Sean Brenner

UCLA’s Russian Flagship Program builds knowledge and community

Geneva Flores, a first-year applied linguistics major, shared her experiences as a participant in UCLA’s Russian Flagship Program, which allows students of all majors to build professional-level competence in Russian through studies on campus and abroad. “The Russian Flagship Program equips courageous global leaders with the language skills and cultural competence to build bridges between international communities,” according to the program’s website. The website also states: “The UCLA Russian Flagship was one of the three original Russian programs funded by The Language Flagship, a federally funded initiative to revolutionize the way Americans learn languages by offering a rigorous, articulated program…

Postdoctoral fellow expands research in the UCLA Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures

Alisée Devillers joined the UCLA Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures as a postdoctoral researcher through a fellowship awarded by the Belgian American Educational Foundation. Devillers, an Egyptologist archaeologist and art historian, originally applied for the fellowship in connection with a project that involved conducting research on ancient Egyptian stelae. “With this project, the idea was to pinpoint visual identity strategy used by people who were not meant to be seen in our Egyptological documentation — so people who were not part of the elite,” Devillers said. After arriving at UCLA, Devillers has received several new opportunities. She is…

Professor Joshua Javier Guzmán discusses Warhol Foundation grant

Joshua Javier Guzmán, assistant professor of gender studies and chair of the LGBTQ studies program at UCLA, received a 2022 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant in support of his new book, “Brown Exposures: Queer Photography and the Literary Aperture.” Funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and administered by Creative Capital, the program “supports writing about contemporary art and aims to ensure that critical writing remains a valued mode of engaging with the visual arts,” according to the grant website. The site includes a synopsis of Guzmán’s forthcoming book: Joshua Javier Guzmán’s book Brown Exposures: Queer Photography…

Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in classics shares experience

Julio Vega-Payne joined the classics department as a UCLA Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow this academic year. According to the fellowship website, “The Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program offers postdoctoral research fellowships and faculty mentoring to outstanding scholars whose research, teaching, and service will contribute to diversity and equal opportunity at the University of California.” The expectations of the fellowship are to focus full-time on research and avoid other commitments, meet regularly with assigned faculty mentors and attend an annual academic retreat, according to the website. Vega-Payne, who earned his Ph.D. in classics at UC Santa Barbara, is researching representations of the natural…

Dominic Thomas wins international Gutenberg Research Chair honor

Last November, Dominic Thomas, Madeleine L. Letessier Professor of French and Francophone Studies in the UCLA Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies, won the Gutenberg Research Chair. As part of his prize, he will serve as lead investigator on a project, “Ecology and Propaganda.” “This honor is a testament to the remarkable timeliness, power and scope of Dominic Thomas’ work,” said Alexandra Minna Stern, dean of the UCLA Division of Humanities. “We are proud to have him representing our division, university and field on a global scale as he innovates new approaches to critically studying pressing environmental and ecological…

Four faculty members receive NEH grants

Among the 204 projects nationwide funded by $28.1 million in grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities this year are initiatives by UCLA faculty members Meredith Cohen, Willeke Wendrich, Li Min and Ellen Pearlstein. Cohen, an associate professor of art history, received an NEH-Mellon Fellowship for Digital Publication, which includes an outright grant of $60,000 to work on “The Lady Chapel as a Model for Visualizations of Digital 3-D Historical Reconstructions.” The project will involve researching, writing and using data visualization to create a website to explore 3-D architectural reconstructions of the Lady Chapel of Saint-German-des-Prés. Wendrich, the Joan…

UCLA Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture to premiere chamber opera

On Saturday, January 21, at 7 p.m., the UCLA Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture will proudly present the premiere of the experimental chamber opera Polymnia, the story of a young woman whose family was tragically expelled from its village by the Ottoman Turks. The performance will take place at UCLA’s Little Theatre. A second performance will be held on January 22 at 2 p.m. Written and composed by emerging artist Theodosia Roussos, the opera presents the story of Roussos’ own great-grandmother Polymnia Athanasiades Pappas and draws from fragments of Sappho’s poetry, Kassiane’s hymns, as well…

In memoriam: Herbert Morris, 94, landmark figure in law and philosophy

Professor emeritus Herbert Morris, a globally renowned scholar and teacher of law and philosophy and a foundational member of UCLA School of Law’s faculty, died on Dec. 14. He was 94. An instrumental leader at UCLA for seven decades, Morris earned his bachelor’s degree at UCLA, law degree from Yale Law School and doctorate in philosophy from Oxford University. He joined the faculty of UCLA’s philosophy department in 1956 and the law school in 1962. During his uncommonly distinguished career, Morris served as dean of humanities of in the UCLA College from 1983 to 1992 and interim provost of the…

English major to publish debut novel

Arushi Avachat, a third-year English and political science undergraduate student at UCLA, will see her debut novel, “Arya Khanna’s Bollywood Moment,” hit bookstore shelves next year. A longtime, avid reader and writer, Avachat has also authored short stories — one of which served as the novel’s inspiration. “I had written a short story my freshman year of high school that I was really attached to,” she said. “I had a lot more to say about those characters — and then I had the idea that I wanted my novel to read like a Bollywood drama.” Avachat worked on outlining and…

‘The New Treaties of Globalization’: Gabriel Zucman delivers Possible Worlds lecture

In the latest installment of the “Possible Worlds” lecture series, French economist Gabriel Zucman joined UCLA students, faculty and community members on October 11 to discuss the link between globalization, taxation and inequality. The event was held in person at Royce Hall, with a livestream reaching additional audience members virtually. In his talk, “The New Treaties of Globalization,” Zucman discussed a range of topics, including the concept of implementing a progressive wealth tax to better reflect modern society. The lecture was followed by a Q&A session moderated by Juliana Londoño-Vélez, an assistant professor of economics at UCLA and a faculty…