Fall '13 UCSC Humanities Perspectives

Humanities Perspectives University of California, Santa Cruz

Fall 2013

The Humani Dean of Humanities, Bill Ladusaw Welcome back from your summer adventures!

We mark the start of the second year of publication for a Humanities Division newsletter by bestowing upon it an official name: Humanities Perspectives. The name is doubly appropriate: the many articles below provide multiple views of the work of people affiliated with the division; and the projects and accomplishments that we celebrate here all represent the perspectives of independent thinkers who are pursuing understanding, reflecting on, and constructing the human experience.

Again this year we welcome new faculty colleagues along with a new cohort of undergraduate and graduate students. We celebrate the opening of the new undergraduate major in Spanish Studies and new research clusters within the IHR. We also introduce Glenn Lindsey, a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council and some other champions of success and academic achievement.

This year should see programs in Critical Race and Ethnic Studies and Applied Linguistics and Multilingualism advance to formal approval and implementation. In the winter, look for talks by candidates for new faculty positions in Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Applied Linguistics, Literature, Philosophy, and Writing.

There is too much good news in too many areas to survey here. Watch for the launch of a divisional blog that will collect it all in one site. Many thanks to Judy Plummer and Marissa Fullum-Campbell for their work to coordinate and improve our communications. If you have news or ideas for stories, please bring them to their attention.

Best wishes for a successful academic year, Bill

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ties Division Assistant Dean of Humanities, David Symonik

The back-to-school issue of our newsletter presents a golden opportunity for me to talk about a topic that’s a great source of pride to the Humanities Division – our student assistants.

In 2012-13, the Humanities Division employed 18 undergraduate students – a remarkable number for a Division the size of ours. The majority are Humanities majors (American Studies, Feminist Studies, Jewish Studies, Linguistics, and Literature). Interestingly, five students are majoring in other disciplines, including Art, Business Management-Economics, Film and Media, and Human Biology. Through exposure to the humanities, these students are learning that engagement with the humanities develops understanding of other cultures and perspectives, habits of critical analysis, and creative imagination that prepares them well for productive careers and life-long learning.

You’ll get to read profiles of our student assistants in future issues of the newsletter. Coming up in winter, we’ll feature accounting assistants, Elie Zhang and Paula Dimatulac. According to Lisa Oman, Humanities Division Director of Finance, “We’re working with Elie and Paula to develop the skills they’ll need to make them competitive in the accounting field when they graduate from UCSC.” I commend our staff members who supervise student assistants. You are teachers in your own right. And as mentors, you’re having a powerful impact on the ability of our students to construct meaningful lives in a cosmopolitan world of rapid technological change.

David

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New Additions Grace Peña Delgado History Delgado received her Ph.D. in American History at UCLA in 2000. She taught for six years in the Chicano and Latino Studies Department at California State University, Long Beach, and held an Assistant Professorship in the History Department at Pennsylvania State University before coming to UC Santa Cruz. Her research and teaching center on North American borders, exploring nationalism, citizenship, and identity construction from a transnational perspective. Her areas of research include U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, U.S.-Canada Borderlands, Nationalism, Immigration and Transnational History, Asian Diaspora, Latina/o History, Asian American History, Latin American History, and Gender and Sexuality.

She has published two books: Latino Immigrants in the United States, co-authored with Ronald L. Mize (2011) and Making the Chinese Mexican: Global Migration, Localism, and Exclusion in the US-Mexico Borderlands (2012). She has a new book in press and scheduled for publication in 2015: Sex and State: Immigration Control and Morals Policing at North America’s Early Twentieth Century Borderlands.

Delgado is an experienced teacher with a distinguished record and considerable range. Some of her recent course offerings are: U.S. Latina/o History, Latin America and the United States, History of the Body, History of the US-Mexico Borderlands.

