafts (Portable Press @Yo-Yo Labs), and in airplane and other poems (oxeye press). She is an editor at The Georgia Review and Fence.
Sponsored by The Puknat Literary Endowment, The Porter Hitchcock Poetry Fund, The Laurie Sain Endowment, The Humanities Institute, and Bookshop Santa Cruz.

Karen Tei Yamashita Lifetime Achievement Award Celebration
2022-05-13 16:00 - 18:00 | Cowell Provost House, Cowell Provost House, Cowell Service Rd‎ University of California Santa Cruz, Cowell College, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
Please join us in a celebration of Karen Tei Yamashita’s Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Book Foundation. Karen’s books will be for sale at the event through Bookshop Santa Cruz. For more information contact: meperks@ucsc.edu.
Sponsored by the Creative Writing Program, the Literature Department, and Cowell College.

Jed Buchwald - "Isaac Newton and the Origin of Civilization"
2022-05-13 17:30 - 19:00 | Virtual Event
Isaac Newton, who renovated the foundations of mathematics, optics, and mechanics in the 17th century, aimed also to overturn the entire history of civilization. By the late 1690s Newton had become convinced that the natural rate of population growth implied that elaborately organized social life had not arisen until near the time of Solomon’s kingdom. He canvassed ancient texts for words that could be pruned and transformed into supporting evidence – deploying in the process the earliest known procedures for handling discrepant data, and reconstructing the very plan of Solomon’s temple. Here we will find Newton’s unorthodox religious convictions interacting in complex ways with the new methods that he had introduced into experimental science. And we will also see how the most sophisticated of techniques can produce error when data is massaged to fit a strongly-held conviction.
*Due to unforeseen circumstances, this year’s event will only be held online. Join us by registering for the webinar here:

Jed Z. Buchwald is the Doris and Henry Dreyfuss Professor of History at Caltech. After earning degrees in physics and science history at Princeton and Harvard, Professor Buchwald taught for twenty years at the University of Toronto. After several years as director of the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he moved to the California Institute of Technology in 2001. He has authored or co-authored six books in the history of science and, more recently, on the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics. Buchwald is a member of the American Philosophical Society, the International Academy of the History of Science, and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was also a MacArthur Fellow in 1995.

Inaugural Nauenberg History of Science Lecture
The Nauenberg History of Science Lecture was established in honor of Michael Nauenberg, a founding faculty member in the Physics Department at UCSC who came to the campus in 1966. During his distinguished academic career, he contributed to a remarkably broad range of fields, including particle physics, condensed matter physics, astrophysics, chaos theory, fluid dynamics, and the history of physics in the 17th-18th centuries.
Amongst Professor Nauenberg’s passions, he deeply believed in the importance of interdisciplinary scholarship connecting the sciences with the humanities. Following his retirement in 1994, he pursued his long-standing interests in the history of science, writing books and articles about Joseph Banks, Robert Hooke, Christiaan Huygens, and Isaac Newton. In 2013, he became the only scientist to receive the University of California Panunzio Distinguished Emeriti Award, an honor normally given to Professors in the Humanities and Social Sciences. When Professor Nauenberg passed away in 2019, the UCSC Emeriti Association and the Nauenberg family established a History of Science Lecture series in the spirit of his 1999 proposal.
You can support the lecture series by contributing here.
The Nauenberg History of Science Lecture is presented by the UCSC Emeriti Association and co-sponsored by The Humanities Institute.

Santa Cruz County History Fair
2022-05-14 12:00 - 16:00 | Museum of Art & History, 705 Front Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95060, United States
Celebrate local history by connecting with historical organizations and groups throughout Santa Cruz County. Enjoy hands-on activities, artifacts, photographs, publications, and more.
The 2022 Santa Cruz County History Fair is generously sponsored by The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz.
Participating Organizations:
Amah Mutsun Tribal Band
California State Parks
Capitola Historical Museum
Castro Adobe State Park
Davenport Jail
Evergreen Cemetery
Friends of Santa Cruz State Parks
Friends of the Cowell Lime Works, UCSC
Genealogical Society of Santa Cruz County
History Forum
Historic Preservation Commission
London Nelson Legacy Initiative
MAH Publications Committee & Historic Landmark Committee
Native Daughters of the Golden West
Otter B Books
Pajaro Valley Historical Society
Researchers Anonymous
San Lorenzo Valley Historical Society
Santa Cruz Daughters of the American Revolution
Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History
Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History
Santa Cruz Public Libraries
Santa Cruz Surfing Club Preservation Society
Scotts Valley Historical Society
Special Collections & Archives at UCSC
Watsonville is in the Heart
Watsonville Public Libraries

Pamela Z - Concert and Panel Discussion
2022-05-14 19:00 - 20:45 | Rio Theater, 1205 Soquel Avenue, Santa Cruz, CA, 95062, United States
Pamela Z is a composer, technologist, mixed-media and performance artist specializing in real-time synthesis, voice and vocality, and the framing of found objects and found texts as opportunities for unexpectedly visceral engagements— engagements with the interiorities and exteriorities of our identities and communities. She will complete a two-part residency at UC Santa Cruz, engaging with artists, and then in public dialogue with our music- and media-curious communities on the future of performance and multi-modal creativity.

Media and Society is a series of lectures and public conversations on the role of media, journalism, popular culture narrative, and media representation, in the deployment of power in contemporary society.

Each series lasts a full academic year, but the fall quarter of the series is also a component of Kresge 1: Power and Representation, the core course at Kresge College. The series as a whole uniquely serves the UC Santa Cruz community in a vital function of the liberal arts: to cultivate dialogue in the context of public dialogue, and to guard our freedoms in expressing and debating that knowledge.

