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Student Spotlight
Matthew Limb, History of Art and Architecture graduate student at UCSB, was awarded The Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS Dissertation Fellowship in 2020. In a recent interview, Limb spoke about this fellowship and his dissertation, “'Living on the Edge': Ceramics and the Environment in the American West, 1961-2000,” which focuses on the overlap of craft production with the environmental movement within the United States.
Due to the COVID 19 pandemic, the UCSB Dance Company had to forego its annual European tour and instead starred in its first documentary, UCSB Dance Company: In Flight and on Film. The film kicks off with a sequence of ten solo performances, each choreographed by the dancers themselves, expressing their feelings about the pandemic, followed by a group piece choreographed by company director Delilah Moseley, and three other films by guest choreographers.
UC Santa Barbara graduate student Clint Terrell has been awarded a Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship for his work examining themes of redemption in prison literature and narratives. After his own experience with incarceration, Terrell channeled his passion for reading classical literature in prison to obtaining a college education and further exploring narratives of prisoners. In a recent interview, Terrell described how he became inspired to pursue his Ph.D., why he chose prison narratives, and how the Ford Foundation Fellowship will impact his work and its societal reach.
William Chavez, a doctoral candidate in Religious Studies at UC Santa Barbara, has studied exorcism, dark fantasy and science fiction. Currently an Engaging Humanities Graduate Fellow at UCSB, he has been exploring terrorism’s links to nihilism – an absence of morals, values or beliefs - and how both are incorporated into the Joker, a fictional supervillain created in the 1940s for the comic book Batman.
UCSB Writing and Literature student Via Bleidner has her first book coming out on August 10, 2021. The book is a collection of short stories and personal essays detailing her life growing up in Calabasas. Bleidner recently sat down for an interview to discuss her journey to becoming a published student author.
Iridian Pineda, a fourth-year Latin American and Iberian Studies major at UC Santa Barbara works with the Community Based Literacies (CBL) group to present Latin American history to Latinx children. Pineda combines her major in Latin American Studies with a minor in Education.
Emily Hu is a third-year UC Santa Barbara student double minoring in Chinese and Religious Studies. Soon after arriving at UC Santa Barbara in 2018, Hu got a better understanding of her own family’s culture and history. She says that growing up in a predominantly Hispanic community never gave her the chance to fully cherish her Chinese heritage. After taking several UCSB courses, Hu has developed a strong connection to her Chinese identity.
Sara Shahgholian, a fourth-year UCSB dance major, has turned to social media to share her choreography, which combines modern dance and Armenian traditional dance, in order to raise awareness of and donations for the unfolding war in Armenia.
Since going to remote learning. due to the pandemic, UCSB Linguistics has risen to the occasion and moved its peer tutoring labs online. Graduate student Jordan Douglas-Tavani recently sat down to discuss the process of moving their tutoring services online.
HFA videographer Denise Shapiro checked in with Humanities and Fine Arts students during fall 2020, to see how they were coping with the COVID-19 pandemic and to hear their perspectives on studying remotely. From writing commentaries to producing a mockumentary, UC Santa Barbara's students are keeping up with their education and keeping themselves entertained while social distancing.
For more information on how to protect yourself amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, check out UCSB’s Resource Index at www.ucsb.edu/COVID-19-information/resource-index.
Hannah George is a third-year English major at UCSB. After three years of working for The Daily Nexus as an Artsweek writer, she is now working towards becoming a professional journalist.
Why We March is a play written, directed and performed virtually, by UC Santa Barbara Theater students. The action takes place the night before the biggest fictional mass protest in the country. The play touches on heavy topics surrounding our world and the reform needed.
The art of five UC Santa Barbara students will be featured in a UC Santa Cruz’s online exhibition and webinar called “What Makes Us Human: An Art + Genomics Convergence.”
A Student Spotlight on Molly McAnany, a fourth-year double major in political science and english. McAnany shares her passion for music, classic literature, and educating others. She is able to combine all of these passions in her radio show on KCSB, “Shamrocked,“ where she airs Irish music and poetry.
As the academic year comes to a close, many stories from this years senior will go unheard as the pandemic forces Commencement to take place online. To highlight some graduates from the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts, Noe Padilla an HFA intern, interviewed the Bruhns Twins, Cooper and Calvin, and asked them to reflect on their time at UCSB. Cooper is graduating in Theater and Calvin is graduating in Film and Media Studies.
UCSB history student Michael Sanders recently organized the “Justice for George Floyd: Solidarity March,” to support the Black Lives Matter movement by peacefully protesting against police brutality. He sat down with HFA intern Raymond Matthews to talk about the protest and the experience of Black students.
HFA conducted an interview with this year’s recipient of the Dean’s Prize Teaching award, Julio Vega. Vega, a PhD candidate teaching assistant in the Classics department, discusses his passion for the classics, his teaching techniques, and his work with the UCSB-Howard University Initiative.
The Classics department may be one of the smallest at UC Santa Barbara, yet it houses one of the most highly sophisticated and intensive fields of study. For graduate student and classics PhD candidate Olga Faccani, a passion for studying friendship ties within Greek tragedies has earned her a spot as a participant in Harvard University’s Institute for World Literature (IWL) this upcoming summer.
Earlier this spring the HFA held a creativity contest with the prompt “Stories That Matter.“ Please celebrate their talent with us and learn more about the winning students and the stories they told with their work in poetry, prose, music, videos, visual art, and photography.
“Numbers,” by Connor Ding won first place in the prose category of UC Santa Barbara’s Division of Humanities and Fine Arts spring creativity contest, in response to the prompt “Stories That Matter.“ The personal essay is about Ding’s family back in China during the winter weeks of the novel Coronavirus outbreak.
