CANCELLED: Jonathan Ellis: "Philosophy and the Public"
2015-12-01 16:00 - 17:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Stevenson Fireside Lounge, Humanites 1 University of California, Santa Cruz Cowell College, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
The Works in Progress Talk by Jonathan Ellis has been cancelled. It will be rescheduled for a date in January. Please stay tuned for more information.

Jonathan Ellis Works in Progress: Philosophy and the Public
At least once a quarter the Philosophy Department hosts a Works-in-Progress presentation by a member of the faculty.
The format may vary from a traditional talk to a communal environment allowing for ideas to be tested and feedback solicited.
All members of the campus community and interested public are welcome to attend.

Digital Humanities Reading Group
2015-12-02 16:00 - 18:00 | Cowell Senior Commons Room, Cowell College 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95062-1225, United States
Hypercities: Thick Mapping in the Digital Humanities
by Todd Presner, David Shepard, and Yoh Kawano
Join the Digital Humanities Working Group will meet to discuss Hypercities: Thick Mapping in the Digital Humanities. Elaine Sullivan will lead our discussion about Hypercities and the impact of mapping on Humanities research. For a copy of the selected reading, email digitalhumanities@ucsc.edu.
For more details click here!

Last Day of Freedom Film Screening
2015-12-03 15:30 - 18:00 | Kresge Town Hall
You are invited to a film screening and presentation of Last Day of Freedom, an award winning film by UCSC Associate Professor Dee Hibbert-Jones & Nomi Talisman.
Last Day of Freedom is a richly animated personal narrative that tells the story of one man’s decision to stand by his brother, a Veteran returning from war, as he faces criminal charges, racism, and ultimately the death penalty.
Q&A with filmmakers and Estrus Tucker, Vietnam-era Veteran, ordained minister and Master Facilitator on issues of race and reconciliation. Board member National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.
Funded by Porter College, UCSC Art Department, SPARC at UCSC & the Institute for Humanities Research at UC Santa Cruz

Screening of “Okinawa: The Afterburn” with Director John Junkerman
2015-12-03 16:30 - 18:30 | Communications 150, Studio C
Q&A with Director John Junkerman to follow the film

Introduction by Professor Alan Christy, Department of History

Directed by John Junkerman, long-term resident of Japan and Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker, the brand-new “Okinawa: The Afterburn” is a sweeping, in-depth look at the wartime and postwar history of Okinawa and the massive American military presence on the island. Consisting of interviews and rare archival footage on the 1945 Battle of Okinawa, the 27-year American occupation and the ongoing struggles of the local people up until the present, the film is a powerful statement on the historical background and complex reality of US bases on Okinawa, an issue that remains highly controversial on both the island itself and in mainland Japan.

Co-sponsors:

Center for Documentary Arts and Research
Department of History
Institute for East Asian Studies
Film and Digital Media
The Gail Project

Living Writers: Claudia Rankine: University of Southern California
2015-12-03 18:00 - 19:45 | Humanities Lecture Hall, Room 206, UCSC Humanities Lecture Hall, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
Claudia Rankine
University of Southern California
Claudia Rankine is the author of five collections of poetry including Citizen: An American Lyric and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely; two plays including Provenance of Beauty: A South Bronx Travelogue; and is the editor of several anthologies including The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind. She also co-produces a video series, “The Situation,” alongside John Lucas, and is the founder of the Open Letter Project: Race and the Creative Imagination. Among her numerous awards and honors, Rankine is the recipient of the Poets & Writers’ Jackson Poetry Prize and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and the National Endowment of the Arts.
Rankine’s bestselling book, Citizen: An American Lyric (Graywolf, 2014), uses poetry, essay, cultural criticism, and visual images, to explore what it means to be an American citizen in a “post-racial” society. A defining text for our time, Citizen was the winner of the 2015 Forward Prize for Best Collection, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry (it was also a finalist in the criticism category, making it the first book in the award’s history to be a double nominee), the NAACP Image Award, the PEN Open Book Award, and the LA Times Book Award for poetry. Citizen was nominated for the Hurston/Wright 2015 Legacy Award, was a finalist for the 2014 National Book Award, and was selected as an NPR Best Book of 2014, who stated: “This collection examines everyday encounters with racism in the second person, forcing the read-er—regardless of identity—to engage a narrative haunted by the deaths of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and Renisha McBride.” Citizen also holds the distinction of being the only poetry book to be a New York Times bestseller in the nonfiction category.
In all of her work, whether writing about intimacy or alienation, Rankine’s voice is one of unrelenting candor, and her poetry is some of the most innovative and thoughtful work to emerge in recent years. Her work often crosses genres as it tracks wild and precise movements of mind. In the words of the Judges Citation for the Jackson Prize: “The moral vision of Claudia Rankine’s poetry is astounding. In a body of work that pushes the boundaries of the contemporary lyric, Rankine has managed to make space for meditation and vigorous debate upon some of the most relevant and troubling social themes of the 20th and 21st centuries….These poems do the work of art of the highest order—teach-ing, chastening, changing, astounding, and humanizing the reader.”
Her other poetry collections are Don’t Let Me Be Lonely (2008); the award-winning Nothing in Nature is Private; The End of the Alphabet; and Plot, wherein she welds the cerebral and the spiritual, the sensual and the grotesque. Don’t Let Me Be Lonely—a multi-genre project that blends poetry, essays, and image—is an experimental and deeply personal exploration of the condition of fragmented selfhood in contem-porary America. Rankine is also the author of the play, Provenance of Beauty: A South Bronx Travelogue, which is performed on a bus ride through the Bronx. The New York Times calls it an “engrossing urban adventure, which does not conform to the standard formula for theater but does make the bustle outside the bus throb with history, mystery and meaning, as the best live performances do.”
Rankine co-edited the anthology American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Where Lyric Meets Language, and her work is included in several anthologies, including Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present, Best American Poetry 2001, Giant Step: African American Writ-ing at the Crossroads of the Century, and The Garden Thrives: Twentieth Century African-American Poetry. Her work has been published in numerous journals including Boston Review, TriQuarterly, and The Poetry Project Newsletter.
Born in Kingston, Jamaica, and educated at Williams College and Columbia University, she lives in California and is the Aerol Arnold Chair in the University of Southern California English Department.