The Deep Read: A Conversation with Yaa Gyasi
2022-05-15 16:00 - 17:30 | Quarry Amphitheater
Join us for a live discussion May 15 at the Quarry Amphitheater with novelist Yaa Gyasi and UC Santa Cruz Professor Emerita of Literature Karen Tei Yamashita, as we close the book on the 2022 Deep Read exploration of Transcendent Kingdom. We’ll discuss the conditions of cultural assimilation for immigrants to the United States, religious faith vs. scientific inquiry, and the experience of first-generation students in higher education.

Parking
Free parking for this event will be in the East Remote Lot 104. There will be free shuttles taking attendees from the parking lot to the venue.
Schedule
3:30 – 4:00pm: Doors open. UCSC Music Lecturer Francis Akotuah will perform Ghanian drumming with an ensemble
4:00 – 5:00pm: Yaa Gyasi and Karen Tei Yamashita in conversion
5:00 – 5:30pm: Q&A with Yaa Gyasi

About The Deep Read
This event 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.

The Stories of Pilipino Migrant Labor in San Jose: Challenging the Neoliberal Export Labor Policy of the Philippines
2022-05-17 10:00 - 11:30 | Virtual Event
Pilipinx Historical Dialogue: The purpose of this course is to foster an interactive conversation and space of political education amongst participants regarding Pilipinx history, diaspora, organizing, and culture.

Presented by the UC Santa Cruz Center for Racial Justice.

Adom Getachew - Africa for the Africans: A History of Self-Determination before Decolonization
2022-05-18 12:15 - 13:30 | Virtual and In Person
From the mid-nineteenth century into the twentieth, Africa for the Africans was the banner under which a range of pan-Africanists imaginaries and political projects were articulated. This lecture charts the transformations of this pan-African motto, examining in particular the shifting conceptions of “Africa” in the first two decades of the twentieth century. This event is co-sponsored by The Humanities Institute. Please note: this event is fully remote, with attendance only via Zoom.

The Center for Cultural Studies hosts a weekly Wednesday colloquium featuring work by faculty and visitors. We gather at 12:00 PM, with presentations beginning at 12:15 PM.
For Spring 2022, the colloquium will take a hybrid format, with the option of in-person or virtual attendance. Attendees have the option to attend in person in Humanities 210 or to watch the presentation on zoom. To attend remotely via zoom, please RSVP in advance, and you will receive a zoom link on the morning of the colloquium. In most cases, speakers will appear remotely so that they will not have to present wearing a mask. To RSVP for the full Spring colloquium series, please use this form. If you have any questions about the colloquium, please contact Piper Milton (cult@ucsc.edu).
Staff assistance is provided by The Humanities Institute.

Madhavi Murty - Stories that Bind: Political Economy and Culture in New India
2022-05-18 15:00 - 16:30 | Virtual and In Person
Join us to celebrate the publication of a new book by Feminist Studies Prof. Madhavi Murty, in conversation with Prof. Gina Dent.
Stories that Bind: Political Economy and Culture in New India (Rutgers University Press) examines the assertion of authoritarian nationalism and neoliberalism backed by the authority of the state, and argues that contemporary India should be understood as the intersection of the two. Through its focus on India and its complex media landscape, the book reveals that this intersection has a narrative form, which Prof. Murty labels “spectacular realism.” Studying stories told through film, journalism, and popular non-fiction, Murty argues that Hindu nationalism and neo-liberalism are conjoined, and that consent for this political economy project is crucially won in the domain of popular culture.

Attendance is hybrid and can be in-person in Humanities 1 210 or virtually via Zoom.

Living Writers: Senior Projects Reading
2022-05-19 17:20 - 18:55 | Humanities Lecture Hall, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
LIVING WRITERS UCSC, SPRING 2022 presents: CELEBRANT: SOUND ACTIONS
CELEBRANT: SOUND ACTIONS showcases interdisciplinary writers who deeply engage in various sonic forms, whether the libretto and the operatic, sound and visual art, acoustic music and songwriting, or embodied meditations to explore the possibilities in being attentive to sound, as action and celebrant through writing. This hybrid series features an array of writers and artists who work across several modes (text, multi-media, meditation, and performance) exploring what happens between sound and/as verbal language, rendering its effects and configurations through poetry, prose, and sound inspired and activated interdisciplinary writing practices.
Sponsored by The Puknat Literary Endowment, The Porter Hitchcock Poetry Fund, The Laurie Sain Endowment, The Humanities Institute, and Bookshop Santa Cruz.

Festival of Monsters
2022-05-20 - 2022-05-22 | UC Santa Cruz
The 2022 UCSC Festival of Monsters is a weekend of scholarship, social events, and art focused on monsters and their hidden meanings. Anyone interested in monsters, those tantalizing creatures that lurk in our collective cultural psyches, will enjoy this investigation and celebration of the strange and macabre. Scholarly presentations are framed by a film screening, a play reading, a horror writing contest, and a fabulous Halloween-in-May Monsters’ Masquerade Ball.
For more information and tickets, please visit: https://www.monsterstudies.ucsc.edu/festival
The Festival of Monsters is presented by the UCSC Center for Monster Studies and made possible through the support of The Humanities Institute, the Department of Performance, Play & Design, Oakes College, Porter College, and the generosity of James Gunderson and Peter Coha. Special thanks to the staff of the Center for Monster Studies – Labris Willendorf, David Crellin, and Jen Mahal.

