Art student Jasmin Tupy hosted an art show gallery in her Isla Vista home last month featuring several other student artists – to showcase the talents of the college town next to UC Santa Barbara.
Holly Roose, the director of UCSB’s Promise Scholars Program, works with high-achieving, first-generation students from low-income households to ensure their academic success. As director, she advises students, makes sure they hit their academic marks, supports them to overcome life difficulties, and helps them plan for future careers.
Americans created a criminal punishment system based on the model of quarantine in which the poor and people of color are disproportionately isolated and contained, “treated as a pathogen,” Sharon Daniel, a professor at UC Santa Cruz and media artist, told the UCSB Media Arts and Technology (MAT) graduate program. Now, in the 21st century, the COVID-19, has both exposed and intensified the injustices of the criminal system, Daniel said as she walked through her interactive art documentary “EXPOSED: Documenting COVID-19 in the Criminal Punishment System.”
Yin Yu, a graduate student in UCSB’s Media Arts and Technology (MAT) program, debuted her 3D fusion of biology and technology recently at the Art Department’s Glassbox Gallery. Yu’s pieces “OctoAnenome” and “SoftVoss” are a representation of her desire to portray the potential of robots to behave realistically with life-like motions.
In celebration of Women's History Month, UC Santa Barbara's Humanities and Fine Arts division hosted a panel entitled "The Wisdom of Women," in which two faculty members stressed uplifting and recovering female voices that are not often heard in mainstream discussions of women in history. UCSB undergraduate student Colleen Coveney, engaged author and English professor Cherríe Moraga and History professor Miroslava Chavez-Garcia in an insightful discussion that ranged from the panelists' personal histories to the difficulties they encounter in academic circles.
UC Santa Barbara history professors Anthony Barbieri and Sherene Seikaly were recently awarded $60,000 each by the National Humanities Alliance to further their research on the ancient Han Dynasty and Levantine mobility, respectively.
UC Santa Barbara second-year dance and biology double major Riley Haley balances being a full-time student and performing with the Santa Barbara Dance Theater, a professional dance company. Though she must devote a significant chunk of her time to these academic and artistic passions, she is grateful to UCSB that she does not have to choose between the two.
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.