Juned Shaikh History Shaikh received his Ph.D. in 2011 from the University of Washington, Seattle, where he was awarded the Dean’s Medal for Social Science. His Ph.D. research was supported by the American Institute of Indian Studies. Dr. Shaikh held a Post-doctoral Associateship at the South Asia Studies Council at Yale University in 2011-12. He comes to Santa Cruz from an Assistant Professorship in the Department of History at Xavier University in Ohio. Dr. Shaikh’s research centers on urban social and cultural formations in modern South Asia, with particular attention to questions of modernity; state-making; the global movement of capital, ideas, and people; and the role of language in shaping the political imagination of India’s Dalits (“untouchables”). He is currently preparing a book manuscript entitled Dalits and Modern Social Imaginaries: Entanglements of Caste, Space, and Ideologies in Mumbai, 18961984. Shaikh has developed undergraduate courses on South Asian urban history and on the history of Asia (a two-part survey), as well as a seminar on twentieth-century South Asia. At Yale, he taught a well-received course titled “Visions of the Indian City.”

Elaine Sullivan History

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Sullivan received her Ph.D. in 2008 from Johns Hopkins University. Her research fields are Egyptology and the archaeology of the ancient Near East. She comes to UC Santa Cruz from UCLA where she held an ACLS Digital Innovation Fellowship and a Visiting Assistant Professorship. Prior to that, at UCLA, she held a one-year Adjunct Assistant Professor appointment and a three-year postdoctoral appointment funded by the Keck Foundation. Her research centers on the development of communities in ancient Egypt, the study of the making and transmission of meaning in those communities over the longue durée via the use of archeological analysis of large structures and small artifacts, and the reconstruction and presentation of those ancient worlds in compelling interactive formats via means devised in the emergent field of digital humanities. Sullivan is completing work on a book provisionally titled A Glimpse into Ancient Thebes: Excavations in and around the Temple of Mut, South Karnak (2004-2006), based on five seasons of excavation work there, and centering on a building complex from the first millennium BCE that played an important ritual role in the city of Thebes (near present-day Luxor, Egypt). Sullivan’s postdoctoral appointments at UCLA have entailed considerable teaching and curriculum develop responsibilities. As a Keck Fellow she designed and taught courses using digital mapping technologies across the Humanities curriculum. Among the other courses Sullivan has taught are ones on Gender in Ancient Egypt and on Ancient Egyptian Civilization. She is prepared to offer course on Greco-Roman Egypt, the era of Tutankhamun, the temples of Thebes, religion and visual culture in Egypt, and thematic courses on digital history and on urbanism in the Ancient Near East.

New faculty accepting appointments for the 2013-2014 academic year

Maziar Toosarvandani Linguistics Toosarvandani received the Ph.D. in Linguistics (2010) from UC Berkeley. In 2010-11 he was a Visiting Assistant Professor in Linguistics at UCLA. He has been at MIT since then, a recipient of a prestigious ACLS New Faculty Fellowship (2011-13). Toosarvandani’s work investigates the interaction of syntactic and semantic principles. His work has two main strands. The first concerns the interaction of coordination and ellipsis with information structure, working primarily from Persian and English, exploring where the boundaries of sentence grammar lie. The second strand of research explores clause combination in Northern Paiute. Toosarvandani has an outstanding publication record, including peer-reviewed articles in the top-tier journals of Linguistics. He also has prestigious proceedings publications and a long record of conference and invited colloquium presentations. Toosarvandani has a solid teaching record in courses such as Language and its structure: Semantics and Pragmatics; Topics in the Syntax and Semantics of a Language Family; Syntax (all levels); Introduction to Linguistics; Syntactic Theory; Introduction to Linguistic Science; Comparative and Historical Linguistics; Introduction to Syntax and Semantics.

Bryan Donaldson Languages Donaldson received his Ph.D. in French Linguistics (2004) from Indiana University. Since graduation he has been an assistant professor at the University of Texas in the Department of French and Italian.

