Arts & Culture
Celebrating the Humanities at UC Santa Cruz
The annual Celebrating the Humanities gathering was more than just a way to recognize excellence across the division. This event, which filled the Merrill Cultural Center, was also a strong reminder of the relevance and career power of humanistic studies in an era of artificial intelligence.
Humanities EXCEL students who intern at the Museum of Art and History with their mentors. From left to right (MAH Archives Specialist Jessie Durant, MAH Exhibition Manager Shanti Nagwani, fellow Danielle De La Cruz, fellow Kian Hladky, fellow Morgan Woodley, MAH Education and Outreach Coordinator Litzy Mozqueda-Franyutti, MAH Deputy Director Marla Novo).
The annual Celebrating the Humanities gathering was more than just a way to recognize excellence across the division. This event, which filled the Merrill Cultural Center, was also a strong reminder of the relevance and career power of humanistic studies in an era of artificial intelligence.
“You may have noticed some big names in big tech are predicting a turn back to the humanities in the age of AI,” Humanities Dean Jasmine Alinder told the crowd of 250 people. “Daniela Amodei, UC Santa Cruz alumna and president and co-founder of Anthropic, recently gave an interview in which she said that studying the humanities is ‘more important than ever.’ Can any of you guess what she studied at UCSC? Literature!”
AI is forcing difficult choices and conversations about what it means to be human, the nature of knowledge production, the scope of consciousness, and the limits of the archive, Alinder said.
“These are the kinds of complex questions we in the humanities have been asking for a very, very, very long time,” Alinder said. “Our goal in the Humanities Division is to prepare UC Santa Cruz graduates to be the creative problem solvers and ethical decision makers so needed in today’s world
At the heart of Celebrating the Humanities were stories of powerful immersive experiences that involved community engagement. One of the highlights was a networking reception that invited guests to learn about the outstanding work students have done in the division’s experiential learning programs: Humanities EXPLORE, Humanities EXCEL, and The Humanities Institute’s Undergraduate Research Fellows.
In 2023, the division launched Employing Humanities, an initiative that has expanded access to experiential learning experiences, including paid internships, research roles, and career-building opportunities for undergraduates.
To date the initiative has supported more than 400 students in paid and for credit opportunities thanks to funding from the Mellon Foundation, the Helen and Will Webster Foundation, and other funders. The renewed funding of $2 million from the Mellon Foundation is allowing the division to expand its outreach to students. By 2029, the Humanities Division aims to serve 300 students annually in paid and for-credit experiential learning.
The language of food
Jasmine Alinder introduced this year’s Distinguished Humanities Undergraduate Alumni Award winner Kendra Baker, founder and president of The Glass Jar, Inc., the company behind The Penny Ice Creamery and The Picnic Basket.
Baker started out at UC Santa Cruz as a chemistry major, but found her way to the Humanities, where she studied Italian and Spanish—an experience that helped her recognize language and food as cultural expressions tied to identity and place.
“The humanities taught me to pay attention to the human experience, and that matters today more than ever, when it becomes easy to reduce life to money metrics, efficiency, and outputs,” Baker said. “The humanities tell us to stay close to the richness of life itself. For me, that eventually led to food. At their core, the humanities are about paying attention to what it means to be alive—a poem, a conversation, a song, a shared meal. These are ways we make meaning of life. They say, ‘I was here. This matters. You matter. We belong to each other.’”
During her semester abroad in Italy, Baker learned that food is never just food. “A meal can carry memory, identity, struggle, celebration, migration, family history, love and belonging, all at once,” Baker said. “Food is culture speaking. Over time I realized that what I was building through cooking and hospitality wasn’t separate from my education but an extension of it.”
The award’s previous recipients are William Finnegan (Cowell, ‘74, literature), a New Yorker staff writer and Pulitzer Prize-winning author and John Rickford (Stevenson ’71, sociolinguistics), a world-renowned linguist and scholar of African-American Vernacular English.
Recognizing excellence
The program also honored Associate Professor of Literature Martin Devecka with the Dizikes Faculty Teaching Award, which recognizes excellence in undergraduate teaching and its impact on student learning. Devecka is director of the Ancient Studies Program at UC Santa Cruz, also presented scholarships in his name to outstanding students.
Alinder described Devecka as “a remarkable scholar and dedicated teacher, who has gone above and beyond the call of duty in his leadership of the program.”
Devecka’s courses range from seminars in Greek language, to popular, large lecture courses such as Classical Myth, Homer’s Odyssey, and Literature and Magic (aka Practical Magic). The course uses magic and spells as a way to study ancient cultures of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, Greece, and Rome.
One student in the Lit and Magic course wrote, “His lectures are funny, engaging, really thoughtful, and he is genuinely kind when he engages with his students.”
Faculty recipients of the award receive a grant and designate students from a Humanities Division program to receive scholarships in their name that recognize academic accomplishment. Four undergraduates – Frankie Lowder, Joey Shelton, Sophia Thoman, and Jett Warfield, were honored with Martin Devecka Scholarships.
During the celebration, Kylie Rachwalski, assistant director of experiential learning in the Humanities Division and leader of the Humanities EXCEL and EXPLORE programs welcomed three Humanities EXCEL interns, Ashley Palma-Jimenez, Kian Hladky, and Ruby Ruetmann–and two Humanities EXPLORE fellows, Carolyn Mish and Michael Lieu to speak about their experiences.