Miriam Ellis International Playhouse
2022-05-20 20:00 - 2022-05-22 21:30 | Stevenson Event Center
Cowell College, Stevenson College and the Department of Languages and Applied Linguistics will present the 20th season of the Miriam Ellis international Playhouse (MEIP XX), May 20, 21, and 22, 2022 at 8:00 PM in the Stevenson Event Center at UCSC.
Several fully-staged theater pieces in different languages (TBA), with English supertitles, performed by Language students and directed by their instructors.
No admission charge; parking in adjacent lots is $5.00.
Interested in participating? Contact us:
Renée Cailloux, co-producer and director of the French Play: rcaillou@ucsc.edu
Sakae Fujita, co-producer and director of the Japanese Play: sakaefuj@ucsc.edu

Abolition. Feminism. Now. with Angela Davis, Gina Dent, Erica Meiners, and Beth Richie.
2022-05-21 14:00 - 15:30 | Quarry Amphitheater, 1156 High St, Santa Cruz, CA, 95062, United States
Join us for a conversation with abolitionist scholars Angela Davis, Gina Dent, Erica Meiners, and Beth Richie as they discuss their new book, Abolition. Feminism. Now.
This event is free and open to the public. Free tickets available online. Tickets and admission details to be announced. Please familiarize yourself in advance with the full COVID-19 protocols required for admission.
As a politic and a practice, abolition increasingly shapes our political moment—halting the construction of new jails and propelling movements to divest from policing. Yet erased from this landscape are not only the central histories of feminist—usually queer, anti-capitalist, grassroots, and women of color—organizing that continue to cultivate abolition but a recognition of the stark reality: abolition is our best response to endemic forms of state and interpersonal gender and sexual violence. Amplifying the analysis and the theories of change generated from vibrant community based organizing, Abolition. Feminism. Now. surfaces necessary historical genealogies, key internationalist learnings, and everyday practices to grow our collective and flourishing present and futures. Abolition. Feminism. Now. is available for purchase online or in person at Bookshop Santa Cruz.
This conversation is sponsored by the Institute of the Arts and Sciences, The Humanities Institute, Feminist Studies, and Bookshop Santa Cruz as part of the Andrew W. Mellon funded Visualizing Abolition initiative UC Santa Cruz.
About the Speakers:
Angela Y. Davis, Distinguished Professor Emerita of History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz, is a renowned activist and scholar. The author of numerous monographs, including most recently, Freedom is a Constant Struggle, 2015, for decades Davis has been for decades at the forefront of research and activism on prison abolition and the related intersections of race, gender, and class.

Gina Dent is Associate Professor of Feminist Studies, History of Consciousness, and Legal Studies at University of California, Santa Cruz. The editor of Black Popular Culture, and a prison abolition activist for more than 25 years, Dent is also the director of UC Santa Cruz’s groundbreaking public scholarship initiative, Visualizing Abolition, an art and education project aimed at shifting the social attachment to prisons.

Erica R. Meiners is Professor of Education and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Northeastern Illinois University and author most recently of For the Children? Protecting Innocence in a Carceral State, 2016. Meiners has collaboratively started and works alongside a range of ongoing mobilizations for liberation, particularly movements that involve access to free public education for all, including people during and after incarceration, and other queer abolitionist struggles.

Beth E. Richie is Director of the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy, and Professor of Black studies and criminology, law, and justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Richie’s most recent publication, Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence and America’s Prison Nation, 2012 demonstrates the emphasis of both her scholarly and activist work on how race/ethnicity and social position affect women’s experience of violence and incarceration, focusing on the experiences of African American battered women and sexual assault survivors.

Santa Cruz Dickens Fellowship: A Tale of Two Cities
2022-05-22 13:00 - 15:00 | Virtual Event
A Tale of Two Cities is a historical novel set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. It is the story of the French Doctor Manette, his 18-year-long imprisonment in the Bastille in Paris, and his release to live in London with his daughter Lucie whom he had never met. The story details the conditions that led to the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror.
Its central themes–cultural and historical difference, the nature of political revolution and change, the identity and narration of the self, sacrifice, secrecy heroism–find expression through an often weird or gothic concern with bodies and their doubles, split identities, and the uncertain boundaries of life and death.
Join Wayne Batten and the Santa Cruz Dickens Fellowship for a series of discussions about Dickens’s most enduring–and shortest!–novels.

Conversation on The Celine Archive with Filmmaker and Arts Dean Celine Parreñas
2022-05-24 14:30 - 16:30 | Virtual Event
The Center for Racial Justice presents a conversation on The Celine Archive with Filmmaker and Arts Dean Celine Parreñas.
In 1932, Celine Navarro was buried alive by her own community of Filipino Americans in northern California. Filmmaker Celine Parreñas Shimizu, finding kinship with Navarro’s long-lost story, exhumes her tragic life story while trying to unravel the mystery of her murder. This documentary paints a vivid portrait of the early Filipino migrant community, creating space not just for a reckoning with the haunting violence of Navarro’s murder, but also belated community grief.

Please view the film in advance. After registering, you will receive two links that will enable you to do the following:

