News Archive

February 12, 2016 — When playwright Deborah Stein and director Suli Holum began working on the musical comedy “Movers + Shakers” in 2012, it was the height of the presidential election season and they were amused by the foibles of politicians such as Sarah Palin and Anthony Weiner. Flash forward to 2016 and another election year. The players have changed, but the intersections of “sex, power and hubris” portrayed in the play, which premieres Feb. 13 at the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Theatre District at the University of California, San Diego, are just as fascinating.

February 8, 2016 — The University of California, San Diego is not short on big ideas. Just ask Craig Callender, chair of the Department of Philosophy, who was recently featured in San Diego Magazine’s “Big Ideas” feature for his vision to establish the Institute of Practical Ethics on campus. Callender conceptualizes UC San Diego as a leading center for ethical science; to realize that vision, the philosophy department now offers a new minor program in bioethics, with its first students enrolled this winter quarter.

February 5, 2016 — A 2013 University of California, San Diego M.F.A. graduate in acting, Ngozi Anyanwu, has won the inaugural Humanitas Prize for “Good Grief,” a play about a first-generation Nigerian girl dealing with love and loss in a small Pennsylvania town. Chosen from more than 230 submissions, “Good Grief” will be presented in staged readings Feb. 12-14 at the Humanitas Play Festival in Culver City.

February 5, 2016 — The University of California, San Diego Division of Arts and Humanities recently sponsored, “The Scarlet Stone,” a modern dance/theater retelling of a tragic Persian myth developed by Shahrokh Yadegari, professor of sound design in the Department of Theatre and Dance. The production was performed last summer at UC San Diego’s Mandell Weiss Forum, toured to Toronto—for the Tirgan Festival, the largest Persian arts festival in the western hemisphere—and then to Los Angeles at UCLA's Royce Hall. This production, which involves university faculty and alumni, is now set to reach more than 14 million viewers worldwide through four satellite broadcasts during the week of Feb. 8 on BBC Persian in Iran, Tajikistan and Afghanistan, and online streaming at the time of broadcast.

January 29, 2016 — The University of California, San Diego is an institution known for achieving scientific and creative innovations. So it is no surprise that the Department of Visual Arts broke boundaries and crossed audiences when it recently transformed a 2,500 square-foot, San Diego Art Institute (SDAI) project-space at Horton Plaza into an unexpected home for innovative contemporary art.

January 27, 2016 — UC San Diego Department of History Professor Natalia Molina, who also teaches urban studies and serves as associate vice chancellor for faculty diversity and equity, was recently awarded the 2015 Susanne M. Glasscock Humanities Book Prize for Interdisciplinary Scholarship for her book, “How Race Is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts.” Molina’s publication examines Mexican immigration from 1924 to 1965 to understand how broad themes of race and citizenship are established. She will discuss her research publicly as the next keynote speaker in the Division of Arts and Humanities’ Degrees of Health and Well-being lecture series, Wednesday. Jan. 27, 7:00 p.m., in UC San Diego’s Great Hall.

January 25, 2016 — The University of California, San Diego’s New Writing Series (NWS) is anything but new. In fact, the series, originally rooted in poetry, is among the longest running programs in the state, dating to the early 1970s. Each quarter the Department of Literature hosts the “new” writing series, and this winter’s series, which began Jan. 13 and runs through March 2, takes a transnational focus with guest writers John Gibler, Lorena Gomez Mostajo, John B. Washington and Marivi Blanco. The next presentation, featuring Washington, takes place Jan. 27, 4:30 p.m., in the Visual Arts Presentation Lab on campus.

January 19, 2016 — The University of California, San Diego is celebrating the 20th annual Lytle Scholarship Concert with renowned jazz trumpeter Gilbert Castellanos and the Mambo Messengers on Sunday, Jan. 31 at 3 p.m., at the Department of Music’s Conrad Prebys Concert Hall. For two decades, the annual concert has raised funds for the Lytle Scholarship Endowment, which benefits UC San Diego undergraduate students.

January 14, 2016 — Alumni play a key role in a university’s fundraising efforts. Casey and Matthew Shen are prime examples. The University of California, San Diego alumni couple recently donated one-half million dollars to their alma mater to establish the Casey and Matthew Shen Endowment to support graduate student fellowships in the Department of Literature.

January 13, 2016 — The Chinese and the Iron Road: Building the Transcontinental, produced by the Chinese Historical Society of America and the Chinese Railroad Workers Project at Stanford University, is on display through February 29, 2016 in Geisel Library on the University of California, San Diego campus.