Spring Magazine Dean’s Welcome Spring 2015
We welcome spring and the beauty of its message, both literal and figurative, that this is a time to start fresh, to bloom, and to smell the roses.
The School of Humanities is itself springing forward—six faculty books have published since January with three more coming out in April, innovative new courses are being offered, our students are completing award-winning research and we continue to build relationships with foundations and community leaders who believe in our mission.
Inside of this magazine, we pick up from where we left off in our Annual Report. You’ll get an in-depth look at what our faculty, students and alumni are accomplishing.
I express my gratitude to professors Jonathan Alexander, Erika Hayasaki, Tiffany Willoughby-Herard, Claire Jean Kim and Kristen Hatch for sharing their latest research with us; to students Jessica Bond and Jazmyne McNeese for letting us see how studying the humanities is shaping their worldviews and life ambitions; and to alumnae Pheobe Bui and Aline Ohanesian for showing us where a humanities education has taken them today.
I encourage you to keep in touch with us and the school’s latest developments by joining on us Facebook and Twitter and by staying tuned every second Tuesday of the month for timely faculty-led insight into today’s most topical issues via Humanities Headlines, our exclusive webinar series. If you are local, take a look at the events listed at the end of the magazine--we’d love to see you there.
Sincerely,
Georges Van Den Abbeele Dean, School of the Humanities SCHOOL UPDATES
SPRING | 2015 3 Humanities Studio Embodies UCI’s Global Mission with Language Tools & World-Class
space where students and faculty can learn, teach, and conduct research with support from staff who understand their needs,” said Franz.
Knowing multiple languages and how to deftly utilize and navigate Adding to this theme of engagement is the wealth of historic art a range of technologies are arguably two of the most important currently available for viewing throughout the studio. Acquired by skills a global citizen can have. Globalization and technology make Graham Arader, a well-known his¬tor¬ical art dealer and founder of it increasingly seamless to connect with others around the world, Arader Gal¬leries, and facilitated by Georges Van Den Abbeele, dean but also more necessary than ever to create multilingual citizens of the School of Humanities, the studio now features natural history who understand the histories, values and traditions of other watercolors, woodcuts, engravings, lithographs, chromolithographs cultures. and maps dating from the 16th to 19th centuries and valued at approximately $1 million. The School of Humanities has offered instructional and technological services to both students and faculty since its founding 50 years ago that aim to create this type of citizen. Originally called the Language Lab and housed in what was called the Humanities/ Fine Arts building (now Murray Krieger Hall & Humanities Hall), Humanities Studio/Academic Resources & Technology has seen many transformations over the years. Working in tandem with Humanities Computing, the studio houses three computer labs, audio visual equipment and other technological tools, offers language-learning services, hosts the SPEAK test, and provides a “We want to foster an environment where students can look up venue for workshops and other events. from their computer screens to enjoy and learn about the varied botanical prints, maps, and other treasures that can enhance their Judi Franz, Director of Humanities Studio, who came into studies in the Humanities,” said Franz. Several classes in history and employment by the School of Humanities in 1988, has led many Humanities Core have already given assignments to their students of the changes to the studio’s technology-based academic services. that incorporate our art installation.
When Franz began her tenure in the then Language Learning As we celebrate the continual growth of the Humanities Studio, we Resource Center, she was featured in the Daily Pilot in an article also express our gratitude to Franz and wish her the best of luck as about the center and its translation referral services. In the article, she moves into a new role in campus wide classroom technology Franz recalls the time a woman in labor needed an Arabic translator support. Dwayne Pack, director of computing for the School of and mentions the center’s language-learning videotapes. As we Humanities, will be taking on primary administrative responsibility. near the 50-year anniversary of UC Irvine’s establishment, this article reminds us how far both the center/studio and technology The Humanities AR&T studio is open to the public, with limited have come. Franz has guided the studio’s transition from analog hours. Because it is a technology lab and student resource center, to digital, added a small teleconference space, and hosted an the schedule varies each week. There are weekly calendars posted international conference on language learning technology. outside of the gallery space, as well as on its website here.
Last year, Franz led the rebranding of the space, changing its name If you’d like more information, or to schedule your visit in advance, from the Humanities Instructional Resource Center (“HIRC”) to the please contact Arianne Schultheis, Operations Manager, at (949) Humanities Studio/Academic Resources & Technology. The name 824-6344 or [email protected]. change is meant to reflect that the studio “is an active, productive Art History Internship Thrives
Thanks to the generosity of the Friends of Art History, the department has collaborated with the San Diego Museum of Art’s Department of Asian Art to offer a paid internship with curator Dr. Marika Sardar. Please contact the department of Art History for more information.
La Casa Nuestra
AHUA members gathered in the Neoclassical Panel room at the La Casa Nuestra is an on-campus living-learning residence Getty Center. (L-R) Effie Seong, Chelsea Trinh / Back Row (L-R) Gladys Preciado, Philana Li, Paulina Daquiz, Leilani Yamanishi, Alex Garcia, Nadya Kasimoff, and Eric Colbert. Photo credit: Chelsea designed for students seeking a way to study the Spanish Trinh language and culture in an immersed environment. To
that end, participating in-residence students have signed a NEW Religious Studies
pledge to hablar español (“Spanish only”) on a daily basis, as House
long as they are “at home” at La Casa Nuestra. Professor Emeritus Keith Nelson and Krista Kernodle, resident advisor have organized informal faculty “fireside chats” (with refreshments) for interested students. Professor Cecelia Lynch January events included friendly and informal conversation spoke on January 15 on religion and humanitarianism. Professor exchanges with UCI’s Spanish faculty, a home-cooked Jack Miles spoke on February 12 on the history and practice
potluck dinner with the Dean and Professor Armin of religious conversion. On March 3, professor Roxanne Varzi spoke on religion and the Middle East – the Culinary Arts house Schwegler. In February, La Casa hosted a salsa dancing event residents were invited, and a Persian supper was served. The in their common room. Religious Studies house will host the Honors house in April.
Religious Studies House is located at #1050 in the Arroyo Vista “We are happy to see the growing warmth of this residence housing village. community and are proud to sponsor this house” – Hector
Limon, UCI Arroyo Vista Housing Students who are interested in the Religious Studies House in 2015-2016 should indicate their interest now to RS House faculty advisor Prof. Emeritus Keith Nelson ([email protected]).
SPRING | 2015 5 State of the School Breakfast
The School of Humanities hosted its inaugural State of the School Breakfast Briefing event,
which provided an informal and intimate opportunity for select donors to hear the latest
updates from the school, and to share in the Dean’s vision for the future of the humanities
at UC Irvine. We were pleased to host 20 of our close friends and community leaders in
early February for a traditional breakfast spread and informational report, delivered by
Dean Georges Van Den Abbeele, Associate Dean for Research, Julia Lupton, and Associate
Dean for Curricular Development, Jim Herbert. Our guests shared that this breakfast was
a great way to kick-start their week, and that they were pleased to learn about our recent
faculty and student accolades, our burgeoning community partnerships and outreach
programs, the launch of new inter-school initiatives, and our forthcoming endowed chairs
in Armenian Studies and in Indic Religious and Civilizational Studies.
To view the Dean’s presentation and remarks, click here to watch the 30-minute video.
New Courses/Reqs
Art History
• New course: Ancient Empires, focusing on the interconnections between India and Iran from c. 600 BCE through 600 CE.
