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.
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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.
UCSB French lecturer Marion Labatut sat down to discuss her efforts to build up enrollment in UCSB French courses after COVID-19 related drop. During a Q&A session, she described new ways the department in encouraging students to fall in love with French.
Professor Fabio Rambelli from UCSB’s Religious Studies and East Asian Languages & Cultural Studies departments, speaks about hosting “The Transcultural Exploratorium: Neuro Music and Japanese Culture” event and how he exposed the UCSB community to traditional Japanese sounds.
UC Santa Barbara’s Walter H. Capps Center welcomed UC Berkeley professor Khiara M. Bridges for a lecture titled “Race in the Roberts Court: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.“ Bridges discussed the history of restricting reproductive healthcare for Black women in the United States, and what this ruling means for future discourse on race in the Supreme Court.
Musician and composer Gene Coleman spoke to a UC Santa Barbara audience about his work in Neuro Music. With compositions inspired by the brain’s auditory pathways, Coleman studies music from a neuroaesthetic perspective for creative production.
UCSB’s Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies recently hosted Andreas Bernard, a visiting professor from Leuphana University Luneberg, for a talk on the history of epidemics. He said past theories regarding infections and diseases established successive origin stories that have affected epidemiological narratives today.
UC Santa Barbara graduate student Gulia Gurevich last week shared her research into Uzbek music history, in a joint lecture and recital. Gurevich presented Uzbek history as it influenced music, and discussed women’s role in music as a professional and educational field. After her lecture, she performed several different Uzbek works, including both solo and duo pieces.
The UC Santa Barbara Jazz Ensemble performed its Fall Concert with a tribute titled “The Identity of Ellington.” Ensemble director Jon Nathan spoke to HFA reporter Maya Johnson about what it meant for a predominantly white UCSB band to explore the history of race in jazz’s origins, and to give credit to artists and innovators who had been underpaid, discriminated against, and sidelined as jazz culture developed in the 20th century.
UC Santa Barbara's Carsey-Wolf Center hosted UC Irvine film professor Lucas Hilderbrand and UCSB Ph.D. student Graham Feyl to discuss the film classic, "Paris is Burning." The speakers said the film had a major impact on the LGBTQ community, on cinema, and on pop culture.
UC Santa Barbara’s Carsey-Wolf Center hosted the filmmakers Valerio Ciriaci and Izaak Liptzin to discuss their film Stonebreakers. The speakers talked about the protests surrounding the Columbus monuments during the Black Lives Matter movement and finding new ways to memorialize history.
UC Santa Barbara’s Carsey-Wolf Center hosted Cuban writer-director Miguel Coyula and actress Lynn Cruz to discuss their 2021 film Corazón Azul. The filmmakers spoke about the challenges they faced over the decade it took to produce the film, specifically, government censorship in Cuba.