Author: Dan White
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Uncovering the troubling legacy of racism in fairy tales
In Specters of the Marvelous: Race And The Development Of The European Fairy Tale, Literature Professor Kimberly Lau reveals how “innocent” stories often encoded virulent prejudice.
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Celebrating the power of poetry: Ellen Bass draws large, enthusiastic crowd for Morton Marcus Poetry Reading on campus
Three hundred people filled the Merrill Cultural Center to hear celebrated poet Ellen Bass deliver the keynote presentation at the 15th annual Morton Marcus Poetry Reading this month.
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PhD history student Linda Ulbrich helps bring Santa Cruz’s past to life in the city’s expanded online history page
Santa Cruz’s official government website now offers a brisk virtual tour through influential, intriguing, tragic and overlooked moments from the city’s past. The updated and lavishly illustrated Santa Cruz history timeline is the handiwork of history Ph.D. candidate Linda Ulbrich, whose work encourages further exploration.
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Using speculative fiction to fill the silences of Colonial history
In his acclaimed new book, First Contact, Associate Professor of Literature Zac Zimmer draws on the power of speculative fiction to revisit, question and upend stories and tropes about early contact between European explorers and Indigenous populations.
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Exploring the hidden kingdoms of fungi: Bestselling author Merlin Sheldrake brings Entangled Life to the Deep Read program
British biologist Merlin Sheldrake—renowned for his scientifically rigorous and lyrical explorations of fungal networks and interconnected life—is this year’s featured author for The Humanities Institute’s (THI) seventh annual Deep Read.
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Humanities EXCEL Fellows build community through hands-on Internships
At UC Santa Cruz, the Humanities EXCEL Program is helping Humanities undergraduates discover new pathways to professional growth and connect to local communities through paid internships.
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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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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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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…