Oceans of Dissent Workshop
2026-04-03 - 2026-04-04 | UC Santa Cruz
Oceans of Dissent will serve as a feminist gathering to forge new vernaculars of the geopolitical, to assemble spatial imaginaries of the “oceanic” that refuse rather than relent to the insistent march of capital and empire. Our deliberations will foreground inter-linked landscapes across multiple oceanic field-formations, to expand settled narratives of region, historiography, aesthetics and more. To “dissent” here is an invitation to think more about the messiness and stuckness of our intellectual labors across histories of slavery, indenture, colonialism and more. Let us imagine those conversations together.

Register here!
More information: Oceans of Dissent Workshop
Any questions? Email Sadie Lynn at sklynn@ucsc.edu.

Suzanne Simard - When the Forest Breathes
2026-04-04 14:00 - 15:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Cowell Ranch Hay Barn, Ranch View Rd, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
Bookshop Santa Cruz welcomes bestselling author Suzanne Simard (Finding the Mother Tree), a scientist who pioneered the concept of sophisticated communication between trees. Simard will share her highly anticipated new book When the Forest Breathes, in which she offers a powerful vision for saving our forests based on nature’s deep-rooted cycles of renewal.
“A masterclass on the inner workings of forests. . . . This is science as an act of love for the world.” —Zoë Schlanger, author of The Light Eaters

Raised in a family of loggers committed to sensible forest stewardship, trailblazing ecologist Suzanne Simard has watched as timber companies leave forests at higher risk for wildfires, water crises, and plant and animal extinction. But her research has the potential to chart a new course. The forest, she reveals, is a symphony of finely honed cycles of regeneration—from mushrooms breaking down logs to dying elder trees passing their genetic knowledge to younger ones—that hold the key to protecting our forests. Working closely with local Indigenous communities, whose models of responsible forestry have been largely dismissed, Simard examines how human interventions—particularly destruction of the overstory’s mother trees—endanger new growth and longevity. If we can honor the tools that trees have honed for sharing intergenerational wisdom, she argues, we can protect these sacred places for many years to come.
Dr. Suzanne Simard is the New York Times bestselling author of Finding the Mother Tree. She is a Professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia, where she leads The Mother Tree Project and co-directs the Belowground Ecosystem Group. Dr. Simard has earned a global reputation for pioneering research on tree connectivity and communication and the productivity, health, and biodiversity of forests. Her work has been published widely, with over 170 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals, including Nature, Ecology, and Global Biology, and she has co-authored the book Climate Change and Variability. Her research has been communicated broadly through three TED Talks, TED Experiences, as well as articles and interviews in The New Yorker, National Geographic, NPR, CNN, and many more. She lives with her family in the mountains around Nelson, British Columbia.
More information at: Bookshop Santa Cruz – Suzanne Simard

This event is cosponsored by the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum & Botanic Garden and The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz

Music in North Africa: From Cultural Mixity to Political Expression
2026-04-04 15:00 | Santa Cruz Public Library – Capitola
This talk will look at various musical genres in North Africa to explore the history of a region that is at the crossroads of Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. How is music an expression of the cultural diversity of the region? How have musicians played a central political role from the colonial period to the so-called “Arab Uprisings” that swept the region from 2010-2020? How does music continue to give expression to various social and economic issues in the region, such as the refugee crisis? The talk will focus on classical genres such as Arab-Andalusian music as well as Raï, Gnawa and even rap. The presentation will include clips and translations of music and offer important historical and political context for the 15 May concert hosted by the Center for the Middle East and North Africa at Woodhouse Brewery featuring the musical group, Aza.
Muriam Haleh Davis is the Director of the Center of the Middle East and North Africa at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of Markets of Civilization: Islam and Racial Capitalism in Algeria, published by Duke University Press in 2022. In addition to her scholarly work, you can also find her writing in the LA Review of Books, Al Jazeera English, Truthout, Jacobin, Public Books and Jadaliyya. Her favorite genre of music is Raï.

Film Screening: Sotong and Against this Messy World
2026-04-06 14:00 - 16:00 | Humanities 1, Room 210, 1156 high st, Santa cruz, CA, 95060, United States
On April 6, 2026, the Graduate Training in Southeast Asia (GETSEA) consortium and UCSC’s Center for Southeast Asian Coastal Interactions will host two short films highlighting the challenges to art and expression in Malaysia’s complex political, legal, and societal landscape.
Sotong follows four fierce local drag queens who were part of the 2022 Halloween party raided by the authorities. One of them, Juan, was arrested for ‘a man dressing up as a woman’. Two years later, they revisit on the fallout of that night as they continue to perform underground and nurture the Malaysian drag scene in all its beauty, joy, and pain.
Against This Messy World is a deeply introspective and visually captivating short documentary that delves into the heart and soul of artistic expression in Malaysia. A personal exploration, narrated by Malaysian artists, this documentary takes viewers on an evocative journey to understand the essence and purpose of being an artist in a world marked by chaos and uncertainty and piece together conversations and unfiltered moments in their lives.
Universities from across North America will come together to watch the films simultaneously, then connect via Zoom with the filmmakers for a post-screening discussion. Please join us in conversation!

Neha Dixit — The Many Lives of Syeda X: A People’s History of Invisible India
2026-04-06 14:30 - 16:00 | Rachel Carson College Red Room, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
What does the life of an ordinary working-class, Muslim woman look and feel like in modern India? Award-winning journalist Neha Dixit traces the story of one such faceless Indian woman, from the early 1990s to the present day. What emerges is a picture of a life lived under constant corrosive tension.
Syeda X left the holy city of Banaras (now Varanasi) for Delhi with her young family in the aftermath of riots and communal violence in the early ’90s. In Delhi, she settled into the life of a poor migrant, juggling multiple jobs a day – from sewing soccer balls and removing the stems from raisins, to shelling almonds sold in bulk to multinationals and assisting in illegal abortions. Syeda has held over 50 different jobs in 30 years, earning paltry sums in the process. And if she ever took a day off, her job would be lost to another faceless migrant.
We meet an unforgettable cast of characters: a rickshaw driver in Chandni Chowk who ends up tragically dead in a terrorist blast, a doctor who gets arrested for pre-natal sex determination, a Hindu nationalist “cow vigilante” whose sister elopes with Syeda’s son, and policemen who delight in beating up young Muslim men.
Written with empathy and deep insight, The Many Lives of Syeda X is a portal to a harsh, hidden world. It is the story of untold millions and a searing account of urban life in new India.
Neha Dixit is an independent journalist based in New Delhi. She has covered politics, gender, and social justice for seventeen years. Most of her work is investigative, narrative, and long-form. She has reported for Al Jazeera, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Caravan, The Wire, and other notable publications.

Presented by the Department of Sociology and co-sponsored by the Center for South Asian Studies. This event is open to all students, faculty, staff, and members of the public consistent with University policy and state and federal law.

Chris Gray - The Fantasies Shaping Today’s AI
2026-04-07 12:00 - 13:30 | Humanities 1, Room 210, 1156 high st, Santa cruz, CA, 95060, United States
All AI (algorithmic intelligence) companies claim they are pursuing the next logical step in digital—perhaps even human—evolution. But, the development of AI is clearly shaped by a wide range of untethered belief systems from obscure German philosophy to The Lord of the Rings. There is nothing logical about it. It is unreasonable to make AI the dominant industry in terms of investment and valuation when it has produced little profit, great social disruption, and a worsening of most aspects of today’s polycrisis, from climate change to military operations and genocide.
The forces trying to produce general purpose AI and super intelligence are multiple and almost all irrational, even fantastical. The most rational is the hunger for wealth and power, considered sacred by capitalist true believers, for even if AIs never wins a war or produce real value, they will make money and shape societies.
To explain today’s “Tech Lords” more than a simplistic “California Ideology” argument is needed. Accepting we now live under Surveillance Capitalism is only the context. Looking at the psychodynamics of Postmodern War is also helpful, for today’s AI complex shares the same genealogy as contemporary high-tech militaries. A close analysis of key parts of the actual beliefs of AI billionaires, from fantasy novels to fantasy altruism to dreams of immortality and divinity, is also very helpful.
Together, they might help begin to answer the real question—how do we transition from this clearly unsustainable socio-technological society into something better?

This event is presented by The Humanities Institute’s ± AI Initiative.

Central American Report Back: In Defense Of Land & Dignity
2026-04-07 16:00 - 18:00 | Namaste Lounge – College 9, Namaste Lounge, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
Facilitated by SCC intern Rafael Revolorio, this report-back features community members and organizers Ana and Allan Fisher, Amy Argenal, Lupita Alvarado-Sanchez, and Cynthia Lopez-Fernandez who will reflect on their recent experiences in El Salvador and Honduras during a time of heightened imperialist escalation and right-wing shifts in Latin America.

This event is sponsored by the Center for Racial Justice and Santa Cruz in Color. Special thanks to the Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas, the Resource Center for Nonviolence, and the Bay Area chapter of Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) for their support in co-sponsoring this event.

Nauenberg History of Science Lecture with Jennifer Derr
2026-04-07 17:30 - 19:30 | Music Center Recital Hall, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
World Wounds: The Damming of the Nile River and the Transformation of Medicine
The damming of the Nile River transformed agriculture and human health in twentieth-century Egypt. While dams enabled year-round irrigation and provided hydroelectricity, the prevalence of parasitic disease also skyrocketed. Professor Derr explores the effects of damming the Nile on the health of Egyptians and the impact of large-scale environmental transformation on the knowledge and practice that made medicine during the twentieth century.
April 7, 2026
Reception 5:30 p.m.
Lecture 6 p.m.
Music Recital Hall and Virtual
Free and open to the public

Jennifer Derr is an Associate Professor in the history department at UC Santa Cruz. Her first book, The Lived Nile: Environment, Disease, and Material Colonial Economy in Egypt, won the Middle East Political Economy Book Prize. In 2019, the National Science Foundation awarded Derr a CAREER grant to support her research on the “History of Science at the Interface of Biomedical and Environmental Concerns.” In 2024-2025, she was a fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute.

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. The Nauenberg History of Science Lecture Series features leading historians of science and highlights the significance of their work across disciplines for faculty, students, and community members.
The Nauenberg History of Science Lecture is presented by the UC Santa Cruz Emeriti Association and co-sponsored by the Science & Justice Research Center, The Humanities Institute, the Humanities Division, the Environmental Studies Department, the History Department, and the Center for the Middle East and North Africa (CMENA).

Dr. V. Chitra - Drawn to Life: Environments, Managerial Logics, and the Limits of Care
2026-04-08 12:15 - 13:30 | Humanities 1, Room 210, 1156 high st, Santa cruz, CA, 95060, United States
This talk examines how urban planning, animal governance, and racial politics converge in the production of interspecies belonging in Singapore. Through this, it considers what drawing, as an analytic, might offer anthropology for understanding how more-than-human worlds become governed. Focusing on the “Singapore Special” — a term for local mongrel dogs — it traces how housing policy, behavioral training regimes, and administrative classification shape the conditions under which dogs can find belonging in the island-city.
Recent shifts from culling toward sterilization and rehoming appear to signal a more humane approach to animal care. Yet these interventions install a more demanding managerial logic: dogs must demonstrate governability — proper conduct, emotional regulation, adaptability — to qualify for care. Belonging is produced through the same administrative machinery that has long mediated human access to housing, mobility, and security in Singapore, where racialized ideals of civility and order underpin the city-state’s developmental project.
Drawing on ethnographic research with animal welfare volunteers, the talk delves into how managerial logics naturalize the conditions they impose, and sits with the limits of companionship that cannot accommodate refusal, flight, and ferality.
V. Chitra is an anthropologist and visual artist based at The Australian National University. Her research intersects environmental studies, science and technology studies, and the visual arts. Her first book, Drawing Coastlines: Climate Anxieties and the Visual Reinvention of Mumbai (Cornell University Press, 2024) looks at how science, management, and planning remake coastal worlds in urban India. Chitra has a background in visual design and works with comics as an ethnographic medium.