View The Celine Archive (available from 5/12-5/26)
Join the May 24 webinar

The Helen Diller Distinguished Lecture in Jewish Studies: A Conversation with Ethan Michaeli
2022-05-24 18:00 | Virtual Event
Please join us The Helen Diller Distinguished Lecture in Jewish Studies, which promises to be a lively conversation between Ethan Michaeli, award-winning author of the new book, Twelve Tribes: Promise and Peril in the New Israel, and Nathaniel Deutsch, Baumgarten Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies at UC Santa Cruz. Taking place on May 24th at 6:00 PM.
RSVP to attend virtually here.
Twelve Tribes explores tribalism in Israel and Palestine by weaving together personal histories of ordinary citizens from all walks of life, revealing the land’s extraordinary, polyphonic diversity as well as its volatility. An American Jew with close family in Israel, Michaeli used his background and language skills to gain access to Israelis and Palestinians of all sectors during his travels across the country over four crucial years. Michaeli met with the aging revolutionaries who founded Israel’s kibbutz movement and the young people working for the country’s booming Big Tech companies, Ethiopian Jews and ultra-Orthodox Haredim. Twelve Tribes examines Israeli-Palestinian relations at the grassroots level with portraits of Palestinian citizens of Israel and those living in the territory ruled by the Palestinian Authority, as well as Israeli settlers and soldiers, illuminating how the conflicts there have global consequences. The book also explores the rapidly changing relationship between Israel and the United States, whose political interactions are increasingly fraught even as their military industries and even legal systems are more enmeshed.
Ethan Michaeli is an award-winning author, educator and publisher whose latest book, Twelve Tribes: Promise and Peril in the New Israel (Custom House, 2021), was praised by The New York Times Book Review, which noted that “…illuminating conversations with a wide variety of ordinary people — ultra-Orthodox Jews, Holocaust survivors, aging kibbutzniks, Ethiopian and Russian immigrants, Arab citizens of Israel, Jewish settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank — fill the pages of this richly descriptive book.” The New York Times applauded Ethan’s first book The Defender: How the Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America, (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016) as “a towering achievement that will not be soon forgotten.” The Defender was named a Notable Book of 2016 by The New York Times, The Washington Post and Amazon, awarded the Best Non Fiction of 2016 prizes from the Chicago Writers Association as well as the Midland Authors Association, and placed on the short list for the Mark Lynton Prize.

This event is made possible by generous support from the Helen Diller Family Endowment and the Center for Jewish Studies at UC Santa Cruz.

Barbara McCullough in Conversation with Lior Shamriz
2022-05-25 12:15 - 13:30 | Virtual and In Person
A native of New Orleans, Barbara McCullough has spent most of her life in southern California. Her initial interest was in photography but the moving image, immediacy, and possible forum for ideas set her on a path of exploration. McCullough’s work progressed to examining the creative process of artists but always maintaining a fascination with experimental film and video. McCullough sees herself as part of the continuum of African American storytellers whose aim is to preserve knowledge by capturing the essence of her culture — its life, spirit, and magic. She states, “I am dedicated to the preservation of the heritage of the African American artist/cultural worker by documenting her/his achievements for future generations to keep the music and visual poetry alive.” Her work has been shown in galleries, museums, and film festivals nationally and internationally and she is associated with UCLA filmmakers known as the LA Rebellion.

The Center for Cultural Studies hosts a weekly Wednesday colloquium featuring work by faculty and visitors. We gather at 12:00 PM, with presentations beginning at 12:15 PM.
For Spring 2022, the colloquium will take a hybrid format, with the option of in-person or virtual attendance. Attendees have the option to attend in person in Humanities 210 or to watch the presentation on zoom. To attend remotely via zoom, please RSVP in advance, and you will receive a zoom link on the morning of the colloquium. In most cases, speakers will appear remotely so that they will not have to present wearing a mask. To RSVP for the full Spring colloquium series, please use this form. If you have any questions about the colloquium, please contact Piper Milton (cult@ucsc.edu).
Staff assistance is provided by The Humanities Institute.

Socialist World Cultures Conference
2022-05-26 - 2022-05-27 | Humanities 1, Room 210, 1156 high st, Santa cruz, CA, 95060, United States
Keynote Lecture: Monica Popescu, McGill University – “Cold War Internationalism and Frayed Alliances,” Thursday, May 26, 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM.
Join us virtually at by clicking here.
Click here to download the Socialist World Cultures Conference Program.
Monica Popescu is Associate Professor and William Dawson Scholar of African Literatures in the Department of English at McGill University. She is the author of At Penpoint: African Literatures, Postcolonial Studies and the Cold War (2020), South African Literature beyond the Cold War (2010) and The Politics of of Violence in Post-Communist Films (1999).
Hosted by The Humanities Institute (THI) at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI).

Living Writers: Gina Athena Ulysse
2022-05-26 17:20 - 18:55 | Humanities Lecture Hall, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
LIVING WRITERS UCSC, SPRING 2022 presents: CELEBRANT: SOUND ACTIONS
CELEBRANT: SOUND ACTIONS showcases interdisciplinary writers who deeply engage in various sonic forms, whether the libretto and the operatic, sound and visual art, acoustic music and songwriting, or embodied meditations to explore the possibilities in being attentive to sound, as action and celebrant through writing. This hybrid series features an array of writers and artists who work across several modes (text, multi-media, meditation, and performance) exploring what happens between sound and/as verbal language, rendering its effects and configurations through poetry, prose, and sound inspired and activated interdisciplinary writing practices.

Gina Athena Ulysse is an artist-scholar and Professor of Feminist Studies. In her ongoing crossings and dialogues between the arts, humanities, and the social sciences, she engages in a practice of rasanblaj– the gathering of ideas, things, people, and spirits. Her last book, Because When God is Too Busy: Haiti, me & THE WORLD (2017) was long-listed for the 2017 PEN Open Book Award and received the 2018 Best Poetry Connecticut Center for the Book Award. She was the invited editor of “Caribbean Rasanblaj,” a double issue of e-misférica journal. Her articles, essays, and creative work have been published in Feminist Studies, Gastronomica, Interimpoetics, Liminalities, Meridians, Third Text, etc. She has also performed at The Bowery, The British Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Gorki Theatre, LaMaMa, Marcus Garvey Liberty Hall, MoMA Salon, and the MCA. In 2020, she was an invited artist to the Biennale of Sydney, Australia. More info on: ginaathenaulysse.com
Sponsored by The Puknat Literary Endowment, The Porter Hitchcock Poetry Fund, The Laurie Sain Endowment, The Humanities Institute, and Bookshop Santa Cruz.

