Humanities
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Humanistic approaches to urgent environmental issues
At UC Santa Cruz, the environmental humanities encourage us to ask: what happens when we stop treating the natural world as merely a backdrop, resource, or object of study—and instead treat it as a web of interconnected lives?
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UC Santa Cruz Professor Banu Bargu Awarded 2025 David Easton Prize for ‘Disembodiment’
UC Santa Cruz History of Consciousness Professor Banu Bargu, an acclaimed scholar of political theory and resistance, has spent her career exploring some of the most extreme and harrowing forms of political protest, including hunger strikes. Bargu’s work has now been recognized with the 2025 David Easton Prize from the American Political Science Association.
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Preserving the Amazon: A digital lifeline for the Biblioteca Amazónica
Three years ago, a fire broke out at the Biblioteca Amazónica in Iquitos, Peru, imperiling one of the world’s most important collections of primary sources on Amazonian history, culture, and politics. For Amanda M. Smith, Associate Professor of Latin American Literature, the disaster highlighted the urgency of the project she had already begun: digitizing the…
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From KZSC to national acclaim
How Jesse Thorn built a radio empire from his roots at the UCSC campus station
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Get to know our researchers
Meet some of the passionate people leading our impact and innovation. Public support and federal funding make this work possible.
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At the Crossroads of Language and AI
As technology advances in English, a UCSC professor is making sure Indigenous languages don’t get left behind.
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CITRIS Interdisciplinary Innovation Program (I2P) funds three campus projects
The 2025-26 edition requested projects focused in three areas: Society, Media and Technology, AgTech, and EdTech.
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A Renaissance dream reimagined: Sir Isaac Julien’s major new installation opens in Italy
Acclaimed artist, filmmaker, and Distinguished Professor of the Arts and History of Consciousness Isaac Julien has created a Renaissance-inspired dreamscape for the 21st century.
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Life Beyond the Redwoods: Smeet Mehta at 100x.VC Mumbai
One year after graduating from UC Santa Cruz, Smeet Mehta (Crown ’24, philosophy) works as an analyst at 100x.VC—an early-stage venture capital firm based in Mumbai—to help startups get the funding they need to start their journeys.
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This spooky season, join UC Santa Cruz experts in exploring what scares us and why
As Halloween approaches, UC Santa Cruz faculty are undertaking scholarly investigations of zombies, digging up cultural histories of vampires, and delving deeply into the metaphysics of creepiness.
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Making metaphysics matter: Two new UC Santa Cruz Philosophy professors bring big questions down to Earth
Metaphysics has never had a “fun” reputation. Many people—if they’ve even heard of the M-word— tend to associate it with woozy, abstract lectures about time and space. But with the arrival of Philosophy Professor and new Department Chair Sara Bernstein and Philosophy Professor Daniel Nolan, two internationally respected experts in metaphysics, the UC Santa Cruz…
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Eighth US-India Conference to explore dynamic and evolving relationship with a focus on AI, global dynamics, and biomedical breakthroughs
This year’s conference, US India: Normalization or Reset?, examines how the two countries can review their priorities and either restore normalcy or redefine the relationship for a multipolar world.