Presented by the Center for Cultural Studies and co-sponsored by the Center for South Asian Studies and the Department of Anthropology Colloquium. This event is open to all students, faculty, staff, and members of the public consistent with University policy and state and federal law.

Spring 2026 COLLOQUIUM SERIES
THE CENTER FOR CULTURAL STUDIES hosts a weekly Wednesday colloquium featuring work-in-progress by faculty & visitors. We are pleased to announce our Spring 2026 Series. Sessions begin promptly at 12:15 PM and end at 1:30 PM (PST) in Humanities Building 1, Room 210.
Staff assistance is provided by The Humanities Institute.

Documentación Lingüística en México
2026-04-08 15:00 | Humanities 1, Room 202
Please join us for a presentation on “Children’s role in Language Documentation Efforts in Mexico“.
Cuando realizamos proyectos de documentación lingüística, nos encontramos con niñas y niños que quieren participar en alguna actividad del proceso de documentación, sean o no hablantes o sean hablantes de herencia. Su colaboración es valiosa en los proyectos porque aportan muchos elementos clave para el proceso de registro de la lengua y la cultura que se está documentando. En esta charla platicaremos sobre algunas experiencias con niñas y niños que colaboraron en diferentes etapas del trabajo de campo que se realizó para la documentación de la lengua otomí de Santa Ana Hueytlalpan, en el municipio de Tulancingo de Bravo, en México.
María de Jesús Selene Hernández Gómez Doctora en Estudios Mesoamericanos por la UNAM, Maestra en Lingüística con Línea Terminal en Lingüística Teórica-Descriptiva y Licenciada en Lenguas Modernas en Inglés, ambas por la UAQ. Es profesora de la Facultad de Lenguas y Letras y de la Facultad de Filosofía en la Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro. Es investigadora asociada del Laboratorio de Educación y Mediación Intercultural (LEMI) y es responsable del programa de Prácticas Profesionales “Prácticas Universitarias de Traducción”, que se ofrece en el LEMI. Da clases a nivel licenciatura y posgrado en ambas facultades. Se dedica particularmente a la enseñanza de la historia de la lengua inglesa y sus líneas de investigación son: la documentación y descripción de lenguas originarias mexicanas en peligro de extinción (particularmente el otomí del estado de Hidalgo, México), procesos de traducción de documentos en inglés antiguo y medieval y procesos de traducción en/de lenguas originarias mexicanas. Ha sido becaria del Programa Santander Universities en la Universidad de Surrey y del Programa “Endangered Languages Documentation Programme” (ELDP) en la Universidad de Londres, ambos en el Reino Unido.
This talk will be in Spanish.

New Articulations with James Clifford
2026-04-09 12:00 - 18:00 | Humanities 1
This event engages the theme of articulation and James Clifford’s contributions to cultural studies, anthropology, and literary studies, addressing our current disconcerting cultural, historical, and ecological conjuncture. For more info, please visit: tinyurl.com/5ecv4t27
With talks by Elizabeth Povinelli (Columbia), James Clifford (UCSC), and Kirin Narayan (ANU), and a panel with Mark Anderson (UCSC), Chris Connery (UCSC), Donna Haraway (UCSC), Gail Hershatter (UCSC), Caren Kaplan (UCD), and Richard Rodriguez (UCR).
Program schedule:
12.00 Dimitris Papadopoulos & Maria Puig de la Bellacasa
12.15 Elizabeth Povinelli
1.30 Light Lunch
2.00 James Clifford
2.45 Break
3.00 Mark Anderson, Chris Connery, Donna Haraway, Gail Hershatter, Caren Kaplan, Richard Rodriguez
4.30 Break
4.45 Kirin Narayan
6.00 End

Convened by Dimitris Papadopoulos (UCSC) & Maria Puig de la Bellacasa (UCSC) and co-sponsored by The Humanities Institute, History of Consciousness, and the Center for Cultural Studies. Please note that this event will be held in person only.

Slugs and Steins with Greg O' Malley - The Escapes of David George: An Odyssey of Slavery, Freedom, and the American Revolution
2026-04-13 18:30 - 20:00 | Virtual Event
The Escapes of David George: An Odyssey of Slavery, Freedom, and the American Revolution describes the life of a man born enslaved in colonial Virginia, whose repeated escape attempts made his life a remarkable odyssey. He survived enslavement on Virginia and Carolina plantations, stints hiding in backcountry Carolina settlements, captivity in Native American communities, battlefields of the American Revolution, and evacuation as a refugee from the emerging United States. Along the way, he formed a family, became a preacher, and founded the first Black Baptist congregation in what became the United States. His surviving narrative offers the earliest known firsthand account of escaping slavery in North America. And because his struggle against slavery spanned the revolutionary era, his story offers a counterweight to the many biographies of white “founding fathers.” Instead of a fight for political freedom from Britain and monarchy, George’s life reveals a parallel quest for freedom from American slavery. To achieve his independence, George fled the United States in the moment of its creation.

Greg O’Malley is professor and chair in the History Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His first book, Final Passages: The Intercolonial Slave Trade of British America, 1619–1807, received four awards: The America Historical Association’s Forkosch Prize for British history; the AHA’s Rawley Prize for Atlantic history; The Owsley Award from the Southern Historical Association; and the Goveia Prize from the Association of Caribbean Historians. The book examines the network that distributed enslaved
Africans throughout North America and the Caribbean after their survival of the Atlantic crossing. O’Malley is also co-creator (with Alex Borucki) of the Intra-American Slave Trade Database, a free online research tool that documents more than 38,000 human trafficking voyages from one port in the Americas to another. His second book, The Escapes of David George: An Odyssey of Slavery, Freedom, and the American Revolution, was published by St. Martin’s Press in February 2026 and was named one of “ 6 Noteworthy Books for February” by The Washington Post.
Questions? Please contact University Events at specialevents@ucsc.edu.
Slugs and Steins are free informal lectures served up over Zoom. Brought to you by the UC Santa Cruz Alumni Association, each talk will engage one of our favorite professors in discussion with you, the local community of Silicon Valley, and beyond. We will cover everything from organic artichokes to endangered zebras, self-driving cars to Shakespeare. All are welcome. Audience participation is encouraged.
Watch past Slugs and Steins events here.

Carlos Martinez - The Carceral Frontier: Migrant Captivity and Care on the Mexico-U.S. Border
2026-04-15 12:15 - 13:30 | Humanities 1, Room 210, 1156 high st, Santa cruz, CA, 95060, United States
This talk offers an ethnographic account of the structures of captivity that keep migrants and deportees in conditions of enforced immobility and precarity at the Mexico-U.S. border. Whereas much scholarship has framed the border primarily as a site of transit or deadly deterrence, Martinez argues that it has been transformed into a carceral frontier that restricts the movements of those rendered disposable while gradually wearing them down. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Tijuana, Mexico, since 2018, the presentation examines the lives of deportees and asylum seekers in the borderlands, focusing on survival strategies, care practices, and forms of solidarity that emerge amid the intertwined politics of expulsion, attrition, and prolonged waiting.
Carlos Martinez, MPH, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Latin American and Latino Studies and core faculty member of the Global and Community Health program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Trained in public health and medical anthropology, Dr. Martinez’s research examines the health and sociocultural implications of policing, incarceration, and punitive immigration and drug policies. He is the co-editor of All This Safety Is Killing Us: Health Justice Beyond Prisons, Police, and Borders (North Atlantic Books, 2025).

Spring 2026 COLLOQUIUM SERIES
THE CENTER FOR CULTURAL STUDIES hosts a weekly Wednesday colloquium featuring work-in-progress by faculty & visitors. We are pleased to announce our Spring 2026 Series. Sessions begin promptly at 12:15 PM and end at 1:30 PM (PST) in Humanities Building 1, Room 210.
Staff assistance is provided by The Humanities Institute.

SOLD OUT: Ritual Drinking in the Ancient World
2026-04-15 17:00 - 19:00 | Stockwell Cellars, 1100 Fair Ave, Santa Cruz, CA, 95060
“Drink and make a happy day!” (New Kingdom Theben tomb)
“Wine gladdens the heart of man…” (Psalm 104:15)
At this ‘symposium’ event, three UCSC professors in Classical, Biblical, and Egyptian antiquity will tell stories about how various ancient cultures drank wine to commune with their gods, suspend the normal social rules, and prepare for the end of days.
The Stockwell Cellars tasting room bar will be open for attendees to purchase individual wines-by-the-glass during the event. Come enjoy tasting local Santa Cruz wines while learning about the long history of drinking as a ritual event in the ancient Mediterranean world. A Q&A will follow the short presentations.

Registration required! This event is now sold out.
Martin Devecka, Associate Professor, Ancient Studies & Literature, “Wine before Liquor”
As a cultural historian, Devecka writes on topics in ancient literature and society that range from robots to ruins. He is currently finishing a book manuscript on animal citizenship in the Roman Empire.
Anne Kreps, Associate Professor, Ancient Studies & History, “Drinking like the World is Going to End”
As a historian of the ancient Near East, Kreps studies heresies, Gnosticism, and the politics of sacred texts. Her current work examines the Dead Sea Scrolls within New Religious Movements in the United States.
Elaine Sullivan, Associate Professor, Ancient Studies & History, “How to Get Drunk with a Goddess”
An Egyptogist, Sullivan’s field research has included excavation and survey at Karnak’s Mut Temple, the cemetery of Saqqara, and the Greco-Roman city of Karanis, all in Egypt. She is currently authoring a book on the sales of antiquities out of Egypt in the late 19th and early 20th century.

This event is presented by Ancient Studies at UCSC, co-sponsored by The Humanities Institute

Ripple Effect Arts Festival Opening
2026-04-16 | Santa Cruz County, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
A celebration of Santa Cruz County’s creative community during arts and culture month in California! The arts community of Santa Cruz County is coming together for this exciting new 11-day celebration showcasing the region’s rich artistic landscape.
The festival will feature performances, exhibitions, workshops, and interactive events across venues countywide, inviting audiences of all ages to experience the transformative power of art.
Known for our stunning coastline and redwood forests throughout Santa Cruz County, the Ripple Effect Arts Festival invites visitors to also discover the talent and creativity of our local artists, as well as the hospitality that make this region a world-class destination.
The Ripple Effect Arts Festival was born out of a shared belief that the arts not only enrich our lives but also strengthen our community and economy. At a time when many artists and organizations face mounting challenges, Ripple Effect provides a new opportunity for collaboration, visibility, and collective support. Grassroots and volunteer-driven, the festival is powered by the dedication of local arts organizations and community partners who believe in the unifying force of creativity.
More info and detailed schedule at: https://www.rippleartsfestsantacruz.org/

The Ripple Effect Arts Festival is co-sponsored by The Humanities Institute

Omar Zahzah - Virtual Palestine: Digital Settler Colonialism and Palestinian Resistance
2026-04-16 15:00 | Humanities 1, Room 210, 1156 high st, Santa cruz, CA, 95060, United States
The Center for Racial Justice is very proud to sponsor the second annual Possibilities of Palestinian Refusal: Against Disciplining Knowledge and Movement series! Please join us for the following talk with Omar Zahzah- Virtual Palestine: Digital Settler Colonialism and Palestinian Resistance.
In this talk, Omar Zahzah will elaborate upon the concept of digital settler colonialism, which captures how the internet is weaponized to fortify Israeli settler colonialism—often with the complicity of US Big Tech companies. Building off of his newly published book Terms of Servitude: Zionism, Silicon Valley, and Digital Settler Colonialism in the Palestinian Liberation Struggle (Censored Press/Seven Stories Press, 2025), the presentation will also describe the contingent role that digital technologies have played in advancing the Palestinian struggle, and how Palestinians and their allies continue to resist censorship and repression in spite of an increasingly hostile digital status quo.

