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Interdisciplinary Humanities Center

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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 5, from 4-6 pm. Cosponsored by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center and the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts. Meet new Humanities faculty, IHC fellows, and staff members. Learn about Crossings + Boundaries, our 2017-2018 public events series. Find out about our community-engagement programs and our numerous funding resources for faculty and graduate students. Explore our new lending library. Enjoy good food, drink, and conversation.

RECEPTION: IHC Platform Gallery Exhibition Opening Reception

6th floor of HSSB

Originating from the French word plateforme, meaning ‘ground plan’ or ‘flat shape’, the Platform Gallery is a public exhibition space at the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, UCSB, that features the work of emerging artists displayed as two-dimensional printed media. The complete Platform exhibition archive is available online. The 2017–18 Platform exhibition engages with the IHC’s public events series theme, Crossings + Boundaries, which considers diverse experiences and phenomena of boundary crossing—institutional, political, cultural, artistic, gendered, psychological, ...

Talk: Interstellar Crossings: The Image of Exoplanets and the Imagination of Other Worlds

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

When seven rocky planets were discovered around the star TRAPPIST-1, claims of potentially habitable worlds animated the scientific discourse and press coverage. Beautiful animations of the surfaces of these planets and imaginative tales of planet hopping suggested that this discovery was not just about discovering more planets, but that it was also about discovering worlds. In this talk, Messeri will recount ethnographic findings from her work with exoplanet astronomers. She will explore how planets become worlds and what resources scientists draw on to execute this conceptual crossing and imaginatively leave the boundary of our world to extend human presence beyond the solar system.

TALK: Embodying the Present Moment/ Master Class Open Practice

MultiCultural Center Lounge, UCSB 494 UCen Road, Isla Vista, CA, United States

Join us for a public discussion of this performance workshop that brings together students, staff, faculty, community artists and activists who work towards social justice in their social and political spheres. The program brings to UCSB the potentialities of Theatrical Jazz for better knowing the people with whom one works, for realizing common goals, imagining programs and outreach, and for personal and community healing in a one-day session geared towards strengthened inter- and intra-university community collaboration.

Sharon Bridgforth is a 2016 Doris Duke Performing Artist, 2016 Creative Capital Artist, New Dramatists alumnae and recipient of funding from The Whitman Institute, MAP Fund and the National Performance Network Commissioning Fund. Her imagined “dat Black Mermaid Man Lady/Home” performance is published in Imagined Theatres: Writing for a Theoretical Stage and her play delta dandi is in solo/black/woman.

CONFERENCE: The Humanities in the Community: 2017 Convening of the Western Humanities Alliance

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

What is the significance and power of community in the 21st century? How has community been conceptualized and created by different cultures throughout history? How are relationships between specific communities and the broader social milieu constructed and maintained? In today’s global society, what provides the impetus for a life of civic engagement, built upon democratic values, goals, and aspirations? Is the “network” the latest form of community, now disconnected from the preconditions of shared physical or social space? These and other questions will be explored in the 2017 convening of the Western Humanities Alliance.

HUMANITIES DECANTED: Elisabeth Weber, Kill Boxes: Facing the Legacy of US-Sponsored Torture, Indefinite Detention and Drone Warfare

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

Join us for a discussion of Elisabeth Weber's new work. Refreshments will be served. Kill Boxes addresses the legacy of US-sponsored torture, indefinite detention and drone warfare by deciphering the shocks of recognition that humanistic and artistic responses to violence bring to consciousness if readers and viewers have eyes to face them. The book provides intensive readings of philosophical texts by Jean Améry, Jacques Derrida, and Christian Thomasius, with poetic texts by Franz Kafka, Paul Muldoon, ...

IHC Fellow TALK: Plastic China, Plastic Chain: An Inconvenient Truth about Recycling

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

Until the Chinese government's new trade policy on waste importation this year, the environmental and practical impact of the global waste trade has been largely absent from US scientific and theoretical studies on waste. These new policies, however, are predicted to have a catastrophic impact on the American scrap recycling industry and have therefore ignited a conversation. This talk uses the lens of the critically acclaimed yet domestically banned documentary Plastic China (2016) by Jiuliang ...

Crossings+Boundaries TALK: Opening the Gates of Heaven: Religious and Philosophical Implications of Space Exploration

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

Religion and philosophy have always been present in human space exploration, in the form of religious rituals practiced during space missions, placement of sacred objects in space, and astronauts’ descriptions of transcendental changes in perspective when looking back on Earth. Space exploration also poses ethical, religious, and philosophical challenges. How, for example, do we protect other celestial bodies from contamination by human space exploration? How do we protect the Earth from contamination by extraterrestrial samples ...

HUMANITIES DECANTED: Robert Samuels, Educating Inequality: Beyond the Political Myths of Higher Education and the Job Market

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

Join us for a dialogue between Robert Samuels (Writing) and Heather Steffen (English and Writing) about Samuels’ new work, Educating Inequality. Refreshments will be served. Politicians and school officials often argue that higher education is the solution to many of our social and economic problems. Educating Inequality argues that in order to reduce inequality and enhance social mobility, public policies are needed to revamp the financial aid system and increase the number of good jobs. ...