Fall 2015 Living Writers Series:
Creative Work & Critical Play
Thursdays, 6:00-7:45 PM
Humanities Lecture Hall, 206
Creative Work & Critical Play features contemporary writers and artists who expose and explore the space between critical discourse and the creative imagination. Through the work of making art and the play in ideation, they mine issues of race, sexuality, gender, and class through several genres and media, to include poetry, fiction, critical prose, performance, sonic and visual art, memoir, as well as hybrid forms.
October 8: CA Conrad: The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage
October 15: Tonya Foster: California College of the Arts
October 22: John Keene: Rutgers University, Newark
October 29: Ronaldo V. Wilson: University of California, Santa Cruz
November 5: Student Reading
November 12: Al Young: California Poet Laureate, Emeritus
November 19: Juliana Spahr: Mills College & Jasper Bernes: University of California, Berkeley
December 3: Claudia Rankine: University of Southern California

PhD+: Coding for Humanists
2015-12-04 11:00 - 12:30 | Stevenson Fireside Lounge, Humanites 1 University of California, Santa Cruz Cowell College, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
Part of the PhD+ Workshop Series, Sponsored by the IHR
Interested in coding, but not sure where to start? Fabiola Hanna, a new media artist and PhD Candidate in the department of Film and Digital Media, will walk us through the basics of coding for the web. We will explore HTML, CSS, and (time permitting) Java Script by remixing existing website code. Think deconstruction as a way of learning how websites are built and how code processes work. This introduction will not make you into expert coders – but it will provide you with insight into coding that you can apply to customize existing sites and work within easy-to-use platforms (like WordPress, Drupal). You will also gain an understanding of next steps so you can continue developing your coding skills.
Join us for this introductory workshop. No previous experience with coding necessary.
Be sure to bring a LAPTOP (not a tablet). Before the workshop: Download the Firefox Browser.

PhD+ Workshop Series
Please join us for the launch of PhD+, our new series! We will meet monthly, over lunch, to discuss possible career paths for humanities PhDs, online identity issues, internship possibilities, work/life balance, elements of style, grants/fellowships and much, more more.
October 9, 2015: Alternative Academia Panel
November 6, 2015: Internship Info Session
December 4, 2015: Coding for Humanists
January 8, 2016: Research Tools and Methods
February 5, 2016: Online Identity
March 4, 2016: Work-Life Balance
April 8, 2016: Writing and Publishing in the Humanities
May 13, 2016: Research and Grants
June 3, 2016: End of Year Luncheon
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Friday Forum: Lara Galas "Languaging the Landscape: A Translational Analysis of the Geopolitical in Nineteenth Century American Literature"
2015-12-04 12:30 - 14:00 | Humanities 1, Room 202
The Friday Forum is a graduate-run colloquium dedicated to the presentation and discussion of graduate student research. The series will be held weekly from 12:30pm to 2pm and will serve as a venue for graduate students in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Arts divisions to share and develop their research.
This meeting will feature Lara Galas (Literature) presenting her talk “Languaging the Landscape: A Translational Analysis of the Geopolitical in Nineteenth Century American Literature”.
For more info, or to inquire about joining the roster of presenters for the 2015-16 academic year, contact: fridayforum.ucsc@gmail.com