Film & Media Studies
• Working with the Art Department on a digital production minor
History
• Revised requirements for the major • New course topics include: Terrorism, Global Crises, Soccer, Global Warming, Genocide, Bioscience: Ethic and Diversity (which is a new partnership with Public Health), Japan’s Modern Revolutions, California Dreaming, The Two Koreas, Technological India, US Urban/Suburban development, What to Eat (food history) • Continuing to grow its history internship class, offered in the Fall
Spanish and Portuguese
• New graduate seminar on “Gender and Revolution in Mexico” Humanities Network Receives Competitive $5.7M Grant
The Humanities Network, overseen by UCI-based UC Humanities Research Institute, will support humanities research, UC-wide
This January, the UC Office of the President announced that the Humanities Network received a prestigious UC Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives award (“MRPI”) for $5.7M. MRPI awards support innovative multi-campus research collaborations that strengthen UC’s position as a leading public Homecoming research university. There were a total of 18 recipients of MRPI grants with fewer than 10% of proposals receiving funding this UC Irvine’s 50th Anniversary Homecoming celebration on Saturday, year. January 31st, 2015, was a tremendous and lively afternoon that honored UCI’s Bright Past, and also featured the current talent, The Humanities Network is designed to support, stimulate, intelligence, and effervescence of our campus that are propelling us and facilitate excellence in humanities research across the into our Brilliant Future. Aldrich park was bubbling with nearly 5,000 alumni, students, and friends who enjoyed interactive activities, food University of California. trucks, free giveaways, an Anteater Ale garden, and music and dance performances. Originally developed and funded by a five-year grant from the UC Office of Research and Graduate Studies in 2009 Later in the afternoon, each school presented a break-out session to to incorporate and expand upon the Humanities Initiative foster reunions within the respective quads. The School of Humanities established by former UC President David P. Gardner in 1987, hosted “Humanities Your Way” for our alumni – our group ranged the Humanities Network is overseen by the UC system wide from recent graduates to a member of the pilot class of UC Irvine Humanities Advisory Committee and administered, staffed, (Class of 1969). Our sessions included a History of Chinese Food in America by Professor Yong Chen (complete with fortune cookies), and coordinated by the UC Humanities Research Institute a tour of the historically-significant artwork in the Humanities Art located at UC Irvine. Since its inception, the Humanities & Technology Studio by Dean Georges Van Den Abbeele, and a DIY Network has consistently involved every campus in the UC Journaling Session led by Professor Julia Lupton. system, as well as campus-based humanities centers and affiliated programs that connect faculty and graduate students It was very rewarding and exciting to reconnect with our friends and with colleagues across the system. School of Humanities alumni, and our team had a great time at the event and are already looking forward to next year’s homecoming. Georges Van Den Abbeele, dean of the School of Humanities, served as principal investigator for this grant. To learn more, please click here.
SPRING | 2015 7 DONOR RELATIONS School of Humanities to Establish Endowed Chair in Indic Religious & Civilizational Studies
The Dharma Civilization Foundation and donors Irma and Ushakant Thakkar have pledged $1.5M to the School of Humanities to establish DONOR RELATIONS the Thakkar Family DCF Endowed Chair in Indic Religious and Civilizational Studies along with additional academic opportunities.
The Thakkar Family DCF Endowed Chair in Indic Religious and Civilizational Studies will be established at the School of Humanities, thanks to a gift of $1.5M from the Dharma Civilization Foundation and Irma and Ushakant Thakkar, individual donors with a profound interest in educational philanthropy. The Dharma Civilization Foundation (“DCF”) is a California-based non-profit organization that seeks to promote and enhance philanthropic giving to promote the systematic study of Indian religious traditions (Hindu, Buddhist, Jain and Sikh).
“This new endowed chair not only anchors our religious studies program by permanently securing faculty-led research and instruction in one of the world’s most influential religions, but it also further supports our campus strength in Indian and South Asian studies, as well as in the study of the global South Asian diaspora. These are fundamental areas of expertise for UC Irvine’s international preeminence as a cutting-edge site of global learning,” said Georges Van Den Abbeele, dean of the School of Humanities.
The endowed chair will be a respected scholar in Indic Religious and Civilization Studies and will have expertise in the study of Dharma traditions with an emphasis on interpretation and expression of the classical Hindu teachings, texts and practices. The scholar will work closely with the faculty associated with the School of Humanities’ Program in Religious Studies and other departments to develop relevant courses for the study of India and Indian Civilization that will emphasize, but not be limited to, research and programs on Indian culture, religion, ethics, philosophy, history, language, literature, arts and society. To learn more, please click here.
UCUC Irvine Irvine Enters into Enters Agreement into with The Agreement American University with of TheArmenia American to Provide Faculty, University Student and Re- of search Exchange Armenia to Provide Faculty, Student and Research Exchange
Led by the School of Humanities for the UC Irvine campus, this partnership adds incredible value and knowledge-share to the Humanities’ current Armenian Studies Program through faculty, student and research exchange.
A signing event took place on January 15th on the UCLA campus where Georges Van Den Abbeele, dean of the UC Irvine School of Humanities, and Armen Der Kiureghian, PhD, president of the American University of Armenia, were both present to sign the Memorandum of Understanding.
“We are very pleased to have this agreement with UC Irvine, which aims at facilitating study abroad and faculty interactions between our two universities. AUA provides an ideal choice for study abroad for UC Irvine students, who are interested in Armenian studies or wish to study in their ancestral homeland for a summer, a semester or a year,” said Armen Der Kiureghian, PhD, president of the American University of Armenia. “We would also be very pleased to host UC Irvine faculty, who are interested in studying the history and culture of Armenia or would like to spend a sabbatical leave at AUA. We hope our students and faculty will be able to make reciprocal visits and benefit from the many rich programs available at UCI.”
To learn more about this agreement, please click here.
SPRING | 2015 9 FACULTY New Media with Jonathan Alexander
of energies around communication that reciprocally invites us to reconsider the creative and rhetorical affordances of expression.
How is the definition of composition changing to incorporate new media? [Or, how should it?]
That is the question of our book! We argue that the very definition of composition—of what it means both to compose and to teach composing—must necessarily be in flux and under constant reconsideration as the field of composition studies incorporates new communication technologies into its domain of study and use, particularly as Let’s start by setting our foundation. How do you define those technologies enable the exploration and development “new media”? of rhetorical affordances and possibilities beyond the more “traditional” domain of print literacies. I don’t think “new media” is easily definable, as what counts as “new media” is always shifting and changing. With that In your book, On Multimodality: New Media in Composition said, we might call “new media” that conglomeration of Studies, you and co-author Jacqueline Rhodes make the communication technologies that, at any given moment, case that utilizing new media to serve the rhetorical has captured and provoked the social imaginary of goals of writing limits the capacity of new media to bring communication. More theoretically, “new media” is the about new modes of thought. How should new media be always in flux provocation to reimagine possibilities for used in the classroom? communication. So, for instance, in the context of the late 19th century, the rise of photography as a “new medium” both opened up new ways to create visual representations and challenged artists to reimagine the possibilities of painting—a re-imagination that coincided with increased experimentation with formal dimensions of painting. Likewise, in more contemporary terms, the advent of widespread access in the global north to multimediated forms of communication has prompted experimentation with the integration of textual, aural, and visual domains of expression, but it has also provoked the re-imingation of more “traditional” literacy practices. We see, for example, more experimentation with the visual field of the novel, such as the inclusion of printed PowerPoint decks in novels, such as in Jennifer Egan’s Pulitzer Prize winning A Visit from the Goon Squad. So we might say “new media” is always more than just a set of technologies; it’s the concentration
SPRING | 2015 11 We don’t want to be prescriptive here, but rather suggestive. reimagine the field of composition and as the possibility of With that said, we think it’s vitally important that, as we re-imagining how we engage each other, individually and work with different media and modes of composing, we pay collective, to transform our world into (we hope!) a more attention to the particular affordances of those media and socially equitable one. modes. So, for instance, when I was working last quarter with students who were making video “trailers” about their Jonathan Alexander is Professor of English, Education, favorite young adult fiction novels, we looked critically at and Gender & Sexuality Studies at UC, Irvine, where he what successful producers of video trailers do—how they is the founding Director of the Center for Excellence in narrate the subject, arrange visual scenes to create dramatic Writing and Communication. The author, co-author, or tension, use sound and music to set tone, and carefully edit editor of nine books, Jonathan writes about sexuality, to provoke a viewer’s interest. Such work required that we technology, and literacy — sometimes all at the same think through a whole host of rhetorical choices—some time. He is the general editor of College Composition and textual as students drafted “scripts” for their trailers, but Communication. also visual as they drew story boards, and aural as they sampled, recorded, and remixed soundtracks for their trailers.
Do you think some fields of study are more resistant to, or embracing of, new media into their studies? If so, why?
We don’t see resistances to working with new media—not at all. What we see instead are failures to think through what working with different media means and entails. Hence, we caution folks in composition studies, who have increasingly adopted new media tools, not to use those tools as though they were just “add ons” to print. We’ve seen too many student-produced videos, for instance, that look like five-paragraph essays that have been filmed! Such seem to privilege the kinds of literacy practices that circulate in textual production while ignoring the possibilities of working with video.
Why is it important to ask students to work with new media or multimedia in their studies?