In applied linguistics, Dr. Donaldson’s research focuses on the pragmatic ability of very advanced learners of French. His studies of the semantic, pragmatic, and socio-stylistic reflexes of word order variation situate him generally within the broad field of morpho-syntactic acquisition. His publications attest to his ability to apply the principles and findings of syntactic theory to two, related domains of empirical inquiry, each of them integral to the mission of French linguistics. In the first, he examines whether highly proficient non-native speakers are senstivie in the same way as native speakers are to the interpretive consequences that result from variations in word order. In the second, he attempts to resolve long-standing problems in the historical development of word order in French and in Occitan.

He has published numerous articles in highly ranked journals on this topic and others. Dr. Donaldson’s teaching will include third-year French courses on the history of the language and language in society, courses contributing to a new major in Multilingualism and Applied Linguistics, and Structure of Romance Languages (for the Linguistics Department).

Ronaldo Wilson Literature Wilson received his M.A. in Creative Writing, Poetry from New York University in 1995. He received his Ph.D. in English from the CUNY Graduate Center in 2009. Ronaldo Wilson has held a Visiting Assistant Professorship in the UCSC Literature Department for the past two years. Before that, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing, Literature and African American Poetics at Mount Holyoke College, where he taught both introductory and advanced creative writing courses as well as courses in literature. Professor Wilson’s work focuses on race, sexuality, and the body. His poetry slips through registers, from slang to lyricism, to found language, and from form to form with great agility. His poetic narrative, Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Man won the 2007 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. His book, Poems of the Black Object won the Thom Gunn Award and the Asian American Literary Award in Poetry in 2010. His latest book, Farther Traveler: Poetry, Prose, Other, is forthcoming from Counterpath Press in 2013. Professor Wilson’s secondary genre is performance. He is the founding member of The Black Took Collective, an ultra-contemporary group of multi-media performers that examines issues of race, sexuality, and class. At Mount Holyoke he taught courses in Contemporary Autobiography: Race, Sexuality, Style; and Black Texts/Black Experiments: Contemporary African American Poetics.

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Divisional News

From retires to hires, the Humanities is always changing

Appointments

Mark Cioc: Chair, History Sandy Chung: Chair, Linguistics Stephanie Casher: Department Manager, Literature Cindy Morris: Graduate Program Coordinator, History Maria Zimmer: Linguistics Research Coordinator Donna Davis: Undergraduate Advisor, Philosophy Sheila Peuse: Advisor, Interdisciplinary Studies Evin Guy: Events Coordinator, Institute for Humanities Research

Retirements

Barbara Epstein, Professor, History of Consciousness John Jordan, Research Professor, Literature Gildas Hamel, Senior Lecturer, History Lorina Fleming, Budget and Personnel Analyst, Literature Shann Ritchie, Events Coordinator, Institute for Humanities Research

Transfers

Lourdes Martinez-Echazabal Professor, Literature to Professor, Social Sciences Division (Latin American and Latino Studies) Jon Daehnke Visiting Assistant Professor, American Studies to Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Social Sciences Division

Instructional Development Lab Opens Doors to Humanities Division Faculty Back-to-school is anything but status quo this year, as evidenced by the grand opening of the Instructional Development Lab – a new technology resource for faculty. Located in Humanities 1, room 120, the self-serve lab provides Humanities Division faculty with the ability to develop leading-edge methods for teaching and learning. The lab features six workstations running an array of creative design software programs, audio and video equipment such as camcorder kits and microphones, and digital solutions that enable voiceover and podcasting.

Visit hcs.ucsc.edu for everything you need to know about the Instructional Development Lab, including inventory, scheduling, orientations, and policies and procedures for reserving equipment and workstations. Attend an Open House on Thursday, October 10 from 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon or on Thursday, October 17 from 2:00-4:00 p.m.

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The birth of Spanish Studies

Curriculum Spotlight

The study of the Spanish language and its diverse cultural groups is of special importance in the United States, the country with the second largest Spanish-speaking population in the world.

