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    • Taubman Symposium Talk: Between Catastrophe and Creativity: Shmuel Yosef Agnon’s Nobel Prize and the Jewish Response to Trauma

    Zoom

    In December 1966, Austro-Hungarian born Israeli author Shmuel Yosef Agnon (1887–1970) received the Nobel Prize in literature—the only author writing in Hebrew to receive that distinguished honor. Rabbi Jeffrey Saks will trace how Agnon’s remarkable acceptance speech vividly expresses the intertwining of personal destiny, Jewish history, and the art of storytelling. Standing before the crowned heads of Europe, Agnon recounted his life, not merely as a biographical sketch but as a narrative shaped by the ...

    Research Focus Group Talk: All the Frost Melts: A Trilingual Reading in Dolgan, Russian, and English

    McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

    This trilingual reading of writings by Indigenous writer Kseniia Bolshakova will include portions from her autobiographical novel All the Frost Melts, which was recently translated into English after being published in Dolgan and Russian in 2024. It will feature writer Kseniia Bolshakova reading in Dolgan, linguist Karina Sheifer (UC Santa Barbara) reading in Russian, and translator Ainsley Morse (UC San Diego) reading in English. The reading also will include imagery from life in the Russian ...

    Humanities Decanted: Shana Moulton

    McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

    Join us for a discussion with Shana Moulton (Art) about her recent exhibition at MoMA, Meta/Physical Therapy. This 2024 exhibition premiered a new site-specific installation. Through performance, video, and sculpture, Moulton chronicled the experiences of her semi-autobiographical alter-ego, Cynthia, as she navigated personal choices and physical limitations. Transforming the Kravis Studio into a prismatic environment, this installation employed the artist’s signature blend of spiritual imagery, medical technology, popular culture, and references to high art and ...

    • Research Focus Group Talk: Gilgamesh and the Many Faces of Mesopotamian Heroism

    Zoom

    Please join us on Friday, May 1 at 1:30PM PST for a virtual lecture by Eric Harvey on "Gilgamesh and the Many Faces of Mesopotamian Heroism." Harvey will introduce the Epic of Gilgamesh alongside other Mesopotamian narratives of kings, warriors, and sages, illustrating the strikingly varied vision of heroism produced in the ancient Near East. Eric Harvey holds a PhD from Brandeis University in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, with a specialization in Bible and ...

    On Fire Talk: Mass Deportation as Racial Engineering

    McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

    Ahilan Arulanantham will describe the role race discrimination has played in immigration and refugee policy and how that history continues to play out in the current struggle over the Temporary Protected Status program, which allows individuals to remain in the United States because of unsafe conditions in their home countries. Audience Q&A and a reception will follow. Ahilan T. Arulanantham is Professor from Practice and Co-Director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy (CILP) ...

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    Research Focus Group Talk: “Children are an Extraordinary Plastic Material”: Juvenile Homelessness and Delinquency in the Early Soviet Union

    6206C Phelps Hall

    The symbol of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution in public memory in Russia and abroad has been the tragedy of the Romanovs’ family in which five children of Nicholas II and Alexandra had been executed by the Bolsheviks, along with their parents. What is less salient in public commemoration is the fact that thousands of ordinary children died in the years after the Revolution from hunger, diseases, and overall neglect as direct causes of the turbulent ...

    On Fire Talk: The Fires Last Time: Landlord Arson and the Reverb of Racial Capitalism

    McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

    Last year's wildfires in L.A. turned a spotlight on a corner of the insurance world that typically exists in the shadows: the California FAIR plan, the state's insurer of last resort. Though it is now synonymous with wildfire risk, the FAIR plan is the byproduct of a very different conflagration: the Watts uprising of 1965. The strange career of the FAIR plan illustrates the links between the urban crisis of the late twentieth century and ...

    New Research in the Humanities: Presentations by the IHC’s 2025-26 Faculty Fellows

    McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

    Please join us in celebrating our 2025-26 Faculty Fellows, whose works-in-progress are supported this year by IHC release-time awards. Fellows will give a short presentation of their work. A reception will follow. Alicia Boswell, History of Art and Architecture “Ancient Moche Metals from Loma Negra, Peru: Performance in the Past and Present” Heather Blurton, English “Piety and Prejudice: The Ritual Crucifixion Accusation in Late Medieval England” Howard Chiang, East Asian Languages & Cultural Studies “The ...