Living Writers with Joe De Vera and Josen Diaz
2026-04-16 17:20 - 18:55 | Humanities Lecture Hall, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
In Nourishment, Us.
Joe De Vera (WSU) Visual Artist and Josen Diaz (UCSC) Critic and Archivist
Joe deVera’s paintings and installations are attempts to clarify the absurd theaters of human tragedy — examining the possible relationships between historiography and art objects — while simultaneously investigating the resonant aftermath of mass conflict. Having emigrated from the Philippines as a youth and enlisting in the U.S. Marines Corps after high school — serving two combat deployments to Iraq in support of the Second Gulf War/GWOT — deVera’s works are also autobiographical observations of power structures and the machines of empire. He joined the Sam Fox School from Wake Forest University. He earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from California State University, Fullerton, and his Master of Fine Arts in painting and printmaking from Yale University.
Josen Masangkay Diaz (she/they) writes and teaches about race, gender, colonialism, and authoritarianism. Her book, Postcolonial Configurations: Dictatorship, the Racial Cold War, and Filipino America (Duke University Press, 2023), analyzes the formation of Filipino American subjectivity through a study of U.S.-Philippine cold war politics. Her writing appears in American Quarterly, Social Text, Critical Ethnic Studies Journal, Signs, and elsewhere. She serves as section editor for Lateral, editorial board member for the Asian Journal of Women’s Studies, Critical Ethnic Studies Journal, and Feminist Pedagogy Journal. She received her Ph.D. in Literature from the University of California, San Diego and was previously faculty at the University of San Diego and fellow with the Asian American Studies Center at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Living Writers Spring 2026: Our Nourishment, US features poets, writers, critics, visual and performance artists, who demonstrate how writing and art enacts around the idea of freedom and the imaginary in the face of the constant threat of terror and erasure. In the presence of who we all are within marginalized yet expansively powerful fields of racialized and multiply lived complex and diverse identities, please come as we convene in spirit, deep celebration, and resource with one another.
About the Living Writers Series
The Living Writers Series (LWS) is a live reading series organized especially for the Creative Writing Program community at UCSC. There is a new series each quarter, and each series features writers with unique voices. The LWS is open to all creative writing students and the public.

Sponsored by the Porter Hitchcock Poetry Fund, The Humanities Institute, The Laurie Sain Endowment, and the Bay Tree Bookstore.

Santa Cruz Night of Ideas
2026-04-17 17:00 - 21:00 | Institute of the Arts and Sciences, 100 Panetta Avenue, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
Join us for a nocturnal celebration of art, philosophy, and activism!
As the United States approaches the 250th anniversary of its independence, the 2026 Santa Cruz Night of Ideas invites us not to celebrate the Enlightenment, but to interrogate it. Long associated with democracy, progress, and universal reason, the Enlightenment’s legacy remains deeply ambivalent – coexisting with enduring forms of exclusion, colonial violence, and economic exploitation. These unresolved tensions, strikingly visible today, demand renewed scrutiny.
Rather than treating the Enlightenment as a closed chapter or shared inheritance, this edition centers young local voices and civil society to ask urgent questions: whose reason matters, whose freedoms are secured, and whose futures are denied?
Through conversations, workshops, performances, and visionary talks, Enlightenment, Now! becomes a space for lived experience and collective experimentation. Featuring contributions from local performers Crista Berryessa and the Beati Quorum, Alex Olwal’s audiovisual collaborations with AL-EK, and Juan Ospina, flautist and composer with Olemano, we will gather with Thomas Sage Pedersen, Ronaldo V. Wilson, Gina Athena Ulysse, and many other guests. The aim is not consensus, but momentum: rethinking progress and imagining new political, ethical, and cultural possibilities under radically changed conditions.
Join us on Friday, April 17 at the Institute of the Arts and Sciences to explore what remains of the Enlightenment, and what it might become!

Night of Ideas, a global event taking place simultaneously in more than 100 countries and 22 cities in the United States, invites thought leaders, activists, performers, authors, and academics to engage the public in discussions around central questions that address major, contemporary global issues.
First introduced in the United States in 2015 by the French Embassy, Night of Ideas is a nationwide phenomenon today, drawing tens of thousands of people to events across the country, for a nocturnal marathon of philosophical debates, performances, readings, and more.

This event is brought to you by the Center for Public Philosophy, with support from the Institute of the Arts and Sciences, The Humanities Institute, the Marc Sanders Foundation, Villa Albertine, and the Institut Français.
By attending this event you hereby consent to having your photo/likeness/recordings posted publicly and on social media.

Saturday Shakespeare - Macbeth
2026-04-18 10:15, 2026-04-25 10:15, 2026-05-02 10:15, 2026-05-09 10:15 | Virtual and In Person
Saturday Shakespeare in Santa Cruz Presents Macbeth by William Shakespeare Aptos Library on Aoril 18, 25, May 2, 9 & 16 2026 at 10:15 a.m in the Aptos Library Betty Leonard Community Room (in person or join by Zoom). The first hour will be a conversation with the scheduled guest speaker followed by a volunteer read aloud of the play. On May 16,a video of a live stage production will be shown. This event series is co-sponsored by the UC Santa Cruz Shakespeare Workshop.
For more information, Zoom Link, or to volunteer to be a reader, contact: saturdayshakespeare@gmail.com
Guest Speakers / Video Recording

April 18: Julia Reinhard Lupton, Distinguished Professor Emerita of English & Comparative Literature & Co-Director of the New Swan Shakespeare Center at UC, Irvine. Reading: Act 1
April 25: Charles Pasternak, Acclaimed New York-based theatre director and actor, Paul will direct Santa Cruz Shakespeare’s 2026 production of Macbeth. Reading: Act 2 through Act 3, Scene 3
May 2: Abigail Heald, Lecturer in Literature @ UC Santa Cruz & Stanford. She is writing a book on the relationship between art and emotion in Shakespeare’s work. Reading: Act 3, Scene 4 through Act 4, Scene 2
May 9: Paul Mullins, Actor / Director, Artistic Director of Santa Cruz Shakespeare. Reading: Act 4, Scene 3 through Act 5, Scene 8
May 16: Video recording of a live stage production at the Globe Theatre, directed by Tony Award winning director Eve Best, and starring Joseph Millson (Macbeth) and Samantha Spiro (Lady Macbeth).

ICE Surveillance is Not Safety / La Vigilancia de ICE No es Seguridad
2026-04-20 18:30 | Santa Cruz County, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
During a time of escalating state violence, Pajaro Valley for Ethnic Studies and Justice (PVESJ) and Get The Flock Out Santa Cruz County invite you to join us for an evening of community education and resistance against automated license plate readers (ALPR) that track us and endanger migrant members of our community. At this freedom school, we will discuss what we can do locally to secure our digital civil rights and make us safe.

Doors will open at 6:00 pm, and the event will begin at 6:30 pm / Hora: Puertas se abren a las 6:00 pm, el evento empieza a las 6:30pm
Location will be sent with registration confirmation / La ubicación se enviará junto con la confirmación de registro
Why Freedom Schools? In the tradition of freedom and liberation schools, the Watsonville Ethnic Studies Freedom School fosters a space of political education in the service of local communities most impacted by structural violence. We formed in response to the failure of the prior PVUSD school board to heed the community’s call to support ethnic studies. From a foundation of community knowledge, we learn from each other and engage in collective study in order to organize for justice and enact social transformation.
Cosponsored by the Center for Racial Justice, the Resource Center for Nonviolence, MILPA, the Tobera Project, Santa Cruz Black, People’s Aid, Santa Cruz County Immigration Coalition, Your Allied Rapid Response, and Watsonville Brown Berets.

Aziz Abu Sarah & Maoz Inon - The Future is Peace
2026-04-20 19:00 - 20:00 | Temple Beth El, 3055 Porter Gulch Road, Aptos, CA, 95003, United States
Two lifelong peace activists and guides to Israel/Palestine, both of whom have lost family in the conflict, take readers on a revealing life-changing journey across this holy, bloodstained land and discover the mythic, political, and personal history that divides but also binds them and their peoples.
In The Future Is Peace, Sarah and Inon take readers on a transformative weeklong journey across a sacred and bloodstained land. Facing competing narratives, they explore how compassion and unity can pull humanity back from the precipice of blind hatred. Throughout their travels, they have been constantly asked: In the face of so much loss, how can we ever find hope? Their answer is always the same. One cannot find hope. We must create it.

Aziz Abu Sarah is Co-CEO of InterAct International, a nonprofit dedicated to Middle East Peace. He is a peacebuilder, entrepreneur, National Geographic Explorer, TED Fellow, and renowned speaker and trainer on conflict resolution and responsible travel. Aziz is the co-founder of MEJDI Tours, a travel company on a mission to transform tourism into a global force of citizen diplomacy. He has won numerous awards, including from the United Nations, Institute of International Education, and The Explorers Club. Aziz is consistently named one of the world’s 500 most influential Muslims by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre in Jordan. He has written opinion pieces for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Al-Quds, and Haaretz.
Maoz Inon is Co-CEO of InterAct International, a nonprofit dedicated to Middle East Peace. He is an Israeli peace activist and entrepreneur. He was honored with the prestigious Franco-German Human Rights Prize and the Shared Living Award from Abraham Initiatives. He has spoken on Capitol Hill, at U.S. universities, and the European Parliament. He has written pieces for The Washington Post, Al Jazeera, Haaretz, and more. He has founded several peace-focused initiatives within Israel and the Middle East, including the Jesus Trail, Fauzi Azar Inn, and Abraham Hostel & Tour brands.
Douglas Abrams is a multiple New York Times-bestselling author, as well as an editor, literary agent, and film producer. He is the founder and president of Idea Architects, a creative book and media agency helping visionaries create a wiser, healthier, and more just world. He co-wrote The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World with the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu which inspired the film MISSION: JOY. Doug served as the interviewer in the film as well as an Executive Producer. As an editor and literary agent, he has also worked with other Nobel Laureates including Nelson Mandela, Jody Williams, and Elizabeth Blackburn and worked with many visionary scientists including Stephen Hawking.

Film Screening with Julie Wyman - The Tallest Dwarf
2026-04-20 19:00 - 21:30 | Communications 150, Studio C
The Tallest Dwarf charts Julie Wyman’s quest to find her place within the little people (LP) community at a moment when dwarf identity is poised to radically change. Wyman’s work engages issues of embodiment, body image, and the possibilities and problematics of media spectatorship—all informed by her experience of living with hypochondroplasia dwarfism. Julie Wyman will be in conversation after the screening with Pooja Rangan (Professor of English and Film and Media Studies at Amherst College and Visiting Scholar of Visualizing Abolition) and Cynthia Ling Lee (Associate Professor of Performance, Play & Design, UC Santa Cruz).
Co-organized/co-sponsored by the Arts Division’s Film & Digital Media Department, “Abolition Medicine and Disability Justice“— a collaborative initiative of five UC campuses, including Riverside, Irvine, Los Angeles, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco, to address health disparities in institutions and policy — and The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz. This event is open to UC Santa Cruz affiliates.
PARKING
– Parking via UCSC permit or ParkMobile
– Core West is the lot closest to the event
ABOUT THE FILM
As Wyman unpacks the rumors of “partial dwarfism” in her family, she finds that hers is the last of a body type she has inherited. She joins forces with a group of dwarf artists to confront the legacy of being fetishized and put on display. Together they create films that reclaim a complicated history and speak back to the echoes of eugenics in the newly emerging pharmaceutical interventions that make little people taller. Through its personal and expanding perspective, the film invites audiences to a new way of seeing.
ABOUT THE FILMMAKER
Julie Forrest Wyman’s 2012 documentary STRONG! premiered at AFI Silverdocs and was broadcast nationally on PBS’s Emmy award-winning series, Independent Lens, where it won the series’ Audience Award. Wyman’s work has been awarded support from Sundance, Sandbox, IDA, SF Film Society, Points North, ITVS, the Creative Capital Foundation, The Princess Grace Foundation, California Humanities, and NEH. She has been a fellow at the UC Davis Feminist Research Institute and a resident of SF Film Society’s Filmhouse, Siena Art Institute, Logan Nonfiction and Points North. Her films, including FatMob (2016), Buoyant (2005), and A Boy Named Sue (2000), have aired on Showtime, MTV’s LOGO-TV, and have been exhibited on five continents. She serves as Associate Professor of Cinema and Digital Media at UC Davis.
Photographer credit: Gabriella Garcia-Pardo; image description: A group of six LP (little people) performers regard their paper body cut outs on the wall.

