HUMANITIES CENTERHUMANITIESOFUNIVERSITYSANDIEGO Annual Report 2021-22
HUMANITIESCENTERCAROLVASSILIADIS
After a period in which the activities of the Humanities Center were of necessity in a remote format, it was a great and revivifying delight to hold in-person events again.
Reviewing our work this year, I once again find myself both happy and fortunate to be at the helm of a Center that provides remarkable intellectual and cultural offerings to our campus community and to all the people of San Diego. In this context, as always, it is fitting to thank Carol Vassiliadis, whose generous endowment has secured the Humanities Center’s place at the heart of the University of San Diego.
Brian R. Clack, PhD A. Vassiliadis Director of the Humanities Center
The center’s pluralism is seen in our multielement foundation, and the accomplishments of each of these elements — Collaborative Research, Digital Humanities, Interdisciplinary Curriculum Development, Public Humanities and the HC Gallery — are outlined in the pages of the report that follow. I am very proud of the manner in which everyone involved in our work — the Element Chairs, our students, our guests and our incomparable Assistant Director Lindy Villa — moved with great alacrity to return the Humanities Center to its full range of activities within our bustling home in Saints Tekakwitha and Serra Hall.
Letter From the Director
The 2021-22 academic year, indeed, has been among the busiest and most vibrant years of the Humanities Center’s life. In this annual report, you will read about the manifold ways in which our work sprang back fully into life. From our varied and provocative gallery exhibitions to the impactful visits by an extraordinarily diverse range of thinkers, we have continued to fulfill our mission of exploring the widest array of perspectives on the human condition.
As ever, I find it hard to isolate highlights from the abundance of events that were on offer this year. But sticking most firmly in my mind, perhaps, are the two events advertised proudly on the billboard outside the entrance to USD: an exhibition of 18th century satirical prints (“The Gout and the Guillotine”) and the residency of one of our Knapp Chairs, the brilliant Marie Watt. It was the first time that the Humanities Center’s work had been featured on a USD billboard and that public-facing statement clearly demonstrated our commitment to opening our doors to the wider community beyond campus. In less dramatically publicized work, we continued our examination of the challenges posed by rapid developments in the field of Artificial Intelligence, and we maintained the exceptional research opportunities offered to our students through the Keck Undergraduate Humanities Research Fellows Program. All this (and much more) is documented in the pages that follow.
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The program strives to initiate, convene and promote exceptional opportunities for student-facultycommunity partnerships centered on the most pressing humanities issues. The Knapp program had an especially vibrant year. The Humanities Center welcomed artist Marie Watt (Seneca) in February. In her public conversation with John Murphy, she discussed the evolution of her artistic practice and the ways that it encourages cross-disciplinary conversation. Watt hosted multiple sewing circles on campus, and USD galleries displayed her work throughout the spring semester.
In March, Morgan State University physicist Willie Rockward arrived on campus. Rockward met with numerous faculty members, staff and students to discuss the centrality of mentorship, especially in the STEM fields. In April, University of Chicago political scientist Cathy Cohen shared her work on the politics of Black youth organizing, offering a lecture that engaged faculty and students in a dynamic conversation about the importance of social movements. This year, the Keck program welcomed a cohort of six students who conducted original Rivas (philosophy and theology and religious studies) studied gender expression and material culture in Catholic theology; Anna Salvestrin (theology and religious studies) delved into Christian ethics and the HIV/AIDS crisis in Tijuana; and Thomas Sanbeg (philosophy and interdisciplinary humanities) explored the philosophy of appropriation. In May, the fellows presented their projects with the interdisciplinary humanities graduating cohort.
ResearchCollaborative interdisciplinary humanities research under the guidance of a faculty advisor. Fanisee Bias (sociology) investigated the ways that people with disabilities navigate higher education; Claire Bredar (political science and international relations) examined the politics of female embodiment; Bryson Patterson (environmental and ocean sciences and political science and international relations) delved into photography and the sublime through a study of Burke; Bryanna
The Collaborative Research program includes the Knapp Chair of Liberal Arts, Keck Undergraduate Humanities Research Fellows Program, and Collaborative Research Group grants.