    Research Focus Group Talk: The Funny Thing About Noise: Film Sound Aesthetics in the Cold War Cinema of Taiwan and South Korea

    McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

    Taiwanese and South Korean film comedies of the 1960s and 70s were swarming with funny noises, from cymbal crashes to dog barks and glissandos of all timbres. Why all the ruckus? Was this simply a relic of the bygone era, an early sound film aesthetic arrived late in a developing nation? Examining the ways in which these sounds emanate from the bodies of comedians to make them larger, unrulier, or simply noisier than life, Shih ...

    Research Focus Group Event: Undergraduate Research and Creative Showcase

    6206C Phelps and Zoom UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, United States

    This undergraduate showcase will feature a research presentation by Fiona Boborci, titled “Translating Childhood: Untranslatability, Linguistic Hospitality, and Reader Perception in The Little Prince.” In her talk, Fiona explores the linguistic, philosophical, and cultural dimensions of translation in children’s literature, examining how different English translations of Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince produce distinct understandings of childhood, imagination, and moral responsibility. Drawing on both French and English traditions, the presentation highlights translation as an active and transformative ...

    Humanities Decanted: Josephine Metcalf and Ben Olguín

    McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

    WITH SPECIAL GUEST LUIS J. RODRÍGUEZ Join us for a dialogue with Josephine Metcalf (University of Hull) and Ben Olguín (English), who will be speaking with Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval (Chicana and Chicano Studies) about their new co-edited volume, The Life, Literature and Legacy of Luis J. Rodríguez: In the Long Run. Luis Rodríguez is a prominent Latinx poet, memoirist and activist renowned for his candid visceral accounts of urban working-class life that includes youth gang violence, ...

    Research Focus Group Talk: Re-negotiating the Algorithmic Contract: The Need for a Politics of Potentiality

    3605 South Hall Santa Barbara, CA, United States

    Jose Marichal is a professor of political science at California Lutheran University specializing in studying the role that algorithms and AI play in restructuring social and political institutions. His book entitled You Must Become an Algorithmic Problem was published in 2025 with Bristol University Press (UK). The book explores the unwritten social contract we have with the algorithms that shape what we see, hear and think. His next project (expected 2026) is entitled Machine Liberalism: ...

    Public Humanities Graduate Fellows Program Capstone Presentations

    McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

    Join us to celebrate our 2026 program graduates! Katherina Gontaryuk (Philosophy) Olivia Henderson (English) Martina Mattei (Comparative Literature) Claudia Mendoza Chavez (Anthropology) Russell Nylen (Anthropology) Edward Reyes (Chicana/o Studies) Eunwoo Yoo (Theater and Dance) Each Fellow will present on their training, work, and identity as a public humanist. Hear about their projects and learn more about the Public Humanities Graduate Fellows Program! Audience Q&A and a reception will follow.

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    IHC Open House

    McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

    You are invited to the IHC’s Open House on Thursday, October 1, from 4 to 6 pm. Meet new Humanities faculty, IHC fellows, and staff members. Learn about Bodies Politic, our 2026–27 public events series. Find out about our publicly engaged programs and funding resources for faculty and graduate students. Enjoy good food, drink, music, and conversation. Cosponsored by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center and the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts

    Bodies Politic Talk: Food and The Body: The Politics of What We Eat

    McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

    What we eat may feel like a matter of personal choice, but our choices are shaped by powerful forces: food companies and their marketing teams, government policy, agricultural subsidies, public health priorities, and an industry whose profits depend on selling us more. In this conversation with Good Food host Evan Kleiman, pioneering food-policy scholar Dr. Marion Nestle will explore how corporate and political power shape the American diet — and, ultimately, our bodies. Drawing on ...

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    Bodies Politic Talk: A-Maizing Nahua Healers: Colonial Attacks on Indigenous Healers in Early Modern Central Mexico

    McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

    Dr. Edward Anthony Polanco will discuss how Nahua healers used maize to heal the human body in central Mexican communities in the 16th century. Titiçih (Nahua healing specialists) provided maize to patients topically and orally and relied on it for answers about illnesses. Dr. Polanco will also explore how Spanish Catholic authorities viewed these healers and their practices as a threat to settler colonial society and attempted to extirpate them. Audience Q&A and a reception ...