Enduring Power - Photography Exhibit - Nov. 2 - Dec. 17
2015-12-07 12:00 - 16:00, 2015-12-14 12:00 - 16:00 | Resource Center for Non Violence
Enduring Power:
The Middle Eastern and Iranian Women’s Story
— A Photography Exhibit —
November 2 – December 17, 2015
AT: Resource Center for Nonviolence, 612 Ocean St., Santa Cruz, CA
Exhibit HOURS: M-TH noon – 4p.m. or by appointment, 831-423-1626
Sponsored by the Resource Center for Nonviolence and Senses Cultural,
Enduring Power’s striking images represent a wide range of experiences, aspirations, fears and realities of Middle Eastern and Iranian women from Yemen, Egypt, Bahrain, Iran and Kuwait. A collection of work from several female photographers of Middle Eastern backgrounds, Enduring Power shows an intimate and unique perspective of an otherwise private world to the American audience. This exhibition, curated by photographer Sina Araghi, presents powerful stories of education, individuality, familial relationships, societal restraints, and boldness.
“Peering behind the veil and headscarves to reveal real individuals is a delicate but necessary boundary to push. These photographs speak of the greater issues of identity and resilience, and the strength of women within these regions. Their sense of identity has not been erased by culture or governments.
These women are empowering themselves – against all obstacles – through their own will. A clear defiance and a sense of individuality is present. They are not weak or afraid. They are powerful and energized. They command your attention and your interest. Let their stories be heard.” — Sina Araghi, curator of Enduring Power
Senses Cultural, Davis, CA, and the Resource Center for Nonviolence are collaborating on this Senses Cultural’s traveling photography exhibition, which was previously at UC Davis, San Francisco State University. Senses Cultural believes that women – mothers, grandmothers, and daughters – have been the quiet strength that protects the rights of their families, communities, and nations.
Please join us for the First Friday EXHIBIT RECEPTION on December 4, 6-9p.m. featuring Tata Masud, Founder and CEO of Senses Cultural, Davis, CA. Light refreshments will be available.
Co-sponsors (list in formation): WILPF Santa Cruz
For more information: 831-423-1626, rcnv.org
Curator Statement by Sina Araghi
Enduring Power: The Middle Eastern and Iranian Woman’s Story is a collection of work by seven female photographers from Egypt, Kuwait, Bahrain, Yemen, and Iran, examining the lives and livelihoods of women in that region.
Apart from their exceptional photographic work, these photographers were selected in great part due to their diverse coverage of topics regarding women, spanning across many different countries throughout the Middle East.
Peering behind the veil and headscarves to reveal real individuals is a delicate but necessary boundary to push. It is so vital to the future and progress of women in these cultures to be seen succeeding, thriving, and discovering – all on their own. Whether they are generations apart or contemporaries, progress is achieved when women grow and improve on their own terms, separate from the male influence that so strongly permeates their public culture and the worldwide media. There is an almost constant push/pull between the individualized and powerful identity of the Middle Eastern woman, and the attempts by culture and government to erase that identity.
This collection of images illustrate how that sense of identity has not been erased. This collection is a celebration of the progress and growth that has happened, and a tangible foreshadowing of what is still to come.
The division of gender throughout daily life creates two very different worlds within the same culture. The photographic perspective in this exhibition is unique to women who are inside these cultures and countries. These 7 photographers are not outsiders, tourists, or just passing through, and the familiarity and camaraderie felt between ‘insiders’ is tangible in these photographs. Being a female photographer creates uniquely privileged access into the lives and experiences of the Middle Eastern woman – access into a world that men seldom are privy to. Respecting this access while still honoring the truth in moments witnessed requires grace and trust. There is fragility in that access. As an Iranian male photographer, I admire this perspective, knowing full well the limitations and privileges of my own gender.
Collectively, these photographs speak of the greater issues of identity and resilience, and the strength of women within these regions. They are empowering themselves – against all obstacles – through their own will. A clear defiance and sense of individuality is present (an especially sacred quality in a world of appearance commonality), and there is no apologizing for any of it. These women are not weak or afraid. They are resilient, powerful, and energized. They command your attention and your interest.
Let their stories be heard.
-Sina Araghi, curator
For more information: 831-423-1626, rcnv.org
