Image (L-R): Britt Cain (CAH), Allia Griffin (Ethnic Studies), Tony Hazard (Ethnic Studies), Kyle T. Mays, Aparajita Nanda (English), Michelle Burnham (English).

The Center for the Arts & Humanities welcomed afro-indigenous scholar Kyle T. Mays (Saginaw Chippewa) to campus on April 26 for a talk related to his book, An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States, the first intersectional history of the Black and Native American struggle for freedom.

Dear College Faculty and Staff,

This quarter brought something new and exciting for me—I am finally teaching my first class of Broncos! While I am no stranger to teaching, this is my first experience doing so at Santa Clara, and so far, I’ve found it to be quite rewarding to be back in the classroom.

So far, I’ve encountered everything from the very prosaic (it gets hot and stuffy on the second floor of Kenna) to the now ubiquitous presence of tablets and computers in class (three years ago, only about a third of the students had computers open during an in-person class of mine at UCSC…) to the thoughtfulness and excellence of the students themselves. And then beyond that, I am every bit as intrigued by the topics I study and teach — and no less worried about the future of the planet. In Environmental Studies there is a lot of news and most of it is bad… or at least very, very sobering and serious. It takes a certain kind of courage to be an Environmental Studies student.

That being said, the work that many on campus are engaging in to mitigate the effects of the climate crisis, some of which is highlighted in our recent video Sustainability Explored: Optimism in the Face of the Climate Crisis, is encouraging. It is important that we, as an institution of higher education, do what we can to prepare this next generation to meet the challenges of their time. 

Fiat Lux (but sustainably, please)!

Daniel

Highlights

Image (L-R): Mikaela Dacanay, Savannah Shange, Kiara Mariscal, Omar Davila, Jr., and Brita A. Bookser.

The Department of Child Studies and the Future Teachers Project hosted Savannah Shange, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Principal Faculty of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at UC Santa Cruz, for the 2022-2023 Child Studies Speaker Series on April 11. With a focus on community-engaged and student-centered scholar activism, Shange is a critical voice in the politics of education and social justice. Child Studies faculty Brita A. Bookser and Omar Davila, Jr. co-organized this event, which featured a panel with Mikaela Dacanay '24 (Psychology, Child Studies) and Kiara Mariscal '23 (Child Studies), as well as a small-group meeting between Shange and student organizers.

Alma M. García's (Sociology) Club Oasis: Childhood Memories (2020) received the 2023 Latino Books Into Movies Award in the category of Cartoon/Animated Series. Edward Olmos, American actor, director, producer, and activist created the Latino Books into Movies Awards to facilitate the production of more television shows and movies by and about Latinos. The awards committee consisted of Olmos and other film and television industry executives. Olmos circulated Club Oasis to the television industry with the possibility of adopting Club Oasis.

Alma's memoir, Club Oasis: Childhood Memories, also received the Best Non-fiction for Young Adults Award from the International Latino Book Award. Alma's watercolor, "Desert Women" and its accompanying vignette of the same title has been selected by Norma E. Cantú, one of the foremost Latina authors, for her anthology Somos Tejanas. Alma is currently writing a sequel to her memoir.

Image: Original Watercolor by Alma M. García

Molly M. King (Sociology) recently published a coauthored article in Nature Human Behaviour looking at gender and racial misclassification by name-based demographic inference algorithms. Academics and companies increasingly draw on large datasets to understand the social world, and name-based demographic ascription tools are widespread for imputing information that is often missing from these large datasets. Using a survey of nearly 20,000 authors of social science journal articles to compare individuals' self-identified gender and race to that ascribed by these algorithms, we were able to calculate error rates for different subgroups. We found substantial inequalities in how these tools misgender and misrecognize the race/ethnicity of authors, distributing erroneous ascriptions unevenly among other demographic traits. Disparities in error rates highlight fundamental problems with the information content of names, rooted in the complex cultural processes of naming. We conclude with recommendations that name-based ascription algorithms should be used with caution, and researchers should be aware of the limitations and potential biases of such tools.

Image: Proportion of people misgendered according to sexuality, parental education, disability, name change history, race and ethnicity when using a gender imputation algorithm.

Annika Singh '23 (Art History) presented "Representing Displacement: Dorothea Lange in WWII" at the Bay Area Art History Undergraduate Symposium. She presented alongside students from Berkeley, Stanford, Mills College, St. Mary's, University of San Franciso, and California College of the Arts.

