The Interdisciplinary Humanities Center will host Julia Reinhard, UC Irvine English professor and Interim Director of the UC Humanities Research Institute, who will examine key passages in Twelfth Night that show the navigation of life changes and social bodies throughout Shakespeare’s romantic comedy. The play begins with a shipwreck, a violent birth onto unknown shores that separates orphaned twins on a journey to nowhere.
The Carsey-Wolf Center will host Adamu Chan, the filmmaker of What These Walls Won’t Hold (2023), which paints a poignant portrait of resilience and hope blossoming within the confines of California’s notorious San Quentin State Prison during the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic. The filmmaker will join moderator Althea Wasow, UCSB Film and Media Studies assistant professor, for a post-screening discussion.
The Department of Art will host Amy MacKay, an artist and educator based in Los Angeles, who will discuss her career and art. Through an intensive research-based process, she creates paintings based on documentation of site-specific and performative events she stages with people in her life. MacKay is also one of the founders of the after-hours gallery in Downtown Los Angeles and the arts initiative Group Practice.
The Walter H. Capps Center will host Amanda J. Baugh, Professor and Associate Chair of Religious Studies and Director of the MA Program in Sustainability at California State University, Northridge. Through Los Angeles-based ethnographic research, she will highlight often-overlooked environmental efforts by Spanish-speaking Catholics. She'll talk about "la tierra environmentalism," an ethic of living lightly on earth grounded in love and respect for God, humanity, and all creation.
The Media Arts & Technology Graduate program will host Daryl Jamieson, assistant professor of composition and aesthetics at Kyushu University, who will talk about how his musical theater, sound art, and video works draw from the aesthetic principles of medieval Japan and East Asia in response to the decline of Modernity. He will draw from examples from his work and other contemporary composers and artists who inspire him.