Film Screening with Dolly Kikon - A Sacred Place
2026-04-21 17:30 - 19:30 | Communications, Studio C, Room 150, Communications Bldg‎ University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
Please join us for the American premiere of A Sacred Place (2026), a new film by Professor Dolly Kikon (Anthropology). The film tells the story of stones, spirits, and salt springs in Makhel. The film focuses on intergenerational storytellers and their relationship with the land. It integrates visual ethnography, oral tradition, and geological features of Makhel to center Indigenous pedagogy, community history, and ecology. After the screening, Professor Clementine Bordeaux (HAVC) will provide comments and facilitate a conversation with Kikon and audience member participants.
Please find a trailer for A Sacred Place here.

This screening is a hybrid event. We welcome you to join us in-person in Studio C/Room 150, Communications Building at UCSC or on Zoom. Remote participants will receive a link to the film before the event to watch on their own.

This event is graciously co-sponsored by UCSC’s Center for Southeast Asian Coastal Interactions, Center for South Asian Studies, Indigenous Faculty Network, the Film and Digital Media Department, and The Humanities Institute.

Ashwak Hauter - Physics of Affinity: Violence, Love, & Affinity in the Physician-Patient Relationship
2026-04-22 12:15 - 13:30 | Humanities 1, Room 210, 1156 high st, Santa cruz, CA, 95060, United States
This talk recalls the recent phenomena of the murder of physicians in Jordan and Yemen, and the rise in altercations in Saudi Arabia between physicians and patients and their family. Aiming to work on the physics of affinity, the binding and unbinding of ethical relationalities, within the patient-doctor relationship the physicians claim to be prophets and reintroduced alghayb (unknown, God’s knowledge) into the clinic in order to prevent the arrogation of power to them and counter the demand of patients for them to deliver the cure. This talk prompts us to ask what kinds of ethics emerges with Alghayb in view? In dialogue with Abu-Hamid Alghazaly, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Sigmund Freud, and Jacque Lacan’s work on affinity, transference, savoir, and alghayb, this paper explores the auto-erotics within ethical relationalities in the clinic. It provokes us to reexamine the anthropological reduction of affinity to a preoccupation with aggression, moving us toward understanding the asymmetries of exchange and relationalities.
Ashwak Sam Hauter is an assistant professor of medical anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of “Fright and the Fraying of Community” published in Cultural Anthropology and “Madness, Pain, & Ikhtilāṭ al-ʿaql: Conceptualizing Ibn Abī Ṣādiq’s Medico-Philosophical Psychology” in Early Science and Medicine. Her manuscript in progress details scenes of Islah (reform) within medicines in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan aimed at securing demands for ‘afiya (holistic well-being), recentering the health of the individual body around the political, economic, and spiritual dimensions of the community (umma). Her current project centers around examining mental health and the work of culture amidst the war in Yemen among Yemeni artists, poets, filmmakers, and psychologists.

Presented by the Center for Cultural Studies and co-sponsored by the Center for South Asian Studies and the Department of Anthropology Colloquium. This event is open to all students, faculty, staff, and members of the public consistent with University policy and state and federal law.

Spring 2026 COLLOQUIUM SERIES
THE CENTER FOR CULTURAL STUDIES hosts a weekly Wednesday colloquium featuring work-in-progress by faculty & visitors. We are pleased to announce our Spring 2026 Series. Sessions begin promptly at 12:15 PM and end at 1:30 PM (PST) in Humanities Building 1, Room 210.
Staff assistance is provided by The Humanities Institute.

Arts and Ecology Festival
2026-04-22 13:15 - 22:00 | Digital Arts Research Center, 407 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz
The first Arts & Ecology Festival at UC Santa Cruz will bring together talks and panels featuring artists, scientists, and researchers. The April 22 program includes film screenings, live music, artworks, a clothing swap, a poetry slam, a solar powered mobile projection system, and groups like the Norris Center of Natural History, The Fábrica community textile Arts & Salvage Workshop in Santa Cruz, and a mobile podcast booth from UC Davis for participants to respond to climate-focused prompts, capturing creative perspectives on climate change.
This program is part of OpenLab Collaborative Research Center, led by Jennifer Parker, with support from the Art Department and the University of California Climate Action Arts Network (UC CAAN). UC CAAN is a new system wide initiative to support creative research, scholars, students, and community partners to address the climate crisis through the transformative power of the arts. The network is supported by the University of California Office of the President through its Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives (MRPI) grant program.
Learn more at the Arts & Ecology Festival website.
The Humanities Institute’s Deep Read program is co-sponsoring a Compost and Fungi: Interactive Talk at 5 pm on Megafires, Floods and Fungi.
With the rise of catastrophic megafires and flooding, we look to fungi and other microbes as nature’s mediators between fire and water. They sink carbon, retain water, prevent erosion, digest toxins, and establish ecological balance in both pre and post fire ecosystems. As fires enter the human-made environment more regularly, there is a growing concern about post-fire toxic ash, and the consequences of ash-runoff entering the surrounding waterways. Wildfire also provides a unique opportunity to revitalize ecosystems, restore water and maximize nutrient cycling. There is a growing grassroots network with hubs in Colorado, California and Hawaii that seeks to generate fire resilience by allying with fungi and other microbes. CoRenewal’s FENiXS program and the Biome Logs Project are evaluating the efficacy of fungal inoculation, with the aim of producing widely applicable tools and methodologies to facilitate ecological regeneration and recovery in the aftermath of disaster and environmental injustice, while honoring and taking inspiration from indigenous relationships with fire and fungi. In this participatory workshop, we will discuss how to organize and integrate inoculants into land tending practices, as well as how to contribute to community science that supports these efforts.

Bibliography as Biography - Recovering Early-Nineteenth-Century Latinx Figures
2026-04-22 16:00 - 17:30 | Humanities 1, Room 202
The lecture will focus on the history of Spanish-language writing and publishing in the United States with particular attention to a New York publisher in the early nineteenth century.
Carmen E. Lamas is Associate Professor of English at the University of Virginia. She is the author of The Latino Continuum and the Nineteenth-Century Americas: Literature, Translation, and Historiography (Oxford University Press, 2021; 2025 paperback release) which won the MLA Prize in Latina and Latino and Chicana and Chicano Literary and Cultural Studies and the Latin American Studies Association Latinx Studies Book Award. She is the co-editor of the critical edition Irene Albar. Novela cubana (1885, 1886) by Eusebio Guiteras (Calambur 2023). Her work has appeared in various journals and edited volumes, and she is a co-founding editor of Pasados: Recovering History, Imagining Latinidad, a new open-access journal published with the University of Pennsylvania Press.

This event is co-sponsored by the Literature Department and the Spanish Studies Major

This is Thirty Exhibition Opening
2026-04-24 | Museum of Art & History, 705 Front Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95060, United States
In celebration of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History’s 30 year anniversary, this exhibition will highlight some of the artwork and artifacts from the MAH’s permanent collection. In addition, artist Joshua Moreno will create a site specific installation inspired by the MAH’s historical archives.
The exhibition runs from April 24th to August 9th, 2026. Please visit the MAH website for more information.
Image: Sam Jablon, Vicousss, 2023. Oil on linen. Collection of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. Gift of Max Werner

Emmaia Gelman - The Anti-Defamation League and the Racial State
2026-04-25 15:00 | Resource Center for Non Violence
“The ADL was born of the belief that the best protection from antisemitism was admission into the white racial state and waging a vigorous defense of capitalism, individual rights, and the West against communists and barbarians. And it has never looked back.” –Robin D. G. Kelley
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) once sought to portray itself as a defender of civil rights aligned with racial justice movements in the United States. In a groundbreaking study that Publishers Weekly describes as a “gutsy, razor-sharp demystification of a powerful organization,” Emmaia Gelman exposes the ADL’s alliance with American white supremacy and western empire and its historic investment in Cold War anticommunism. Her definitive account shows how the ADL as a Zionist organization has advanced and supported pro-state policing, a hate-crimes framework that obscures racialized structures of power, and a “War on Terror” that has stoked anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia.

Please register here but on-site registration is possible.
Emmaia Gelman is the founding Director of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism. She has taught social and cultural analysis at NYU and social sciences at Sarah Lawrence College. Her writing appears in Jewish Currents, Boston Review, The Forward, and elsewhere.
__________________________________________________________________________
This event is presented by the Center for Racial Justice and cosponsored by the Resource Center for Nonviolence, Jewish Voice for Peace–South Bay, Santa Cruz Jews for a Free Palestine, Students for Justice in Palestine Santa Cruz, Faculty for Justice in Palestine at UC Santa Cruz, UC Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, the Ethnic Studies Council at the University of California, and the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism.

Guelaguetza Cultural Festival
2026-04-26 10:00 - 16:00 | Branciforte Small Schools Campus, 840 N Branciforte Ave, Santa Cruz, CA, 95062, United States
Senderos presents the 21st annual Vive Oaxaca Guelaguetza, a family friendly, Indigenous cultural festival. The Guelaguetza brings together food, music, dance, language, crafts, and community to celebrate the beautiful traditions of Oaxaca, Mexico. Local dancers from Senderos’ own Centeotl Danza y Baile will represent the eight regional traditions of Oaxaca, accompanied by Oaxacan musicians from Los Angeles. Oaxacan food and beverage specialties such as mole, tlayudas, and tejate will be sold along with crafts and souvenirs. Senderos is a partner in the new Ripple Effect Santa Cruz Arts Festival and Guelaguetza will take place on the closing day of the festival.
*Admission is $10; free for children 5 and under. No dogs, alcohol, smoking on school property. Bring blankets and lawn chairs and be transported to the sights and sounds of Oaxaca!
More information at: Vive Oaxaca Guelaguetza | Senderos
Isai Pazos, Senderos Executive Director said, “As we celebrate Guelaguetza in Santa Cruz, we affirm our commitment to passing these cultural traditions to new generations, ensuring that our heritage continues to thrive. Today more than ever this is critical. Together, through culture and solidarity, we continue to build a stronger, more connected community.” The word Guelaguetza is derived from the Oaxacan Indigenous Zapotec language and signifies giving, cooperation, and community. The Guelaguetza is the major fundraising event for Senderos, a nonprofit in Santa Cruz who has been providing free dance and music classes, education support and scholarships for Latino youth since 2001.
Guelaguetza in Santa Cruz was created by Senderos co-founders, Fe Silva and Nereida Robles- Vasquez; starting small in the Civic Auditorium, the festival moved outdoors to Harbor High School, San Lorenzo Park and attracted 2000 attendees last year at current location Branciforte Small Schools. Even during COVID, Senderos presented virtual full-length presentations with video of dancers and musicians in Santa Cruz and in Oaxaca.
This event is co-sponsored by: Santa Cruz City Schools, Arts Council Santa Cruz County, California Arts Council, Chicana Latina Foundation, Community Foundation Santa Cruz County, County of Santa Cruz, DCD Insurance and Financial Services, The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz, Kaiser Permanente, La Oaxaqueña, Latino Community Foundation, Mexican Consulate of San Jose, Maverick Mailing, Miller Maxfield, Inc., Monterey Peninsula Foundation, Ow Family Properties, Santa Cruz City Arts, Santa Cruz County Office of Education, West Coast Community Bank, and more.

Karen Tei Yamashita - Questions 27 & 28
2026-04-28 19:00 - 20:00 | Bookshop Santa Cruz, 1520 Pacific Avenue, Santa Cruz, CA, 95060, United States
Bookshop Santa Cruz welcomes acclaimed author Karen Tei Yamashita (I Hotel) to celebrate the launch of her new novel Questions 27 & 28—a masterful polyvocal history of Japanese Americans before, during, and after World War II. Yamashita will be in conversation with Alice Yang, Professor of History and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at UC Santa Cruz.
In February 1942, shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order authorizing the secretary of war to remove 120,000 Japanese Americans from their homes on the West Coast and corral them into inland concentration camps.

