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UCSB Black Studies professor Jeffrey Stewart recently hosted his jazz pop-event Jeffrey’s Jazz Coffeehouse featuring the Los Angeles based jazz artists Ben Caldwell and Love and Exile Players. The event, which was originally created to bring healing to the Isla Vista community following a mass shooting tragedy, honored the history of jazz music and brought members of the community together.
Stained Glass Productions, a new student-run theater collective at UC Santa Barbara, staged its first production, "Seasons of Broadway: A Cabaret," hoping to give students more opportunities to perform musical theater. The ensemble of 16 students performed from multiple renowned musicals, all songs falling into the theme of fall, winter, spring, or summer.
As part of its “Storytelling for the Screen” series, the Carsey-Wolf Center hosted queer and Native American director, writer, and producer Erica Tremblay for a post-screening conversation about her film, “Fancy Dance” with moderator Lisa Parks, a professor in UCSB’s Film and Media Studies department.
Discussing a career in public art spanning 30 years, Art Department professor Kim Yasuda presented the talk “Public Art and Campus Placemaking: Recentering the Artist in Communities of Practice” at UC Santa Barbara’s library, in conjunction with UCSB Reads 2024. Yasuda emphasized collaboration across disciplines and cultural advocacy in her efforts to connect students, scholars, and the public.
UCSB Religious Studies professor Janet Afary discussed her book Mollā Nasreddin: The Making of a Modern Trickster, 1906-1911 with department colleague Dwight Reynolds as part of the series “Humanities Decanted,” an Interdisciplinary Humanities Center program in which UCSB scholars present their newest works in a relaxed environment. Mollā Nasreddin: The Making of a Modern Trickster, 1906-1911, explores the first era of the 20th century Middle Eastern journal Mollā Nasreddin and its use of visual art, folklore, and satire to transmit social democratic ideas in Transcaucasia and Iran.
Community-engaged artist, writer, and UCSB professor of Chicana/o Studies, Silvia Rodriguez Vega, recently spoke to students about her work on how immigration policies impact children. She spoke about her book, “Drawing Deportation: Art and Resistance Among Immigrant Children,” at an event hosted by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.
Christoph Emmrich, an associate professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of Toronto, recently spoke to a UCSB audience about the fictional retellings of Dhammawati Guruma’s life as a Buddhist teacher. Emmrich’s talk was hosted by Rory Lindsay, a visiting scholar at the 84000 Buddhist Texts Translation Initiative, a global collaboration housed in UCSB’s Religious Studies department that began in 2021.
Sarah Dunne, a doctoral candidate in UC Santa Barbara's History department, gave a talk about Queer bookstores and their historical significance—how they created vital community spaces for LGBTQ members and had first-hand involvement in gay liberation advocacy. A rise in the number of Queer bookstores occurred in the 70s after the first bookstore dedicated to LGBTQ work opened in 1967, the Oscar Wilde Bookstore.
The Catalyst is a student-run literary magazine that UC Santa Barbara students can participate in through the English Department. They recently held a fundraiser that gave students, advisors, and community members a chance to enjoy live music and spoken word poetry in an effort to fund the next physical publication.
UC Santa Barbara Alum and former Daily Nexus reporter Gretchen Macchiarella spoke with journalism students of UCSB’s Professional Writing Minor about ways that they can use their reporting to spur social change. Macchiarella advocated for the implementation of Solutions Journalism, a type of reporting that highlights how people solve social problems.
Ingela Nilsson, a scholar from Sweden, gave a talk at UC Santa Barbara titled Ekphrastic and Embodied, on spatial form in fiction. It was hosted by the Classics department’s Center for the Study of Ancient Fiction.
Lerone A Martin, Stanford religious studies professor who directs the university’s Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, recently talked about the FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who ran the FBI for half a century. Hoover curated networks and worked with prominent white evangelists to promote and strengthen Christian nationalism. Martin used recently declassified documents to expose the religious culture in the FBI during Hoover’s era, which has had long lansting repercussions.
UC Santa Barbara Germanic and Slavic Studies professor Fabian Offert teaches a course called “Critical AI.“ Offered through the Comparative Literature department, he explores and critiques artificial intelligence’s current abilities with his students, which puts potential threats in perspective.
UCSB Theater and Dance professor Ninotchka Bennahum and Bruce Robertson, emeritus professor in History of Art and Architecture, conceived the exhibit Border Crossings: Exile and American Modern Dance, 1900–1955. The exhibit examines how artists of color and indigenous artists had a deep impact on dance as an art form. It is running concurrently at UCSB’s Art and Architecture Museum and the New York Public Library.
UC Santa Barbara History graduate student Andrea Serna has been sponsored for her research by the American Councils for International Education’s Title VIII Combined Research and Language Training Program. Serna will use this fellowship to research her dissertation topic, exploring how new borders affected early Soviet republics. In this interview she explains what her plans are for the time that she will spend on the fellowship abroad.
UC Santa Barbara's Theater and Dance department recently put on a LAUNCHPAD Preview Production of Everybody's Favorite Mothers, a new play by James Still, directed by Risa Brainin, professor and chair of the department. The play explores LGBTQ activism in the early 70s through a mother and son relationship, based on real people Morty and Jeanne Manford, who made history when they walked together in what became the first Gay Pride Parade.
Presented by UCSB’s College of Letters and Science and and co-hosted by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center and UCSB Arts & Lectures, the 2024 Arthur N. Rupe Great Debate: Is Housing a Human Right? was held at Campbell Hall. Host of LAist’s Air Talk Larry Mantle moderated a discussion with four housing experts, Eric Tars, Rasheedah Phillips, David Garcia, and Andy Bales who shared insights on the current homelessness crisis.
Max Jack, a researcher and an alumnus of the Ethnomusicology Ph.D. program at UC Santa Barbara, recently spoke to students and faculty about his experience navigating the academic job market in the United States and abroad. Jack also gave advice on doing research and submitting to academic journals.
Students of Theatre and Dance and the UCSB Amplify Initiative presented the Amplify Drag Festival, the first undergraduate drag show UC Santa Barbara has seen in half a decade. The night of theatrical fantasy and radical self-expression sought to define how queer expression exists on this campus.
Humanities and Fine Arts Dean Daina Berry and Film lecturer Wendy Jackson joined student moderator Maya Johnson for a panel discussion celebrating Black life in America. They discussed a variety of topics surrounding Black life both personally and within academia, in honor of Black History Month this February.
