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Year Zero Director, Creative Technologies, Professor of Music, Ben Leeds Carson and Dean Celine talk about the new Creative Technologies major in the Creative Technologies video.
photo: WEST CLIFF CREATIVE
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Message from the Dean of Arts
Celine Parreñas Shimizu, M.F.A., Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor of Film and Digital Media
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October 12, 2023
Dear Arts Community,
Welcome to the new 2023-24 academic year!
I love the term “beloved community” by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for it captures our belief in each other that in the face of struggle, we continue to come together to achieve belonging for all. The beginning of the academic year is awe-inspiring for the transformations awaiting us in the challenging projects we take on, and how we will rise to actualize our dreams and wishes to make them real and true with each other’s help as faculty, staff and students.
Please join us every third Thursday by the koi pond at Porter College, between 4-5pm, for our popular and festive Sesnon Salons as we celebrate each department and program’s latest and greatest work. The next one coming up is Thursday, October 19 and will focus on the Art Department.
My goals for this year include continuing to author and enact our equity and mentorship program to empower our community to relish the joys and confront the challenges of diversity and inclusion by developing skills and systems that lean into the power of the arts. We will work to increase our record-breaking fundraising efforts – in the past two years we’ve quadrupled the historical fundraising in the division to support our students, staff and faculty. And, together, we will further establish exceptional student success programs through mentorship and professionalization efforts within the division.
This year, the Arts Division introduces its groundbreaking new major, Creative Technologies – the very first online major in the UC system, and led by Year Zero Director, Professor of Music, Ben Leeds Carson. Our new video about the major is now on the Admissions YouTube channel.
I recently represented the UC system at our State Capitol in front of the Joint Committee on the Arts about putting the “A” back in STEAM -- science, technology, engineering, and math -- and ensuring that it’s referred to as STEAM -- with art right in the middle. We create exclusion if we only pursue STEM and create inclusion if we pursue STEAM. The Arts Division works to create the conditions for art to equal abundance.
Giving Day is on November 8th, so please encourage your parents, friends and family to contribute, if they can, to our efforts. Their gifts directly help the current and next generation of Banana Slugs! As students tell me, money from these gifts enables great art.
Two days after our November 15 Arts Forum aka Town Hall, we warmly welcome Arts alumnus and Council member Ken Corday, Porter ’75, Aesthetic Arts, who will be here on Friday, November 17 to speak with our students and give a live piano recital in the Music Department. Ken is a multi-Emmy award winning Banana Slug, and the producer and music composer for the country’s longest running soap opera Days of Our Lives. We invite all of our students, faculty and staff to join us for this very special concert by one of our most generous and impactful alumni!
Our annual Convocation this year honors Arts alumnus and award-winning Pixar film editor Kevin Nolting on Wednesday, November 29 at the Mainstage, 3:30-5pm. We look forward to seeing Arts Division staff, faculty, students, and families there in person and on Zoom to welcome the new academic year.
We have so many outstanding events coming up this month and next, so please be sure to check all of our event listings below!
As we continue to learn together in our spaces across generations, I am always inspired by the transformations that UCSC Arts ensures in our lives and our communities.
Let’s do great things together,
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Featured Undergraduate Student
Jaxon Chester
Film & Digital Media and Global Economics
| Jaxon Chester loves being the Media Production Team Leader for the Okinawa Memories Institute (OMI), a public history research project at UC Santa Cruz. “It’s a fantastic position to have,” he said. “I work with a lot of great people and do meaningful work.” | | | |
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Featured Graduate Student
Shirin Towfiq
Film and Digital Media Ph.D. Candidate
| Film and Digital Media Ph.D. student, Shirin Towfiq, has been selected to show her work at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) as part of their upcoming Bay Area Now 9 (BAN 9) show. Bay Area Now is YBCA’s prestigious signature triennial exhibition highlighting eminent artists working throughout the Bay Area’s nine counties. | | | |
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Featured Faculty
The Arts Division Welcomes New Faculty!
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Welcome to our newest UC Santa Cruz Arts Division faculty! The Arts Division leads the way in excellence and equity with outstanding faculty achievements in research and creative scholarship that open new areas of investigation and expression.
Jay Afrisando
Assistant Professor
Music
Jonathan Alonso
Assistant Professor
Film and Digital Media
mattie brice
Assistant Professor
Performance, Play & Design
Yi Yi Mon (Rosaline) Kyo
Assistant Professor
History of Art & Visual Culture
Marina Magalhães
Assistant Professor
Performance, Play & Design
Martin Rizzo-Martinez
Assistant Professor
Film and Digital Media
Lisa Marie Rollins
Assistant Professor
Performance, Play & Design
Don Williams
Senior Professor
Performance, Play & Design
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Featured Staff
Karen Meece
Executive Assistant to the Dean of the Arts Division
| After 16 years at UC Santa Cruz, working in the science division, Karen Meece is enjoying her role as the Executive Assistant to the Arts Dean, which she started last May. “Dean Celine has a lot of great vision, and I think she’s really leaning in on student success,” Meece said. “I just came from being a grad advisor in the sciences here on campus, so being student forward is really important to me.” | | | |
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Featured Alumni
lavender higley
Anthropology/Dance, 2023
| Having recently graduated in June, 2023, lavender grey higley, who majored in anthropology and minored in dance, is ready for whatever lies ahead as they start exploring various graduate school programs | | | |
Arts Happenings and In the News | |
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Giving Day is November 8! | Mark your calendars for UC Santa Cruz's annual Giving Day, which will raise funds for a variety Arts Division programs and projects that support student work, visiting artists, and scholarships. | | | |
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Dean Celine Parreñas Shimizu’s
Film Featured in ALON
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An outstanding group of articles by worldwide, leading Filipinx American scholars,
was recently published in ALON: Journal for Filipinx American and Diasporic Studies about Dean Celine’s film THE CELINE ARCHIVE. The beautiful cover is by American contemporary artist and art educator, Jenifer K Wofford, known for her contributions to Filipino American visual art. She will be part of the Arts Division April event on Watsonville Is In the Heart.