It’s important because they’re already working with multimedia in their private lives and will most likely be called upon to do so in their professional lives. But more importantly, working with (and that also means learning from) students about multimedia will equip them (and us) for more robust participation in the multimediated public spheres of complex democracies. So we see our call to rethink composing in relation to media as a call both to Q & A with Kristen Hatch
In this Q&A, we speak with Kristen Hatch, associate professor the federal government stepping in and censoring the movies. of film and media studies. Her book, Shirley Temple and the Performance of Girlhood, came out this February and explores 2. What was your most surprising discovery while writing Temple’s early career in the context of the history of girlhood and researching for this book? and examines how her star image emerged out of the Victorian cult of the child. I was surprised to discover that audiences didn’t appear to be troubled by the “Baby Burlesks,” though audiences today find 1. What inspired you to focus your research on Shirley them very disturbing. This became the starting point for the Temple? book. In the course of my research, I found that it used to be quite common for little girls to impersonate sexualized women, and I was doing research on Lolita figures, trying to understand the very groups that were threatening to boycott Hollywood in why audiences today seem to find images of sexualized girls to the 1930s had given awards for children’s erotic impersonations be more troubling than they did in the 1960s. Nabokov’s novel, in the ‘teens and 1920s. Clearly, childhood meant something Lolita, was published in France in 1955 (in the US in 1958), Elia different in the early twentieth century than it does for us now. Kazan’s “Baby Doll,” in which Karl Malden spies on his child bride as she sleeps, sucking her thumb in a crib, was released As I dug deeper, I found that all sorts of things that seem in 1956, and Stanley Kubrick’s film “Lolita” was released in 1962. perverse to twenty-first-century audiences appeared benign to early twentieth-century audiences. For instance, in her I became curious about how this figure of the fille fatale was autobiography, Shirley Temple Black claims that Southern imagined before Nabokov gave a name to Lolita, and I started film exhibitors cut the sequences in her films in which she looking for examples of eroticized girls prior to the 1950s. In the holds hands with Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, who had been process, I came across Shirley Temple’s “Baby Burlesks,” a series the first black performer to headline on white vaudeville. of short films that she made in 1932 when she was four years old. However, when I looked through exhibitors’ reports on “The The films are spoofs of popular Hollywood genre films from the Little Colonel” and Temple’s other films with Robinson, I found 1920s and 1930s, with all the roles played by children dressed as that southern exhibitors often identified their scenes together adults. In these films, Temple was typecast as a femme fatale as the highlight of these films. Similarly, audiences today are (she was billed as a “devastating 36-month-old siren.”). In one, often taken aback by Temple’s “Good Ship Lollipop” routine, in she plays a prostitute in black, lacy lingerie and impersonates which she sings her signature song to an enraptured audience Mae West. In another, she sings in a saloon and flirts with two of men, or to a sequence in “Poor Little Rich Girl” in which she soldiers who compete for her affections, giving her lollipops in sits on her co-star’s lap and sings “marry me and let me be your exchange for kisses. wife.” However, Depression-era audiences didn’t find anything objectionable in the image of an adult man cuddling a little girl This seemed like a good starting point for thinking about or of male fans gushing over Shirley Temple. how audiences interpret sexualized images of children. In the 1930s, Hollywood was facing the threat of boycotts because religious and community groups objected to the violence and sexuality being depicted on screen. I imagined that there would be some interesting material about the apparent sexualization of Shirley Temple in the archives of the Studio Relations Committee, which was very concerned about the possibility of
SPRING | 2015 13 I began researching children’s performances on stage from the popularity that had been enjoyed by Shirley Temple and previous 1880s onward as well as their performances in silent-era film, child stars, and many of the conventions that had shaped Temple’s and I found that all of these things that seemed so strange and career fell by the wayside. perverse about Temple’s career were actually common practice at the time. And these conventions were not taken to signal 4. What’s next for your research? men’s perverse attraction to little girls. Rather, men’s adoration of Shirley Temple and other child stars was celebrated as a sign I’m fascinated by the question of how Hollywood developed its that men were not ruled by their desires. conception of a mass audience in the 1930s. Nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century entertainments developed around 3. Has the performance of girlhood seen any modern day local tastes. For instance, because vaudeville acts were performed incarnations? live, they could be adapted to suit specific audiences. This was somewhat true of silent-era film, which relied on live sound. Freud’s ideas about sexuality profoundly undermined the ideal of Theaters that catered to black audiences in Chicago, for example, innocence on which the popularity of Shirley Temple and other hired blues and jazz musicians—including Bessie Smith and child stars depended. Not only did Freud introduce the concept Louis Armstrong—to accompany Hollywood films. However, with of childhood sexuality. He also changed the way we understand the introduction of sound film, the soundtrack, too, was mass adult sexuality by suggesting that our sexual desires are shaped produced, and it became increasingly difficult to excise material by the unconscious rather than by genetics or ‘breeding,’ as to suit the tastes of regional audiences; the studios wanted to previous generations had believed. (Previously, pedophilia was standardize their films. Film producers struggled to develop films attributed to senility or to race/ethnicity; it was unimaginable that would speak to a mass, international audience. that white, middle-class men of sound mind were capable of molesting innocent children.) I’m interested in considering how the studios and radio networks adapted performances that had developed in Under the new, Freudian paradigm, a man’s fascination with a relation to regional tastes to suit this mass audience, and little girl was not necessarily a sign of his self control. This is in what they imagined that “mass” audience to consist of. reflected in Graham Greene’s reviews of Temple’s films, in which he argues that her appeal rests on her “dimpled depravity” and that “middle-aged men” are lulled into imagining that they don’t desire Temple’s “well-shaped and desirable little body” because “the safety curtain of story and dialogue drops between their intelligence and their desire.” For Greene, the “safety curtain” is like a Freudian screen that prevents audiences from recognizing that they are driven by sexual desire.
Greene was sued by Fox and had to write an apology to Shirley Temple, which may explain why other similar interpretations of her popularity weren’t published in the 1930s.
However, during the post-war period, Freud became the dominant lens through which Americans understood childhood and adult sexuality. It was not uncommon for critics to describe Margaret O’Brien or Elizabeth Taylor in Freudian terms. Not To learn more about Hatch, please view her faculty bio here. coincidentally, these actors did not achieve nearly the degree of Breathing Life into Non-Fiction: Erika Hayasaki’s Latest Novel Tackles Drowning by Corn
Four years ago, Erika Hayasaki, assistant professor of Literary Journalism, learned about the death of two young men in a corn grain bin accident in the Midwest. Over the next two years, while pregnant and later with her then-6-month-year-old daughter and husband in tow, she left her life in Los Angeles— home to 3M people—to visit Mount Carroll, Illinois, home to 1,700, to capture the story. Her interest, however, wasn’t so much in rehashing the deaths of the two young men, but in telling the story of the survivor, Will Piper, who nearly died trying to save his friends from the deadly pull of the grain bin, and whose life took a surprising turn after the accident.
Hayasaki is a former Los Angeles Times national correspondent who hasn’t strayed far from her journalism roots. She writes regularly for Newsweek and The Atlantic and teaches literary journalism—essentially, true stories that are told using literary
Erika Hayasaki (pictured) techniques often employed by fiction writers.
The corn industry has had its fair-share of bad publicity. From documentaries like Food, Inc. to King Corn and books like Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, the real-food movement has taken corn to task for its preponderance in packaged food due to government subsidies and its propensity to be genetically modified here in the U.S. Its nutritional value aside, whenever an item becomes in high demand, there are fringe consequences. With corn—death by grain-bin entrapment is one of those consequences. In fact, this year is expected to yield more deaths by “corn drownings” than in 2010, when 31 people died, according to Professor Bill Field with Purdue University’s Agricultural Safety & Health Program. In 2013, Hayasaki received a Hellman Fellows Grant to further her research for, and writing about, the grain-bin tragedy in Illinois. Hellman Fellows go to support the research of promising assistant professors who show capacity for great distinction in their chosen fields of endeavor.
Her research recently culminated in the publication of her second Amazon Kindle Single, Drowned by Corn, which jumped into the top 10 nonfiction Kindle Singles when it was published in December. Her first Amazon Kindle Single,Dead or Alive, was published in 2012.
SPRING | 2015 15 Choosing to publish with Kindle Singles was no accident. Erika Hayasaki is assistant professor of Literary Journalism Hayasaki teaches courses in digital longform storytelling, and and a journalist who writes about youth, education, health, is excited about exploring the evolution of online platforms that science, culture, crime, death and urban affairs. She is a former publish and promote literary journalism, adding to the tradition New York-based national correspondent for the Los Angeles and variety of deeply reported narrative storytelling that has Times, where she spent nine years covering breaking news roots in newspapers like the Los Angeles Times, and magazines and writing feature stories. She is the author of The Death like Esquire and The New Yorker. Class: A True Story About Life (Simon & Schuster 2014), Drowned by Corn (Kindle Single, 2014) and Dead or Alive Drowned by Corn tells the story of the three young men involved (Kindle Single, 2012). She has published more than 900 articles in this tragedy while commenting too on the industrialization of in the Los Angeles Times and various other newspapers, and agriculture and its effects on those, usually young men, whose her writing has also appeared in The Atlantic, Newsweek, hard and dangerous labor stays mostly behind the scenes. The Wall Street Journal, Time, Los Angeles magazine and The Chicago Tribune recently called it “a gripping narrative of others. You can learn more about her by visiting her faculty tenderness and horror, friendship and loss.” profilehere .
