News & Events
Turning awareness into action
August 11, 2022
After years of working to bring feminist history and thought to a young audience through her popular Rad Women series, author Kate Schatz (Stevenson ’03, literature and creative writing) moves to turn teaching history into teaching practice and show adults what they can do to combat racism.
Mythologizing for a purpose
August 11, 2022
After years working across industries from filmmaking to horse-wrangling, alumnus Justin DiPego channels both his vast career experience and his UCSC creative education into his latest novel—"Wrong Side of a Workingman."
Zimmer to develop Responsible AI course
June 13, 2022
Zimmer will join colleagues from around the U.S. to plan classes that better explore the impact of artificial intelligence on our world.
‘Crossing Latinidades’ program selects UC Santa Cruz faculty and graduate students for national research and mentoring collaboration
June 3, 2022
Two UC Santa Cruz faculty were awarded $310,000 grants to lead national research working groups, and two doctoral students have been selected for one-year research fellowships and a summer institute focused on interdisciplinary research methods.
Harryette Mullen named 2022 Humanities Division Distinguished Graduate Student Alumna
April 7, 2022
The Humanities Division’s 2022 Distinguished Graduate Student Alumna, Harryette Mullen (M.A. Literature ’86, Ph.D. Literature ’90), published her first poetry book Tree Tall Women in 1981 and has since published dozens of poems, stories, books, and essays that have been published worldwide and reprinted in over one hundred anthologies.
Introducing The 2022 Deep Read: Yaa Gyasi’s Transcendent Kingdom
March 1, 2022
The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz announces the return of The Deep Read annual program. The group will read Transcendent Kingdom, the acclaimed novel from Brooklyn-based author Yaa Gyasi.
'From the Margins: Dante 701 Years Later' to provide critical perspectives on author's work
February 7, 2022
Funded through the Siegfried B. and Elisabeth Mignon Puknat Literary Studies Endowment and presented by The Humanities Institute, the series will include events taking place throughout 2022 to engage with Dante’s work through a much different lens than the usual discussions of his life and work.
Bridging the educational divide on a global scale
February 3, 2022
Alumnus Fred Mednick, founder of two-time Peace Prize–winning NGO Teachers Without Borders, has worked to expand worldwide educational access for over two decades.
Grant supports project to digitize, preserve materials at Biblioteca Amazónica
January 20, 2022
The project will concentrate its efforts on those items within the archives that are unique to the Biblioteca Amazónica and not available elsewhere. One important inclusion will be back issues of three local newspapers — El Eco, La Razón, and El Oriente — that have never been fully digitized before.
Alumna bell hooks—celebrated feminist theorist, cultural critic, artist, and writer—dies at 69
December 16, 2021
bell hooks was the author of over two dozen books that ranged from the groundbreaking text 'Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism' to her deeply felt memoir 'Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood'.
Karen Tei Yamashita receives 2021 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters
December 2, 2021
Yamashita used her acceptance speech, in part, to emphasize the significance of this medal being awarded to an Asian-American writer “especially this year, post-pandemic, having weathered the Twitter absurdity, corruption, and mendacity; the brutality of racial profiling; and the provocation of anti-immigrant, anti-refugee, anti-Muslim, [and] anti-Asian hatred.”
New grant to support Dickens Project programming in year ahead
November 23, 2021
The programming in 2022 is focused on questions of race and social justice in the 19th century and today, with the summer's Dickens Universe event broadening its purview by pairing a British novel with an African-American novel.
Award-winning poet Gary Young to read at 12th annual Morton Marcus memorial event
November 10, 2021
Gary Young has written powerful, richly detailed verses often inspired by the bounty of the natural world. And as with most great poetry, Young’s work is great on the page, but truly comes to life when it is read aloud.
The Nineteenth Annual Literature Undergraduate Colloquium
May 8, 2018
Join us Thursday, May 17 for a presentation of exceptional undergraduate work in literature, thoughtful discussion, and refreshments!