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| May 6, 2022 | Submit a Note |
 2022 DeNardo Lecture: Adia Benton, Ph.D. speaking on "Modern Plagues and Structural Violence." Photo by Adam Hays.
This week, we welcomed Adia Benton to campus for our annual DeNardo Lectureship in the Health Sciences. A cultural and medical anthropologist based at Northwestern University, she presented on the political, economic, social, and historical dynamics that shape diseases and how communities respond to them. It was wonderful to be back in person after two years for this annual event; her talk was especially relevant, given the times. Next week, we will welcome BD Wong to campus for his third and final residency week. As usual, he will be attending classes and participating in the following public events:
Please feel free to attend one or all of these free events! BD has been an engaging Sinatra Artist-in-Residence and we want to ensure his final residency week is a success! Happy Weekend! Daniel
Highlights
Image: The new layout seeks to increase environmental benefits for underserved neighborhoods as well as aquatic and ecological communities in and around the river. Iris Stewart-Frey (Environmental Studies & Sciences) and her students have been partners with the Tuolumne River Trust (TRT) on a project that aims to increase park access in underserved communities in and surrounding the city of Modesto (Central Valley). Additionally, they are collaborating to create a vision for the development of the Carpenter Road parcel, a former industrial and landfill site along the Tuolumne River that will become part of a string of parks along the riverfront (the Tuolumne River Regional Park). This park system will provide these communities with increased opportunities for interaction with the river and natural spaces, building community, and becoming physically active. Iris and her students contributed a spatial analysis on the lack of park access for unincorporated and underserved neighborhoods, demographics, and bike access. In addition, she and her students, together with TRT, co-developed a survey and focus groups on community ideas for the new park. The resulting findings were presented at several community meetings and local government representatives. Based on this input, the design and ultimately development of this park are moving forward, meeting both human and ecological needs through native plantings, natural recreational opportunities, as well as an additional spawning habitat for endangered salmon. The work was funded by a California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA) Environmental Justice Grant.
The Department of Art and Art History was represented by Persia Liu '22 (Art History, Communication) at the 2022 Bay Area Undergraduate Art History Research Symposium held at Mills College in Oakland, California. Undergraduate researchers presented projects ranging from topics on Renaissance Italy to modern and contemporary East Asian art and film. Two Stanford University graduate student respondents provided commentary to link the themes of the projects together. Persia presented “Shah Abbas’ Safavid Silk Diplomacy,” which examines how the Safavid king Shah Abbas (1571-1629) used silk as a weapon against the Ottomans and as a tool in diplomacy with European nations. Image: Persia Liu representing SCU at the Annual Bay Area Undergraduate Art History Research Symposium.
Aparajita Nanda (Ethnic Studies, English) recently published "Butler's Akin and the Narrative of Passing" as a book chapter in Encompassing Passing: Identities in the Making, edited by Mihaela Mudure. The book brings together explorations of a complex identity phenomenon that defies reductive dualities. The texts belong to different historical periods and communities. The concept of passing is viewed not only as a racial or gendered transformation, but also as a religious one.
Kai Harris (English) was recently interviewed by Refinery29 and featured in the article, "Why Kai Harris Fought To Write A Story About Black Girlhood In What The Fireflies Knew." In the interview—which focuses on Harris's debut novel, What the Fireflies Knew—Harris talks about telling Black coming-of-age stories, writing through personal trauma, and the ways that love fuels her writing. Harris is a champion of Black girl voices. What The Fireflies Knew follows KB, a girl sent to live with her grandfather after her father dies of an overdose and her family loses their home in Detroit. In the literary world, Black authors are often told that Black girl stories are not enough, that they won’t sell. Phoebe Robinson, whose Tiny Reparations imprint published Harris’ book this year, knows this well as an author who was once told people aren’t interested in stories about Black women’s experiences. Harris chose to see KB’s story through anyway. “I have always enjoyed reading about Black girlhood,” Harris says in the interview. “I really love Black girlhood stories and seeing Black girls doing their thing. I wanted to really immerse the reader in nothing but that experience.”
Christina Soto van der Plas (Modern Languages & Literatures) shares that her edited book, The Marx Through Lacan Vocabulary, was published on April 25, 2022, by Routledge. The Marx Through Lacan Vocabulary is their attempt to join the world of Marxism with Lacanian psychoanalysis. In the true spirit of Modern Languages, the book has collaborators from all over the world and it includes transliterations of the terms to Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish. And the book will also be translated into French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese in the next couple of years!
Image: Artist's reconstruction of Native neighborhood at Mission Santa Clara Lee Panich (Anthropology), Amy Lueck (English), and Lauren Baines (de Saisset Museum) led a successful application to the American Council of Learned Societies for a Sustaining Public Engagement Grant, which is part of a responsive funding program made possible by the National Endowment for the Humanities and its Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan (SHARP) initiative. Santa Clara University has been awarded $190,522 for the project, "Sustaining Collaborative Approaches to the Public Interpretation of Indigenous History at Mission Santa Clara, California." This project supports the implementation of the first phase of the Ohlone History Working Group’s recommendations to enhance the public interpretation of Indigenous Ohlone history at Mission Santa Clara. University personnel and Ohlone partners will co-create public-facing interpretive materials that honor the Native people who lived, worked, and died at Mission Santa Clara between 1777 and the 1840s. Funding supports archival research, community collaboration, student involvement, and display fabrication and installation. Local partners for this project include the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area and the Ohlone Indian Tribe.
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