    Humanities Decanted: Jeffrey Hoelle

    McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

    Join us for a dialogue between Jeffrey Hoelle (Anthropology) and David Pellow (Environmental Studies) about Hoelle's new book, Cultivated: Plants, Hair, and the Aesthetic of Control. In this book, Hoelle traces the imprint of cultivation across the naturally growing covers of the land and body—plants and hair. The book builds from research in the agricultural fields and cattle pastures at the edge of the Amazon rainforest to domestic landscapes and hair salons and shops in ...

    Bodies Politic Talk: A Dark Cast: Disability, Blackface, and Franklin D. Roosevelt

    McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

    Drawing from her national best-selling book Darkology: Blackface and the American Way of Entertainment, Rhae Lynn Barnes will explore the complex intersections of disability, presidential power, and racial masquerade. She will examine how minstrelsy and the dark cast of blackface performance functioned both as cultural entertainment and a political prosthetic during the Roosevelt era, masking the physical vulnerability of white children with polio while reinforcing racial hierarchies. Audience Q&A and a reception will follow. Dr. ...

    • Humanities Decanted: Eric Prieto

    McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

    Join us for a dialogue with Eric Prieto (French and Italian) about his new book, Urban Informality and Narrative Form.  Urban Informality and Narrative Form brings together literary analysis and spatial planning theory in an interdisciplinary study of urban informality. It examines a diverse array of literary and cinematic fictions from across the globe—West and North Africa, West and South Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America—in dialogue with influential social scientific studies of urban informality. ...

    Bodies Politic Talk: American Sexual Exceptionalism: Sex, Labor, and U.S. Foreign Policy

    McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

    Between the 1870s and 1930s, American social reformers, working closely with the U.S. government, transformed sexual vice into an international political and humanitarian concern. As these activists worked to eradicate prostitution and trafficking, they promoted sexual self-control for both men and women as a cornerstone of civilization and a basis of American exceptionalism. American reformers successfully pushed for international anti-trafficking agreements that mirrored U.S. laws, calling for states to criminalize commercial sex and restrict migration, ...

    • Humanities Decanted: Elizabeth Digeser

    McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

    Join us for a dialogue between Elizabeth Digeser (History) and Christine Thomas (Religious Studies) about Digeser's new book, Constantine, the Once and Future King: Constructing Apocalyptic Autocracy in Late Antique Gaul. Though the rule of Constantine I from 306 to 337 CE represented a sea change in the ancient world, the emperor's path to consolidating power and securing his legacy was hardly a straightforward one. In this book, Digeser uses material culture and textual evidence ...

    Bodies Politic Talk: Art, Culture, Ethics, and Disabilty

    McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

    Disability is a concept, social identity, community, and shared human experience represented in history, literature, visual art, music, dance, architecture, design, and popular culture. Images show and shape the way we think about disability and people with disabilities and how we understand variation in human bodies. New ways of seeing and representing disability have appeared in U.S. public culture because of the civil and human rights movement, its laws, attitudes, and social changes. This talk ...

    • Humanities Decanted: Hangping Xu

    McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

    Join us for a dialogue between Hangping Xu (East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies) and Catherine Nesci (French and Italian) about Xu's new book, Crip China: Ablenationalism and Disability Aesthetics. In Crip China, Hangping Xu offers a compelling account of Chinese modernism and modernity through the lens of disability, or what he calls “a cripistemology of modern China.” Central to the book is a critique of “ablenationalism” as a recurring ideology in modern China: a ...

    • Bodies Politic Talk: Inviting Death In: How I Helped My Dad Die, and The Fight to Control How Life Ends

    McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Santa Barbara, CA, United States

    Esmé E. Deprez is an investigative reporter whose father was an aid-in-dying patient. In her forthcoming book, she explores assisted death through both a clinical and a personal perspective. She considers assisted death as a social phenomenon, a legal and political movement, and an area of medical practice that has transformed end-of-life health care. Audience Q&A and a reception will follow. Deprez is the author of the forthcoming book Inviting Death In: How I Helped ...