News & Features — Division of Humanities and Fine Arts
FOCUS ON FACULTY: Film and Media Studies Professor Michael Curtin

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FOCUS ON FACULTY: Film and Media Studies Professor Michael Curtin

Michael Curtin, a UC Santa Barbara film and media studies professor, has released his newest book Voices of Labor: Creativity, Craft, and Conflict in Global Hollywoodabout the exploitation of labor in the entertainment industry.

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FOCUS ON FACULTY: Writing Program Lecturer Cissy Ross

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FOCUS ON FACULTY: Writing Program Lecturer Cissy Ross

"I don’t like to call it retiring, I like to call it reinventing." 

                                                             — Writing Lecturer Cissy Ross

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NEWS: Montage Concert

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NEWS: Montage Concert

Each year, the Music Department at UC Santa Barbara hosts "Montage," a concert open to the public highlighting the diverse musical talents on our campus. The 2017 showcase was held on Sunday, November 12 at the Trinity Episcopal Church in downtown Santa Barbara. HFA intern Giovanna Vicini spoke to Petra Peršolja, a graduate pianist, and Scott Marcus, chair of the Music Department, about their roles in the unique concert. 

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FOCUS ON FACULTY: Anne H. Charity Hudley

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FOCUS ON FACULTY: Anne H. Charity Hudley

UC Santa Barbara’s hire Anne H. Charity Hudley believes linguistics is a discipline that offers insight into one of the most intriguing aspects of human knowledge and behavior: how we use language.

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Kinan Azmeh and the UCSB Middle East Ensemble play tribute to Ibn ‘Arabi

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Kinan Azmeh and the UCSB Middle East Ensemble play tribute to Ibn ‘Arabi

Syrian clarinetist-composer Kinan Azmeh captivated a Santa Barbara audience with a composition about a lover’s resilience in a war-torn Syrian village, which he dedicated to the Islamic philosopher Ibn ‘Arabi.

Azmeh appeared alongside the UCSB Middle East Ensemble for a concert, lecture, and poetry reading to open the Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi Society’s annual conference “This Vast Earth,” hosted by UCSB’s Center for Middle East Studies.

“I was totally inspired by what I read,” Azmeh said, telling the audience how discovering Ibn ‘Arabi’s poetry led him to compose the music. “The piece ended up being a depiction of Ibn ‘Arabi’s journey, of love and fate intersecting.”

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ALUMNI ALL-STARS: Chloe Brotherton

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ALUMNI ALL-STARS: Chloe Brotherton

Insults can be used to empower people rather than demean them, says Chloe Brotherton, who won the 2017 Undergraduate Research Slam with her presentation “A ‘Bitch’ by Any Other Name: Reclaiming Gendered Insult Terms.” Brotherton, who graduated from UC Santa Barbara in Linguistics, is now a graduate student at UC Davis.

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ALUMNI ALL-STARS: Trina Lazzara 

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ALUMNI ALL-STARS: Trina Lazzara 

Trina Lazzara graduated last spring with two degrees from UC Santa Barbara, one in Psychology and one in English Literature. Throughout her time at UCSB, Lazzara was active in the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts as an English research assistant and as a mentor in the Campus Learning Assistance Services. She is currently tutoring young students in writing while volunteering at a domestic abuse treatment center in Fremont, California. Lazzara, who aims to become a social worker, says her passion for social justice combined with her undergraduate experience to place her on the road to success.

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FOCUS ON FACULTY: Film Professor Patrice Petro

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FOCUS ON FACULTY: Film Professor Patrice Petro

The Carsey-Wolf Center wrapped up its fall film series “Hollywood Berlin: Exiles and Immigrants” with the final film Some Like It Hot. The event featured guest speaker David Mandel who is a writer, director and executive producer of shows such as Veep and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

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Building Identity in College: Chicana/Chicano Studies

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Building Identity in College: Chicana/Chicano Studies

When I started college I was a third generation Mexican-American whose attachments to his culture of origin were made of glass—fragile and transparent. Assimilation had worked its way into the lives of my grandparents and parents and poured bleach over our cultural memories...

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RELIGION: The ‘other’ as a mirror of ourselves

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RELIGION: The ‘other’ as a mirror of ourselves

“We tried to define the parameters [of the event] around not vilifying religion as the culprit of xenophobia,” said Kathleen Moore, a UC Santa Barbara Religious Studies professor and co-organizer of the “Thank G@d We’re Not Like Them: The Global Dimensions of Religious Othering" workshop. “We wanted to isolate religion enough to understand why it’s instrumental in the way that people construct the archetypal enemy and use religion as a negative mirror to reflect the values that are positive about oneself.

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