Beginning this fall, students at UC Santa Cruz can now declare a major in Spanish Administered by UCSC’s Language Program in the Humanities Division, the faculty affiliated with the major come from 10 departments across three divisions.

“While many of us are very involved with the Latin American and Latino Studies Department in the Social Sciences Division, the Spanish major presents a SpanishM. Victoria González-Pagani taught and Humanities-based alternative that will be, we hope, very appealing to many of our students,” noted Juan Poblete, UCSC professor of literature and provost of Kresge College, who helped to develop the proposal for the new degree.

The curriculum draws upon UCSC’s Literature, History, Anthropology, Education, Feminist Studies, History of Art and Visual Culture, Latin American and Latino Studies, Linguistics, and Sociology Departments.

In the interest of advanced linguistic and cultural proficiency, the core of the new major will be comprised of courses taught in the Spanish language.

Students will be able to choose from two tracks that allow more in-depth study--literature and culture, or language and linguistics.

The major will help students gain a broad understanding of the historical and cultural developments of the countries in which Spanish is a national language, as well as those regions in which Spanish is employed in contact with other languages.

Spanish Studies will also encourage students to take advantage of the UC Education Abroad Program (EAP) in Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Spain and Costa Rica.

M. Victoria González-Pagani, director of Spanish Studies at UCSC, noted that the major comes at a very opportune time since the Latino student population has been increasing considerably on campus in recent years.

“Students are excited at the news of the Spanish major,” said Pagani. “Since the moment they found out we were working on a proposal they have been asking about it, and expressing their desire to pursue this major.”

Juan Poblete

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Graduate Student Profile Karen deVries is a Ph.D. Candidate in the History of Consciousness department at UC/Santa Cruz. She is currently at work on her dissertation – Prodigal Knowledge: Journeys in the Study of Religion. Her thesis explores the tensions and schisms between religious and secular knowledge formations in the Northern Rockies regions of the United States. Using the figure of “the Prodigal Daughter,” deVries draws on personal memoir to trace and develop situated conversations in religious and secular educational institutions as she develops what she calls “a prodigal approach” to the study of religion in the 21st century.

Her broad research interests include: • Contemporary forms of Christianity in the United States • critical theories of religion and culture • possibilities and limitations for translation between different communities of knowledge and practice • feminist approaches to the study of sexuality, religion, and science • capacious understandings of literacy in the 21st century • pedagogy in higher education Tell us about your education leading up to your graduate studies.

I grew up in a rural, conservative, evangelical, Dutch immigrant Christian Reformed community called Amsterdam-Churchill in Montana where I attended a private, religious school with the same 17 kids from K-12. Although it was a very conservative place, my mother had been influenced by feminists of the 1960s and the ERA movement. She passed this influence on to me, which, among other things, prompted me to avoid the evangelical colleges my classmates attended, and I opted to go to Lawrence University, a small liberal arts college in Appleton, Wisconsin. On a bit of a whim, I took a Religious Studies class during my first year, and the critical and historical approach to the Bible and the Christian tradition blew my mind and upended my understanding of myself and the world. I was infinitely curious, and I decided to major in Religious Studies.

After college, I worked for a few years (as a Process Analyst for Andersen Consulting, now Accenture, at Caterpillar Inc. in Peoria, IL) while I applied to graduate programs in religion. I ended up going to the University of Chicago Divinity School (most of the major graduate departments of religion in the US are housed in Divinity Schools) where I received a thorough baptism in divisive theoretical debates about what the study of religion ought to be and how to go about it.

What motivated you to pursue a graduate degree in History of Consciousness?