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Institute of the Arts and Sciences Awarded $2 million Climate Action Grant | Rachel Nelson, director of the UCSC Institute of the Arts and Sciences, is teaming up with Ocean Science Professor Ari Friedlaender on a $2 million grant project to develop a research-based traveling art exhibition that will connect climate change impacts on whales and other marine animals with the precarity of vulnerable human communities. | | | |
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Professor A.M. Darke Wins Best Paper Award at the 22nd Annual Symposium on Computer Animation | |
Professor A.M. Darke along with Professor Theodore Kim (Yale University), collaborated to develop and publish the first computational model designed specifically for afro-textured hair. This technical paper won best paper at the 22nd annual Symposium on Computer Animation (SCA) which took place from August 4 to August 6, 2023 in Los Angeles, California.
The paper Lifted Curls: A Model for Tightly Coiled Hair Simulation can be found here: https://www.tkim.graphics/LIFTED/
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Recent Arts Alumna, Becky Diaz, on Un Millón de Gracias with Actress Michelle Rodriguez | Becky Diaz, who recently graduated with a B.A., Art Studio from UC Santa Cruz, was featured in the Roku show Un Millón de Gracias, executive produced by Jennifer Lopez, where celebrities each give away $100,000 to someone who has inspired them. Actress Michelle Rodriguez chose Diaz who, in turn, will continue the chain of giving. | | | |
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Hulu/Firelight Award to Film & Digital Media SocDoc Alumnus Juan Carlos Dávila Santiago | Stanley Nelson’s Firelight Films and Hulu have set Julianna Brannum (Now I Lay Me Down), Ivan MacDonald (Breaking the Silence) and Juan Carlos Dávila Santiago (When Reggaeton Was a Crime) as the first filmmakers to benefit from their new Hulu/Firelight Kindling Fund. Through the initiative, each will be awarded $25,000 to develop their original documentary feature or limited series for a first look by the companies. | | | |
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Soc Doc Alumnus Book Reviewed in New Yorker | Film and Digital Media, Social Documentary alumnus, Rian Dundon, recently published a new book with Oregon State University Press, titled Protest City. It's a photo book about protests and political spectacle in Portland, Oregon. The book was reviewed in The New Yorker and Mother Jones. | | | |
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L.S. Kim’s Book, Maid for Television, Published | Maid for Television, by Associate Professor in the Department of Film and Digital Media, L.S. Kim was recently published by Rutgers University Press. It examines race, class, and gender relations as embodied in a long history of television servants from 1950 to the turn of the millennium. | | | | |
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Linda Burman-Hall, professor emerita | The UC Santa Cruz Arts Division community was deeply saddened to hear that Professor Emerita Linda Burman-Hall, recently passed away very suddenly while traveling in Malaysia. She joined the UC Santa Cruz Music Department as a Lecturer in 1976, and has been a vital part of the community for the past 47 years. | | | |
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Disability Pride Through Art | |
You are invited to submit original artwork as part of the Disability Resource Center's Disability Pride Through Art project, which seeks to celebrate disability experience and honor the culture and identities of the disability community at UC Santa Cruz, while providing exposure for disabled artists. To learn more and submit art, please use the Disability Pride Through Art submission form.
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Arts Dean’s Fund for Excellence and Equity | |
The Arts Dean’s Fund for Excellence and Equity (ADFEE) is dedicated to supporting the dissemination of student research. Qualifying projects must demonstrate a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. This fund is supported entirely through the generosity of our donors, and remains open as long as funding is available. Funds are administered through the Office of the Dean of Arts. Applications are reviewed each quarter. Next deadline: November 16, 2023. Decisions will follow within two weeks.
Read more
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Arts Research Institute (ARI) — Funding Available | The Arts Research Institute administers a number of grant programs that support arts research and practice, visiting artists, and collaborative interdisciplinary arts-based research across the UC Santa Cruz campus. Funding is available for faculty, students, visiting artists, and research. | | | |
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Lakas Shimizu Memorial Scholarship Award for Students in the Arts | Lakas Shimizu was a gentle warrior, a deeply caring, generous, and empathetic young man who had a gift for drawing people together. Lakas unexpectedly passed away at the tender age of eight. In his memory, his family—parents Dan Shimizu and Celine Parreñas Shimizu, brother Bayan Shimizu, and grandfather Robert Shimizu—established a scholarship at UC Santa Cruz. The scholarship honors Lakas’ spirit by supporting students in the arts who engage in artistic and creative scholarly practice, and who organize people together to make an impact for inclusion and equity. | | | | | |
