Earlier this month, students in UC Santa Barbara’s Honors Arts Program opened their studio spaces to the public — the first time they have held such an event since 2020. UCSB Honors Art students Grace Warren, Madeleine Galas, and Marlena Goodman were among those who exhibited their completed and ongoing works, as well as their work spaces. Viewers were able to stroll through the studios and meet the student artists.
The Art, Design, and Architecture Museum at UC Santa Barbara has multiple art exhibitions on display year-round. Currently, it is showing a collection of instruments used for gagaku, an ancient Japanese style of orchestral music and dance.
For many students the names Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonius Monk and Chet Baker are just random names. That changes quickly for those, like anthropology student Jennifer Yoshikoshi, who take the course “Listening to Jazz,” taught by Jon Nathan in UC Santa Barbara’s Music Department. She describes how this course deepened her knowledge of music and music history.
At the turn of the 20th century, the United States saw a boom in Japanese immigration. But as the Japanese American population increased, campaigns to exclude immigrants grew as well. In a recent talk for the UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, UC Berkeley English professor Andrew Way Leong examined Japanese literature in the context of these acts of exclusion. He explained how the immigration ban led many Japanese Americans to emphasize reproduction as a way to build a future in America, excluding individuals in queer or other non-traditional relationships.
Nowadays, machines are so technologically advanced that they can handle problems humans are ordinarily responsible for. But, we should view artificial intelligence in cultural rather than technological terms, French AI researcher Alexandre Gefen recently told a UC Santa Barbara audience at an event sponsored by the Comparative Literature Program and the English Department’s Transcriptions Center.
Television has changed since the beginning of the 21st century, with streaming platforms such as Netflix and Hulu now allowing us to watch thousands of television series that offer more diversity and global perspectives, says UCSB Film and Media lecturer James McNamara. Television series, he told a virtual audience this month, allow people to connect with one another through shared experiences, not only in America but around the world, giving the medium a new educational role in society.
The UC Santa Barbara Writing Program is beginning a creative nonfiction initiative in which 19 students will work with faculty members to create multimedia stories about their COVID-19 pandemic experiences.
Student Engagement and Enrichment in Data Science (SEEDS) at UC Santa Barbara is a cohort of students from a variety of majors and diverse backgrounds who study data science ethics and how algorithms have biases that further social, political, and economic divides. The students are mentored by professors, including UCSB’s Associate Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Sharon Tettegah. And they hear presentations from researchers in various data science fields.
Theater, Dance, and Music at UC Santa Barbara have persisted through the COVID-19 pandemic with a common strength: creativity. Theater and Dance department chair Irwin Appel, UCSB Dance Company director Delilah Moseley, and UCSB Gospel Choir director Victor Bell recently spoke at a Humanities and Fine Arts Division event HFA Speaks: Arts Evolving in a Pandemic, to discuss how the arts have changed, struggled, and adapted throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Adapted for film from the acclaimed science-fiction novel by Frank Herbert, Dune tells the story of Paul Atreides, son of the noble family that governs the planet Arrakis, and his epic destiny-driven journey to the most dangerous realm in the universe. Dune has been celebrated by both critics and audiences for its exciting storytelling and vivid world building– and coming up with the successful feature adaptation was no small feat. Dune screenwriter and UCSB alumnus Eric Roth spoke with a student audience about his creative process for the film at a recent installment of the Carsey-Wolf Center’s Script to Screen series.
Known for his literary works about immigrants and Chicano Studies, author and professor, Rubén Martínez, has been awarded UC Santa Barbara’s 17th annual Luis Leal Award for Distinction in Chicano/Latino Literature.
Earlier this month, Santa Barbara Dance Theater began its 2022 season under the new artistic direction of Brandon Whited, marking a return to live performance after a pandemic-induced hiatus. In downtown Santa Barbara the company presented a series of performances, curated by Whited with guest choreography by fellow dance faculty member Nancy Colahan and UCSB Dance alumna Weslie Ching.
A new UCSB Library exhibition, “Beyond The Wall: The Prison Art Resistance,” opened last week, featuring art created by currently and formerly incarcerated individuals. It showcases the creative talent hidden behind bars, and the lengths that incarcerated artists will go in order to produce and share their creations. The gallery display serves as a means to share the experiences of the featured artists and to invite UCSB students to learn more about programs that support the educational endeavors of those who have been incarcerated.
The Guantanamo Bay Detention Center in Cuba has housed 780 “unlawful enemy combatants” over its 20-year history, detainees who were tortured and denied human rights because of the prison’s status in a “legal black hole.” In a recent Center for Middle East Studies event, UC Santa Barbara professor Lisa Hajjar said that the 39 detainees who remain at Guantanamo have not left or been convicted due to government failures. But Americans and the United States government should still be concerned with their future.
During the current pandemic, a lack of access to labs has made modular synthesizers even more elusive than usual to media arts students. But in a recent lecture hosted by UCSB’s Center for Research in Electronic Arts Technology, UCSB alumna, Jiayue Cecilia Wu, described how free, online software programs and a "student-centered" approach to teaching makes modular synthesis accessible to students. Wu now teaches at the University of Colorado Denver.
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced $24.7 million in grants for 208 humanities projects across the country this week. Of those, two grants were awarded to faculty in the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts at UCSB.
UCSB Theater and Dance’s BIPOC Reading Series Festival took place over this past week, hosting a diverse group of emerging and veteran playwrights from across the country to collaborate with UCSB students and staff on their newest works. The festival, born out of a need for more diversity in theater, creates an interactive space for playwrights and performing artists of color to present their work.
The murder of George Floyd in May, 2020 sparked a re-emergence of anti-racist activism in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, exhausting people across the country — especially those directly impacted by racial injustice. UCSB Library archivists have mounted an exhibition that highlights the Santa Barbara community’s experience during the pandemic, in an effort to maintain the momentum of social justice movements and narrate history as it happens.
Blushing is an uncontrollable physical response to embarrassment, erotic desire, anger, and other emotions. In a recent lecture hosted by UC Santa Barbara's Early Modern Center, the author and scholar Valerie Traub explained how a bodily function which is shared by all races was denied to literary characters of color throughout the 15th to 18th-century early modern literary era.
Fighting a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis prompted UC Santa Barbara alumna Ashley Ratcliff to inspire others and publish her first book, a memoir titled “Jesus Year.”