This isn’t the first time Hayasaki has breathed life into real stories that may have otherwise gone unnoticed. Last year, Hayasaki’s book The Death Class (Simon & Shuster, 2014) published and transfixed its readers so much so that former “Dexter” star Jennifer Carpenter teamed up with Sara Colleton to adapt the book for NBC. The two are currently working on a TV pilot.
Hayasaki currently finds herself fascinated by the intersection of psychology, neuroscience, human behavior and narrative, and is working on a series of related narrative-style stories for publications including Pacific Standard, Matter, and The California Sunday Magazine. Q & A with Claire Jean Kim
1. Your book Dangerous Crossings 4. What can we learn about the complexity of power from received initial support from a 2009 looking at these controversies over how racialized non-white UCHRI Residential Research Group. subjects treat animals in their (cultural) traditions? What type of support did this group provide for your research? How did In all three of the impassioned disputes I examine--over the live it impact your work? animal markets in San Francisco’s Chinatown, the Makah tribe’s proposed resumption of whaling after a hiatus of 70 years, and The group brought together the arrest and conviction of NFL superstar Michael Vick, who several scholars from various is black, on charges relating to dogfighting--we see that race disciplines who were all interested in and species have historically operated as “conjoined logics,” or the co-constitutions of race, species, taxonomies of power that together produce answers to questions such as “who matters morally,” “who is a grievable life,” and gender, and sexuality. It was a rare space to talk about animality “who is disposable.” Animalization is integral not incidental in an academic setting-- and never just animality, but animality to the construction of the race-d body, and animal bodies are as articulated with these other systems of power. frequently racialized, in turn. In this sense, the conventional posing of each scenario as a zero-sum conflict between the 2. You hold positions in both the Asian American Studies interests of racialized humans and those of nonhuman animals department within the School of Humanities and the obfuscates the real power dynamics in play. Political Science department within the School of Social Sciences. How does your research involve both schools’ fields of inquiry?
This book clearly shows the imprint of my dual roots. It combines humanistic questions and concerns and language with social science-type methods such as ethnography. Its central preoccupation with discourse, power, and resistance, of course, cuts across the humanities and social sciences. 5. What’s next for your research? What are you currently 3. Animal Studies is a relatively new field. What challenges working on? does it face and what possibilities does it present? I am writing a book on the positionality of Asian Americans in It’s an exciting field with dramatic possibilities and difficulties. It the U.S. racial order, from the 1800s to the present. The focus holds out the promise of powerfully elaborating and amplifying is on the surprisingly consistent relation of Asian Americans to our understanding of how classification and domination work blackness and antiblackness across historical epochs, a finding and thereby enlivening the fields of ethnic studies, gender and that challenges currently popular notions about both Asian sexuality studies, cultural studies, and more. At the same time, Americans’ putative shift from near-black to white and race’s it is bedeviled by its largely unreflective relation to whiteness. overall fluidity and malleability. After this, a book of essays on Here I am alluding to people’s political understandings and race, animality, and institutionalized violence. orientations, not their bodies. Claire Jean Kim is professor of Asian American studies and political science. You can view her faculty bio here.
SPRING | 2015 17 Q & A with Tiffany Willoughby-Herard
In this Q&A with Professor (LaRue 2002; Adams 2002). Their speeches and political Tiffany Willoughby-Herard, ideas demonstrated that anti-apartheid and anti-slavery assistant professor of African consciousness were pieces of an elaborate tapestry of Black American studies, we learn internationalist thinking. I first learned about South Africa about her latest book and what from them in sermons and community workshops and talks. drives her research. In addition to being a place where I could imagine one day conducting political historical research and doing activism, South Africa (long before I ever had a passport) was a place 1. What was it like growing up of concrete political conscientization for me having been in Detroit when you did? How raised during an era in which Black Detroit was aflame with has this influenced how you the anti-apartheid movement and internationalist politics. approach your research and your teaching? What I have now come to understand as a particularly successful form of diasporic and translocal political In a forthcoming essay in the National Political Science education, I grew up in what Cynthia Young has called the Review I described this in this way “Black Detroit in the ‘U.S. third world lef’ (2006). So while the South Africa of 1980s and 1990s in addition to being a community wounded my mind was a place of reverie, the hoped for Lan Guinee- by a lack of adequate public health response to the crack Eden, figured in the art in my home (Benson 1992), South epidemic, HIV/AIDS, and rampant gun violence was also a Africa was also a place of deep reverence for the political city made whole by the legacy of the Black nationalism of commitments that animated enduring stories about Igbo- Rev. Albert Cleage and the ideologies of Black working class landing and ‘people who could fly’ and people who knew self-defense and communalism among the stigmatized and how to fight back and win (Okorafor 2009; Dash, Hooks, and abandoned that showed up in Black trade union organizing Bambara 1992; McDaniel 1990). and Black credit unions coordinated by Rev. Charles A. Hill (Berger 2006; Dillard 2007, 13, 241). Black Detroit was also a My city was etched by independent Black community place whose spatial geographies of Blackness were shaped organizations and an associational life that constituted by the Pan-African and militant sentiments of civil rights Black consciousness and Blackness itself around a dizzying leaders like Rosa Parks (Theoharis 2009), were shaped by array of possibilities from the Shrine of the Black Madonna the insistence that Black people claim the public sphere bookshop to the Grace Lee and James Boggs Educational and the actual streets in the city as was done by Prophet Center to the Black militant academics and lawyers who James Francis Jones (Retzloff 2002), and were shaped by migrated from Detroit and landed in Oakland and Berkeley the sometimes incomprehensible but necessary support and San Francisco to use the Afro-American Society to and advocacy for an independent Africa by the Michigan help launch the Black Panther Party for Self Defense governor, G. Mennen Williams (Noer 2009, 239-242). The (Kelley 2000). Such actions as Wildcat Strikes and the 1943 South African dissident and liberation theology liturgist, and 1967 rebellions cannot be understood without the Rev. Mangedwa Nyathi, and the civil rights theologian and context of an associational life that took trans-local, cross- pastor, Dr. Charles G. Adams, used the Hartford Memorial generational organizing and political education of boys and Baptist Church pulpit and community organizations to girls very seriously (Shaw 2009). More than the American explain the practice of civil rights struggle, anti-apartheid South or the Northern city my family had migrated to, my protest, black power and liberation militancy--globally church community and my parents in Detroit helped me Continues through page 7
understand that South Africa and its political life and the disbanded by the late 1930s that the capital and state struggle against apartheid were central to my basic identity publicly acknowledge that black workers had a legal right as a Black person.” to organize for their own interests. But, in the course of my archival work at the National Archives in Pretoria, I was 2. Your book, Waste of White Skin: The Carnegie at first distracted, curious, and then compelled to change Corporation and the Racial Logic of White Vulnerability course after hearing about a government office called the (University of California Press, 2015) came out earlier Inspectorate of White Labor. Once I learned about the ways this year and discusses how government-sponsored that black men and Colored men and Indian men were research and philanthropy towards impoverished whites pushed out of early industrial organization and re-classified in South Africa in the 1930s influenced the creation of into lower paying, lower status work on the mines and in apartheid. You didn’t initially set out to research this other industrial work, I found that I had to conduct research topic though. What did you initially set out to research on the racial regimes that repressed the history of their and why did that change? labor—so that the only remnant of their presence was the trope of them as “cheap labor” and of white working men as “protected” and “efficient” laborers and “workers.”
