Professor Mario García recently retired after 47 years at UC Santa Barbara, having focused his research on Chicano history with an emphasis on civil rights, Chicano Catholic history, and the Chicano movement. In a recent interview, García discussed his legacy and his passion for Chicano studies.
As an Interdisciplinary Humanities Center Public Humanities Graduate Fellow, UC Santa Barbara religious studies doctoral student Shannon Toribio launched an Oral History Project with the Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation. He works closely with librarian and archivist Dez Alaniz to analyze and store the collections that document the rich history of the Filipino American community at El Presidio Research Center in downtown Santa Barbara. In collecting oral histories as a part of the Trust’s Oral History Project, Toribio has encountered many diverse and enriching stories of migration and community-building.
Venerable Yifa, religious scholar and Buddhist leader, spotlighted Buddhist organizations and practices that help protect the environment and reduce climate change, at an event co-sponsored by the East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies department, the East Asia Center, the Center for Taiwan Studies, and the Dalai Lama Endowment.
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.
Patrick Hunt, a Stanford University medieval studies scholar came to UC Santa Barbara last week to give a lecture on Hannibal, a military commander from the Second Punic War, and how his tactics are still used today in modern military intelligence. The lecture, “Hannibal’s Secret Weapon,” was co-sponsored by UCSB’s Department of Classics, Department of History and History of Art & Architecture.
UCSB Film and Media Studies professor James McNamara recently became the showrunner for The Artful Dodger, an Australian Disney+ television series. In an interview with film student Douglas Chen, McNamara discussed balancing his creative projects with his teaching career.
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.
Civil liberties and democracy scholar Ellis Cose spoke to a UC Santa Barbara audience last week. Cose presented two distinct threats to American democracy — social and institutional - and answered student questions about the future of democracy in the United States.
Adrienne Edgar, a UC Santa Barbara Professor in history, held a talk about her book The Intermarriage and Friendship of People: Ethnic Mixing in Soviet Central Asia. The talk, sponsored by The Center for Cold War Studies and International History, focused on the historical background of the Soviet Union’s advocacy for intermarriage and the experience of the Soviet people, as well as the aftermath of scientific thinking coming to the forefront in the 1960s.
Samuel Lamontagne, a UCLA ethnomusicology researcher, visited UC Santa Barbara to discuss his expertise on hiphopography, the study of hip-hop culture. After moving to Los Angeles from France, Lamontagne was able to immerse himself in the hip-hop sphere and interview LA rappers to understand their communities, experiences, and history.
Scholars from all over the world will meet at UC Santa Barbara this August to collaborate and exchange ideas in the field of children’s literature as it intersects with environmental awareness. Germanic and Slavic studies professor and chair Sara Pankenier Weld, is an organizer of the conference as a board member for The International Research Society for Children’s Literature.
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.
Cherríe Moraga, UCSB professor of English and co-director of Las Maestras Center for Xicana Thought, Art, and Social Practice, was recently awarded the annual Luis Leal Award for Distinction in Chicano and Latino Literature. Moraga spoke at an IHC event, delving into her role as a writer and her passion for Chicano studies. She shared part of her memoir, Native Country of the Heart, explaining the meaning behind the story.
In her upcoming novel Atomic Anna, author Rachel Barenbaum poses the question: What would happen if a woman was in charge of the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Soviet Union in 1986? “Atomic Anna follows three generations of women – grandmother, mother, and daughter – as they build a time machine to stop the Chernobyl disaster and save their family,” Barenbaum said at a recent virtual luncheon hosted by UC Santa Barbara’s Taubman Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies.
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.
UC Santa Barbara professor of Theater and Dance Jessica Nakamura organized a lab event on decentering Japanese performance. She recently spoke about the outcomes of her lab event in an interview.
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.
UCSB’s Middle East Studies program hosted University of Michigan historian Kathryn Babayan earlier this month to discuss her book, “The City as Anthology: Eroticism and Urbanity in Early Modern Isfahan.” Babayan spoke about the medium she used to uncover the lives of 17th-century Isfahan residents and migrants—family archives. She said the seldom-viewed records revealed details of relationships and attitudes toward sex that provide a new perspective on the city’s documented history.