As an Editorial Fellow with Lookout Santa Cruz, Ashley Paula-Jimenez is a prolific writer and reporter. Among her wide variety of topics were the ‘No Kings’ protests in Santa Cruz and Watsonville, UC Santa Cruz students rallying against ICE raids, a wave of burglaries in Aptos, and the increased demand for food pantries. She was also part of a team that interviewed City Council candidates.
Kian Hladky, an Exhibitions and Programs Fellow at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, helped lead school tours, install exhibitions, update archival databases, support community outreach events, and even designed a self-guided LGBTQ+ walking tour of the downtown area as an extension of the museum’s Queerstory Exhibit.
“Whether I was guiding students through a tour, talking to locals at outreach events, or collaborating with staff behind the scenes, I began to see how public humanities work can make history and culture feel accessible, relevant, and personal,” Hladky said.
Ruby Ruetmann worked for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Santa Cruz County, processing donations, stewarding donor relationships, writing thank-you letters, and helping to organize fundraising campaigns. “I’m a former Club Kid from the Boys & Girls Clubs of America in LA Harbor, so returning to a Boys & Girls Club in a professional role felt very personal to me,” Ruetmann said.
Upon graduation, Ruetmann accepted a job offer to continue working with her mentor, UC Santa Cruz alum and Vice President of Development & Marketing Andrew Cunningham, as a resource development assistant for the Boys & Girls Club of Santa Cruz County.
Carolyn Mish worked closely with Teaching Professor and Writing Program Chair Kim Helmer, who developed a new writing course (WRIT 1E) called The Happiness Project, designed for international and “Gen 1.5” multilingual students. Instead of a traditional composition curriculum, the course blends writing instruction with mindfulness and mental health tools. Mish studied the various ways in which the new course shapes student wellbeing and experiences on campus.
Michael Lieu worked with Associate Teaching Professor Jamila Kareem to examine how the African American tradition of call-and-response has been adopted into K-pop culture — specifically in idol-fan interactions. In April, Lieu traveled with Kareem to Atlanta, where they gave a presentation at the Annual Pop Culture Association’s conference.
These fellows, and many of their peers in both programs, created digital showcases to curate their work, highlight their projects, share key insights, and reflect on their growth throughout the year.
Professor of Linguistics, Associate Dean of Research, and Faculty Director of the Humanities Institute, Pranav Anand, announced this year’s cohort of Humanities Institute (THI) Undergraduate Research Fellows and their projects: Juan Pablo Calvo Huerta, “Evidentials in Paraguayan Guaraní and Paraguayan Spanish”; Danielle Chaplin, winner of the Bertha N. Melkonian Prize, “From Revival to Rebellion: Gendered Selfhood and the Rewriting of Irish Modernity in Kate O’Brien, Nuala O’Faolain, and Emma Donoghue”; Sofia Dicesare-Bystrowicz, “Eulalia Pérez and the Intersectionality Between Race, Californian Missions, and Gender”; Tyler Kay, “That vs. Which: Empirical Judgements of Relative Clause Acceptability with Theoretical Ramifications”; Inez Lynch Alfaro, “As Mulheres: Constructed Gender, Family, and Archive in Rural Southeastern Brazil”; Grace Menagh, “British Empire and Patriotism in 19th Century Montreal”; Jamie Penilla, “Gentrification and Aesthetics in Mexico City”; Joeb Stout, “Die Neue Frau: Weimar Women in American Contexts”; and Pilar Zapien, “Optimized Affection: AI Systems and the Rewriting of Love.”
Awards and scholarships
The recipients of this year’s Dean’s Awards are: Jade Glentzer, Ella Goldman
Abigail Roth, Ethan Strom, Skyla Sachiko Tomine, Mia Uc, and Vivian Suthikarn Zalunardo.
The students whose projects received Dean’s and Chancellor’s Awards are:
Sara Blumkin, Grace Menagh, and Charissa Xin Zeigler.
The Humanities Dean’s Excellence Awards, given to support student success in and beyond the classroom, are Mila Bekele, Nolan Burks, Jazmine Garcia, Zevontre Jones, Maddie Miller, and Lena Szerwo.
The Jay Family Humanities Scholarship Award goes to Marthasol Vera Barrera. The Kenneth Andrew Gram Memorial Scholarship is awarded to Georgia Villarreal. The David A. Kadish Humanities Scholarship Award goes to Tabitha Ozaki.
The Dr. Raihan Kadri Memorial Scholarship goes to Maury Burnett-Cavoto.
The Siobhan O’Neill Memorial Scholarship goes to Daymia Rousseau.
The Peter Rushton Memorial Scholarship goes to Dina Minovitsky.
Mollie Cass Sater Memorial Scholarship in Jewish Studies goes to Sasha Porat and George Willis.
The Judy Yung Memorial Fellowships in Asian American/Pacific Islander Studies are awarded to Yoonkyung Lim and Sage Tran.
This year’s Don Rothman Endowed Awardees in First-Year Writing include Farina Salam, who received 1st place in Writing 1, Samantha Gans, who received 1st place in Writing 2, Darya Sanai, who received 1st place in Alternative Media; Ava Salinas, Finley Lindstrom, Aaryn Bloomer, who are finalists for Writing 2. Delaney Boman, Pauline Sevel, Eros He-Raulins, and Eva Cataldi were given Honorable Mentions.
Following the formal ceremony, attendees gathered for a reception featuring student research displays and conversations between students, faculty, alumni, and community partners aimed at strengthening collaboration and expanding humanities engagement beyond the classroom.