One of my best friends from undergrad had come to UCSC to study Anthropology. She kept telling me that I needed to check out this program called the History of Consciousness as she thought it would be a good fit for me. I was a bit apprehensive about taking myself out of a strict disciplinary environment, but the more I looked into it, the more excited I became. At Chicago, it seemed like I was constantly encountering disciplinary boundaries where it became increasingly difficult to ask the kinds of questions I was interested in. Specifically, most of the interesting theory and method questions were happening in the study of non-Western religions or what they call the History of Religions. Other Divinity schools sometimes call this field Comparative Religion. Anyway, I was interested in Christianity, but one could either do a strictly historical program of study of a particular tradition or one could do what they called Constructive Studies (philosophy, theology, and ethics) with a Christian, or occasionally Jewish, perspective. I wanted to use the more theoretical tools from the History of Religions approach to question the foundational assumptions undergirding the study of Christianity which often functions as a prototype for westernized understandings of religion.

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Karen deVries The more I looked at possible ways and places to pursue my questions, the more obvious it became that the History of Consciousness was perhaps the only institution that provided a place where true interdisciplinary knowledge was encouraged and nourished. As if all of this wasn’t enough reason to change gears, I had become increasingly interested in feminist and queer theory and Santa Cruz simply excels in both of these arenas.

How do you see yourself using your History of Consciousness graduate degree?

I don’t have a very concrete vision of this, yet I can imagine many possibilities. I love teaching and being in conversation with students. Truly, that’s the most magical thing about higher education. I love the curiosity and intellectual energy that happens when people are thinking together. And I’m pretty passionate about education and literacy (broadly conceived), so I can definitely see myself pursuing an academic career. At the same time, the academic job market is a pretty miserable place to be right now, so that route might not work out. I’m a firm believer in the idea that graduate knowledge can and does benefit the world and society just as much outside of the academy as within it. There are some interesting developments happening in the “alt-ac” (alternative academic) world right now. In my work with the Institute for Humanities Research here on campus, we’re really working on opening up more of these conversations. Whatever I end up doing, I trust that the creative and critical skills I’ve been honing here will serve me well.

Why do you think that History of Consciousness is unique to UCSC? It’s unique in at least two ways. For one thing, the history of the way in which the program developed is unlike any other program I’ve encountered. For several years, it was a student-run program with very little administrative oversight with passionate students who were often committed to some kind of social justice mandate. Then a handful of faculty really shaped the program. Although the history is full of interesting conflicts, they managed to create a truly interdisciplinary space where they often claim they learned as much from the students as vice-versa.

The second way History of Consciousness is unique concerns its vision of what education might be. This past summer, I’ve had a graduate student research position working with several History of Consciousness alumni on a book and a web site about the formation of the program and some of its intellectual legacies. I’ve been reading interviews with many key players from the 1970s and 1980s.

“I love teaching and being in coversation with students.

Truly, that’s the most magical thing about higher education” -Karen deVries

What I’ve really been struck and impressed by is the approach articulated time and again that the program isn’t interested in creating disciples or advocating a particular school of thought. Instead, the vision of the program has always seen education as a process that helps students find their own voices and think their own thoughts and to do this in the most productive way possible. Having this kind of permission can be a bit disorienting, even terrifying, at first, but the result is often fresh, innovative scholarship delivered with integrity. The amazing web of people who have gone through or been touched by the History of Consciousness program are a kind of family to me.

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Eye on the IHR Crisis in the Cultures of Capitalism Capitalism has emerged as a central theme for research in the humanities. Since the global economic crisis of 2008, it has become clear that scholars are returning to fundamental theoretical questions about the capitalist world-system. The Crises in the Cultures of Capitalism Research Cluster, has been founded in conjunction with the History of Consciousness initiative, but seeks to extend across departments to bring together a wide range of methodologies and perspectives on the research of capitalism. Two events are planned for the cluster: a faculty-graduate research seminar in Winter 2014, with public events by four guest authors, and a two-day interdisciplinary conference entitled “Capital, Crisis, and Class” in Spring 2014. Among the topics addressed by the seminar and conference: the origins of market society and its corresponding state forms; the role of the family and women’s work in the development of labor under capitalism; the uneven development of capitalism and the historical effects of colonization and decolonization; the theory of economic crises; and the analysis of social movements today.