Questions 27 & 28 reaches backward and forward from the time of the questionnaire, chronicling the individuals who arrived in the US from Japan at the turn of the century, their children who came of age during war and incarceration, and their descendants who lived in its aftermath. Yamashita mixes fact with fiction and layers genres from James Bond movies to haiku to oral history, transfiguring an enormity of archival research into a chorus of stories. With her signature wit and aplomb, she gives voice to laborers, artists, scholars, informants, and activists who, over three generations, defined an immigrant community.
Karen Tei Yamashita is the author of nine books, including I Hotel, finalist for the National Book Award. Recipient of the National Book Foundation’s 2021 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, she is Professor Emerita of literature and creative writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 2024 Yamashita was inducted as a Literature Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Alice Yang is Professor of History and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She received her Ph.D. in history from Stanford University and currently co-directs the Center for the Study of Pacific War Memories. She specializes in memories of the Pacific War, Asian American history, race, gender, oral history, historical memory, and twentieth-century America. Her publications include Historical Memories of the Japanese American Internment and the Struggle for Redress (2007), Major Problems in Asian American History (2003, 2017) and What Did the Internment of Japanese Americans Mean? (2000). Her exhibit, Never Again is Now: Japanese American Women Activists and the Legacy of Mass Incarceration, appeared at UC Santa Cruz, the Watsonville Public Library and the Japanese American Museum of San Jose. She also has served as chair of the UCSC History Department and provost of Stevenson College at UCSC.
More information at: Bookshop Santa Cruz – Karen Tei Yamashita

Co-sponsored by The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz.

Quinn Slobodian - Whither Neoliberalism Studies?
2026-04-29 12:15 - 13:30 | Humanities 1, Room 210, 1156 high st, Santa cruz, CA, 95060, United States
Co-sponsored by the Politics Department
The last two decades have seen a flood of research on neoliberalism. Defined in multiple and even conflicting ways, the term nonetheless served as a master category of analysis for scholars from history to geography and communications. Where does the field sit now as trends of authoritarianism and reterritorialization shatter long-standing axioms of rule? This question will be discussed in relation to my own engagement with the subfield of neoliberalism studies over many years.
Quinn Slobodian teaches international history at Boston University. His books include Globalists, Crack-Up Capitalism, and Hayek’s Bastards. Out in April 2026 with Ben Tarnoff is Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed. He is a Guggenheim Fellow for 2025-26.

Presented by the Center for Cultural Studies and co-sponsored by the Center for South Asian Studies and the Department of Anthropology Colloquium. This event is open to all students, faculty, staff, and members of the public consistent with University policy and state and federal law.

Spring 2026 COLLOQUIUM SERIES
THE CENTER FOR CULTURAL STUDIES hosts a weekly Wednesday colloquium featuring work-in-progress by faculty & visitors. We are pleased to announce our Spring 2026 Series. Sessions begin promptly at 12:15 PM and end at 1:30 PM (PST) in Humanities Building 1, Room 210.
Staff assistance is provided by The Humanities Institute.

Muskism - A Guide For The Perplexed
2026-04-29 15:30 - 17:30 | Cultural Center at Merrill, Merrill Cultural Center, UC Santa Cruz, Merrill College, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
Everyone’s got an Elon take. He’s a messiah. A menace; a genius; a clown. The verdicts differ, but they share one theme: they treat him as an individual. Muskism argues otherwise. Elon Musk isn’t a glitch in the system—he is the system. His worldview promises sovereignty through technology: plug in, power up, and become self-reliant. But the more you connect, the more he owns you. If Fordism defined the capitalism of the twentieth century, Muskism may define the twenty-first. Fordism helped build the welfare state. Musk undoes it. He thrives on dependence while preaching freedom. His cars run on subsidies; his satellites run the battlefield; his social networks train the AI that trains us. Muskism sells itself as the future but entrenches age-old hierarchies. It offers autonomy for some and exclusion for others. It’s pro- natalist but anti-immigrant, futurist but reactionary. It speaks of humanity but warns against empathy. Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff cut through the hype and the hate to reveal what Musk really represents: a new political economy, where to be “free” means to serve a Techno- King. Muskism isn’t about the man. It’s about the machine that made him—and the world he’s making next.
Quinn Slobodian is professor of international history at Boston University, and the author or editor of seven books translated into ten languages including, Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ and the Capitalism of the Far Right, Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World without Democracy, and Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism.
Ben Tarnoff is a writer and technologist based in Massachusetts and is the author of Internet for the People and the co-author of Voices from the Valley: Tech Workers Talk About What They Do—And How They Do It. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, and has also written for the New York Times, The New Yorker, and the New Republic, among other publications.

This event is sponsored by Department of Politics, Institute for Social Transformation, The Humanities Institute, Center for Cultural Studies, and The Department of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies.

Living Writers with Nathan Osorio
2026-04-30 17:20 - 18:55 | Humanities Lecture Hall, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
In Nourishment, Us.
Nathan Osorio (Texas Tech) Poet and Critic UCSC Alum
Living Writers Spring 2026: Our Nourishment, US features poets, writers, critics, visual and performance artists, who demonstrate how writing and art enacts around the idea of freedom and the imaginary in the face of the constant threat of terror and erasure. In the presence of who we all are within marginalized yet expansively powerful fields of racialized and multiply lived complex and diverse identities, please come as we convene in spirit, deep celebration, and resource with one another.
About the Living Writers Series
The Living Writers Series (LWS) is a live reading series organized especially for the Creative Writing Program community at UCSC. There is a new series each quarter, and each series features writers with unique voices. The LWS is open to all creative writing students and the public.

Sponsored by the Porter Hitchcock Poetry Fund, The Humanities Institute, The Laurie Sain Endowment, and the Bay Tree Bookstore.

Environmental Crisis in Gabes: Agriculture and Revolt in Tunisia
2026-04-30 17:30 - 19:00 | Communications 150, Studio C
Film Screening and Discussion: 5:30-7pm, Communications (Studio C)
Reception: 7-8:30pm, Communications 139
Gabes Labess (All is well in Gabes) questions current development models by focusing on the Oasis of Gabes, the only coastal oasis in the world. What was once considered “The Paradise of the World” has been transformed into an economic, social, and ecological catastrophe by the construction, in the 1970s, of an industrial chemical complex that has deprived local farmers of their water, arable land, economic well-being, and personal dignity.
Join us for a screening of this film by Habib Ayeb, followed by a discussion with Jennifer Derr (UCSC) and Hossein Ayazi (UCB) on how models of development influence the lived environment, public health, and political contestation from California to North Africa. As climate change and rising temperatures dramatically alter landscapes around the world, professors Derr and Ayazi will discuss how local populations adapt to these challenges and organize to demand accountability from the state. Reception to follow.
Hossein Ayazi, PhD, is a Senior Policy Analyst at the Othering & Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. His research, teaching, and policy work examine the U.S. and global political economy of agri-food systems and environmental change and their relationship to antiracist, anticolonial, and revolutionary-socialist movements from the twentieth century to the present. He has authored reports and peer-reviewed articles on U.S. and global agri-food and environmental policy, state and corporate power, trade and development, labor and migration, climate impacts and resilience strategies, and food sovereignty and climate reparations. He is currently coordinating lead author on the California Fifth Climate Assessment topical report on Climate-Induced Human Displacement & Migration and has recently advised the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on “Global Recommendations to Prevent Loss of Nationality and Statelessness in the Context of Climate Change.” He holds a PhD in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management from the University of California, Berkeley, and has held resident fellowships and visiting professorships at Tufts University, Williams College, and Santa Clara University.
Jennifer L. Derr is Associate Professor of History at UC Santa Cruz, where she also served as the founding director of the Center for the Middle East and North Africa. Her research explores the intersections among medicine, science, the environment, and capitalism, particularly in the modern Middle East and North Africa. Prof. Derr’s book, The Lived Nile: Environment, Disease, and Material Colonial Economy in Egypt (Stanford University Press, 2019), was awarded the 2020 Middle East Political Economy Book Prize.

Presented by the Center for the Middle East and North Africa and co-sponsored by the Film and Digital Media Department.

Kuumbwa Jazz Presents - Gregorio Uribe
2026-05-04 19:00 | Kuumbwa Jazz Center
“Colombian artist Gregorio Uribe, whose blend of contemporary cumbia and timeless charisma has marked him as an artist to watch.” – Billboard
Uribe was recognized by the Colombian government as one of “The 100 Most Successful Colombians Abroad”, and has received honors from the city of Boston and the state of Massachusetts for his contribution to Latin music. He is currently recording his fourth studio album, a groundbreaking collection of songs that will take the Colombian accordion to a new level of versatility. This concert date will feature a dynamic combination of solo and band performances.

Gregorio Uribe is a Latin GRAMMY-nominated Colombian singer-songwriter and accordionist. He graduated from Berklee College of Music and has performed his music at NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert, Carnegie Hall, Madison Square Garden, and the New Orleans Jazz Fest, among others. He has collaborated with renowned artists such as Rubén Blades, Carlos Vives, and Paquito D’Rivera, as well as with folklore masters Alfredo Gutiérrez, Carmelo Torres, and Martina Camargo.
For more information: Kuumbwa Jazz – Gregorio Uribe

Presented by the Kuumbwa Jazz Center and Co-sponsored by The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz.

The Current Status of the Torment Nexus, and how are those Stochastic Parrots?
2026-05-05 12:00 - 13:30 | Humanities 1, Room 210, 1156 high st, Santa cruz, CA, 95060, United States
Let’s check in on two of our old friends in the critical history of artificial intelligences. What’s the status of the torment nexus today? And how are those stochastic parrots? This talk will provide an update on AI projects that continue to abuse their science fiction namesakes (RIP the Metaverse & Horizon Worlds), and reevaluate the major claims of the 2021 paper “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots”, including what they got wrong (water, parrot intelligence, etc.), what issues are still as relevant as ever (data provenance, data bias, energy usage; limits of scaling), and what they didn’t really address (speculative finance, hyperscaler monopoly).
Zac Zimmer is an associate professor in the literature department at University of California, Santa Cruz. He is an interdisciplinary scholar of literature, culture, and technology in the hemispheric Americas, and teaches classes on Latin American literature, science fiction, ethics, technology, and the poetics of California infrastructure. He is the author of First Contact: Speculative Visions of the Conquest of the Americas (2025). In addition to his current research on the infrastructure of techno-systems, he co-facilitates the Ethics and Astrobiology reading group, part of the University of California, Santa Cruz’s Astrobiology Initiative. Recent open access publications on artificial intelligence include “Outlier and Collapse: The Enron Corpus and Foundation Model Training Data” and “El ingenio de la inteligencia (The Knowledge Mill)“.

This event is presented by The Humanities Institute’s ± AI Initiative
Banner image from Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic

Sanjay Barbora - Territorial Autonomy, States and Politics in the 21st Century: Notes from a Frontier
2026-05-06 12:15 - 13:30 | Humanities 1, Room 210, 1156 high st, Santa cruz, CA, 95060, United States
How can we interpret the increasing centralisation of political authority and decision-making in the 21st century, and can movements for autonomy provide an answer to this question? The concept of territorial autonomy has been a complex issue in modern politics, especially since the emergence of postwar nation-states in the 20th century. While it provided a useful framework for understanding the structure of the modern state and its legal systems, it has also been a convenient tool for governance, where calls for autonomy have often been subject to the shifting nature of power. In this presentation, I will draw on my personal involvement with autonomy movements in the region James Scott, Willem van Schendel, and Sanjib Baruah refer to as “Zomia,” to explore the challenges faced by much of the world today.
Sanjay Barbora studies agrarian change, social movements, wildlife conservation, human migration and urbanisation in the global south, especially in South Asia. Before coming to UCSC, he worked as a media development professional with Panos South Asia and as one of the founding faculty members of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Guwahati Campus. He reads Seamus Heaney’s poems when he is confused, and cook for friends and family when he is able.

Presented by the Center for Cultural Studies and co-sponsored by the Center for South Asian Studies and the Department of Anthropology Colloquium. This event is open to all students, faculty, staff, and members of the public consistent with University policy and state and federal law.

