With the coming of the new year, we continue our commitment to education without boundaries by empowering our students to carve out their own unique academic paths.
Throughout the past year, we have made unprecedented progress toward fulfilling our promise of preparing L&S students for meaningful lives by increasing opportunities and removing obstacles. We continue to recruit one of the most diverse and talented faculties in UC Davis history and celebrate the impact we make on the whole world every day.
In this newsletter, we bring you stories of alumni following their passions through filmmaking, writing and health research with results that broaden horizons for larger communities.
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My wish for you in the coming year is that you experience fulfillment without boundaries. I look forward to seeing what we achieve together in 2023.
Sincerely,
Estella Atekwana, Dean
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Filmmaker Talks Summer of Soul
Academy Award-winning filmmaker Joseph Patel (B.A., economics, ’94) returned to campus this fall as the guest for the first Chancellor’s Colloquium of the new academic year. Their conversation covered the emotion and joy of his documentary Summer of Soul, as well as Patel's lifelong love for KDVS. Read an article about the colloquium and watch a video of the event.
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Studying Dementia Links to War
Oanh Meyer (Ph.D., psychology, ’11) has a personal connection to her research at UC Davis Health on links between wartime trauma and dementia in Vietnamese American communities. Her mother, who fled Vietnam in 1975, now has dementia. In an episode of UC Davis podcast Unfold, Meyer talks about the first study of its kind tracking the cognitive health of more than 500 aging Vietnamese Americans.
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Haiti Novel Wins Maurice Price
A U.S. Coast Guard veteran turned writing instructor, Kirk Colvin (M.A., creative writing, ’98) won the 2022 Maurice Prize for Fiction for his novel Bloodless Coup. The tale's narrator is the Coast Guard attaché to the American Embassy in Haiti, like Colvin had been, during the final months of the brutal Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier regime.
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Taking the Lead
Underwhelmed by her choice of female acting roles, Emily Somers (B.A., American studies, ’08) wrote her own screenplay based on Ruth Galms' novel Into the Valley. The short version of the film, starring Somers in the lead role, is now in postproduction. She began filming just as her recurring part on the HBO show “Westworld" began to air. Somers recently talked with UC Davis Magazine about her acting and writing career.
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Pandemic's Toll on Teens
The unprecedented shutdown of classroom learning caused undue stress, low levels of social inclusion and low satisfaction with school for many teens — and mental health issues for some, according to a new study led by communication associate professor Drew Cingel .
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Capturing Carbon for New Uses
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Seeking Lydia, a debut novel by Christina Huvelle (B.A., English, ’90), explores what happens when an early 20th-century Nebraska farmwife and mother of 10 leaves her family for greener pastures only to find that they aren’t as green as they seemed. The protagonist is based on the author’s second great-grandmother.
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Homestead, a debut novel by Melinda Moustakis (M.A., creative writing, ’06), received a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly, which called it an “evocative, well-drawn account of Alaska’s American settlers.”
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Clarke Owens (M.A., creative writing, ’76) wrote a new novel of apocalyptic satire, Isak AI (Cosmic Egg/John Hunt Pubs), with a chapbook of poems Thaw (Finishing Line Press), appearing around January 2023.
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Ken White (B.A., history and English, ’72; Cred. ’73) describes his latest book, The Flatland Chronicles, as a fictional memoir in the style of the Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters. Instead of poems, it is a collection of short, short stories about life in California’s Central Valley.
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A Sacramento exhibition of self-portraits by Julia Couzens (M.F.A, art, ’90) in October gave viewers an “extended glimpse into the art-making process,” according to a Squarecylinder review.
Torreya Cummings (B.A., studio art, ’99) and Terry Peterson (M.F.A., art, ’12) explored the natural world in a digital context in a two-person exhibition this fall at the Library Gallery at CSU Sacramento.
Kevin Knight (B.A., English, ’84) is a professor in the Department of International Communication at Kanda University of International Studies in Chiba, Japan. A PDF version of his book, English for Specific Purposes Project Leader Profiles: The Leadership Communication of 55 ESP Project Leaders, can be downloaded for free from the publisher's website.
Poetry by UC Davis performance studies doctoral student Diego Martínez-Campos (M.F.A, dramatic arts, ’20) has been selected to be part of a Catalyst New Music song collaboration project. Five artist trios, each comprising a singer, composer and poet, will premiere their pieces Feb. 11, 2023, at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Comedian Hasan Minhaj (B.A., political science, ’08) recently took Wired's autocomplete interview, answering the internet's most searched questions about himself. Watch the video. He
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Kristin Orlando (B.A., dramatic art and math ’08), vice president of operations for the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, is the co-winner of a Mid-Atlantic Emmy Award for the orchestra's long-form video of Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 21.
Musical artist Tom "Lyrics Born" Shimura, who launched his career while attending UC Davis in the early 1990s, talks with the San Francisco Chronicle about his latest album, Vision Board.
In an interview with the UC Davis Cal Aggie Alumni Association, Andrea Stewart (B.A., economics, ’04) talks about her success as a fantasy writer, beginning with her 2020 award-winning debut novel The Bone Shard Daughter, the first book in a trilogy.
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This holiday season, a gift of any size can make a big difference in the lives of many students.
Generous donors like you help ensure that all students have the chance to participate in research, internships, study abroad, mentorships, field work and more. We hope you will consider supporting the College's Beyond the Classroom Fund.
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Today
Robert Emmons, professor emeritus of psychology
KCRA
Jacob Hibel, associate professor of sociology and co-director of the Center for Poverty and Inequality Research
The Sacramento Bee
Ben Highton, professor and department chair of political science
Town and Country Magazine
Petr Janata, professor of psychology
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The Conversation
Amy Motlagh, associate professor of comparative literature and Middle East/South Asia studies
Forbes
Giovanni Peri, professor of economics
The New York Times
Nicholas Pinter, professor of earth and planetary sciences and Roy J. Shlemon Chair in Applied Geosciences
Capitol Weekly
David Rapson, Chancellor’s Leadership Professor of economics
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