Critical Race and Ethnic Studies The Critical Race and Ethnic Studies cluster aims to foster dialogue leading to the creation of an institutional home at UC Santa Cruz for the interdisciplinary and intersectional study of race and ethnicity. Through a speaker series and a spring quarter symposium, our conversations will focus on the intellectual and institutional implications of formalizing an academic field out of a history of political and epistemic struggles within the university and in dialogue with a rapidly changing set of social relations in the United States and across the globe.

Santa Cruz Ellipsis Consortium The Santa Cruz Ellipsis Consortium is a collaboration among faculty and students (undergraduate and graduate) in the language sciences at UCSC, whose purpose is to deepen understanding of one of the most pervasive and mysterious aspects of human language — that of ellipsis (in which large stretches of an utterance are reduced to silence but their meaning somehow communicated). The group’s principal current focus is on the development of a new research resource: a richly annotated database of naturally occurring instances of ellipsis, one which will be freely available to researchers around the globe who are trying to understand ellipsis and what its implications might be for our understanding of the nature of human language in general.

Shakespeare’s Disciplines: Literature & Theater Arts “Shakespeare Disciplines” takes the occasion of Shakespeare’s 450th birthday in Spring 2014 to foster a new dialogue among the Literature and Theater Arts departments. The cluster intends to explore a range of fundamental topics during its first year, including: the different ways that literary studies, theater arts, and professional acting companies pay attention to works of art, and understand the contexts that make them meaningful; what these disciplines mean when they refer to an “interpretation”; how they train their practitioners to interpret works of art, what techniques they use, and on what occasions; to what extent there are affordances in these disciplines for the subjective experiences, sense perceptions, and feelings of practitioners as dimensions of critical judgment; and, perhaps most importantly, the ways in which teaching in literary studies, theater arts, and professional acting companies could be enriched and transformed by sharing each other’s perspectives, methods, and goals.

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2013-14 Research Clusters Complicated Labor The Complicated Labor Research Cluster is an interdisciplinary collaboration that brings together artists and scholars around questions of feminism, maternity, and creative process. It seeks to center questions of care in our research and art whether they are explicit sites of inspiration and study or simply important to the conditions in which we undertake expressive practices.

Often under the shadow of “work-life debates,” “mommy wars,” “feminist waves,” and “family values,” artists, writers, and scholars who grapple with the work of care – difficult labor – have been marginalized. When women and their artistic/scholarly output in these areas does receive attention, they are often marketed as rejoinders to what are seen as larger, more “masculine” military projects – or mothering as a corrective. This cluster welcomes faculty and students from the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences to discuss and create new work exploring feminism, motherhood and care, and creative/scholarly practice.

Working Group on the Study of Children The working group on the study of children brings together faculty and graduate students from multiple disciplines to explore how to pursue and theorize research on children. Or particular interest is the examination of how different disciplines are currently approaching the study of children and what they might learn from each other. This cluster will pursue common readings, sharing developing research, and inviting scholars to present current work.

Image Information: Miner Normal--1st grade. (c. 1900-1920).

Affect Working Group* The Affect Working Group draws together faculty and graduate students from across the University who are interested in the felt dimensions of social life. Activities since its formation in 2009 have consisted of reading groups, public lectures, and panel discussions. Faculty and graduate student participants in the Affect Working Group hail from multiple disciplines crossing four of the five divisions: American Studies, Anthropology, Art, Computer Science, Feminist Studies, Film and Digital Media, History of Art and Visual Culture, History of Consciousness, Latin American and Latino Studies, Literature, Politics, and Sociology. Several faculty participants in the group teach graduate courses on affect in their respective disciplines (Anthropology, Literature, Politics and Sociology), and have dedicated aspects of their previous work to the analysis of affect.

