Scholars from all over the world will meet at UC Santa Barbara this August to collaborate and exchange ideas in the field of children’s literature as it intersects with environmental awareness. Germanic and Slavic studies professor and chair Sara Pankenier Weld, is an organizer of the conference as a board member for The International Research Society for Children’s Literature.
UC Santa Barbara Dance Team competed at the ESPN World Wide Center in Orlando, Florida last month and took home a bronze medal. They were the only self-coached team at the at the Universal Dance Association’s national competition. A quarter of the members of the team are part of UC Santa Barbara’s dance program, allowing them to apply what they learn in the classroom to the team dances.
Cherríe Moraga, UCSB professor of English and co-director of Las Maestras Center for Xicana Thought, Art, and Social Practice, was recently awarded the annual Luis Leal Award for Distinction in Chicano and Latino Literature. Moraga spoke at an IHC event, delving into her role as a writer and her passion for Chicano studies. She shared part of her memoir, Native Country of the Heart, explaining the meaning behind the story.
In her upcoming novel Atomic Anna, author Rachel Barenbaum poses the question: What would happen if a woman was in charge of the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Soviet Union in 1986? “Atomic Anna follows three generations of women – grandmother, mother, and daughter – as they build a time machine to stop the Chernobyl disaster and save their family,” Barenbaum said at a recent virtual luncheon hosted by UC Santa Barbara’s Taubman Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies.
The UC Santa Barbara Moot Court team has become the first in recent Moot Court history to have won the National Tournament for Brief-Writing three years in a row, most recently in mid-January. To top it off, UCSB’s team is student-run.
The Honors Open Studio exhibition featured the works of 10 graduate art students in early February. In Episode 4 of HFA Speaks: The Podcast, UC Santa Barbara communication student Maxwell Wilkens interviews conceptual photographer Trieu Nguyen about inspirations, creative processes, and perspectives on the world of photography.
UC Santa Barbara professor of Theater and Dance Jessica Nakamura organized a lab event on decentering Japanese performance. She recently spoke about the outcomes of her lab event in an interview.
Late on Tuesday afternoons, like clockwork, a group of ten UC Santa Barbara undergraduate students convene on the third floor of the humanities and social sciences building, bypassing classrooms and teaching assistant offices to reach an office of their own: The Undergraduate Journal of History. The journal publishes the academic research of history undergraduate students from both within and outside UC Santa Barbara. The editorial staff comprises students enrolled in history lecturer Jarett Henderson’s course Internship in Scholarly Publishing.
Students at UC Santa Barbara were interviewed on video saying they wish to mark Valentine’s Day this year by expanding the definition of love and romance that is the celebration’s focus. And Yuri Fraccaroli, a UCSB graduate student in the Feminist Studies department, sat down for a podcast interview with UCSB Humanities and Fine Arts Division student intern Faith Harvey to view the day through the lens of the LGBTQ+ community.
UCSB’s Middle East Studies program hosted University of Michigan historian Kathryn Babayan earlier this month to discuss her book, “The City as Anthology: Eroticism and Urbanity in Early Modern Isfahan.” Babayan spoke about the medium she used to uncover the lives of 17th-century Isfahan residents and migrants—family archives. She said the seldom-viewed records revealed details of relationships and attitudes toward sex that provide a new perspective on the city’s documented history.
Jody Enders, medievalist and UCSB Distinguished Professor in the department of French and Italian Studies, recently translated two books of French farce. Enders spoke at a recent IHC Humanities Decanted event with Leo Cabrantes-Grant, a professor of Spanish and Portuguese. They discussed contemporary themes in medieval farces that resonate with a 21st-century audiences and how Enders approaches translating.
Migrant workers have been filling gaps in the economy and industries as far back as in the fifth century B.C. in ancient Rome, said UCLA ancient history professor Greg Woolf at a recent event hosted by UC Santa Barbara’s Classics and History departments and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.
UCSB Film alum James Hayman spoke at the Pollock Theatre about his experience directing an episode of HBO’s “The Sopranos,” as well as his experience with UCSB’s film department and career. Hayman’s episode, “Eloise” was also screened, followed by an on-stage conversation with moderator Patrice Petro, director of the Carsey-Wolf Center.
