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Student Spotlight
UCSB’s Division of Humanities and Fine Arts celebrated Give Day last week with its annual Creativity Contest. Students from all majors and years submitted works in different categories—photography, prose, poetry, visual art, music and video—for the opportunity to be published on the HFA website. The winners were honored at a luncheon award ceremony.
Fourth-year Theater and Dance major Sophie Lynd finds she is able to enhance the emotional impact of her productions through theater lighting design. Lynd has worked on many productions and recently adapted previous lighting designs for the UCSB Dance Company.
Two UC Santa Barbara undergraduate students created an art exhibition about climate change from the ground up—with no previous art experience. Fourth-year student Lukas Kraak and third-year student Noah Weiss were part of an Environmental Leadership Incubator (ELI) year-long course in which they were able to turn their idea into reality. Their exhibition is located on the first floor of the UCSB Library.
History and Music student Conor Mack plays guitar for both the UCSB Jazz ensemble and the Isla Vista rock band “Marella.” Mack spoke about how he entered both musical spheres, and how his experience with Jazz helped him fit right in to the world of Rock.
Linguistics student Jennali Reyes is a fourth-year cadet in the UCSB Surfrider Battalion ROTC. UCSB’s ROTC is student run program where fourth-years are in charge of leadership. Reyes has run activities throughout the year as well as an alumni committee. For Reyes, it has been a journey of self-discovery that taught her discipline, with physical training classes beginning as early as 6 a.m.
UC Santa Barbara Dance Team competed at the ESPN World Wide Center in Orlando, Florida last month and took home a bronze medal. They were the only self-coached team at the at the Universal Dance Association’s national competition. A quarter of the members of the team are part of UC Santa Barbara’s dance program, allowing them to apply what they learn in the classroom to the team dances.
The UC Santa Barbara Moot Court team has become the first in recent Moot Court history to have won the National Tournament for Brief-Writing three years in a row, most recently in mid-January. To top it off, UCSB’s team is student-run.
The Honors Open Studio exhibition featured the works of 10 graduate art students in early February. In Episode 4 of HFA Speaks: The Podcast, UC Santa Barbara communication student Maxwell Wilkens interviews conceptual photographer Trieu Nguyen about inspirations, creative processes, and perspectives on the world of photography.
Late on Tuesday afternoons, like clockwork, a group of ten UC Santa Barbara undergraduate students convene on the third floor of the humanities and social sciences building, bypassing classrooms and teaching assistant offices to reach an office of their own: The Undergraduate Journal of History. The journal publishes the academic research of history undergraduate students from both within and outside UC Santa Barbara. The editorial staff comprises students enrolled in history lecturer Jarett Henderson’s course Internship in Scholarly Publishing.
Students at UC Santa Barbara were interviewed on video saying they wish to mark Valentine’s Day this year by expanding the definition of love and romance that is the celebration’s focus. And Yuri Fraccaroli, a UCSB graduate student in the Feminist Studies department, sat down for a podcast interview with UCSB Humanities and Fine Arts Division student intern Faith Harvey to view the day through the lens of the LGBTQ+ community.
Check out these Q & A’s with UCSB Film Students: an Instagram-inspired director, a transfer student making new connections, and an Indonesian student telling untold stories.
UC Santa Barbara Film and Media Studies program is renowned for its research and scholarship and students come away with a deep understanding of the field.They also have a chance to network and pursue production projects to gain traction in their future careers — applying practically what they’ve learned theoretically. Four students recently gave interviews about what they are doing on the production side. Read their stories.
UC Santa Barbara Theater majors Sophia Papalia and Hannah Froman directed the one-act plays Dash Climbs a Rope and Reunion, both by renowned playwright and department friend James Still, under the mentorship of theater professor Risa Brainin for UCSB’s Fall One-Acts.
During the pandemic, Stephanie Kraus left the Dance Department to pursue Sociology. After being confined to dancing in her isolated Isla Vista apartment, she began to feel unmotivated and doubtful of her decision to pursue dance. Although Kraus enjoyed her new classes, she missed being able to express herself without words, with only movement. The Kinetic Lab, the closing performance of the year for the dance department, gave Kraus the opportunity to reconnect with her passion for dance.
Professor, artist, and PhD Student Masood Kamandy says his LGBTQIA+ identity inspires his artistry and drive to educate those locally and abroad in communities of Afghan heritage. He combines his passions for teaching, fine arts, and photography in his research on how to make the field of technology and computing more equitable. He creates programs and coding certificates refined for disadvantaged or minority students that otherwise would have limited access to these resources. He now teaches Javascript and Processing in the Art Department at UC Santa Barbara and Pasadena City College.
UC Santa Barbara student Yulim Choi has been passionate about art since childhood. English was her second language, and she found she could use art to express herself better than she could words. She followed her passions into an art-focused high school and graduates this spring with a minor in Art and major in Communication.
UC Santa Barbara biopsychology major Kiana Ranjbaran devotes herself to the study of Islamic poet Rumi and holds an internship with the Rumi Education Center via the Department of Religious Studies. She says everyone can benefit from reading Rumi, who writes about the interconnectedness of humanity, the world, and the divine.
Developing gender-neutral vocabulary in French can be challenging due to the highly gendered nature of the language and resistance from French academics and politicians. But Jordan J Tudisco, a doctoral student in Comparative Literature and French teacher at UC Santa Barbara, looks to provide students with the inclusive vocabulary they need to express themselves. In a recent interview, Tudisco discussed their work, some of the challenges that hinder the use of inclusive language in French, and what they see for the future of inclusive vocabulary.
Yuval Cohen is finishing up her final year at UCSB as President of Associated Students. As this academic year winds down, Cohen says she has learned many lessons about the power of influence and leadership.
Environmental Studies Major and Indigenous Studies Minor Katie Miller is an Intern for the Walter H. Capps Center at UC Santa Barbara, which focuses on the connection between environment, society, and ethics. Miller is workign at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden to catalog and preserve plants native to California. She met with UCSB Writing student for an interview and accompanying video.