3. Are there contemporary examples of similar scientific racism or sponsored research that drives racial tensions?
I think in the STEM fields this issue is debated more readily because of research on disadvantaged and vulnerable populations. However, even in those conversations which usually focus on research procedures and how to conduct ethical research the social, legal, historical, and political context that researchers are functioning in and more importantly that vulnerable and exploited populations are surviving is not always considered. In a recent example, my I initially set out to research two commissions the Wiehahn child was hospitalized critically. During his second day in and Riekert Commissions conducted and published in the the ICU when he was still in full-on respiratory failure, a late 1970s to investigate the conditions of black working UCI research doctor came to check on his case and offer a people in South Africa. They hoped to maintain racial second set of eyes on his treatment plan. Unfortunately he segregation by law but deal with working conditions that also showed up asking if I wanted my child’s body samples included it being illegal to organize as unions for black to be used in a research study on the genomic component of people. I was interested in mining labor and wildcat his illness. Not only did I recoil in horror because it seemed strikes and how black workers had come to consciousness that the researcher was unwilling to take no for answer of rebellion and how to utilize mobilizations of their and returned two more times to advocate that my child be political force to institutionalize change in their material a subject in the study but I also was horrified because it was and working conditions. I had read that the commissions definitely unclear whether my child would get quality care were the first time since Clements Kadalie’s 1919 founding if I said no. This happened in March 2015. I am sure many of the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union which readers would say well that’s just how research occurs and
SPRING | 2015 19 somebody has to be the human subjects. But, that research most of all because it is such a marvel to watch students think was unethical on several levels—and one level that is actually again about what they might believe about blackness and ontological and that relates to concept formation. Genomic black consciousness and black movements and the politics components or not, predispositions or not, conditions of life of gender, sexism, patriarchy, and colonial feminisms. I talk do a great deal to trigger health conditions. When I asked with them both about Oyeronke Oyewumi’s critiques of the researcher after looking at his study materials why “sisterarchy” and T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting’s embrace they were not considering other intervening factors like of Frantz Fanon’s critique of “anti-black femininity” and exposure to harsh chemicals that are part and parcel of the the ideas of many other thinkers for whom the black world everyday air, water, and soil quality, of black communities and feminist consciousness and politics extends far beyond across Southern California—he was dumbfounded and national borders. a bit frustrated by my inability to buy into the miracle of medical research science. I use this personal experience to 5. You’ve been working with the Future of Minority explain that the ramifications of decisions about research Studies and wrote a piece titled, “Mammy No More/ and the production of knowledge impact real people. If Mammy Forever: The Stakes and Costs of Teaching Our the researcher on this project and his team discover some Colleagues” published in a book by an FMS research awesome remedy will I be enthusiastic to use it, heck yeah. project called, The Truly Diverse Faculty: New Dialogues in But, that doesn’t change the context that binds life-extending American Higher Education (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). to death-dealing or treating some people like the inert/the What challenges and opportunities currently exist with experimented upon and the dead in order to extend life for making higher education a truly diverse place? others. The relations that bind those two are shot through with the social, historical, legal, and economic conditions that make up our present society. Another example I am fond of was brought to my attention by the Anarcha Project, a collaborative research project and traveling performance, exhibition, and installation. It documents the life of three of the many many women operated on by medical doctor and the putative founder of American gynecological surgery, J. Marion Simms. Anarcha, Betsy, and Lucy were not allowed to have control over their bodies, of their flesh. They were subject to the literal medical plantations that are part of the hidden history of enslavement in the United States which has its corollary in the medical experimentation done on black South Africans under apartheid and the contemporary trade in organs. These are perhaps extreme and easy examples. The ones in social science—because of its imperatives for care are sometimes much harder to Well, since my raison d’etre/ calling/vocation/daily name as being profoundly unethical. But, thinking about inspiration is rooted in centuries of research, radical plantations as sites of medical chattelization has been very practice, and survival politics that has sought to liberate important to me. black people and pour into them a courageous abolitionist consciousness, I would argue that the most critical 4. Do you have a favorite class to teach? If so, which one opportunity is to challenge every moment when we mis- and why? remember the history of higher education in the United States. It is not a history of open-arms and inevitable I love all my classes. But, if I had to choose I would say I really progress. Instead it is a history shaped by the fact that enjoy teaching African Feminisms/ African Gender Studies places like Harvard and other universities founded in the unfolding of conquest in North America raised much of Dr. Tiffany Willoughby Herard is an assistant professor their money and their earliest market of students from in our African American Studies department, a faculty among the children of slave owners in colonial Barbados. affiliate in Gender and Sexuality Studies, and on the faculty The symbols, public art, architecture, demography, motto on for the Queer Studies Minor and the Graduate Program in every campus is part of its “hidden curriculum”--that makes Culture and Theory. She is the author of Waste of a White each teacher, alum, staffer, and policy maker an inheritor of Skin: The Carnegie Corporation and the Racial Logic and colluder in its history and its present prerogatives. of White Vulnerability (University of California Press, 2015), the co-editor (with H.L.T. Quan) of African Identities Each time students do the work in every generation to 11(2), the Special Issue on Cedric J. Robinson: Radical remind us of what Sandy Grande calls the imperatives of Historiography, Black Ontology, and Freedom (Taylor and working for “red pedagogy” and what Cathy Cohen calls Frances, 2013), and the editor of Theories of Blackness: “remixing democracy” we should listen and learn to not On Life and Death (Cognella, 2011). finger wag and talk down to them. There are political and ethical claims that animate what I think “diversity” is. These are not simply claims about professionalism and civil dialogue. A diverse campus, in my understanding, has to be willing to be a genuine learning environment where people have the opportunity to change their minds but also have the obligation to focus their minds on doing better as well as knowing better.
6. You have been known to bring in non-academics into your classroom. Why?
We encourage lifelong learning in students by making sure they know that adults who are non-academics use life experience and their own study (successes and mistakes) as a basis for research and becoming knowledgeable about all kinds of dimensions of human experience. The fancy way of talking about this is called “decolonizing theory” and it is a foundational way of doing political education that makes life worth living. Everybody can relate to that.
I have had gang interventionists speak in class and lay historians from the OC who have done amazing oral histories of the black community here--academics don’t get to have all the fun. We teach each other, we heal each other, we disagree, we learn, we hunger to learn, we grow. That’s what I love about university life at its best--we tell the truth and we grow.
SPRING | 2015 21 Jonathan Alexander (professor of English, education, and gender & sexuality studies) and Jacqueline Rhodes (English, CSU San Bernardino) won the 2015 “Outstanding Book Award” for their book, On Multimodality: New Media in Composition Studies by the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC). The co-authors will be presented with this award during the 2015 CCCC Convention on Friday, March 20, 2015 in Tampa, Florida. Since 1949, the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) has been the world’s largest professional organization for researching and teaching composition, from writing to new media.
Elizabeth Allen (associate professor of English) organized and participated in the symposium, “The Matter of Beauty,” in February, featuring Sarah Faculty Beckwith, Duke University, Maura Nolan, UC Berkeley, and Andrew Cole, Princeton University. Julia Lupton (Director of Humanities Commons and Accomplisments professor, English), and Jim Steintrager, (professor, English), of our English department, also participated.
Emily Baum (asistant professor of modern China & world history) was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) for her proposal, “Spit, Chains, and Hospital Beds: A History of Madness in Republican China, 1911-1937”
Anke Biendarra (associate professor of German; director, German Undergraduate Program) has been awarded a UC Grant for the Academic Integration of Study Abroad to facilitate work on our departmental collaboration with Engineering (dual major in Engineering and German – pending approval for Fall 2015). This grant is one of the sixteen given out by the UCEAP office systemwide and will support a number of specific tasks the ELS department needs to undertake to support the design and implementation of the double major. Her co-investigators are Professors John Smith (ELS) and John LaRue (Engineering).
Biendarra was also awarded Study Abroad Director for Northern Europe 2015- 17, a post she will resume in Berlin on August 1. She was also recognized by a CORCL Single Investigator Innovation Grant for 2014-15.
Yong Chen’s (professor of history) book, Chop Suey, USA: The Story of Chinese Food in America was awarded an Honorable Mention in the category of U.S. History in the 2015 Prose Awards by the American publishers Awards for Professional and scholarly Excellence.
Ed Dimendberg (professor of film & media studies), has won the 2015 Photographic Arts Council/Los Angeles Fellowship at the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson. This will allow him to spend a month working in one of the largest photography archives in the US to research the work of Max Yavno, a photographer who figures in his book on Los Angeles infrastructure.
Alice Fahs (professor of history) has been invited to hold the Rogers Distinguished Fellow of 19th Century American History at the Huntington Library for 2015-2016. Julia Lupton (professor of English) co-hosted a conference at UCLA entitled “Touching Shakespeare: Proximity, Precarity, Resilience.” English Ph.D. students Chris Dearner, Peter Cibula, and James Funk shared their research projects at a concluding roundtable featuring graduate students from three campuses. (February 13-14, 2015)
Viviane Mahieux (assistant professor of Spanish and Portuguese) presented a paper at: Reunión Internacional de Investigadores de la Frontera, in La Paz, Mexico. February 27th, 2015: “Francisco Cornejo y el renacimiento de la estética Maya.”
Jack Miles’ (Distinguished Professor of English and religious studies) The Norton Anthology of World Religions is now available in a six-volume paperback edition. Miles will be lecturing on art and religious studies, with possible reference to art incorporated in the anthology, at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art on Wednesday, March 18, this as the museum’s annual Sneh Singh Lecture.
Ève Morisi (assistant professor of French) has been selected as one of two junior scholars for a 2015-2016 residency at the Paris Institute for Advanced Study.
