Inspired to spend some of this pandemic time entering a timeless world of book reading together, the English Department has been hosting an online Pandemic Book Club. As faculty and students share their readings from isolation, the club encourages people to join and be part of a literary community to create strong networks of support.
In a recent interview, UC Santa Barbara alumna Tracy Kong discussed her current role at the Getty Research Institute, her passions as a fine artist, and experience as an art major at UCSB.
The 2020 Diana and Simon Raab Writer-In-Residence Jesmyn Ward and IHC Director Susan Derwin discuss Ward’s exploration of trauma in her work, in a virtual presentation hosted by the “Living Democracy” series of UC Santa Barbara’s Interdisciplinary Humanities Center and the Writing Program.
UCSB’s Linguistic Department hosted Tasha Hauff, a Mnikȟowožu Lakȟota scholar, teacher, and language activist who works on new ways to apply linguistic research to Indigenous communities. Hauff discussed rapid language loss and revitalizing Indigenous languages through education and activism.
In a seminar hosted by Media Arts and Technology science writer and and artist Margaret Wertheim discussed the intersection of math and art in a project started with her twin sister Christine Wertheim, called Crochet Coral Reef, where they use the craft of crochet to create sculptural representations of coral reefs. The project was an artistic response to climate change and exists at the nexus of art, science, math, and community engagement.
UC Santa Barbara historian John Majewski explains how the artistic and literary creative works of Black abolitionists in the 1840s and 1850s acted as a critical catalyst for the abolition of slavery, and compares the creative political action of then to that of 2020.
UCSB Theater and Dance’s program Naked Shakes staged its first 100 % Zoom production of the fall season, Immortal Longings, where each actor, theater technician and the play’s adapter and director, Irwin Appel, presented the production from various locations across the country.
New faculty member Iman Djouini shares her work and interests in the the first Art Colloquium presentation of the fall, hosted by the UC Santa Barbara’s Art Department.
