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UCSB English, Dance and Black Studies Professor Stephanie Batiste lead a post-screening Q&A with world-renowned movement duo Charles “Lil Buck” Riley and Jon Boogz in UCSB's Pollock Theater about their careers and Netflix documentary “Move.” The duo seeks to give a voice to the voiceless and use movement to heal painful emotions, offering their audiences a story within their dance.
As part of his senior directing concentration, UCSB student Alex Guaydacan tackled his biggest project yet: solo directing “The Incident Report” for the Fall One Acts. In an interview, he reflects on the directing process, from navigating friendships with cast members to building confidence as a director. Guaydacan speaks about the process of bringing his vision to life for UCSB’s annual theater showcase.
UC Davis professor Kathleen Cruz was hosted by UCSB Classice for a lecture on modern Latine writers who draw on classical mythology, particularly the story of Ariadne, to explore themes of ethnic identity, feminism, and social exclusion. In her lecture, Cruz highlighted works by Chicana poet Analicia Sotelo and Puerto Rican poet Etnairis Rivera, showing how these poets use Ariadne’s myth to reflect on experiences of “othering,” reclaiming identity, and the challenges of diasporic life.
Filmmaker and director Persis Karim visited UC Santa Barbara for a screening of her film The Dawn is Too Far, hosted by the Center for Middle East Studies. The film details how art serves as a cultural creative outlet for many Iranian immigrants who moved to America.
UC Santa Barbara’s Walter H. Capps Center hosted a virtual panel last week about the influence of religion in politics and the 2024 election. Panelists were University of Pennsylvania religious studies professor Anthea Butler, North Florida University professor Julie Ingersoll, and UC Santa Barbara professor Joseph Blankholm. The audience heard that Christian nationalists aim to establish a theocratic government, viewing a figure like Donald Trump as a vehicle for gaining political and religious power. Panelists warned of potential violence as these movements see themselves in a battle of good against evil.
Jewish Israeli Rotem Levin and Palestinian Osama Iliwat discussed their transformative life experiences and the different realities they face in the same land, in a discussion hosted by UCSB’s Interdisciplinary Humanities Center. As violence escalates in the Middle East, leaving many devastated, the two activists are holding conversations around the world, to encouraging individuals to listen to one another and challenge presumptions. By doing so, they aim to foster a future of peace and freedom for all.
UC Riverside religious studies professor Melissa M. Wilcox spoke to a UC Santa Barbara audience last week about her research on the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, an international group of drag queens and queer activists. Wilcox was invited by UCSB's Walter H. Capps Center as part of its 60th-anniversary celebrations. Her book, Queer Nuns: Religion, Activism, and Serious Parody, explores how the Sisters blend drag, activism, and religious imagery to challenge societal norms around gender and morality.
UC Santa Barbara students recently took to the stage in an outdoor performance of Much Ado About Nothing through the Naked Shakes theater program. They brought their own interpretations to Shakespeare’s work under the direction of UCSB Theater professor Irwin Appel. The actors explored the impact of spoken word, delighting several audiences over the course of an October weekend.
In a lecture last week, English professor Sowon Park spoke about how human writing is born from creativity and a need to make sense of the world, whereas AI-based writing can only be formed from a prompt and cannot pull from real emotion. Park explored the notion of AI replacing human writing through her own experience as a judge in the UCSB Mellichamp Initiative’s AI and Human Writing Competition.
Cinema sound editor Javier Umpierrez joined UCSB Film and Media Studies professor Greg Siegel for a post-screening discussion on the 2021 fantasy mystery film Memoria, which was the inaugural feature of “Panic!,” a fall series presented by UCSB’s Carsey-Wolf Center. Umpierrez spoke about his role in Memoria’s sound design and the film’s portrayal of bodies and locations recording history.
In a milestone for the campus, UC Santa Barbara has received visionary commitments totaling $22 million — including a record gift of $13.5 million in support of the arts and humanities — from alumnus and UC Santa Barbara Foundation Trustee John Arnhold ’75 and his wife Jody Arnhold, with their Arnhold Foundation.
Spring One-Acts, an annual UCSB student director-led event, featured three one-act plays individually directed by senior Theater students, who each took several months to create and direct their plays, providing a night of provocative entertainment for the audience.
UCSB’s Department of Music hosted an Opera Gala last month, showcasing the talents of UCSB and Ventura College students in three separate performances: one at UCSB, one at Ventura College and an abridged version at the Casa Dorinda retirement community. The primary focus of the Gala was six opera singers, all graduate students in UCSB’s music department. The event also featured a chorus, orchestra, and dancers .
Historian Evan Axel Andersson spoke on amulets and daily life in ancient Roman Egypt at the 2024 Van Gelderen Lecture, hosted by UC Santa Barbara’s History Department. Andersson discussed how these ancient artifacts did much more than adorn—serving as vital protective and spiritual tools.
Twenty students in the 2024 Raab Writing Fellowship program presented their final projects at a showcase last week, displaying multimedia works from books and zines to videos games and interactive websites — including research, fiction and creative nonfiction. Topics ranged from jazz, to AI to incarcerated women, and an Athenian prostitute. The program is generously funded by Santa Barbara writer Diana Raab, a former UCSB Foundation Trustee. It is administered by the UCSB Writing Program.
UC Santa Barbara's Walter H. Capps Center hosted Diane Winston, Knight Chair of Media and Religion at the University of Southern California, for a lecture on her book Righting the American Dream: How the Media Mainstreamed Reagan's Evangelical Vision. She spoke about the role religion played in both Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump's presidency and how media helped popularize the politics of the Christian right.
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.
“HFA Speaks: For the Love of Language” brought together Sabine Frühstück, a UCSB professor of modern Japanese cultural studies, Magda Campo, an Arabic continuing lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies, and Laura Marqués-Pascual, the language program director in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese for a panel discussion. Moderated by Jackie Jauregui, the panel had a conversation about the importance of learning languages, and the related struggles of teaching it at a time of dropping enrollment nationally.
This spring, UC Santa Barbara students co-facilitated the creation of Originalia, an art showcase featuring the painting, sculpture, and interactive artwork of 11 students interpreting their experiences with reproductive biology. UCSB students Emilie Risha and Anastasia Senavsky described how they came together to express their passion for reproductive biology in an interdisciplinary manner.
Ph.D. student Letícia Cobra Lima created the recent exhibit at UC Santa Barbara’s Art, Design & Architecture Museum, “A Box of One’s Own: Women Beyond Borders.” Through intricately decorated boxes, women express what womanhood means to them. Lima’s recent workshop 'Bring Your Own Box' invited the UCSB community to actively participate. Inspired by Virginia Woolf, this exhibit explores the use of artistic freedom and empowerment through the creation of these small, meaningful boxes.