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previous year, student feedback was strongly positive. In addition to The Story of Now and Black Lives Matter, a range of pop-up and seminar classes were taught through the Humanities Center this year. The 2021-22 offerings were:
Artificial Intelligence 2021, taught by Dr. Hannah Holtzman (Humanities Center) and Dr. Maritza Johnson (Shiley-Marcos School of Engineering)
The Humanities Center also hosted another offering of the Black Lives Matter seminar class developed initially in 2020-21. In Fall 2021, the class was taught by 20 faculty members, including Provost Gail F. Baker and Dr. Regina Dixon-Reeves, vice provost for diversity, equity and inclusion. Instructors came from the College of Arts and Sciences, ShileyMarcos School of Engineering, Hahn School of Nursing and Health Science, School of Law and Copley Library. This class included a discussion of the complex histories of Black people in the U.S. and exposed students to a range of interdisciplinary analyses of the movement for Black lives, with opportunities for critical, transformative reflection. As in the During 2021-22, the interdisciplinary curriculum element pivoted from the remote-only delivery format that was adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic. The 1st@USD summer seminar was offered remotely, but seminar and popup classes returned to in-person experiences in the fall and spring.
Frontiers in Frontiers, taught by Prof. Farrah Karapetian (Dept. of Art, Architecture + Art History) world from a range of disciplinary perspectives. As in the previous summer, the student response was strong, with over 160 students enrolled in the class.
The Interdisciplinary Majors and Minors Committee, consisting of the directors of the college’s 11 interdisciplinary minors and two majors that are not within departments, built upon past efforts to attract and retain students. Between Fall 2018 and Spring 2022, the number of students in these 13 programs more than doubled from 140 to 322. A new minor in Africana studies was launched in Fall 2021, and classes in that program already have seen robust enrollment. Summer 2021 marked the second year of the 1st@USD Summer Seminar. Designed to introduce incoming first-year students to the interdisciplinary mindset emblematic of a liberal arts education, this class was taught entirely in a remote, synchronous format by 20 faculty members from across the College of Arts and Sciences, Shiley-Marcos School of Engineering, Hahn School of Nursing and Health Science and Copley Library. The class, titled The Story of Now: Why Knowledge Matters, discussed the nature of information and its use in the modern CurriculumInterdisciplinary ELEMENT
Edmund Burke and the Problem of Revolution, taught by Dr. Brian Clack (Dept. of Philosophy)
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Homelessness in the U.S.: Intersections with Race and Policing, taught by Dr. Mike Williams (Dept. of Political Science and International Relations) and Dr. Kate DeConinck (Dept. of Theology and Religious Studies)
Technology and Humanities
This academic year, we focused on the consequences of the use of social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram in a series beginning in Fall 2021 and continuing through Spring 2022 in a series titled Social Media, Profit and Protection. The series was held virtually in the fall as a response to the allegations by Frances Haugen to Congress that Facebook knew through internal research the damage its algorithms were causing to young people and other vulnerable groups and did nothing to mitigate it. Because the topic was timely and more aspects of the Facebook failures were revealed, we continued the series held in person and over Zoom in the spring. Faculty members from the Law School, the School of Business and several departments in the College of Arts and Sciences spoke in panel discussions about topics both positive (e.g., that social media facilitates communication in communities that are underrepresented) and negative (that social media has no regulation as to the parameters of free speech and the spread of misinformation). Fall sessions were well attended, with lively discussions; spring sessions saw in-person attendance that was sporadic. The sessions that were well attended in the spring generated valuable discussions.
law, for a book project under contract with Public Affairs titled The Equality Machine: Transforming Tomorrow’s Technologies for Inclusion and Empowerment, and Darby Vickers, PhD, visiting assistant professor of philosophy, for a project titled Can Algorithms Be Decent? Developing Value Frameworks for Artificial Intelligence, for a paper that looks beyond concerns of algorithmic fairness to the virtue of decency and its possible role in addressing algorithmic injustice. The Humanities Center also offered an interdisciplinary undergraduate seminar titled AI 2021. The seminar focused on basic AI literacy, awareness of the relationship between AI and data systems, and specific challenges posed by AI for societies and humanity. Co-taught by Hannah Holtzman and Maritza Johnson, PhD, director of the Center for Digital Civil Society, the seminar attracted students from the College of Arts and Sciences and the ShileyMarcos School of Engineering.