Gonzalo Navajas (professor of Spanish & Portuguese) is newly appointed to the following editorial boards: Studia Iberica et Americana: Journal of Iberian and Latin American Literary and Cultural Studies, Cuaderno Internacional de Estudios Humanísticos y Literatura, and Aula lírica. Revista sobre poesía ibérica e iberoamericana.
Jane O. Newman (professor of comparative literature) was awarded a National Humanities Center (Research Triangle, North Carolina), AY 2015-16 Research Residency grant, for completing a book entitled: Early / Modern Mimesis: Erich Auerbach between Religion and History.
Rachel O’Toole (associate professor of history) has been awarded a 2015 - 2016 Long-Term Fellowship funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) at the John Carter Brown Library (at Brown University), one of the leading research institutions in Atlantic and colonial history of the Americas, for her project “Uncertain Freedom: African beyond the Laws of Slavery in 17th-Century Peru.”
Jaime Rodriguez (professor emeritus of history) was named a Member of the Academia Nacional de Historia in Ecuador.
Jacobo Sefami (professor of Spanish & Portuguese) did a reading at Casa Sefarad, Madrid, titled, “Memorias hechas pedazos: una Siria judía” [Broken Memories: A Jewish Syria], February 11, 2015; was interviewed at National Radio, Spain, for a program called “Entre paréntesis.” Podcast available here at (8:25-19:45); published a posthumous interview with Esther Seligson, at “Confabulario” [February 26, 2015]. Interview available here.
SPRING | 2015 23 ALUMNI Q & A with Alumna Aline Ohanesian
Aline Ohanesian’s debut novel, Orhan’s Inheritance, There a great quote by novelist Arundhati Roy who says, was a finalist for the PEN/ “There’s really no such thing as the ‘voiceless’. There are only Bellwether Prize for Socially the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.” I’ve always Engaged Fiction. Her work has been fascinated by what I call “hidden” stories. I think our been translated into Italian, stories, (our words, language) are what distinguishes us from Hebrew, and other languages. everything else on the planet. We use stories to explain our Orhan’s Inheritance will be selves, our families, our nations and our world. published on April 7th and can currently be pre-ordered through A broader collection of stories, both in literature and in Amazon here. Ohanesian will be historiography, means we get a more complete picture of showcasing her book at several our humanity. As far as the straddling goes, I learned that in local events and bookstores, fiction, you only use the facts needed to push the plot forward. which you can learn about here. I probably only used about 10% of the research I did for this She received her master’s degree book. But that other 90% was necessary to build the world in in history from UCI in 2005. my head, to know it intimately.
1. Was there a particular moment you knew you wanted to 4. How has your history education informed your writing? become an author? I had amazing teachers at UCI. Dave Bruce, Jon Wiener, Sharon I fell in love with novels at an early age, but in an immigrant Block, Heidi Tinsman and Alice Fahs among others. They really family, the idea of being novelist was akin to wanting to be a changed the way I examined history. I don’t think I’d be able “rock star.” I didn’t have the guts to really go for what I wanted, to write the books I write without that experience. Also, I’m until my grandmother was dying. She asked me what I really stickler for research. I could probably footnote the whole novel, secretly wanted in life and when I told her, she said “I didn’t but the beauty of writing fiction is I don’t have to. The novel make it all the way to this country for you to play small.” She I’m writing now takes place in California from 1820-1864, when was asking me to play big, and I did eventually. the land was part of Spain, then Mexico, then the United States. The first step in the process for me is to read as many history 2. What inspired you to write your first book? books as I can about that period. I’m 14 books in and have a long way to go before I feel like I know enough to write about All of my grandparents were genocide survivors. Though they the period. never wished to talk about it, it was the elephant in the room that colored everything in our lives. I wanted to examine their 5. What was your experience like as a student here at experience but also the experience of their Turkish neighbors UCI? Any particularly fond memories or a favorite class or and friends. I felt a moral obligation to write about this but I also professor? felt a kind of mystical connection to that place, that event, that particular time & place. In the end, alI novels, at their core, are I really loved my time at UCI. I can honestly say that I’ve explorations of the human spirit. never ever felt more intellectually stimulated in my life. I still fantasize about going back for my PhD. I think I’m considered 3. Your book is considered “historical fiction.” What drew ABD, if that’s a real thing. I know I passed my orals and have 75 you to that genre and what was the experience like crafting pages of my dissertation in a drawer somewhere. a story that straddles the line between truth and fiction?
SPRING | 2015 25 Q & A with Alumna Pheobe Bui
Arranging flowers for others is one of my favorite things to do, so I felt that starting a small flower business was something I should also do. With this in mind, towards the end of my senior Pheobe Bui is a 2013 year of college and a few months into my first post-graduate graduate with a B.A. in year, I began working at a small flower shop in Irvine, a decision English with an emphasis that surprised my family and friends who had known me best in creative writing (poetry) as someone who wanted to pursue writing. My decision to work at the flower shop, however, did not surprise me in the least. I loved to tell people that flowers have their own language, too, and they need people to interpret it. So, though I believe flowers are most beautiful when left alone to nurture themselves, my motto is simple: that flowers require human interpretation to become vessels of feeling. I viewed work at the flower shop as an opportunity to improve myself as a person and writer, to We’ve heard that you’ve launched a business since learn more about the subject matter I wrote the most about and graduating. Give us the details! to learn more about myself relative to how my writing evolved from it. I continued working with floral arrangements and Upon graduating, I did start my own (small) business! Named observed what I could about people from the reactions of those after my favorite flower coupled with a natural environment receiving them. At some point, I wanted to learn more than that has been manipulated for its own preservation, Rose & what had been taught to me, and to incorporate more of who Woodland is a flower arrangement and event service that I was into where I spent most of my time. I began to develop specializes in planning all aspects floral for weddings located my own vision of what my own flower business would be like. in Orange County. It began more as an extension of who I am For example, there was room for creative improvement of the and what I love to do in my spare time than it did as a business consultation process. This is where Rose & Woodland begins to venture guided by any strong entrepreneurial instinct. As a differ from other flower planning services: with my background young girl growing up, I admired my mom’s gardening skills and in writing and drawing, I like to create a “storyboard” made from the magic of her green thumb with the flowers in our backyard, my sketches of the event, a sense of poetry in descriptions of so the act of arranging flowers and the comfort of feeling at flower pairings, photographs, etc. to help tell the story of what home became intimately associated and dear to my heart. the client’s wedding or special event may look like. A personal Likewise, had I not felt keen on sketching flowers and writing touch at the beginning goes a long way. about them in my poems over the years, the idea of detailing a large-scale event with the same level of commitment as I give Why did you decide to switch from biology to English as a to my artwork and to my writing would have overwhelmed me. major?
I stumbled into biology as a practical major. Writing has always been my strength. By my second quarter at UCI, I decided to work hard to turn a small talent into something to help define me. And just recently I was accepted into the MFA Writing Program and awarded a fellowship at the University of San Francisco! Had I pursed biology as a major, my concentration might have been botanical studies, or so I tell myself…
I know that you took “Marketing Fictions” with professor Julia Lupton while you were a student. Has what you learned in that class affected your business?
The course helped me to conceptualize what my small business would offer. Becoming a small business owner involved accountability to my customers, but also to my vision of what flowers are capable of expressing when arranged with purpose, care, and details unique to my particular brand. At the same time that I developed my mission statement, I became friendly with members of a number of unique start-up wedding magazines whose mission it was to publish textual content that allowed for fashion, design, and event photography to leap off the page and into their readers’ hearts. They asked all of their readers and subscribers to submit inspiring, well-crafted, and relatable stories. What I needed to pinpoint from the beginning was a great story behind my brand. This is where Professor How has your humanities education in general affected Lupton’s Marketing Fictions course and a bit of good fortune your business? came in handy. I took a step back and began deconstructing successful brands to unravel their stories. Professor Lupton and In all the ways above! Being a student instructor of prose poetry Professor Christenson had offered Disneyland and Starbucks as and chief editor of the creative writing journal taught me how to examples. I visited Disneyland Resort with my old annual pass be a better leader. Also, I incorporate my writing into describing and remembered how Professor Lupton described each “land” as and advertising the services provided. similar to themes and settings present within a story, and how the employees (who are better known as “cast members”) were What advice do you have for budding entrepreneurs? like their characters. One of my favorite films is “You’ve Got Mail,” which was screened by Professor Christensen in class I am new to this myself! Just to work hard and be creative! as an example of marketing in media. It was a great example, but what stayed with me was unintended. I identified with the The Rose & Woodland website is currently under construction. character of Kathleen Kelly, who feels about her mother, her Those interested in learning more about Bui’s floral designs, books, and owning a valuable bookstore the same way I feel can email her at [email protected]. about my mother, my flowers, and owning a valuable flower business. The course did impact how I represent my business and what my business represents. I have no doubt that Rose & Woodland is as close to my vision as it is because this course and my humanities education as a whole taught me to observe and apply intentional design and careful story-telling to things lacking them.