Spring 2026 COLLOQUIUM SERIES
THE CENTER FOR CULTURAL STUDIES hosts a weekly Wednesday colloquium featuring work-in-progress by faculty & visitors. We are pleased to announce our Spring 2026 Series. Sessions begin promptly at 12:15 PM and end at 1:30 PM (PST) in Humanities Building 1, Room 210.
Staff assistance is provided by The Humanities Institute.

The Deep Read San Diego Salon
2026-05-06 18:30 - 20:30 | Stone Brewing Liberty Station, 2816 Historic Decatur Rd UNIT 116, San Diego, CA, 92106, United States
UC Santa Cruz and The Humanities Institute (THI) invite you to a special event at Stone Brewing in Liberty Station to discuss this year’s Deep Read book, the New York Times bestseller, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make our Worlds, Change our Minds, and Shape our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake.
As part of The Deep Read program of The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz, this event is designed to invite curious minds like yours to think deeply about literature, art, and the most pressing issues of our day. Even if you haven’t read the book, we encourage you to come and enjoy the discussion and connect with fellow San Diego alumni and fellow Deep Readers to discuss the foundational role of fungi and fungal networks in our lives and world.

Beer and light bites provided by Crown College alumnus and co-founder of Stone Brewing, Steve Wagner!
This event is open exclusively to UCSC alumni and San Diego Deep Readers.
Participants:
Laura Martin, Deep Read Faculty Lead
Laura is a Continuing Lecturer for Porter College and the Literature Department at UC Santa Cruz where she earned her PhD. She is the Deep Read Faculty Lead and a Research Program Manager for the Deep Read and other programs at The Humanities Institute.
Christian Schwarz, Educator and Naturalist
Christian is an educator and naturalist from California. A UC Santa Cruz alum, he’s co-authored two field guides — Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast and Mushrooms of Cascadia. He is a research associate of the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden and the Ken Norris Center for Natural History at UCSC, where he has taught undergraduate courses in mycology and community science.
Irena Polić, Deep Read Founding Director
Irena is the Managing Director of The Humanities Institute and the Assistant Dean for Research and Engagement in the Humanities Division. She is a proud UCSC alumna and a passionate advocate for the humanities in the public sphere.
Host:
Steve Wagner is a Crown College alumnus and the co-founder of the national brewing company Stone Brewing. He is a strong supporter of The Humanities Institute, the Literature Department, and affiliated graduate students. Wagner was transformed by his time as a student at UCSC, where he studied English literature and was inspired by the radical education system and inspiring professors.

Gukha Amin — From the Margins: The Lives and Labor of Yemen’s "Undesirable" Subjects
2026-05-07 12:00 - 13:30 | Humanities 1, Room 210, 1156 high st, Santa cruz, CA, 95060, United States
Join the Center for the Middle East and North Africa for a presentation by Gukha Amin. Her talk follows the lives of social outcasts and marginalized Black people who lived and moved across Southern Arabia in the first half of the twentieth century using deportation records, petitions, and criminal cases. These include street performers, sex workers, sanitation laborers, and others who colonial officials labeled as “undesirables.” Moving across Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Southern Arabia, these subaltern actors reveal the porous contours of an “Oceanic Yemen,” a global space that reincorporates Southern Arabia into its historic oceanic networks and makes legible Yemen’s deep links to the Horn of Africa. The talk centers these individuals’ labor, mobility, and gendered experience to unpack the complex subject and racial formations unfolding in twentieth-century Southern Arabia and the broader region. It asks who were the men and women that made up the social margins of this global space? How does their labor and gendered experience challenge our understanding of gender and sexuality? And what do these internal outsiders teach us about how categories of race, Blackness, and caste overlapped and operated in the twentieth-century Middle East and beyond?
Gukha Amin is a historian of modern Yemen and a current UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Santa Cruz. She is interested in questions of race and racialization in the Middle East and North Africa. Her book project, The Nesting Margins: Identity and Belonging in Oceanic Yemen is a social history of racial and social minorities living and moving across late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century Southern Arabia. Gukha is the founder and curator of The Global Yemen Project, an ongoing digital humanities project that narrates the global histories of an “Oceanic Yemen” through the lives of those on the margins of Yemeni society.

Presented by the Center for the Middle East and North Africa. Lunch will be served during the talk.

Rasanblaj as Spirit Turn: Gina Athena Ulysse in Conversation with Jennifer González
2026-05-07 18:00 - 19:30 | Institute of the Arts and Sciences, 100 Panetta Avenue, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
Please join us for a conversation between Gina Athena Ulysse and Jennifer González, discussing Ulysse’s solo exhibition Redwoods Rasanblaj: Origins & Disentanglements.
The internationally-lauded work of humanities professor Gina Athena Ulysse is on view at the IAS as an inaugural Faculty Spotlight Exhibition. The site-specific installation, produced in community from things collected, found, purchased and donated, centers on the concept developed by the artist of “rasanblaj”, a form of assembly and collage that transcends the formal use of materials to draw together people, spirits, and ideas.
The artist will be joined in conversation by noted art theorist and scholar Jennifer González, professor of history of art and visual culture.

The Annual Maya K. Peterson Memorial Lecture
2026-05-08 14:30 - 16:00 | Alumni Room, University Center, CA, United States
In early 2018, the city of Cape Town nearly ran out of water. South Africa’s “Mother City,” renowned for its cosmopolitan population and natural beauty, faced the prospect of a “Day Zero,” when it would be forced to close its taps and force millions to queue for water rations. Across much of the continent, though, water scarcity is an everyday reality, with nearly 1 in 3 people lacking access to sufficient drinking water. How did this become the case? This talk explores the history of water on the African continent, using a historical lens to understand the present-day water crisis. It shows how these resources came to be “colonized” through the mechanisms of imperialism in Africa. European colonial actors in the 19th and 20th centuries attempted to transform the ownership, management, and meaning of water with the aim of harnessing its powers to advance their objectives. In doing so, they created deep seeded inequities and underdevelopment that has persisted in the decades since African colonies gained their independence. This historical analysis shows that many of the present-day obstacles to providing clean, safe water stem from legacies of colonial rule. Yet it also shows the many ways in which everyday Africans proved resilient, finding ways to thrive despite the odds.
Matthew Bender is Professor of History at The College of New Jersey. His research focuses on modern African social and cultural history, with interest in the environment, natural resources, and agriculture. A leading scholar in water history, he has authored numerous articles, essays, and chapters as well as a book entitled Water Brings No Harm: Management Knowledge and the Struggle for the Waters of Kilimanjaro (Ohio University Press, 2019).

The Maya K. Peterson Explorations in History Seminar Series at UCSC honors the life and spirit of a brilliant scholar, teacher, and mentor whose career was cut short by her untimely death in 2021. A specialist in Russian, Central Asian and environmental history, Maya was a valued member of UCSC’s faculty in the History Department and the Humanities Division. The Explorations in History Seminar Series celebrates Maya’s passions for the study of history, for dialogue between the humanities and the sciences, and for innovative scholarship across disciplines—passions that she shared generously with students, colleagues, and communities around the globe.

This event is made possible by the generous support of the Maya K. Peterson Memorial Endowment.

Reyna Grande - Migrant Heart
2026-05-11 19:00 - 20:00 | Bookshop Santa Cruz, 1520 Pacific Avenue, Santa Cruz, CA, 95060, United States
Bookshop Santa Cruz welcomes award-winning author Reyna Grande (The Distance Between Us) back to the store to celebrate the release of her newest book Migrant Heart: Essays About Things I Can’t Forget—an ambitious memoir in essays that illuminates the hidden cost of the American Dream and the complex journey of healing that follows survival. Grande will be in conversation with Sylvanna Falcón, Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at UC Santa Cruz.
Migrant Heart is a powerful testament to Grande’s role as a storyteller and cultural witness. It is an essential, moving read that continues to expand what we understand about the United States and the complex people who cross and live within its borders. It is a book for anyone seeking to understand the true price of belonging and the enduring power of finding one’s voice.

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 Migrant Heart, 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.
Sylvanna Falcón is a Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at UC Santa Cruz. She is the winner of the 2016 Gloria Anzaldúa Book Prize from the National Women’s Studies Association and of a teaching award from the Division of Social Sciences at UC Santa Cruz.
More information at: Bookshop Santa Cruz – Reyna Grande

This event is cosponsored by Latin American and Latino Studies and The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz.

Camilla Hawthorne, Michael Whalen, Christina Zanfagna, and John Gennari - BLACKITALIAN: A Documentary Screening and Discussion
2026-05-13 12:15 - 13:30 | Humanities 1, Room 210, 1156 high st, Santa cruz, CA, 95060, United States
What are the meanings of belonging and cultural identity at a time of resurgent white nationalism, large-scale transnational migration, and the increasingly convulsive dynamics of nation and imperium? We address this question in a screening and robust critical discussion of scenes from a documentary film-in-progress called BLACKITALIAN. A collaboration between cultural geographer Camilla Hawthorne, ethnomusicologist Christina Zanfagna, cultural historian John Gennari, and filmmaker Michael Whalen, BLACKITALIAN interweaves “story walks,” interviews, and media representations to explore cross-racial contact zones of music, foodways, and other forms of expressive culture in the cities of New York, New Orleans, and Milan. What emerges is a dynamic story about the ways social outsiders move to the inside and create new forms of culture and belonging, challenging us to confront our differences and understand our entwined histories.

Camilla Hawthorne is Associate Professor of Sociology and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The bilingual, dual citizen daughter of a Black American father and an Italian mother, Hawthorne has studied the politics of race, citizenship, and Blackness in Italy and the wider Mediterranean region for over a decade. She is the author of the monograph Contesting Race and Citizenship: Youth Politics in the Black Mediterranean (Cornell University Press 2022; published in Italian as Razza e cittadinanza. Frontiere contese e contestate nel Mediterraneo nero, Astarte Edizioni 2023) and co-editor of The Black Mediterranean: Bodies, Borders and Citizenship (Palgrave Macmillan 2021) and The Black Geographic: Praxis, Resistance, Futurity (Duke University Press, 2023). She also serves as program director and faculty member with the Black Europe Summer School in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. In 2020, Hawthorne was named one of the Corriere della Sera (Italy’s largest national newspaper) Women of the Year for her contributions to the study of the Black diaspora in Italy

Michael Whalen is the Knight Ridder/San Jose Mercury New Endowed Professor at Santa Clara University. A member of the Director’s Guild of America since 1996, Whalen has extensive experience writing one-hour documentaries focusing on humanities scholarship for A&E (a dozen episodes of “Ancient Mysteries” and “Biography”) and the Discovery Channel/TLC (six episodes of “Super Structures”). He has also produced documentaries for The Discovery Channel, NBC, MTV, and The Learning Channel (TLC). As an independent filmmaker, Whalen regularly explores themes of identity and culture with his documentaries. Another First Step (1994, Cine Golden Eagle Award) tells the story of an Irish American father trying to care for his autistic deaf and mute son in the 1950s and 60s. FRESH women (2007, Worldfest Gold Medal) profiles four 40-year-old women leaving the corporate world to launch careers in art. A Christmas in Tent City (2008, multiple Best Short Film awards) recounts the experience of a Mexican immigrant child living in a migrant worker camp. A Question of Habit (PBS, 2011) uncovers how popular culture (think Sister Mary Margarita cocktail napkins and nun porn) has erased the real history of American nuns. The Farmer & The Chef (Australian Public Television, 2014) takes the audience behind the scenes of a working relationship between a world class chef and farmer, and Gringos at the Gate (2012, ESPN) explores US/Mexican relations and national identity through the intense rivalry of the two nations’ soccer teams.