AI and the Humanities
In 2021-2022, critical technology studies focused more specifically on programming in artificial intelligence and the humanities.
The AI Reading Group, led by Tyler Hower (philosophy) and Hannah Holtzman, PhD (Humanities Center), convened for a second year to continue an exploration of the human and social dimensions of artificial intelligence. The group continued to draw faculty members from the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering with the goal of building bridges across disciplines and fostering conversations about artificial intelligence across campus. To encourage the development of faculty research in artificial intelligence and the humanities, the AI and the Humanities Small Grant program was developed. The grant program awarded funding to two projects in its inaugural year: Orly Lobel, SJD, Herzog research professor and Warren distinguished professor of ELEMENT
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6 | HUMANITIES CENTER exhibition—a mini survey of late 18th-century prints titled The Gout and the Guillotine: The Satirical Imagination in Britain, 1790-99. The project dovetailed with Professor Clack’s recent edited volume devoted to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France and drew poignant comparisons between political unrest and personal pain as witnessed in the works of James Gillray, Isaak Cruikshank, Thomas During the 2021-22 academic year, the Humanities Center Gallery hosted four exhibitions and numerous related programs. During the fall semester, we mounted two successful projects in our space: the first was Screenings 7: Eve Fowler, in which the artist’s remarkable, hypnotic tribute to Gertrude Stein, with it which it as if it is to be (2016), was received with rapt attention from all who visited.
The L.A.-based artist herself spoke on October 22 to one of the first in-person groups of the year in the center’s Salon. Next, Modern Icons demonstrated what experimental collaboration can mean across the art history curriculum. Students in an introductory art history course worked together with colleagues enrolled in an upper division course devoted to the history of photography to jointly curate this exhibition based on the growing print and photography collections at USD. Experienced students in my Histories and Theories of Photography course also selected two portraits expressly for the exhibition: Herman Leonard’s Duke Ellington, Paris (1958) and Sophie Bassoul’s James Baldwin (1972). Both works are now part of the university’s permanent collection. Rico Gatson, whose bold graphic works anchored Modern Icons, spoke via remote connection to an eager audience in the Humanities Center on November 29. During the spring of 2022, the galleries continued to be highly animated. Screenings 8: Lorna Simpson featured the artist’s two-channel epic, Corridor (2003) which was generously lent to USD by the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College. Simpson’s work attracted classes from throughout the university. Following that, the Director of the Humanities Center, Brian Clack, curated his very first Humanities Center Gallery ELEMENT
Storywork: The Prints of MarieHoehnFebruaryWatt4-May13FamilyGalleries University of San Diego COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIE NCES
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The Gout and The GuillotineMarch14-May20 USD Humanities Center Gallery
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HumanitiesPublic of the Minerva Lecture Series. This series brings back to campus retired and emeritus faculty members who are invited to talk about their work and/or their reflections on education and the life of the mind. The title chosen for the series — The Minerva Series — is a reference to Hegel’s remark in The Philosophy of Right: “The owl of Minerva takes its flight only at the onset of dusk.” The lecture ELEMENT
In partnership with our friends at Warwick’s Books, we hosted the novelist Anthony Doerr, the prominent congressman Adam Schiff, and Fr. Gregory Boyle, the visionary founder of Homeboy Industries. Spring 2022 saw a flurry of activity in the center, with public lectures and in-conversation events featuring the award-winning novelist Mark Z. Danielewski and the philosopher and mechanic Matthew Crawford. Each of our Knapp chairs (detailed in the Collaborative Research section of this report) also gave lectures that were well attended and open to the public. In addition to these Illume events, community members were welcomed at our gallery talks and panel discussions. A new addition to the Illume Series commenced this year in the form The Humanities Center provides opportunities for USD not only to organize and coordinate liberal arts initiatives and programs for our campus community but also to establish partnerships with the broader San Diego community and beyond. In this manner, the center is engaged in the practice of what is known as public humanities — the intersection of civic engagement and the study of the human condition — and manifests its commitment to ensuring the accessibility of the humanities to our wider community. Since its inception in 2016, the work of the Humanities Center has had a profoundly outward facing and public dimension, and in 2021-22 our vibrant public humanities activities continued our engagement with the broader San Diego community. These activities have taken the form of campus events open to the public and of initiatives aimed at forging partnerships off campus. Dr. Farrah Karapetian will, in a separate section, outline her work on this latter endeavor. Here we will document the events that were open to the public in our most public-facing on-campus programming: the Illume Speaker ConspicuouslySeries. disrupted by the pandemic, the Illume Series returned to full strength in the fall of 2021.