Ronaldo V. Wilson and Gina Athena Ulysse - choose to begin/from the ground up/literally:
2022-06-01 12:15 - 13:30 | Virtual and In Person
“choose to begin/ from the ground up, literally:” is a conversation whose title is borrowed from Ulysse’s mixed-media assemblage, “Woodswork/Rasanblaj,” digital photos—tree roots, exposed by sun, open field, capturing frey of feeling, living and striated bark— and poetry, where—“No One Could/Save me but you.” This presentation operates between urgencies, where Ronaldo V. Wilson will reflect on and with Gina Athena Ulysse’s meditations, work that leads and pulls from the earth into what Ulyssee describes as the “ancestral imperative,”—here: material forms, sonic lineages, and images begin.

Gina Athena Ulysse is based in Santa Cruz, California where she is professor of Feminist Studies at UCSC. A photographer, poet, chanteuse, and a cultural anthropologist who is always writing something, she has presented her works in numerous colleges, and universities nationally and internationally. She has also performed in artistic venues including: The Bowery, Brecht Forum, The British Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Court Theatre, Gorki Theatre, House of World Cultures in Berlin, LaMaMa, Lyric Stage Theatre, Marcus Garvey Liberty Hall, MoMA Salon, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Australia among others. In 2020, she was invited to the Biennale of Sydney.
Ronaldo V. Wilson, PhD, is the author of: Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Man (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008), winner of the Cave Canem Prize; Poems of the Black Object (Futurepoem Books, 2009), winner of the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry and the Asian American Literary Award in Poetry; Farther Traveler: Poetry, Prose, Other (Counterpath Press, 2014), finalist for a Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry; and Lucy 72 (1913 Press, 2018). His latest books are Carmelina: Figures (Wendy’s Subway, 2021) and Virgil Kills: Stories (Nightboat Books, 2022). Co-founder of the Black Took Collective, Wilson is also an interdisciplinary artist. A recent, MacDowell, and Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Fellow, Wilson is Professor of Creative Writing and Literature at UC Santa Cruz, serving on the core faculty of the Creative Critical PhD Program; principal faculty member of CRES (Critical Race and Ethnic Studies); and affiliate faculty member of DANM (Digital Arts and New Media).
The Center for Cultural Studies hosts a weekly Wednesday colloquium featuring work by faculty and visitors. We gather at 12:00 PM, with presentations beginning at 12:15 PM.
For Spring 2022, the colloquium will take a hybrid format, with the option of in-person or virtual attendance. Attendees have the option to attend in person in Humanities 210 or to watch the presentation on zoom. To attend remotely via zoom, please RSVP in advance, and you will receive a zoom link on the morning of the colloquium. In most cases, speakers will appear remotely so that they will not have to present wearing a mask. To RSVP for the full Spring colloquium series, please use this form. If you have any questions about the colloquium, please contact Piper Milton (cult@ucsc.edu).
Staff assistance is provided by The Humanities Institute.

The Center for Racial Justice Presents: War Against Our Schools: Film Screening and Collaborative Viewing Guide Launch
2022-06-01 15:00 - 16:30 | Virtual Event
Please join us for a screening of La Guerra Contra Nuestras Escuelas/ War Against our Schools, a documentary project exploring the short and long term impact of school closings and privatization in Puerto Rico. After the screening, we will unveil the collaborative viewing guide created by Defend Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rico Syllabus to accompany the film. The guide features a microsyllabus exploring topics from the film, teaching tools, and advocacy resources that can be used in educational and community settings. Together, the film and viewing guide explore and historicize threats to public education in Puerto Rico and provide avenues for action needed to defend our schools.

Featured Speakers:

Marisol Lebron
Yarimar Bonilla
Isabel Guzzardo
Mikey Cordero
Sarah Molinari
Frances Medina

Bilingual Interpretation Provided By: Babilla Collective

PhD+ Workshop – Research Development
2022-06-03 13:00 - 14:00 | Virtual Event
Research Development
Learn how to make your fellowship and grant proposals competitive to a wide range of selection committees. We’ll discuss what does and does not need to be in a research proposal, the proper tone and form, and ways to tease out the larger stakes of individual research projects and avoid the jargon of field-specific descriptions. This session will help you craft a research proposal that appeals to a broad academic audience.
The workshop will be led by Sharon Kinoshita (Professor, Literature). Saskia Nauenberg Dunkell (THI Research Program Manager), Hannah Jasper (Research Development Analyst for the Arts Research Institute), and Eric Sneathen (THI Research Development GSR).
Sharon Kinoshita is a Professor of Literature. She co-directs the mediterraneanseminar.org and has been PI or co-PI for a five-year UC Multicampus Research Project, a UC Humanities Research Institute Residential Research Group, and four National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Institutes in Mediterranean Studies. She has served as first- or final-round fellowship reviewer for the ACLS, the Stanford Humanities Center, the American Academy in Berlin, and other institutions.
Saskia Nauenberg Dunkell is the Research Program Manager at THI. She joined THI in 2019 to manage the Mellon-funded Expanding Humanities Impact and Publics project. This project supports graduate student success and public scholarship through a range of events, workshops, and initiatives. Saskia is a humanistic social scientist and holds a PhD in sociology from UCLA.
Hannah Jasper is a Research Development Analyst for the Arts Research Institute. She is an arts administrator, curator, researcher, and writer who has worked for the last ten years helping to preserve and uplift critically important and yet unexamined stories. Hannah has contributed to developing new and ongoing projects at many distinguished arts and cultural organizations throughout the United States, including the University of Chicago, Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, The Children’s Museum of Art and Social Justice, The Ed Paschke Art Center, and Culture Saving.
Eric Sneathen is the Arts and Humanities Research and Development GSR for 2021-2022. He is a poet and queer literary historian living in Oakland. From 2019-2020, he was a THI Public Fellow working with the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco to complete the San Francisco ACT UP Oral History Project, funded by California Humanities. His writing and scholarship have been supported by a number of grants and fellowships from UCSC, UC San Diego, and the University of Buffalo. In June he’ll be graduating with a PhD in Literature, with a concentration in Creative-Critical Studies.

