Viewing entries in
Focus on Faculty
From Netflix, PBS, Discovery, The History Channel, and more, film professor Chris Jenkins brings his professional documentary experience to the classroom to teach students the art of film production. The poplular, two-term course Crew Production teaches pitching, networking, and all that goes into workting with a production team.
Cheri Steinkellner has had a successful career in television, film, and theater and is now writing a novel. She continues to be a legend in the storytelling world, sharing her expertise with UCSB film students and insider stories from the industry. In an HFA interview, Steinkellner discusses her experiences working on iconic projects like Cheers and her unique creative teaching methods.
Euskara, the oldest language of the Basque Country, is a symbol of cultural survival. At UC Santa Barbara, lecturer Maitane Murumendiaraz Arana teaches students in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese about the language and culture of her own heritage. Through her classes and events, she keeps the Basque spirit alive and growing at UCSB.
UCSB Film and Media Studies professor Mona Damluji recently discussed her journey into children's literature and the inspiration behind her socially-conscious works. Damluji published her debut children’s book, Together, in 2021, emphasizing the power of collective action. Her upcoming book, I Want You to Know, dives deeper into personal and political narratives. Written as a poem for her children, the book reflects on the generational effects of war, particularly in the Middle East, and explores themes of displacement and resilience. Damluji aims to open dialogue about complex histories, colonialism, and intergenerational trauma.
Howard Chiang, Lai Ho and Wu Cho-liu Endowed Chair in Taiwan Studies and professor of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies at UC Santa Barbara discusses Sinophone studies and the newly published reader he co-edited with Shu-mei Shih. “Sinophone Studies Across Disciplines: A Reader” compiles essays that showcase the interdisciplinary potential of Sinophone studies as a nexus for marginalized global topics.
UC Santa Barbara faculty member Sarah Hirsch has turned her passion for New Orleans into a cornerstone of her academic and teaching career. In an interview, she discusses her journey from growing up in California to discovering a deep connection with the city while researching seaports and literature of the sea for her doctoral dissertation. Now a Continuing Lecturer in UCSB’s Writing Program, Hirsch desribes how her fascination with New Orleans inspired her signature course, “The Cross-Cultural Mapping of New Orleans,” and how she brings the vibrant city to life for her students.
Ian Kellett, a UC Santa Barbara professor co-leads the Coastal Media Project. It’s a nine-week, 12-credit intensive summer course focused on environmental media production and documentary studies, offered through UCSB’s Carsey-Wolf Center. It combines a passion for film with environmentalism as students adventure through nature, telling meaningful stories.
George Legrady is director of UC Santa Barbara’sn Experimental Visualization Lab in the Media Arts Technology (MAT) graduate program. He discusses artificial intelligence's positive and negative impacts on art and art engineering in an interview with Humanities and Fine Arts.
Writing program faculty member Patricia Fancher has published a book titled “Queer Techné: Bodies, Rhetorics, and Desire in the History of Computing,” which explores the role of relationships, sexuality and gender in the computing community during its early years of invention, specifically surrounding Alan Turing. Her work was supported in 2023 by the Bazerman Fellowship, given to a Writing Program lecturer, which offered her the opportunity to edit her manuscript. In an interview, she discusses her process and challenges that came up.
There is a direct connection from slavery to colonialism to contemporary Italian culture and politics, says Stephanie Malia Hom, an associate professor of Transnational Italian Studies at UC Santa Barbara.
Screenwriter, producer, and UCSB educator Wendy Eley Jackson speaks to a student from the campus' Film and Media Studies department about her experiences within Hollywood’s film industry. Having gained acclaim working on several well-known films and television shows, Jackson uses her knowledge and resources to mentor her students towards successful careers in the film industry.
UC Santa Barbara's Interdisciplinary Humanities Center hosted Swati Chattopadhyay, a History of Art and Architecture professor at UCSB, to discuss her book Small Spaces: Recasting the Architecture of Empire. She spoke on servant quarters and other small spaces throughout the British Empire in India and how these marginalized spaces held together the Empire's infrastructure.
UCSB professor and artist Sarah Rosalena uses computer programming and hand crafting to interpret the stars. In an interview, she discusses representing Indigenous values and anti-colonialism through her art and her work at UCSB.
In an interview, UCSB Writing Program faculty member Craig Cotich discusses his new course, "Writing for Change." Cotich designed the course to teach strategies to help students overcome resistance to change with a curriculum that encourages creativity. Cotich's teaching style incorporates storytelling and hand-drawn illustrations to engage students. The course, open to upper-division students, aims to improve writing skills and prepare students to manage both personal and societal change.
UCSB Black Studies professor Jeffrey Stewart recently hosted his jazz pop-event Jeffrey’s Jazz Coffeehouse featuring the Los Angeles based jazz artists Ben Caldwell and Love and Exile Players. The event, which was originally created to bring healing to the Isla Vista community following a mass shooting tragedy, honored the history of jazz music and brought members of the community together.
Discussing a career in public art spanning 30 years, Art Department professor Kim Yasuda presented the talk “Public Art and Campus Placemaking: Recentering the Artist in Communities of Practice” at UC Santa Barbara’s library, in conjunction with UCSB Reads 2024. Yasuda emphasized collaboration across disciplines and cultural advocacy in her efforts to connect students, scholars, and the public.
UCSB Religious Studies professor Janet Afary discussed her book Mollā Nasreddin: The Making of a Modern Trickster, 1906-1911 with department colleague Dwight Reynolds as part of the series “Humanities Decanted,” an Interdisciplinary Humanities Center program in which UCSB scholars present their newest works in a relaxed environment. Mollā Nasreddin: The Making of a Modern Trickster, 1906-1911, explores the first era of the 20th century Middle Eastern journal Mollā Nasreddin and its use of visual art, folklore, and satire to transmit social democratic ideas in Transcaucasia and Iran.
Community-engaged artist, writer, and UCSB professor of Chicana/o Studies, Silvia Rodriguez Vega, recently spoke to students about her work on how immigration policies impact children. She spoke about her book, “Drawing Deportation: Art and Resistance Among Immigrant Children,” at an event hosted by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.
Christoph Emmrich, an associate professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of Toronto, recently spoke to a UCSB audience about the fictional retellings of Dhammawati Guruma’s life as a Buddhist teacher. Emmrich’s talk was hosted by Rory Lindsay, a visiting scholar at the 84000 Buddhist Texts Translation Initiative, a global collaboration housed in UCSB’s Religious Studies department that began in 2021.
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.