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The vision for the public humanities element of the Humanities Center is to draw together multiple disciplines, from both on campus and our networks beyond, to address one prescient issue. The vision is grounded in conversation with community partners, so as to actually situate our concerns with a “public” in our region and our relationships.
In the context of public humanities, it should also be noted that the University of the Third Age, the longest-running community outreach program on USD’s campus, continued its operations under the auspices of the Humanities Center, and delivered a highly successful and well-attended three-week session in the winter of 2022. It is a delight to support this remarkable program: designed for an audience of those over 55 years, U3A stands as an invaluable reminder that learning never ends.
Community Partnerships
For 2021-2022, the focus for this construct was initiated in discussion with one of the Mulvaney Center’s community partners and professors of
ANNUAL REPORT 2021-22 | 9 series therefore aims to highlight the understanding that comes toward the end of a university career, the understanding that is the result of decades of experience.
The first two Minerva lecturers were James Gump (emeritus professor of history), who spoke about his new book Maestro: André Tchelistcheff and the Rebirth of Napa Valley, and Fred Miller Robinson (recently retired from the Department of English), who lectured on the stylistic innovations of James Joyce’s Ulysses and Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room, both of which were published 100 years ago, in 1922.
Manuel Shvartzberg Carrío of UCSD’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning led a visit to infrastructural projects in Imperial Valley, including the All-American Canal that brings Colorado River water into the region and the agricultural fields that grow up to two-thirds of the United States’ winter vegetables and 20 percent of our dairy. The group included students and faculty members from USD’s Department of Art, Architecture + Art History, and UCSD’s Architecture, Visual Arts, and Human Rights and Migration
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Studentsprograms.who committed to providing a takeaway for the Innovation Law Lab emerged from this day, our panels and our readings with a far deeper sense of the complexities of the situation of the southern border of the U.S. with Mexico. When they began conversation around the topic, they were sympathetic to migrant experience, but ended understanding that agricultural, architectural, legal and other infrastructures had grown to bulwark migratory policy. Their proposals for ways to evolve in this region include examination of 20th century treaties that might prove applicable to today’s legal framework toward decolonizing this region and moving into a more ethical binational space. practice, Ian Philabaum, of Innovation Law Lab (ILL). ILL works toward abolition in the context of migration. Our discussions oriented the series toward Imperial Valley, where the infrastructure of detention differs from that at the more visible Otay Mesa. Our community first heard from Ariel Prado (ILL) about the circumstances of detention in Imperial Valley.
Dr. Peter Knaack (the Centre for Sustainable Finance at SOAS, University of London; American University; Global Economic Governance Programme at University of Oxford) described the equations through which political economists figure the cost of deterrence. Dr. Kate Boersma (USD Biological Sciences) unpacked the topography of the Imperial Valley, and Evelyn Díaz Cruz (USD Theatre) described some of her strategies for handling narratives in community.
Next, we heard from Ersela Kripa (Texas Tech College of Architecture, El Paso, POST (Project for Operative Spatial Technologies)), Dr. Brian Clack (USD Philosophy and USD Humanities Center) and the Cog*nate Collective (artists Amy Sanchez-Arteaga and Misael Gio Diaz). This panel looked at the philosophical history of surveillance, the architecture of deterrence and its potential apertures for change and the social practice of engaging with community through artwork. Finally, we heard from three of the inaugural class of USD border fellows at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice. Rebeca Cazares, Luis Guillermo Gomez Rosales and Alina Breton described their existing strategies for working with migrant communities in psychological and physical health services as well as in business.