Annika's research focused on Dorothea Lange's photography of the evacuation of Japanese-Americans to internment camps and the conditions of life at the camps. Lange's narrative, constructed by her photographs, displays opposition to the internment and is why the War Relocation Authority, which originally hired her, never circulated the images. Instead, they hid the photographs away in the National Archives. A comparison of Lange’s photographs of the Manzanar internment camp with others taken by Ansel Adams in 1943 reveals a sharp contrast between the two photographers’ approaches to the internment and the U.S. narrative of freedom and equal treatment under the law. Lange’s candid images capture raw and humanizing moments that generate sympathy from those who see them, while Adams’ photographs construct a story of contentment that sidesteps the civil rights issues raised by the internment order.

Image: Annika Singh at the Bay Area Art History Undergraduate Research Symposium

Marie Bertola (Modern Languages and Literatures) co-authored Mastering Italian through Global Debate published by Georgetown University Press. Designed for students with advanced-level Italian language skills, Mastering Italian through Global Debate aims to promote linguistic proficiency and social responsibility through critical engagement with complex global issues, such as environmental consciousness, immigration, wealth distribution, surveillance and privacy, cultural diversity, and education. Its pedagogical approach stems from the idea that the debate is more than just a formal and codified form of discussion, and it can be adopted as a pedagogical framework in the L2 classroom as it creates a civil and engaged space for linguistic interaction across polarized views and shapes openness towards others while helping to recognize our common humanity beyond the issues being discussed.

SCU and Berks Fellows students Naomi Sneath '25 (Political Science, History), Hannah Hagen '23 (Environmental Studies, Spanish Studies, History), and Julia Kovatch '23 (History), with advisor Barbara Molony, organized History Day on April 20. Approximately 80 students attended throughout the day listening to talks given by History professors Sonia Gomez, Meg Eppel Gudgeirsson, Marwan Hanania, Barbara Molony, Michael Brillman, and Naomi Andrews on a wide range of topics. The event was co-sponsored by the History Department, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Berkshire Conference for Women Historians, and the American Historical Association.

Image: Students and faculty listen to Prof. Sonia Gomez's talk, "Interracial Friendship Across Barbed Wire: Interracial Female Friendship during WWII Japanese Incarceration."

Image: Asian Approaches to Urban Challenges: Insights for the Public and Policy Makers

Heather Clydesdale (Art and Art History) was one of three panelists for Asian Approaches to Urban Challenges: Insights for the Public and Policy Makers. Heather presented her paper "Balanced by Design: Promoting Environmental Sustainability and Human Welfare," which examined architecture in Taiwan by the firm FieldOffice and Shenzhen by the firm Urbanus. Heather showed how these firms use traditional design principles and aesthetics to create innovative buildings and sites that advance environmental sustainability, social connections, and civic engagement. She further discussed how such principles can be adapted to urban planning in the United States. The event was organized by the Center for Asia Pacific Studies at the University of San Francisco.

In April, students working in the labs of several Psychology faculty members presented work at the Western Psychological Conference for Undergraduate Research (WPCUR) at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, CA. These students were actively involved in collecting and analyzing data, and developing their own conference proposals. The poster topics spanned everything from investigating a mindfulness intervention in pre-schoolers, looking at the effects and neural mechanisms of early trauma in social outcomes of mice, determining how narcissism is related to comparing the self with others, examining how font size can influence studying behavior, to testing how kids learn novel words in other languages. Three of the student posters (signaled by * below) won outstanding poster awards. The 15 students who delivered the presentations were: Sean Do* '26 (Neuroscience), Kate Griffin '23 (Psychology), Srita Kothuri '25 (Neuroscience), Tiffany Lam '24 (Psychology, Child Studies), Kerri Lyons* '23 (Neuroscience, Biology), Gabby Mangano* '24 (Psychology, Child Studies), Hanna Muse* '23 (Psychology), Michael Nguyen '24 (Neuroscience, Music), Janet Ronquillo '23 (Neuroscience), Linnea Rothi '23 (Biology, Neuroscience), Kevin Shimizu '25 (Neuroscience, Biology), Brad Tomlinson '24 (Psychology), and Dani Yabut '24 (Psychology, Child Studies). The faculty mentors were Jui Bhagwat*, Katy Bruchmann, Lang Chen, Lindsay Halladay*, Patti Simone, and Lisa Whitfield. Congratulations to the students for their work.

James McKenna (Anthropology), the College of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Executive Professor, will be teaching his first course for OLLI@SCU this Spring. In “Humankind Unplugged: Evolutionary, Cultural, and Developmental Perspectives on a Most Unusual Species,” Jim will delve into what differentiates humans from our primate cousins and how technology’s progression may impact how we raise our children.

OLLI@SCU will be featuring notable instructors periodically in the College Notes. The average course ranges from 4 to 10 hours of instruction per quarter. We hope this will inspire you to stay updated on OLLI news and possibly teach a class for our members. OLLI instructors are compensated for their time and knowledge; to learn more about the joy of teaching adult learners, contact olliatscu@gmail.com.

College of Arts and Sciences Calendar