Christina Zanfagna is an Associate Professor of Music and Ethnic Studies at Santa Clara University. An ethnomusicologist and bicoastal Italian-American who grew up on hip hop and basketball, her research explores the intersections of Black popular music, race, and urban space. She is the author of Holy Hip Hop in the City of Angels (University of California Press, 2017), an ethnographic monograph that examines the everyday lives of former gangsta rappers turned gospel rappers in Los Angeles. Zanfagna’s writing has appeared in a variety of publications, including Journal of Popular Music Studies, Black Music Research Journal, Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music and Sound Studies, Cambridge Companion to Hip Hop, Routledge Handbook of Religion and American Culture, and Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas, as well as journalistic publications such as The Beat, fRoots, and Stranger’s Guide. She has written on topics ranging from hip hop’s religious history to digital DJing practices, “krump” street dancing in South L.A., the globalization of flamenco, Harlem’s musical and religious diasporas, and the soundscapes of American gentrification. She is also a flamenco dancer, regularly performing throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

John Gennari is Professor of English and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of Vermont. He is an American Studies-trained U.S. cultural historian with specializations in jazz and popular music, race and ethnicity, Italian American culture, food, sports, and cultural criticism. He is the author of Flavor and Soul: Italian America at Its African American Edge (University of Chicago Press, 2017. His earlier book, Blowin’ Hot and Cool: Jazz and Its Critics (University of Chicago Press, 2006), was awarded the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for Excellence in Music Criticism and the John Cawelti Award for the Best Book in American Culture. Gennari has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University, and the Carter G. Woodson Institute at the University of Virginia.

Presented by the Center for Cultural Studies and co-sponsored by the Center for South Asian Studies and the Department of Anthropology Colloquium. This event is open to all students, faculty, staff, and members of the public consistent with University policy and state and federal law.

Spring 2026 COLLOQUIUM SERIES
THE CENTER FOR CULTURAL STUDIES hosts a weekly Wednesday colloquium featuring work-in-progress by faculty & visitors. We are pleased to announce our Spring 2026 Series. Sessions begin promptly at 12:15 PM and end at 1:30 PM (PST) in Humanities Building 1, Room 210.
Staff assistance is provided by The Humanities Institute.

Jean Drèze - "Yummy: School Meals in India"
2026-05-14 10:00 - 11:30 | Virtual Event
Join the Center for South Asian Studies for a virtual talk by Jean Drèze, “Yummy: School Meals in India.” School meals have been a legal entitlement of Indian children since 2001. It took some years for this legal entitlement to translate into functional schemes, but from then onwards school meals have made important contributions to child nutrition, school attendance, and social equity. From time to time, they faced some resistance from the biscuit industry, finance ministries, upper-caste parents, and other parties. School meals are alive and well today, yet much scope remains to expand their nutritional, educational, and social benefit

This event is virtual. Register above.
Jean Drèze is a development economist based in Ranchi (Eastern India). His work focuses on various aspects of social policy, from employment guarantee to school meals. He is also active in various campaigns for economic and social rights.

Presented by the Center for South Asian Studies.

Living Writers with Erica Hunt, Tisa Bryant, and Tonya Foster
2026-05-14 17:20 - 18:55 | Humanities Lecture Hall, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
In Nourishment, Us.
Erica Hunt (St. John’s University), Tisa Bryant (University of Iowa), and Tonya Foster (San Francisco State University), Poets, Critics, Artists
Living Writers Spring 2026: Our Nourishment, US features poets, writers, critics, visual and performance artists, who demonstrate how writing and art enacts around the idea of freedom and the imaginary in the face of the constant threat of terror and erasure. In the presence of who we all are within marginalized yet expansively powerful fields of racialized and multiply lived complex and diverse identities, please come as we convene in spirit, deep celebration, and resource with one another.
About the Living Writers Series
The Living Writers Series (LWS) is a live reading series organized especially for the Creative Writing Program community at UCSC. There is a new series each quarter, and each series features writers with unique voices. The LWS is open to all creative writing students and the public.

Sponsored by the Porter Hitchcock Poetry Fund, The Humanities Institute, The Laurie Sain Endowment, and the Bay Tree Bookstore.

An Evening with Journalist David Noriega
2026-05-14 19:00 | Namaste Lounge – College 9, Namaste Lounge, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
In partnership with City on a Hill Press and with support from The Humanities Institute and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Kresge’s Media and Society Series presents an evening with award-winning journalist David Noriega.
David Noriega is an award-winning journalist and National Correspondent for NBC News. He has reported from all across the United States and more than a dozen countries on five continents, covering migration, politics, armed conflict, organized crime, labor, the environment, and more. Noriega is the recipient of an Edward R. Murrow Award for his reporting from Mexico, as well as awards from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the New York Press Club, the Los Angeles Press Club, and the French American Foundation. His work has been nominated three times for the News and Documentary Emmy Awards.

CMENA's Annual Concert Featuring Aza
2026-05-15 19:30 | Woodhouse Brewery, 119 Madrone St., Santa Cruz, United States
CMENA is proud to present AZA for our 2026 Spring concert. AZA weaves the rich musical traditions of North Africa’s Tamazight culture with contemporary global influences, creating a unique and captivating sound. Led by Moroccan-born musician Fattah Abbou, AZA blends the intricate melodies and dynamic rhythms of styles like Ahwash, Rwais, and Gnawa. The band celebrates Amazigh heritage through music, art, and education – building bridges between cultures across continents.

Presented by the Center for the Middle East and North Africa

Saturday Shakespeare - Macbeth
2026-05-16 10:15 | Aptos Library, 7695 Soquel Dr, Aptos, 95003, United States

Privacy’s Defender: Fight Against Digital Surveillance with Cindy Cohn
2026-05-19 12:00 - 13:30 | Humanities 1, Room 210, 1156 high st, Santa cruz, CA, 95060, United States
Cindy Cohn has devoted her life to the fight for digital rights. She’s tangled with federal officials to keep our online conversations secure from the government’s prying eyes, fought to ensure that you are told when your information has been turned over to the government, and argued before judges to protect our right to speak and to share science and knowledge on the internet.
In Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance (MIT Press), Cindy weaves her own personal story with her role as a leading legal voice representing the rights and interests of technology users, innovators, whistleblowers, and researchers during the Crypto Wars of the 1990s, battles over NSA’s dragnet internet spying revealed in the 2000s, and the fight against FBI gag orders.
During this national book tour, Cindy will be at UC Santa Cruz to give a book talk on May 19, 2026 from 12:00-1:30 pm.

Free and open to the public with registration. This event is both in-person and virtual.
Cindy Cohn is the Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which works to ensure that technology supports freedom, justice and innovation for all the people of the world. Before becoming Executive Director a decade ago, Cindy was the organization’s Legal Director from 2000-2015, and led the organization’s impact litigation work on bringing balance to copyright law, stopping mass spying and protecting freedom of expression online. She’s won many awards for her work and even more court decisions.

Institute for Social Transformation, The Humanities Institute, Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas, The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society and the Banatao Institute (CITRIS), and the Security Research Lab.

The Deep Read: Faculty Salon on Entangled Life
2026-05-19 18:00 | Virtual and In Person
Join us for a salon-style event at the Hay Barn on campus where our participating Deep Read faculty, Professors Benjamin Breen (History), Gregory Gilbert (Environmental Studies), and Donna Haraway (History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies) will give brief presentations and discuss Entangled Life with the Deep Read community in a Q&A moderated by Deep Read Faculty Co-Lead, Laura Martin. Participants can also attend virtually.

In person at the Cowell Ranch Hay Barn. Doors open at 5:30pm.
Event Logistics: Bicycling, carpooling, ridesharing, and public transportation are encouraged as parking is limited on campus. If you drive to the event, please plan to park in UCSC Lot #115 or #116. To reach these lots, proceed through the main entrance to campus, continue up the hill from the information kiosk on Coolidge, then turn right at the Ranch View/Carriage House Road stoplight into the Carriage House/Campus Facilities parking lot. The Hay Barn is a 5-minute walk across the street from the parking lot. There will be directional signage to help you get to the correct parking lot and the Hay Barn entrance. Overflow parking will be available in lot #122. View the campus parking map here.

The Deep Read is an annual program of The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz made possible through the generous support of the Helen and Will Webster Foundation. We invite curious minds to think deeply about books and the most pressing issues of our contemporary moment.

Alyssa Battistoni - Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature
2026-05-20 12:15 - 13:30 | Humanities 1, Room 210, 1156 high st, Santa cruz, CA, 95060, United States
Co-sponsored by the Center for Critical Urban and Environmental Studies
Although capitalism is typically treated as a force for relentless commodification, it consistently fails to place value on vital aspects of the nonhuman world, whether carbon emissions or entire ecosystems. Free Gifts argues that to understand contemporary ecological problems from biodiversity collapse to climate change, we have to understand how some things come to have value under capitalism—and how others do not. The book recovers and reinterprets the idea of the free gift of nature used by classical economic thinkers to describe what we gratuitously obtain from the natural world, and builds on Karl Marx’s critique of political economy to show how capitalism fundamentally treats nature as free for the taking. This novel theory of capitalism’s relationship to nature not only helps us understand contemporary ecological breakdown, but also casts capitalism’s own core dynamics in a new light.
Alyssa Battistoni is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Barnard College. She works and teaches on climate and environmental politics, capitalism, Marxism, feminism, and other topics in contemporary social and political thought. Alyssa is the co-author of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal (Verso 2019), and Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature (Princeton 2025), and her academic work has been published in the American Political Science Review, Political Theory, NOMOS, Perspectives on Politics, Contemporary Political Theory, among other outlets.

Presented by the Center for Cultural Studies and co-sponsored by the Center for South Asian Studies and the Department of Anthropology Colloquium. This event is open to all students, faculty, staff, and members of the public consistent with University policy and state and federal law.

Spring 2026 COLLOQUIUM SERIES
THE CENTER FOR CULTURAL STUDIES hosts a weekly Wednesday colloquium featuring work-in-progress by faculty & visitors. We are pleased to announce our Spring 2026 Series. Sessions begin promptly at 12:15 PM and end at 1:30 PM (PST) in Humanities Building 1, Room 210.
Staff assistance is provided by The Humanities Institute.

Film Screening with Raed Rafei - "Tripoli: A Tale of Three Cities"
2026-05-20 19:00 - 20:30 | Communications 150, Studio C
Pre-Screening Reception: 5:30-7pm, Communications 139
Film Screening: 7-8:30, Communications, Studio C
While living abroad, a filmmaker returns to Tripoli, Lebanon, to confront a hometown that once rejected him as a queer child. With a microphone in hand, he walks around coffee shops, public squares, and a park to ask the city’s inhabitants about their cultural and social beliefs and their embrace of new ideas. Gradually, he meets a group of marginalized individuals whose eccentric life choices contradict the general lifestyle in this religiously and socially conservative city. Through intimate conversations with a communist activist, a queer music producer, and other unconventional characters, Tripoli: A Tale of Three Cities explores the complicated relations one forms with a hometown in crisis. This contemplative urban symphony paints a picture of a city trapped in a self-spun web, paralyzed by a deep economic crisis, a faltering revolution, and a looming doomsday.
Join us for a screening of the film followed by a discussion between UC Santa Cruz alum, Raed Rafei, and Professor of Film and Digital Media, Peter Limbrick.
Raed (El) Rafei is a filmmaker, scholar, and multimedia journalist who has directed award-winning documentaries and experimental films. As a journalist, he has worked for international publications like the Los Angeles Times and news outlets like CNN and Al-Jazeera Documentary Channel. Rafei holds a PhD in Film and Digital Media from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an MA in Journalism from the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. He is an Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and his research focuses on queer cinema in the Arab region and its diasporas. His films, which include Tripoli: A Tale of Three Cities, 74 (The Reconstitution of a Struggle) and Al-Atlal (The Ruins), have screened at international film festivals and venues like IDFA, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Doc Lisboa, Visions du Réel, and the Pacific Film Archives in Berkeley.