Fall semester There’s More Live programming kicked off in September ResourcesStudent School of Law director of admissions, financial aid and diversity initiatives. November’s event was a story circle, an impromptu and informal space of connection built around listening and sharing, organized around the theme Spring“Names.”semester programming kicked off in February honoring Black History Month with the theme “Inheritance.” Storytellers included Kaia Morrison, president of the Black Student Union and junior computer science major, and Damion Richardson, a junior communication studies major. March’s theme “The Moment” marked the significance of living two
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ANNUAL REPORT 2021-22 | 11 with a Center for Education Excellence co-sponsored event themed “Belonging.” Storytellers included Ariela Canizal, assistant director for community and leadership development; Cory Gooding, assistant professor of political science and international relations; and Lisa Nunn, director of the Center for Educational Excellence. October’s theme was “Non-Traditional,” co-sponsored by the First-Generation Student Action Committee. Storytellers included Susie Morales, transfer program coordinator; Catherine Paolillo, Copley librarian; and Michael Chavez,
Podcast: There’s More There’s More hosted six live events in the Humanities Center and participated in two special events, the Homecoming Arts Festival and Ole Weekend, during the 2021-2022 academic year. The first special event was a tutorial on podcast creation during Ole Weekend’s Dive into Changemaking. The second was part of the Homecoming Arts Festival, featuring stories by sophomore ethnic studies major Sofia Hart and Visiting Assistant Professor of Music Charissa Noble.
Alcalá Review With generous support from the Humanities Center, The Alcalá Review published its seventh volume this year, showcasing fiction, nonfiction, poetry and visual art from the USD student body, including the work of the winners and runners-up of the annual Lindsay J. Cropper Creative Writing Contest. In the fall, The Alcalá Review hosted a Nothing Bundt Poetry reading and open mic event on the balcony of the Shiley Center for Science and Technology, and in the spring organized several copyediting parties in preparation for the release of Volume 7, which was celebrated in turn at The Alcalá Review’s annual Publishing Party at the Humanities Center in May. The Alcalá Review continues to attract active participation from students across disciplines and maintains two little free Open and Read libraries on campus, thereby promoting literacy and unity through the liberal arts. The Alcalá Review staff regularly contribute presence and enthusiasm to campus happenings throughout the year, ranging from the Alcalá Bazaar and Prints and Pinot to assorted Humanities Center, CAS and English department events.
12 | HUMANITIES CENTER years with the COVID-19 pandemic. Communication studies senior Hallie Wiltshire shared a story about the moment in March 2020 when she realized she would be going into quarantine. Attendees at the event workshopped and shared their own stories about this moment.
The final event of the academic year was in April and themed “Anniversary.” This celebration marked the fifth anniversary of the Humanities Center and 10-year anniversary of the Changemaker Hub.
Senior student producers Lily Yates and Amulya Maddali were recognized for their four years working as student producers with There’s More.
All former storytellers and producers of There’s More were invited and recognized for their contributions to this initiative. Stories were shared by Juan Carlos Rivas, director of Social Change and Student Engagement Center for Peace; Mike Williams, director of the Changemaker HUB; Noelle Norton, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences; Ronald Kaufmann, associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences; and Brian Clack, director of the Humanities Center.
Six student producers organized and hosted 2021-2022 There’s More events under the direction of faculty producer Diane Keeling, including Lily Yates, Amulya Maddali, Julianna Jackson, Fanisee Bias, Griffon Hooper and Genesis Capellan.
The Alcalá Review Poetry • Art • Prose University of San Diego
REVIEWALCALÁTHE 7VOL.–
HU MANI T I E S C EN T ER Saints Tekakwitha and Serra Hall, Room 200 5998 Alcalá Park San Diego, CA 92110-2492 (619) sandiego.edu/humanities-center260-4600