Philosophy in a Multicultural Context* The Philosophy in a Multicultural Context research cluster investigates how diverse cultural traditions and academic contexts relate to core philosophical methods of analysis including conceptual analysis, reflective equilibrium, and logical inference. In other words, this research cluster explores both the impact of multiculturalism on philosophical methodology and the use of philosophical tools for understanding the promises and challenges of multiculturalism. *Returning research clusters

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Staff Team Profile “Back to school” is a phrase that strikes fear in the hearts of some. But these three words are music to our undergraduate advisors’ ears. Champions of academic achievement, undergraduate advisors carry the enormous responsibility, and distinct pleasure, of guiding students through the logistics of their academic careers.

We talked with three undergraduate advisors to find out what makes them tick. In the interview that follows, Donna Davis (Philosophy Department), Stephanie Sawyer (History Department), and Susan Welch (Linguistics Department) share their experiences – on and off campus – and reveal what they have learned along the way.

Donna Davis: Philosopy

Stephanie Sawyer: History

Susan Welch: Linguistics

What’s the most common student complaint or predicament that you fix?

DD: Most of the situations I help fix revolve around class enrollment and academic planning (“This class filled up before I had a chance to enroll,” or “I really needed this class to graduate and now it’s been cancelled,” or “Is there room in my schedule to study abroad?”) I love working with students and faculty to find creative solutions.

SS: The most common problem I fix is when a student’s Academic Advisement Report (AAR) is displaying incorrectly. It is extremely stressful for the student when their report tells them they haven’t finished major requirements they believe have already been completed. Fortunately I get to tell most of these students that their AAR’s are reporting inaccurately due to technical limitations. The AAR is not as smart as we are and simply hasn’t figured out that, for example, HIS 2B, The World Since 1500, is better used towards a European requirement as opposed to an Americas and Africa requirement.

SW: I do some creative scheduling, working with students who have conflicts between language courses or other courses needed for our majors or other ones, and figuring out how they can complete their major course work efficiently.

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Undergraduate Advisors What would you major in if you could redo your undergrad career?

DD: I received a B.A. in Psychology. If I were an undergraduate again, I’d think about continuing on for a graduate degree. If I had my whole life to live over again, though, I’d learn to play the saxophone, major in Music, and perform in the Large Jazz Ensemble.

SS: I majored in history so naturally I would do it again in a heartbeat! That being said, if I re-did my undergrad career I would take the time to get to know my professors better, study abroad, and complete an internship or two.

SW: I would probably major in Sociology (I was a Film Studies major). I find that topic fascinating, and maybe I would have gone into some kind of social work.

If you could switch offices or departments with anyone, who would it be and why?

DD: I am very, very happy right where I am!

SS: I would switch with Susan Welch in Linguistics. Linguistics is a great department and I’d enjoy the opportunity to work with their faculty. Also, I’d know that the History students would be in good hands if advised by Susan. She’s the best!

SW: I had a job at the base of campus in the Cook House once - such a beautiful old building, with a stone wall in my office.

That would be fun to work in again.

What’s your favorite memory from this past summer?

DD: In June my husband, our three children and I attended a family reunion in Connecticut. It was the first time that every family member was there - siblings, children, step-children, grandchildren - 42 in all. We played kickball, had potato sack races, threw water balloons - it was such fun to play again! My husband and I also spent two weeks in Wales, where we visited many, many ancient Celtic spiritual sites. We saw castle ruins, enormous cathedrals, tiny churches with Druid carvings, holy wells, ancient forests and caves, and Welsh versions of Stonehenge. We stayed in beautiful manor houses and retreat centers. I swam in a pristine mountain lake. We met some wonderful, friendly people and lots and lots of very friendly sheep and cows.

SS: My brother-in-law and his wife live in Osaka so I don’t get to see them very often. Last summer we all got to spend a week together in Hawaii. It was wonderful hanging out on the beach and catching up.