Presented by the Center for the Middle East and North Africa and co-sponsored by Film and Digital Media

Laura Van Broekhoven - Indigenous-Led Regenerative Partnerships: Reframing Museum Ethics for Reconciliation and Societal Healing
2026-05-21 11:00 - 13:00 | Social Sciences 1, Room 261, Social Sciences 1‎ University of California Santa Cruz, College Ten, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
For over a decade, the Pitt Rivers Museum has engaged in sustained, collaborative work with Indigenous peoples whose cultural belongings, acquired through histories of dispossession and colonial violence, are now held in Oxford. Part of the work has helped reposition the museum as a site of cultural care rather than a repository of extracted, well-preserved “assets.” Drawing on four recent projects that have prioritised listening and collaboration grounded in Indigenous self-determination—including “Maasai: Living Cultures,” “Naga: A Path Home,” “Shuar: Proyecto Tsantsa,” and “Evenki: Wandering in Other Worlds”—Prof. Van Broekhoven explores how Indigenous-led partnerships can enable transformational change through shifting power dynamics on an institutional and societal level.
This lecture examines how Indigenous-led partnerships challenge entrenched academic norms that privilege written documentation over Indigenous knowledge systems. In some contexts, communities have chosen not repatriation but cultural care, reconciliation, and processes of peace-building through reparative justice, using collaboration as a catalyst to renew and strengthen their own governance structures and to address internal inequities shaped by colonial histories. In others, existing peace-making frameworks have been reactivated to collectively confront the enduring impact of colonialism and to imagine pathways for recovery and decolonising the present. Across these contexts, regenerative partnerships can support peace, healing, and structural repair, even as such shifts may be experienced as loss by those long accustomed to institutional advantage.
Laura Van Broekhoven is the Director of the Pitt Rivers Museum and Professor of Museum Studies, Ethics, and Material Culture at the University of Oxford. As a member of the Colonial Collections Committee, she advises the Dutch Ministry of Culture on repatriation. She is an international authority on museum ethics and the development of new praxis in the field of ethnographic museums, especially with regards to redress and repatriation, always working through partnership. At the 2022 European Museum of the Year Awards, Laura was awarded the Kenneth Hudson Award for Institutional Courage and Professional Integrity by the European Museum Forum as recognition of four museum directors for their ‘”personal courage and professional integrity in their continuous contributions to developing a new global ethics for museums, addressing the urgent and contentious issues of decolonization, restitution, reparation, and repatriation.” In May 2025, Laura won the “Making a difference globally” VC award and the Museum+Heritage ‘Partnership of the Year’ award for the groundbreaking Maasai Living Cultures project.

Living Writers with Terri Witek
2026-05-21 17:20 - 18:55 | Humanities Lecture Hall, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
In Nourishment, Us.
Terri Witek (Stetson University Emeritus). Poet/Visual Artist
Living Writers Spring 2026: Our Nourishment, US features poets, writers, critics, visual and performance artists, who demonstrate how writing and art enacts around the idea of freedom and the imaginary in the face of the constant threat of terror and erasure. In the presence of who we all are within marginalized yet expansively powerful fields of racialized and multiply lived complex and diverse identities, please come as we convene in spirit, deep celebration, and resource with one another.
About the Living Writers Series
The Living Writers Series (LWS) is a live reading series organized especially for the Creative Writing Program community at UCSC. There is a new series each quarter, and each series features writers with unique voices. The LWS is open to all creative writing students and the public.

Sponsored by the Porter Hitchcock Poetry Fund, The Humanities Institute, The Laurie Sain Endowment, and the Bay Tree Bookstore.

The Deep Read: The Literature and Poetics of Fungi Salon
2026-05-26 18:00 | Virtual and In Person
Join us for a salon-style event at the Hay Barn on campus where we will hold a salon focused on the literary and poetic influence of fungi and its relation to Entangled Life. The salon will feature Professors Hannah Cole (Assistant Professor of Literature at UC Santa Cruz), Brenda Hillman (Professor Emerita of Poetry at Saint Mary’s College), A. Laurie Palmer (Professor Emerita of Art at UC Santa Cruz), and Jennifer Tseng (Associate Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at UC Santa Cruz) in conversation with moderator Laura Martin and the Deep Read community. Participants can also attend virtually.

In person at the Cowell Ranch Hay Barn. Doors open at 5:30pm.
Event Logistics: Bicycling, carpooling, ridesharing, and public transportation are encouraged as parking is limited on campus. If you drive to the event, please plan to park in UCSC Lot #115 or #116. To reach these lots, proceed through the main entrance to campus, continue up the hill from the information kiosk on Coolidge, then turn right at the Ranch View/Carriage House Road stoplight into the Carriage House/Campus Facilities parking lot. The Hay Barn is a 5-minute walk across the street from the parking lot. There will be directional signage to help you get to the correct parking lot and the Hay Barn entrance. Overflow parking will be available in lot #122. View the campus parking map here.

The Deep Read is an annual program of The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz made possible through the generous support of the Helen and Will Webster Foundation. We invite curious minds to think deeply about books and the most pressing issues of our contemporary moment.

Murad Idris – Against Hate: On the Politics of a False Diagnosis
2026-05-27 12:15 - 13:30 | Humanities 1, Room 210, 1156 high st, Santa cruz, CA, 95060, United States
Co-sponsored by the Global Political Thought Working Group
The idea that “hate” names a fundamental problem of our time has engulfed Anglophone public discourse. Republicans and Democrats, university presidents and doxxing campaigns, advocacy organizations and journalists, scholarly experts and “hate glossaries” criticize what they oppose as hate, demand standing against hate, and seem to treat hate as a diagnosis—one that comes with its own institutional prescriptions. In recent years, Gaza has put the pervasiveness and power of this discourse on full display. What is the long history of this way of diagnosing politics and the world? Who hates, what counts as hating, who is hated, and what broader philosophical structures and shifts underlie the subject for whom hate is a cipher or a code for understanding the world? The presentation offers a genealogy of “hate” through the question of Palestine over the last six decades, its transformations, and its intersections with anti-Muslim racism.

Murad Idris is Associate Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Political Science at the University of Michigan and is currently a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. His award-winning book, War for Peace: Genealogies of a Violent Ideal in Western and Islamic Thought (Oxford, 2019), examines how philosophers fantasize about peace in order to promote hierarchy, war, and repression. He co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Political Theory (Oxford, 2020), with Leigh Jenco and Megan Thomas, and co-authored Political Theory: A Global and Comparative Introduction (SAGE, 2025), with Leigh Jenco and Paulina Ochoa Espejo. He is completing projects about Sayyid Qutb’s global and critical thought, the genealogies of racializing Islam, and the politics of hate. He received his PhD in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania with specializations in Political Theory and Middle East Politics.

Presented by the Center for Cultural Studies and co-sponsored by the Center for South Asian Studies and the Department of Anthropology Colloquium. This event is open to all students, faculty, staff, and members of the public consistent with University policy and state and federal law.

Spring 2026 COLLOQUIUM SERIES
THE CENTER FOR CULTURAL STUDIES hosts a weekly Wednesday colloquium featuring work-in-progress by faculty & visitors. We are pleased to announce our Spring 2026 Series. Sessions begin promptly at 12:15 PM and end at 1:30 PM (PST) in Humanities Building 1, Room 210.
Staff assistance is provided by The Humanities Institute.

Office Hours Under the Sea
2026-05-30 12:00 - 17:00 | Institute of the Arts and Sciences, 100 Panetta Avenue, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
Join Ronaldo Wilson and special guests for a site-specific, endurance performance as part of there are no words, but melodies. The exhibition emerges at the intersections of Black poetics, performance, and visual art to shuttle between verbal and non-verbal forms of language, rendering the boundaries of identity and meaning slippery.
Drop in and visit Wilson’s office hours any time between 12pm and 5pm.
Ronaldo V. Wilson is a poet, interdisciplinary artist, academic, and the author of Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Man, winner of the Cave Canem Prize; Poems of the Black Object, winner of the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry and the Asian American Literary Award in Poetry; Farther Traveler: Poetry, Prose, Other, and Lucy 72. His latest books are Carmelina: Figures and Virgil Kills: Stories. He is the editor of three special issues of hybrid and experimental work in Interim: A Journal of Poetry and Poetics; and Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora. He has shown work and performed most recently at the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics, and The Woodberry Poetry Room at Harvard. The recipient of numerous fellowships, including Cave Canem, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MacDowell, and The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Wilson is Professor of Creative Writing and Literature at U.C. Santa Cruz, where he directs the Creative Writing Program, and serves 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 Deep Read - A Conversation with Merlin Sheldrake
2026-05-31 16:00 | Quarry Amphitheater
Join us for a free, public conversation with British mycologist and author, Merlin Sheldrake, at UC Santa Cruz’s Quarry Amphitheater on May 31, 2026. He’ll discuss his New York Times bestseller, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make our Worlds, Change our Minds, and Shape our Futures with Associate Professor of History Benjamin Breen and the Deep Read community. Together, we’ll explore the dependence of all life—human, plant, animal, and beyond—on fungal networks and how the resulting interconnections provoke us to reconsider our understanding of existence, identity, intelligence, and more.

The Deep Read is an annual program of The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz made possible through the generous support of the Helen and Will Webster Foundation. We invite curious minds to think deeply about books and the most pressing issues of our contemporary moment.

CMENA Student Choice Lecture: Razan Ghazzawi -Carceral Geographies to Racialized Borders: A Queer Feminist Ethnography
2026-06-01 12:00 - 13:30 | Humanities 1, Room 210, 1156 high st, Santa cruz, CA, 95060, United States
Join us for the annual student choice lecture presented by the Center for the Middle East and North Africa: Razan Ghazzawi, “Carceral Geographies to Racialized Borders: A Queer Feminist Ethnography.” From a positionality of an exiled protestor in Europe and a former political prisoner in Syria, this project traces the journeys of eight self-identified Syrian and Palestinian LGBTQ artists, workers, performers, and refugees from their temporary exile locations in Lebanon to their refugee destinations in Europe. It explores the interlocutors’ temporal encounters with geographies of checkpoints and prisons in Syria and Lebanon, on one side, and racialized borders of Europe, on the other. This project investigates narratives of what Rima Hammami calls “carceral geographies” as well as surviving checkpoints, prisons, and asylum journeys from Syria and Lebanon to Europe. The talk will focus on one of the book’s chapters, which examines stories of navigating and surviving racialized borders as LGBTQ refugees of color, and how this experience is securitized and militarized; it will also explore emotional labor and care as affective forms of protest within the context of military carceral states in Syria and Lebanon as well as Europe’s “refugee crisis.”
Dr. Razan Ghazzawi (they/them/هيهن) is an award-winning human rights defender, former political prisoner, and recovering blogger. They are an Assistant Professor in the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Oregon State University. A MESA Global Academy Fellow for 2024–2025, Ghazzawi’s work has appeared in ARTE, Al Jazeera English, The Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, and Kohl: A Journal for Body and Gender Research. They are currently developing their first book monograph, an ethnographic study of sexuality politics in Syria and Lebanon that examines revolution, the “war on terror,” and the “refugee crisis” from south–south perspectives.

Co-presented by the Center for the Middle East and North Africa and the Arab Students Union. Lunch will be served during the talk.

Living Writers Student Reading
2026-06-04 17:20 - 18:55 | Humanities Lecture Hall, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
In Nourishment, Us.
Living Writers Spring 2026: Our Nourishment, US features poets, writers, critics, visual and performance artists, who demonstrate how writing and art enacts around the idea of freedom and the imaginary in the face of the constant threat of terror and erasure. In the presence of who we all are within marginalized yet expansively powerful fields of racialized and multiply lived complex and diverse identities, please come as we convene in spirit, deep celebration, and resource with one another.
About the Living Writers Series
The Living Writers Series (LWS) is a live reading series organized especially for the Creative Writing Program community at UCSC. There is a new series each quarter, and each series features writers with unique voices. The LWS is open to all creative writing students and the public.

Sponsored by the Porter Hitchcock Poetry Fund, The Humanities Institute, The Laurie Sain Endowment, and the Bay Tree Bookstore.

2026 Dickens Universe
2026-07-26 - 2026-08-01 | UC Santa Cruz
The Dickens Project at UC Santa Cruz invites the community to the 2026 Dickens Universe, held July 26–August 1, a weeklong scholarly gathering devoted to Charles Dickens’s Bleak House. The Universe brings together scholars, students, teachers, and lifelong learners for lectures, discussion groups, film screenings, Victorian tea, festive dance, and a variety of other immersive experiences—all set among the redwoods on the UCSC campus. This retreat celebrates the power of literature to build community, spark conversation, and connect readers across generations.
For more information please visit: 2026 Dickens Universe