SPRING | 2015 27 Steven Chung ( ‘07, Ph.D East Asian Languages & Cultures )
He has received tenure at Princeton. Alumni Yunjong Lee (‘12, Ph.D East Asian Languages & Cultures)
News Now a tenure-track professor at Dong-A University.
David J. Morris (‘08, MFA)
His latest book, The Evil Hours, has been extremely well-received
and reviewed in the The New York Times. Morris will also be
visiting the Humanities Core class and will give a lecture/reading
this spring.
Collier Nogues (’08, MFA)
The Ground I Stand On Is Not My Ground, by Collier Nogues,
has been selected by Forrest Gander as the winner of the
inaugural Drunken Boat poetry book contest.
Kem Nunn (‘84, MFA)
His novel, Chance, published this fall (check out the NY Times
Sunday Book Review of Chance here. He also read in the
Humanities Author Series last November.
Matt Sumell (’07, MFA)
Featured in our upcoming Author Series Event, April 16, 2015,
Matt Sumell’s collection of stories, Making Nice was just released.
Click here to listen/read to a review on NPR.org.
Matthew Thomas (‘05, MFA)
His novel, We Are Not Ourselves, was released in early fall 2014
and has received rave reviews. STUDENTS
SPRING | 2015 29 Q & A with Jessica Bond
I want to come back to UCI to apply for the Writing MFA program. I may or may not take a year off in between. For now, getting my bachelor’s seems like an accomplishment enough— by the time I graduate, I’ll have been in college for seven years (I spent four of them floundering in community college). I don’t exactly know where I’ll end up and when (though I certainly have my hopes), but I made up my mind a long time ago that I want to stay in school for the rest of my life. I want to get a PhD someday; I want to teach, to write… I want it all.
1. Why did you decide to major in English? 4. What has been your favorite humanities class at UCI and why? I have always loved to write, but I was actually once a music major at a community college —my original “plan” was to be a There’s no way that I can pick. Every quarter I discover a new studio musician and an arranger. But then I switched majors obsession; it never stops. Everything I learn in one course crosses after I took a critical thinking course, and met a professor who over in some way with something I’ve learned in another. Right I now consider to be my mentor. When I was in her class, she now, there’s a particular topic that I’m studying in all three of challenged and frustrated me more than any teacher I ever had my classes. I thus see all of the courses I’ve taken parts of a in literally my whole life. But I was absolutely determined to get whole—and I love it all. My favorite topics are probably state an “A” in that class. And oh, it was a nightmare—sitting in her & society, which I’m studying in the Humanities Proseminar, office for hours, endlessly going over the same sections of my contemporary British/American literature, and creative writing, essays with a red pen with her, brooding over every single word among many other things—these are all things I’ve always been I wrote…I definitely cried more than once because of that class. interested in. But even the classes about topics that aren’t my favorite I find worthwhile. I haven’t yet encountered a single And yet, when I finally did get that “A” that I wanted so badly, I professor or lecturer that isn’t a deep believer in what he/she had never felt more rewarded. But I wasn’t just rewarded with studies. Since I’m surrounded by this enthusiasm and vitality a grade—the same professor that so tortured me in her class whenever I’m on campus, it’s hard for me not to be inspired by recommended me for a job at my college’s Writing Center, where it. I met even more people who encouraged me to write. A couple of literature and creative writing classes more, and I became a true 5. What has it been like participating in the Humanities believer. Even now, three years after that class, I haven’t changed Honors Program? my mind: this major is who I am. And I can’t put to words how glad I am that I found it. I’m so glad that I get to be a part of it. I can’t wait to write my thesis; I’ve already asked at least four of my professors for their 2. What has been most surprising about your education here involvement, and I’m not even set to write it until next year. at UCI? State & civil society is a topic I’ve been obsessed with since high school, so I feel very lucky that I now get to spend the Just how well-connected this school is. Legendary people have next two years studying it, and writing a thesis about it. I also gone here, have lectured here, taught here, are teaching here. love my professors, as well as my classmates, and the special I mean, who doesn’t like having a Pulitzer Prize winner for a bond we share from being in the same program and sharing the professor? same pressures. Yes, it’s a demanding program, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. After all, I already know from previous 3. Do you have any post-graduation plans? experience how rewarding a demanding class can be. Q & A with Jessica Bond Q & A with Jazmyne McNeese
Since I am still in the process of thinking through it, things may change, however as of now, and after reading the work of Jessica Gordon Nehmhard’s book, Collective Courage, My research is about the idea of cooperative economics. This is the idea that Black People for centuries (which she documents) have been working together as a collective in various organizations to provide for themselves economically what America never has. She documents a the existence of these cooperatives and my research looks at the existance today in the form of credit unions (financial institutions created by Black people) Specifically my research assess the intersections of wealth across gender and the existence of something called linked-fate (the ideas that there is a sense of community or shared identity when creating or running these cooperatives). 1. Why did you choose to double major in dance and sociology and minor in African American Studies? 3. This summer, you’re going to take part in UC Berkeley’s The Goldman School of Public Policy’s “PPIA Junior Summer Institute,” When I applied to UCI I applied as a dance major. So along which is a seven-week program of coursework designed to improve with the normal application process, I also had an audition that the participants’ analytical and quantitative skills vital to success would weigh in on whether or not I got accepted. Once I was at top-level graduate programs in public policy and international accepted , there were general education requirements that I affairs as well as law school. What are you hoping to gain from this had to fulfill, and after being involved with the Black Student experience? Union my first year, I decided to take the African American 40 Series which began with 40A taught by Bridget Cooks. I was so Im hoping to primarily get knowledge about public policy as an Filled by the course that I decided to continue the series and occupation to see if that field is what Id want to pursue in graduate add African American Studies as my minor. As a freshman I was school. Im also looking to gain additional skills that would help me also employed, I worked a a reader, and as he assistant for the get more experience with research. Ive come to enjoy it and Id like to Summer Academic Enrichment Program for the School of Social get as much experience as I can from a program that is so prestigious. Sciences. Both jobs revealed how much I like writing , learning Also, in my current research I’m studying qualitative analysis and id about people, and the idea of research. Because of this I decided like to learn about the quantitative research that directly affects my to take the necessary classes I needed to add the major. And community after Being in the SAEP program I learned what Research was all about, and decided to add sociology spring of my sophomore 4. What are your post-graduation plans? year. Post graduation I would like to go to graduate school at Berkeley. Following that Id like to possibly work for a think tank that focuses on 2. Under the direction of Dr. Tiffany Willoughby-Herard, economics and race. assistant professor of African American Studies in the School of Humanities and Dr. Samuel Gilmore, lecturer in sociology 5. What drives you? in the School of Social Sciences, you’ve crafted a thesis proposal titled, “Special Call: Black Economic Discourse I believe what drives me is the my family but more importantly my Assessing Wealth, Gender and Linked-Fate,” which has won mother. We have been through so much and her strength and passion two awards: the Special Call UROP and the UCI Libraries for me to be the best I can be and be happy with what I want to do in UROP Research Fellowship Award. Tell us about your thesis life has inspired me to keep pushing through adversity. Her love and project. wisdom provides me with the strength to get through the each day.
SPRING | 2015 31 Analaura Brophy (Spanish and Portuguese)
Brophy has won the highly competitive UCI Pedagogical
Fellowship for the 2015-16 academic year.
Kristen Galvin (Visual Studies)
Galvin has received the James Harvey Scholar Award, which
Graduate “provides financial assistance to individuals pursuing research in Student the field of homosexuality.” The award will allow Kristen to enjoy Awards a non-teaching quarter in the spring, when she can work on her dissertation, “The Art of Parties: Downtown New York Cultural
Scenes, 1978–1983.”
Deanna Kashani (Visual Studies) and Parisa Vaziri (Comparative
Literature)
Kashani and Vaziri were recently awarded the 2015 American
Institute of Iranian Studies Pre-doctoral Dissertation Research
Fellowship. This fellowship provides for one- to two-month
research travel to countries with resources essential to the
dissertation. These fellowships enable students in the field
of Iranian Studies to acquaint themselves with the range of
academic activities and resources in relevant foreign countries. To
learn more about their research, please click here.
