News & Events
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.
Karen Tei Yamashita to receive 2021 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters
September 13, 2021
UC Santa Cruz emerita professor of literature Karen Tei Yamashita will be awarded the 2021 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from The National Book Foundation, presenter of the National Book Awards.
Humanities Institute and Bookshop Santa Cruz offer evening with bestselling author Sandra Cisneros
August 24, 2021
UCSC’s Humanities Institute is co-sponsoring a special online event with Bookshop Santa Cruz, featuring Sandra Cisneros, in conversation with Emmy Award-winning journalist Rubén Martínez, to celebrate her new book, "Martita, I Remember You / Martita, te recuerdo."
Dickens Universe celebrates 40th anniversary with ‘A Christmas Carol’
July 22, 2021
This summer, the Dickens Project at UC Santa Cruz—the largest multi-campus consortium on Victorian studies in the world—will present the 40th year of the Dickens Universe, a week of intense study and festivities.
‘Precarity & Belonging’ captures insights from global discussion of citizenship, migration, socioeconomic mobility
July 13, 2021
A new book from an interdisciplinary group of UC Santa Cruz scholars culminates more than five years of collaborative research and discussion that positioned the university as a convener of global thought leaders.
Graduate student organizing community workshops on the queer Black experience
June 25, 2021
Mia Boykin is expanding her Black.Queer.Alive. project to include four community workshops that will explore fitness, creativity, politics and entrepreneurship.
Graduate student explores gay literature's contributions to social movements, canon
June 21, 2021
Eric Sneathen explores how gay men, beginning in the 1960s, formed a literary community, wrote or curated poems and other literary works about their experiences, and how this community informed the more recent social movements around gay identity.
Registration open for the 40th annual Virtual Dickens Universe featuring ‘A Christmas Carol’
June 7, 2021
The Dickens Universe is an annual gathering of scholars, teachers, and members of the general public who share a love of Dickens's writings and his era. This summer, the Universe features A Christmas Carol and will take place online.
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!