SW: My favorite summer memory is backpacking into Sykes Hot Springs in Big Sur, during the heat wave around the fourth of July. Great swimming, and even had some solitude!

What are you looking forward to this school year?

DD: I look forward to getting to know all the wonderful students I’ve met at summer orientation. Their enthusiasm really energizes me!

SS: The 7th Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium. It is an annual event held each spring that recognizes the exceptional research being conducted by history undergraduates. It is my favorite event of the year!

SW: Watching the new Spanish Studies major unfold…it will be interesting.

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Faculty News

Mortality: Facing Death in Ancient Greece

Karen Bassi, Professor of Classics and Literature at the University of California at Santa Cruz, has been awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to direct a Summer Institute on the topic of Mortality: Facing Death in Ancient Greece. The Institute will be held in Athens, Greece in 2014. Professor Bassi specializes in ancient Greek literature and historiography. Her interest in mortality stems in part from her current work on the ways in which descriptions of material remains in Greek literature and history are expressions of the finality of death. “The fact of human mortality transcends all fields of study,� Bassi states. During the Institute, scholars of ancient Greek religion, medicine, philosophy, archaeology, and literature will offer lectures and seminars on the various ways in which these disciplines are shaped by and offer responses to the knowledge that each of us must die. Holding the Institute in Athens will allow participants to view first hand the funerary and archaeological remains that illustrate the significant role that mortality plays in ancient Greek culture.

Professor Bassi hopes to attract twenty-two university and college teachers and three graduate students from institutions throughout the United States to participate in the Institute. Detailed information about the Institute, including how to apply, will be available mid October at: http://mortality.ihr.ucsc.edu/.

Karen Bassi received her BA in Classics from UCSC in 1980 and her Ph.D. in Classics from Brown University in 1987. She has taught at UCSC since 1989.

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Dean’s Advisory Council Dean Ladusaw formed a new advisory council in November 2012 to provide insight, advocacy, and support for the purpose, delivery and impact of a humanities-based, Liberal Arts education and degree from UC Santa Cruz. Council members serve a two-year term and convene at UCSC twice a year for meetings. They provide leadership as donors, advise the Dean on emerging issues and activities that may impact the Case for the Humanities’ strategic direction and opportunities, and are informed advocates on behalf of the Humanities Division.

Currently, four members make up the Dean’s Advisory Council. In this newsletter, we profile the second member to join the Council: Glenn Lindsey, a former mogul in the food industry.

Glenn Lindsey Hometown: Munford, a small town in west Tennessee Education: Evangel College, a liberal arts college in Missouri, B.A., ‘63 University of Nebraska, MA in English, ‘65 UCSC, MA in Literature, ‘77 A National Endowment for the Humanities Young Scholar program with Harry Berger, Jr. at UCSC Career: Now retired, I entered the food industry, eventually becoming President of Golden Skillet. I later joined International Dairy Queen and became Vice President of Research and Development.

On the Humanities: The humanities made me hungry to explore the world and to experience as much as I can. To paraphrase Walter Pater in The Renaissance, cram as many pulsations as possible into every given moment. The humanities also taught me about human motivation and served as a better management program than any business management course. The humanities became a refuge for me-a grounding place where I could always find enjoyment and comfort. Literature, art and history enrich my life and provide me with interests that continue to make retirement a fulfilling experience. My participation on the Humanities Advisory Council is a way to say “thank you” for the wonderful humanities education that I received at UCSC. If you could switch lives with anyone in the world: I would like to have been a citizen in Florence, Italy during the Renaissance. It was a time when philosophers and bankers were friends, when artists were held in high esteem, and the common man could be a Renaissance man.

In the Winter 2013 issue of Humanities Perspectives, we will profile the third member to join the Dean’s Advisory Council: Linda Peterson.

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Division of Humanities University of California, Santa Cruz Humanities 1 Building, Suite 503 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz CA 95064 http://humanities.ucsc.edu humanities@ucsc.edu