Mark Ocegueda (History)
Ocegueda is the first Humanities student to be awarded the
Public Impact Fellowship from Graduate Division. The Public
Impact program supports “academically excellent students whose
research demonstrates the potential to significantly improve
or enrich the lives of people in California and beyond.” Mark
receives this award to allow him to complete his dissertation “Sol
Art History Undergraduate Association members (L to R) Gladys Preciado, Eric Colbert & Paulina Daquiz. Photo credit: Chelsea Trinh y Sombra: San Bernardino’s Mexican American Community, 1900-
1960” under the guidance of Professor Vicki Ruiz.
Leopoldo Peña (Spanish and Portugese)
Peña has been awarded a UC-Mexus Small Grant to work on his
project “Zapotec Double Gazing: The Surplus National Citizen in
the Works of Lamberto Roque Hernández”
Eugene Smelyansky (History)
Smelyansky has been awarded a Chancellor’s Club Fund for
Excellence Fellowship from Graduate Division. This award
recognizes both the academic accomplishments and the
leadership qualities of the applicant. Smelyansky will use these
funds to advance his dissertation, “Self-Styled Inquisitors: Heresy,
Mobility, and Anti-Waldensain Persecutions in Germany, 1390-
1400,” under the guidance of Professor James Given.
Christina Spiker (Visual Studies)
Spiker has been awarded a Chancellor’s Club Fund for Excellence
Fellowship from Graduate Division. This award recognizes both
the academic accomplishments and the leadership qualities of
the applicant. Spiker will be able to use this fellowship to advance
her dissertation, “Primitive Picturesque: Ainu Representation in a
Transnational Visual Economy, 1868-1930” under the guidance of
Professor Bert Winther-Tamaki.
Art History Undergraduate Association member Gladys Preciado Photo credit: Chelsea Trinh
SPRING | 2015 33 BOOKS 2015 In alphabetical order by faculty’s last names. Book publication dates are Jan. 1, 2015-May 2015
Benjamin’s Passages: Dreaming, BOOKS Awakening Alexander Gelley, professor emeritus, 2015 comparative Literature
Shirley Temple and the Performance of Girlhood
Kristen Hatch, associate professor, film & media studies
Dangerous Crossings: Race, Species, and Nature in a Multicultural Age
Claire Jean Kim, professor, Asian American Studies
SPRING | 2015 35 Voices of Negritude in Modernist Print: Aesthetic Subjectivity, Diaspora, and the Lyric Regime (Modernist Latitudes)
Carrie Noland, professor, French
The Coming of the Terror in the French Revolution
Timothy Tackett, professor emeritus, history
Keywords for Asian American Studies
Linda Trinh Võ , associate professor, Asian American studies, with Cathy J. Schlund-Vials and K. Scott Wong Vietnamese in Orange County
Linda Trinh Võ , associate professor, Asian American studies, with Thuy Vo Dang, archivist for the Southeast Asian Archive and Regional History at UCI Libraries, and Tram Le, associate director of the Vietnamese American Oral History Project
Waste of a White Skin: The Carnegie Corporation and the Racial Logic of White Vulnerability
Tiffany Willoughby-Herard, assistant professor, African American studies
The books below came out in 2014, but were not featured in the Annual Report
On Multimodality: New Media in Composition Studies (Cccc Studies in Writing & Rhetoric)
Jonathan Alexander, professor of English, education, and gender & sexuality studies
SPRING | 2015 37 Drowned by Corn
Erika Hayasaki, assistant professor, literary journalism
Left Bank Dream Beryl Schlossman, professor, comparative literature
Art Worlds: Artists, Images, and Audiences in Late Nineteenth- Century Shanghai
Roberta Wue, associate professor, art history EVENTS Upcoming
SPRING | 2015 39 Click photos to be linked to detailed event info. Salar Abdoh at the Jordan Center Art History & Jordan Center’s for Persian Studies Dr. Jenny Rose: “From Behistun to Bamiyan: Meetings Between Ancient Empires”
Monday, March 9, 2015 Thursday, April 2, 2015 East Asian Languages & Literatures’ “The Internment of Japanese Religious Studies’ Americans During World War “Interfaith Marriage: Jewish, Christian, II” - Harumi “Bacon” Sakatani and Muslim Perspectives” (Momoyama Gakuin University) Fr. Patrick J. Ryan, S.J., McGinley Professor of Religion & Public Life at Fordham University
Tuesday, March 10, 2015 Wednesday, April 8, 2015
Film & Media Studies’ “Discharged masses - On the crisis Art History Undergraduate of a concept” - Wolfgang Hagen, Association’s 3rd Annual Art Exhibit, Max Kade Visiting Professor, UC “Altered Perceptions” Santa Barbara
Thursday & Friday, April 16-17, 2015 Friday, March 13, 2015 UCI Humanities Commons & UCIRA Department of Gender & Sexuality present, “Desert/Structure/Modernism”* Studies’ “The Invisible Sinews of Counterinsurgency” with Laleh Khalili
Saturday & Sunday, April 25th & 26th, 2015
*Not a local event. Organized by Lyle Massey (Art History and Visual Studies) & Jamie Nisbet (Art History and Visual Studies) Thursday, May 7, 2015
Religious Studies’ MFA & Development’s Author MFA & Development’s “Interfaith Marriage: Jewish, Christian, Series, featuring Matt Sumell Author Series, featuring Matthew and Muslim Perspectives” Thomas Fr. Patrick J. Ryan, S.J., McGinley Professor of Religion & Public Life at Fordham University
Thursday, April 30, 2015 Thursday, May 14, 2015 Wednesday, April 8, 2015 History’s Inaugural Keith Nelson Lec- Office of the Dean and Department of ture in US International History with European Languages and Studies’ Professor Mark Bradley, “The United “The Trial of Hatred” - Marc Crépon States and the Global Human Rights Imagination”
Tuesday, May 19, 2015 Thursday, April 30, 2015
SPRING | 2015 41 EVENTS Recent The UCI English Majors’ History’s “Nuestra América: Rethinking Association’s, “Never, Ever Fronteras in US History,” A Conference Valentines; Break Up Poems for Honoring the Career of Vicki L. Ruiz Friday the 13th” Recent
Friday, February 20, 2015 Friday, February 13th, 2015
Religious Studies, Classics & Critical The Department of Comparative Theory’s “Josephus without Judaism” Literature with The School of Social lecture by Prof. Daniel Boyarin, Sciences’s Center for Global Peace and Taubman Professor of Talmudic Conflict Studies present, “Biosecurities” Culture and Rhetoric at UC Berkeley
Thursday, February 19, 2015 Thursday, February 5th, 2015 Religious Studies with support Beryl Schlossman: “Reading Paris from the Pacifica Institute, and Spleen with Walter Benjamin” International Studies Public Forum, present “Islam’s Jesus”
Thursday, January 29th, 2015 Wednesday, February 18, 2015
SPRING | 2015 43 The School of Humanities is proud to launch our new and exclusive webinar series, Humanities Headlines. This series is an audi-
ence-led glimpse into today’s most topical issues. In just 30 minutes, you’ll enrich your knowledge of today’s current events with
our most prestigious faculty in a given field, all in the comfort of your own surroundings. With nine issues in total, the most current
Humanities Headlines webinar will be posted on the second Tuesday of the month.
Our previous webinars are all linked below (just click on the image):
These humanities-centered approaches to understanding current events truly demonstrate the utility and applicability of liberal arts
studies, and we are excited to see our viewership expand beyond the UCI campus. One of our viewers shared her positive feedback
with us:
“I am so glad you are doing this. I am having my high school daughter listen to them too, as the episodes have been very relevant to
her World Civilizations class, and I intend to pass them along to others. I think it is a great way to provide outreach from the university
-- especially for those of us who can’t get to campus too easily.”
We are very receptive to audience feedback, and look forward to producing more interesting, relevant, and exciting episodes!
Share your thoughts about Humanities Headlines via this brief survey.
Stay tuned for Episode 6 of Humanities Headlines, “Digital Publishing,” featuring Erika Hayasaki, assistant professor of literary
journalism, publishing Tuesday, March 10 at 9:00 AM PST. Please Give Back Help the Humanities Continue to Thrive
Thank you for being a part of the School of Humanities! Nicole Balsamo Director of Development If you are interested in making a tax- deductible donation, please contact Marijana Lekousis, Interim Director of Development, at [email protected] or 949-824-1342. You may also make a gift online by visiting www.give.uci.edu, selecting the Make a Gift Online option, and then choosing the School of Humanities under Area of Support.
Marijana Lekousis Interim Director of Development
Between the Lines is produced by Communications and the Department of Development. For information on the report, or if you’d like to send your news to be included in the next one, please reach out to Annabel Adams at amadams@uci.
SPRING | 2015 45