The Urgency of Now: Responding to Anti-Asian Violence in the U.S. panelists Renee Tajima-Peña, James Lai, Judy Wu, Sherry Wang, and Juliana Chang (clockwise). This April 14 event was sponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities.

Dear College Faculty and Staff,

Last week SCU hosted a virtual Preview Week for admitted students and their families. The college showcased our departments and programs on the Bronco Exchange platform, and hosted several interactive events. Many thanks to Mythri Jegathesan, Jamie Chang, Aldo Billingslea, Christelle Sabatier, and Jesica Fernandez for welcoming students at a BIPOC networking session; David Hess and Mike Whalen for creating mock classes; Ali Reimer, Sandy Boyer, Kathleen Schneider, Linda Garber, Julie Chang, and John Birmingham for their work on Bronco Exchange; Anna Sampaio, Rich Barber, CJ Gabbe, Tamsen McGinley, Andrew Keener, Boo Riley, Ted Grudin, and others for hosting prospective students in their classes; and nearly a dozen students who helped make events throughout the week possible. We look forward to welcoming the Class of 2025 to campus in the fall!

Meanwhile, our annual Giving Day is fast approaching -- it’s next week, on April 21st (Wednesday). We have 30 separate departments and programs to support in the College, each with their own Giving Day page. I encourage you to promote your favorite College cause; it’s a great way to support our students going into the next year.

Finally, a heads up: SCU’s Forge Garden is accepting reservations for its annual Warm Season Plant Sale, which begins May 3rd – get your plants and get them in the ground while supporting the Forge!

Sincerely,

Daniel

Highlights

Islam in Contemporary Literature: Jihad, Revolution, Subjectivity, a new book by John Hawley (English) will be published at the end of April. This volume presents many of the most interesting authors writing today from an Islamic background—Kamel Daoud, Yasmine el Rashidi, Hisham Matar, Tahar Djaout, Mohsin Hamid, Hanif Kureishi, Edward Said, Driss Chaibi, Kamila Shamsie, Tahar ben Jelloun, Leila Aboulela, Abdellah Taïa, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Hisham Matar, Eboo Patel, Reza Aslan, and Tamim Ansary, among others—who embody the various strains of Islamic interpretation and conflict. This study discusses an ongoing Reformation in Islam, focusing on the Arab Spring, the role of women and sexuality, the “clash of civilizations,” assimilation and cosmopolitanism, jihad, pluralism across cultures, free speech and apostasy. In an atmosphere of political and religious awakening, these authors search for a voice for individual rights while nations seek to restore a “disrupted destiny.” Questions of “de-Arabization” of the religion, ecumenicism, comparative modernities, and the role of literature thread themselves throughout the chapters of the book.

Cruz Medina (English) was invited to contribute a post to the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) blog as a part of National Poetry Month. In "Prison Poetry in Tumultuous Times," Cruz discusses the power of poetry in prison and the potential for poetry to communicate emotions through the syntax of verse at a moment when physical distancing is necessary. The post draws on Cruz's experience in a Shakespeare workshop at San Quentin, where he accompanied first-year students from the LEAD program with Maura Tarnoff (English), as well as an interview that Cruz conducted with Chicana feminist writer Ana Castillo about her memoir and her son's incarceration. 

Image: Cruz Medina, Maura Tarnoff and SCU LEAD Scholars at San Quentin

SCU's past brought to life!

Check out these digital works by winter Arts 74 students, inspired by a virtual visit with Kelci Baughman McDowell from the University Library's Archives and Special Collections.

These works feature studio art majors Carly Kellner '23 and Katherine Simons '23, and studio art minors Kristina Yin '22 (Computer Science) and Katherine O'Malley '21 (Environmental Studies).

Students used Photoshop to either infuse color into black and white photos from the campus archives (with permission) or took new photos inspired by works in the collection and then aged them using digital techniques. Many students chose images of Santa Clara University campus life in the '70s.

Image: Digitally aged contemporary photo by Katherine Simons, inspired by a photo of the mission gardens in the '70s from Archives and Special Collections.

During the past two quarters, Francisco Jiménez (Emeritus, Modern Languages and Literatures) has made virtual invited presentations to schools that teach his work: Jawatha School in East Province of Saudi Arabia; Christopher Grant High School, Gilroy; Roberto Cruz Leadership Academy, San Jose; Lincoln High School, San Jose; Franklin Middle School, Santa Barbara; McKinley Elementary School and Miller Elementary School, Santa Maria; and Oregon State University’s College Migrant Scholars Program. He was also a guest speaker for Redwood City Public Library’s virtual exhibition, “Stitching California” a fabric art on-site traveling exhibition, which “tells the story of the disparate parts that came together to create our state, and the conflicts and challenges that go on to this day.”

Kirsten Read (Psychology) presented an invited talk at the (virtual) 2021 Society for Research in Child Development conference this week as part of a panel on how to support emergent bilingual learning in young children from shared book reading. The talk, "How Bilingual Storybooks can Help Grow Vocabulary for Dual-Language Learning Preschoolers," was based on work conducted with the help of undergraduate researchers Paloma Contreras '19 (Psychology), Jesica Jara '17 (Public Health Science), and Bianca Zardetto '15 (Psychology and Spanish Studies) and supported by the DeNardo Science Scholars program (2017/18), which was published in the journal Early Education and Development in May 2020.

Roberto Mata (Religious Studies/Sociology) participated in a panel on Religion and Spirituality at Harvard's David Rockefeller for Latin American studies. David Carrasco (the Neil Rudenstein Professor of the Study of Latin America) moderated this event. Roberto also published the works below.

• Article: "Exodus Testimonios: Migrant Spirituality in the U.S./Mexico Borderlands" in Revista: The Harvard Review for Latin America, 22 (vol. 2): 2021.
• Chapter in Edited volume: “And I Saw Googleville Descend from Heaven: Reading Revelation in Gentrified Latinx Communities of Silicon Valley" in Land of Stark Contrasts: Faith-Based Responses to Homelessness in the United States, ed. Manuel Mejido Costoya (Fordham University Press, 2021).

In celebration of International Women’s Day, the Octavia E. Butler Literary Society and the St. Catherine University Abigail Quigley McCarthy Center for Women presented, The Confluence: Octavia E. Butler at the Intersection of Cultural Critique and Climate Collapse (Virtual meeting March 6-7, 2021).

Aparajita Nanda (English) presented on Butler’s interest in world religions. Presentations on the panel explored Butler’s religious imagination, placing her fiction in new and provocative interpretive contexts to demonstrate and share the intellectual spiritual vitality of her work. Participants included Shelby L. Crosby, University of Memphis; Brianna Thompson, Cornell University; Briana Whiteside, University of Nevada Las Vegas; Ebony Gibson, Georgia Gwinnett College; Phyllis L. Burns, Otterbein University; Keegan Osinski, Vanderbilt University; and Tarshia Stanley, St. Catherine University.

Blake de Maria (Art & Art History) has been elected to a second 3-year term as Conference Chair of the Renaissance Society of America. With a membership of over 5,000 scholars, the RSA is the preeminent professional organization devoted the study of global culture in the early modern period. As Conference Chair, Blake oversees all aspects of the RSA's annual meeting, including the organization of the "Virtual RSA 2021" which meets this week, with over 3,000 scholars in attendance.

College of Arts and Sciences Calendar