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About the PhD+ Workshop Series
Join us for the sixth year of PhD+ Workshops, hosted by The Humanities Institute. We meet monthly to discuss possible career paths for PhDs, internship possibilities, grants/fellowships, work/life balance, elements of style, online identity issues, and much, much more.

Humanities Division Spring Awards
2022-06-03 17:30 - 19:30 | Virtual and In Person
Join us for our annual celebration recognizing student and faculty academic achievement in the Humanities Division at UC Santa Cruz.
The 2021–22 Spring Awards ceremony will be a hybrid event with an option to attend in person at the Cowell Ranch Hay Barn or via Zoom. Friends and family are welcome.
We will join together to honor the outstanding accomplishments of our students and faculty with remarks from Chancellor Larive, Humanities Dean Jasmine Alinder, and the 2022 Humanities Distinguished Undergraduate Alumni Awardee.
Wherever you’re celebrating, join us in congratulating our exceptional scholars!

Please contact Sadie Lynn via sklynn@ucsc.edu with questions.

Japanese Cultural Fair
2022-06-04 11:00 - 17:00 | 103 Emmett Street, Santa Cruz, 103 Emmett Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
Since its founding in 1986, the fair has provided an opportunity for members of the Santa Cruz County community to increase their awareness and understanding of Japanese culture, both traditional and contemporary. Through the arts, crafts, and culture of Japan, the fair has brought together thousands of people, improving their understanding of our Pacific Rim neighbor, as well as enriching community life.
Tandy Beale was among the first collaborators to bring the idea of a Japanese themed cultural fair to Santa Cruz. Since then, The JCF has increased the activities and events it provides to the community and continues to do so, transforming itself, through the support of our community, from a minor cultural gathering to the annual event we know today.
View the Fair’s schedule here.
The JCF is currently working in collaboration with the Aptos Public Library in a monthly meeting of the Origami Club, the first Saturday of every month from 1-3 pm. All are invited to attend. All are encouraged to have fun. Whether you are a beginner or a master at the art of origami, you are invited.
The Covid-19 Pandemic brought a major halt to normal life worldwide. It was with great sadness and trepidation, and the first time in our history, the Fair could not be presented to the Santa Cruz Community. Although operations halted, and fear for the future of the Fair presented itself, community support and the loyalty of its support network will allow for the return of the Fair in 2022.
We urge our participants, and anybody who has enjoyed the fair in the past, to support the Fair. Through the continuing support of our community, both voluntary and financial, the Japanese Cultural Fair will continue! We strive to improve every year and will continue doing so.
Our volunteers are a major reason the festival has succeeded in becoming what it is today. Please consider being a part of that tradition. Volunteer today!

Slugs & Steins: Jennifer Lynn Kelly - Invited to Witness: Solidarity Tourism Across Occupied Palestine
2022-06-13 18:30 - 20:00 | Virtual Event
Drawing from her research on solidarity tours in Palestine, Jennifer Kelly shows how solidarity tourism in Palestine functions as a fraught localized political strategy, and an emergent industry, through which Palestinian organizers refashion conventional tourism to the region by extending deliberately truncated invitations to tourists to come to Palestine and witness the effects of Israeli state practice on Palestinian land and lives. She shows how Palestinian organizers both extend and redefine this invitation to witness, as well as intervene in tourist demands for evidence and desire for performances of trauma by asking tourists to instead confront the violence of their own desire in Palestine. She also details the conditions that have led Palestinians to make their case through solidarity tourism in the first place, describing the ways in which tourists travel to Palestine to see the effects of Israeli occupation for themselves despite the volumes of literature Palestinians have produced on their own condition. In this way, Kelly shows how Palestinian organizers, under the constraints of military occupation, and in a context in which they do not control their borders or the historical narrative, wrest both the capacity to invite and, in Edward Said’s words, “the permission to narrate” from Israeli control.

Jennifer Lynn Kelly is an Assistant Professor of Feminist Studies and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research broadly engages questions of settler colonialism, U.S. empire, and the fraught politics of both tourism and solidarity. Her first book, Invited to Witness: Solidarity Tourism Across Occupied Palestine (Duke University Press, Spring 2023), is a multi-sited interdisciplinary ethnographic study of solidarity tourism in Palestine. In it, she analyzes the ways in which solidarity tourism has emerged in Palestine as an organizing strategy that is both embedded in and working against histories of sustained displacement. Her next project, co-edited with Somdeep Sen (Rothskilde University) and Lila Sharif (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) is Detours: A Decolonial Guide to Palestine, an edited volume in the Detours Series at Duke University Press.

2022 CART Fellows Exhibit
2022-06-16 16:00 - 18:00 | McHenry Library (3rd Floor), Special Collections
Please join us for the opening reception for this year’s exhibits in the Elisabeth Remak-Honnef Center for Archival Research and Training (CART)
These exhibits, curated by the 2022 CART Fellows, feature the following new acquisitions to Special Collections & Archives:
the Miriam C. and Raymond Rice Papers exhibit curated by Sienna Ballou and Joseph Finkel and the Yamashita Family Papers exhibit curated by Anny Mogollón and Jacob Stone.
Please RSVP by June 13, 2022. Refreshments will be served
Parking Information.
Please note that UC Santa Cruz has COVID-19 guidelines for in-person events. Visitors must complete the UCSC Visitor COVID-19 Symptom Check Questionnaire prior to entering the campus.
We strongly recommend indoor masking regardless of an individual’s vaccination status.

