American journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winner Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste: The Origins of our Discontents has received global praise and became a New York Times best-seller last year. But it has been met with harsh criticism from some in academia. As part of its “Tertulia” series, the Latin American and Iberian Studies (LAIS) department hosted a live Zoom event in which UC Santa Barbara faculty had the opportunity to give their own critique of Wilkerson’s work.
History professor Hillary N. Green, of the University of Alabama, spoke at a UC-Santa Barbara History department event, to describe how she is bringing her university’s long-hidden history of slavery back into the school’s attention with her “Hallowed Grounds” campus tour.
UC Santa Barbara English professor Melody Jue challenges terrestrial-based ways of knowing and reverses our perception of the world by presenting the ocean as a media environment. Jue draws on her experience as a scuba diver to challenge people to consider the ocean itself as a media framework in her book, “Wild Blue Media: Thinking Through Seawater,” which was published in February of last year.
The Sent-Down Youth Movement was a defining period in China’s Cultural Revolution. From 1968 to 1980, nearly 17 million urban students were forcibly relocated to rural Chinese villages in an organized effort to bridge the gap between China’s rural and urban populations. UC Santa Barbara Asian American Studies professor Xiaojian Zhao presented a talk on this movement called Crime and Punishment: Revisiting the Sent-Down Youth Movement in Mao’s China, to a UCSB virtual audience.
UCSB’s Carsey-Wolf Center hosted a virtual roundtable discussion titled Television in the Age of Pandemic about the changing landscape of entertainment in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and the political tensions in 2020. The panel included media experts from UC Irvine, CUNY Staten Island, Cornell, and University of Alabama.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an NYU professor of History and Italian Studies talked about her new book Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present at a webinar hosted by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center last week. Ben-Ghiat discussed the content of her book, that analyzes who authoritarian leaders from Mussolini to Donald Trump gain power and maintain power.
Director of the Getty Research Institute, Mary Miller virtually visited UCSB to speak about new insights she has gained by studying 8th-century Maya figurines. In her talk, she shared images of exquisite sculptures that revealed a complex and little-known side of Maya civilization that likely included slavery.
With the coronavirus pandemic still in full swing, the 2021 Reel Loud Film and Arts Festival is reimagining its existence outside of UC Santa Barbara’s Campbell Hall, its home for the past 30 years.
Vidhisha Mahesh, producer for Reel Loud, and director Jeffrey Peepgrass, are working to adapt this year’s festival to the pandemic, and carry on the festival’s legacy of fostering collaboration among the arts through video and socially-distanced activities.
Emily Hu is a third-year UC Santa Barbara student double minoring in Chinese and Religious Studies. Soon after arriving at UC Santa Barbara in 2018, Hu got a better understanding of her own family’s culture and history. She says that growing up in a predominantly Hispanic community never gave her the chance to fully cherish her Chinese heritage. After taking several UCSB courses, Hu has developed a strong connection to her Chinese identity.
Swarthmore College anthropologist Sa’ed Atshan discussed LGBTQ movements across the Middle East and North Africa region in a virtual talk sponsored by UC Santa Barbara’s Center for Middle East Studies. Atshan focused on the story of late Egyptian activist Sarah Hegazi and said hope is necessary for social change.
UCSB professor Stephanie Hom is applying her research background in Italian colonialism to probe how the experience of Blackness is translated in literature. In a recent virtual interview, Hom discussed her new course, The Art of Translation, in the Department of French and Italian, and how language and translation can be used to evaluate complex cultural issues.
Sara Shahgholian, a fourth-year UCSB dance major, has turned to social media to share her choreography, which combines modern dance and Armenian traditional dance, in order to raise awareness of and donations for the unfolding war in Armenia.
