They clicked immediately, as though long-lost brothers. Gerardo Arellano and Gabriel Agundez were best friends and roommates who bonded over house music and political activism as undergraduates at UC San Diego more than 20 years ago. They reunited at a recent event at the campus Raza Resource Centro, which Arellano now directs. Agundez was there with his step-son, Christian Sanabria, a new transfer student. He told Arellano he was entrusting him—and the university—with his son, to gain the student experience they lacked.
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.
In the northern fjords of Iceland, during the darkest days of the year, Rachel Beetz set out to capture the movement of the stars. Every night for 30 days—one moon cycle—she positioned her camera to take a long exposure photograph. The patterns of movement, or “star trails,” would become her launching point for composing a new piece of music.
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.
Looking back at a two-year interactive course linking the Qualcomm Institute and a classroom in Bangladesh, UC San Diego alumnus Robert Hooper (BA '69) reports success in teaching young filmmakers to combat violent extremism.
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.