Historias de Cultura presents Lenguas Indígenas
2022-06-19 14:00 - 15:30 | Museum of Art & History, 705 Front Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95060, United States

Digital Humanities Workshop Series 2022: Virtual & Augmented Reality
2022-06-24 13:00 - 14:00 | Virtual Event
Join us for the fourth meeting of the Digital Humanities Workshop Series 2022. Learn how to use AR/VR for your projects to enhance your user’s experience. This event covers available game engines, software, and services; using VR/AR for exhibits or teaching; and a demonstration on how to create an interactive, digital environmentNo prior experience is necessary to attend this event.
Speaker: Yuri Cantrell, Humanities UX/Digital Media Specialist
Sponsored by the Humanities Division, The Humanities Institute, Information Technology Services (ITS)

Dickens Universe: Iola + David
2022-07-24 - 2022-07-30 | UCSC
The Dickens Universe is a unique cultural event that brings together scholars, teachers, students, and members of the general public for a week of stimulating discussion and festive social activity on the beautiful Santa Cruz campus of the University of California—all focused on one or two Victorian novels, usually (but not always) one by Charles Dickens.
In 2022, the Dickens Universe will pair one of the best-known novels of Dickens, David Copperfield, with the most famous of all nineteenth-century African-American novels, Frances E. W. Harper’s Iola Leroy or, Shadows Uplifted. Reflections on how personal histories of coming of age play out through and against the mysteries and brutalities of history; confrontations with the claims of familial and community loyalties, as these come to be fractured, exposed, and reconfigured: through these and other ways of reading, Universe participants will explore what happens when the novels of these two extraordinary novelists, reformers, orators, poets, and journalists are brought into conversation.
Now in its 41st year of operation, the Dickens Universe combines features of a scholarly conference, a festival, a book club, and summer camp. Participants include people of all ages and walks of life—distinguished scholars, graduate students, undergraduates, retirees, young professionals, high school teachers, anyone who loves to read and who enjoys long Victorian novels.
Here are some of the things that make the Universe such a special experience.

The college lifestyle: participants live on campus, eat together in the student dining hall, have time to meet and come to know each other in different ways.
Everyone is reading the same book. We all have this one important thing in common.
The range of activities—formal lectures, small discussion groups, films, daily Victorian teas, performances, and Victorian dancing.

View the preliminary schedule.
Questions? Call (831) 459-2103 or email dpj@ucsc.edu for assistance.
We are thrilled to offer discounts to all Dickens Fellowship members. In the registration form, please provide your branch affiliation. Enter FELLOWSHIP50 for $50 off virtual registration in the discount code field, or FELLOWSHIP100 for $100 off in-person options (registration with housing and commuter).
We can’t wait to see you this summer!

The Universe offers a week of total immersion in the world of Victorian fiction with friendly, like-minded colleagues in a beautiful setting. Whether we’re returning to a Dickens novel that everyone knows and loves, or branching out into a Victorian novel by another author who might be less familiar, during the Universe we build a community out of our passion for reading, talking with one another, and bringing Victorian culture to life.
The Dickens Project is a Multi-campus Research Unit (MRU) of the University of California. Its research activities have been supported by extramural grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the U.S. Department of Education, the California Council for the Humanities, the California Arts Council, the Exxon Education Foundation, dues from member schools, and private gifts. Activities for the general public are supported in part by contributions to a private, non-profit organization, the Friends of the Dickens Project.

Blossoms into Gold: The Croatians in the Pajaro Valley
2022-07-24 15:00 - 17:00 | Museum of Art & History, 705 Front Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95060, United States
Of all the immigrant groups who flocked to California in the last two hundred years, probably the least known are the Croatians of the Dalmatian Coast. Often identified as Austrians, Slavonians, or Dalmatians, they came from a glorious background of international traders, sailors, and political thinkers few people in America knew about, and brought with them knowledge that would change the way the United States did business. At the same time, they transported their customs and beliefs to their new home and established a way of life that was vibrant and rich in traditional folkways. Join the authors of Blossoms into Gold for a discussion of this community’s fabled past and economic innovations in the Pajaro Valley.
Donna F. Mekis holds degrees in both Anthropology and Education from UC Santa Cruz. She had a forty-year career in higher education, working at both UC Santa Cruz and Cabrillo College. At Cabrillo, Donna developed and directed both the Transfer Center and the Honors Transfer Program. Recently, she served as the President of UCSC’s Alumni Association and is currently a Trustee on the UC Santa Cruz Foundation Board.
Kathryn Mekis Miller did her undergraduate and graduate work at UC Berkeley. She and her husband Marshall Miller opened their first retail store in Santa Cruz in 1971. They have developed a number of successful businesses under the umbrella name Sun Shops, which has now become a second-generation Santa Cruz business. In 2009, Sun Shops were honored as the Business of the Year by the Santa Cruz Chamber of Commerce.
For more information, please visit Blossoms into Gold.
Free with museum admission. Sponsored by UC Santa Cruz University Library and The Humanities Institute.

Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music: Let Me See The Sun
2022-07-30 19:00 - 21:00 | Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium
Four composers will join you in the audience for our second night as Maestro Măcelaru leads the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra in the West Coast premiere of Iván Enrique Rodríguez’ A Metaphor for Power—reflecting on our ideals of equality in America, as seen through the lens of the composer’s Latinx experience.
Iván Enrique Rodríguez: A Metaphor for Power (WCP)
Stacy Garrop: The Battle for the Ballot (WCP | Festival Commission)
(Texts from seven suffragists; Valerie Joi, narrator)
Paola Prestini: Let Me See the Sun (Lara Downes, piano)
John Harbison: The Great Gatsby Suite (WCP)

Stacy Garrop’s The Battle for the Ballot was commissioned by the Cabrillo Festival in 2020 to commemorate the centenary of women’s suffrage in America and incorporates the words of seven prominent Black and white suffragists, read by narrator Valerie Joi. It receives its West Coast premiere performance tonight, after a spectacular virtual premiere in 2020.
A second work celebrates voting rights and the passage of the 19th Amendment: Paola Prestini’s piano concerto Let Me See the Sun, which features trailblazing pianist Lara Downes. Prestini is hailed by the New York Times as an “imaginative composer,” as Let Me See the Sun demonstrates with an infusion of folk music, virtuosity, dissonance, and vocal simplicity. The concerto is about the human impulse to remain hopeful, structured as a dialogue between piano and orchestra, at times contentious and at times unified.
Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Harbison is an 84-year old American master who has yet to be featured at Cabrillo Festival—until now. Harbison’s music is “rich with lyrical outpourings” (New York Times) that are filtered through his “rigorously crafted language” (Strings Magazine). The Great Gatsby Suite—adapted from his opera, based on the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald—abounds in cakewalks, ragtime and jazz, and includes saxophones and banjo. Composed in 2007, the work receives its West Coast premiere tonight.
Covid-19 public health and safety guidelines will be followed, including requiring proof of full vaccination for all audiences, staff, and artists. Masking will be required indoors at all times. Read our full Covid Policy here.
Concert sponsored by The Humanities Institute.

Weekend With Shakespeare
2022-08-05 - 2022-08-06 | UCSC Arboretum
Join Shakespeare scholars and artists for two days of lectures, discussions, and demonstrations about the 2022 Season’s main stage productions, Twelfth Night and The Tempest.
The Weekend with Shakespeare Lecture Series is free, however seating is limited! Please email Rebecca Clark, Santa Cruz Shakespeare’s Education Coordinator, at rebecca@santacruzshakespeare.org, to reserve your spot.
Weekend with Shakespeare is sponsored in partnership with Santa Cruz Shakespeare.
Lecture Series on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night: Friday, August 5

12-12:15 Welcome
12:15-1:15 Q&A with actors from Twelfth Night, moderated by Mike Ryan, Artistic Director at Santa Cruz Shakespeare
1:15-1:30 Break
1:30-2:30 In conversation with Amani Liggett and Michael Warren, Head of Dramaturgy at Santa Cruz Shakespeare
2:30-3:00 Break with refreshments
3:00-4:00 Presentation on Twelfth Night by Julia Reinhard Lupton, Professor of English and Director, New Swan Shakespeare Center (UCI)

For those who have purchased a ticket to see the evening performance of Twelfth Night:

7:00-7:15 Pre-performance discussion of ‘5 Things to Look Out For’ with Julia Reinhard Lupton
8:00 Performance of Twelfth Night at The Grove.

Lecture Series on Shakespeare’s The Tempest: Saturday, August 6

12-12:15 Welcome
12:15-1:15 Presentation by Mike Ryan
1:15-1:30 Break
1:30-2:30 In conversation with Ashley Herum, dramaturg of The Tempest, and Dr. Michael Warren, Head of Dramaturgy at Santa Cruz Shakespeare
2:30-3:00 Break with refreshments
3:00-4:00 Presentation on The Tempest by Sean Keilen, Professor of Literature and Director, Shakespeare Workshop (UCSC)

For those who have purchased a ticket to see the evening performance of The Tempest:

7-7:15 Pre-performance discussion of ‘5 Things to Look Out For’ with Sean Keilen
8:00 Performance of The Tempest at The Grove

Julia Lupton is Professor of English at UC Irvine, where she co-directed the New Swan Shakespeare Center. She is the author or co-author of five books on Shakespeare, including Shakespeare Dwelling: Designs for the Theater of Life (2018). Her scholarship has been funded by grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies. An award-winning teacher, Julia frequently leads seminars and reading groups for the community.

Sean Keilen is Professor of Literature at UC Santa Cruz and the Founding Director of Shakespeare Workshop there. He studies Shakespeare’s engagements with pagan and Christian authors, as well as the history and theory of literary criticism. His research has been supported by grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Humanities Center, and the Folger Shakespeare Library. An award-winning teacher, he is dedicated to community education, a long-standing partnership with Santa Cruz Shakespeare, and the exploration of literature as a resource for life.

Center for Racial Justice Summer Institute 2022
2022-08-10 10:00 - 2022-08-12 14:00 | Virtual Event
The Center for Racial Justice presents:
Summer Institute 2022: Political Education and Liberatory Knowledge
Dates: August 10-12, 2022
Time: 10:00am–2:00pm PT
Click below to register:
Day 1 (August 10th)
Day 2 (August 11th)
Day 3 (August 12th)
Check crjucsc.com for more detailed information to follow.

The Land of Milk and Honey Exhibition Opening
2022-09-01 | Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History
The Land of Milk and Honey is a traveling multidisciplinary arts and culture program focused on the ideological concept of agriculture in the regions of California and Mexico. Drawing inspiration from John Steinbeck’s portrayal of the region as a corrupted Eden, the biennial presents works that question ethical, cultural and regional practices related to foodways, and the venture from seed to table. The biblical reference of a “land of milk and honey” first became associated with California as a tool for promoting the state as a land of opportunity; a destination for those in search of a better way of life – a terra firma that would provide sustenance and abundance. This boosterism also served as an ethos that fueled “Manifest Destiny” and resulted in land grabs, labor exploitation, ecological destruction, and social injustices.
This inaugural exhibition explores artists’ views around multi-layered topics associated with agriculture including environmental impacts, cultural culinary traditions, identity and migration, regional histographies, and familial and mythical connections to food. The exhibition will run from September 1–December 31, 2022.
Header Image: Fernando Armenghol, Sol2Soul Art Collective (2016), La Cosecha Sagrada, digital photograph.
