Faculty/Department

Professor Meredith Cohen Discusses Rebuilding and Restoring Notre Dame Cathedral

By: Megan Reusche Feelings of grief and despair were felt across the globe on Monday, April 17, 2019, when a devastating fire erupted at Notre Dame Cathedral. Individuals around the world collectively mourned the state of the 850-year-old Paris landmark, posting photos and exchanging memories of the cathedral. After officials began to assess the damage, it became clear that it will take multiple experts to develop a plan to restore and rebuild the structure, including conservators, engineers, and art historians. Meredith Cohen, associate professor of medieval art and architecture in the UCLA Art History Department, is a specialist in Gothic…

Professor Shu-mei Shih Acquires Leadership Role in ACLA

By: Megan Reusche Shu-mei Shih, Professor of Asian Languages & Cultures, Comparative Literature, and Asian American Studies, has been elected second vice-president of the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA). Founded in 1960, the ACLA represents the field of comparative literature and is a crucial meeting place for academics and students around the world, with a membership of around 3,000 individuals. This interdisciplinary and transnational field is a vibrant and vital area of humanistic inquiry, particularly because scholars must know three languages and use this proficiency to compare cultural texts amongst various languages, historical contexts, and cultures. Shih, who received her…

New Professional Writing Minor Drafts Curriculum to Teach Career-Specific Skills

UCLA Daily Bruin BY JACQUELINE ALVAREZ Posted: April 7, 2019 at 11:45 pm UCLA will offer a professional writing minor for students to improve their practical writing skills. The minor offers an array of specialized writing courses in topics including web literacy, entertainment, business, science and technology, nonprofits and public engagement. Students can enroll in the minor after satisfying their Writing II requirement and submitting a brief application essay. UCLA Writing Programs and the English department began developing the minor in 2015 to address the lack of a coherent, intensive writing program for students across all disciplines, said Lowell Gallagher, the English…

Diverse female filmmakers celebrated at 7th annual Latin American, Latinx and Iberian Film Festival

Hosted by the UCLA Spanish and Portuguese Department and co-sponsored by many entities on campus, the 7th Annual Latin American, Latinx and Iberian Film Festival: Women’s Voices will take place April 15-18, 2019 and feature free screenings of twelve films at multiple locations across UCLA’s campus, including the James Bridges Theater. Originally conceived as an important event that fosters diversity at UCLA and beyond, over the years the annual festival has featured a wide variety of comedies, dramas, biopics and documentaries from countries whose films are rarely projected in Los Angeles, including Guatemala, El Salvador, Puerto Rico and Paraguay. This…

Silence is the failure to do things with words

While delivering her vision of how we might “reimagine free speech,” philosopher Rae Langton outlined four required conditions for a healthy free speech environment. First, free speech is for people not for corporations. Second, a successful free speech culture depends upon equality — everyone should feel empowered to participate without fear of reprisal from whomever — whereas forced silence is the result of hierarchy. Third, it requires a supportive community that provides people the training and education necessary to pursue and insist upon the truth. A society that is serious about free speech, Langton said, needs to be serious about…

The parallels of female power in ancient Egypt and modern times

Over the course of 3,000 years of Egypt’s history, six women ascended to become female kings of the fertile land and sit atop its authoritarian power structure. Several ruled only briefly, and only as the last option in their respective failing family line. Nearly all of them achieved power under the auspices of attempting to protect the throne for the next male in line. Their tenures prevented civil wars among the widely interbred families of social elites. They inherited famines and economic disasters. With the exception of Cleopatra, most remain a mystery to the world at large, their names unpronounceable,…

Professor Maite Zubiaurre explores generosity and political activism in “The Wall that Gives/El muro que da”

Walls are typically barriers that divide and separate us. For UCLA Germanic Languages and Spanish & Portuguese Professor Maite Zubiaurre, “The Wall that Gives/El muro que da” is one way to encourage generosity amongst individuals and create a community that promotes reciprocity rather than exclusion, especially in today’s political climate. Zubiaurre’s alter ego, Filomena Cruz, is a Venice, CA visual artist and trash-collagist. She was inspired to create this piece because “today’s world, and our current US government in particular, seem more keen than ever to create walls that separate and exclude. In reaction against hostile walls that take away,…

Professor Maite Zubiaurre increases empathy and pollution awareness through trash collages

When you think of the word “trash,” what types of images do you imagine? A garbage dump? Waste? Pollution? While negative connotations and depictions of the word are typically the first to arise, UCLA Germanic Languages and Spanish & Portuguese Professor Maite Zubiaurre seeks to change the way we think about trash, humanity, and empathy through her trashcollages and academic seminars. Zubiaurre’s alter ego, Filomena Cruz, is a Venice, CA visual artist and trash-collagist. She uses endless recycling and urban trash to create “trashcollages,” a term coined by Cruz to give expression to her mixed-media genre. Zubiaurre takes pictures of…

Establishment of Peter J. and Caroline B. Caloyeras Endowment for the Arts at UCLA

The UCLA Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture announces the establishment of the Peter J. and Caroline B. Caloyeras Endowment for the Arts. The Caloyeras endowment will support the presentation of fine and performing arts related to Greece, from the ancient period through the modern day. Funds from the endowment will bring distinguished lecturers to speak on topics related to the art, history or archaeology of Greece The endowment will also support theatrical and musical performances. In the last year the Center has presented lectures by the President of the Acropolis Museum, Demetrios Pandermalis, the Cypriot “Icon…

UCLA receives two new endowments for Iranian Studies

UCLA Iranian Studies and the Pourdavoud Center are proud to announce two new endowments, the Jahangir and Eleanor Amuzegar Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Contemporary Iranian Studies and the Morvarid Guiv Graduate Fellowship in Zoroastrian Studies. UCLA has launched a national and international search for a top post-doctoral scholar who will be the inaugural recipient of the Jahangir and Eleanor Amuzegar Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Contemporary Iranian Studies. Read more about the post-doctoral fellowship on the UCLA College website. Thanks to a gift in 2018 from the Trust of Morvarid Guiv, the Morvarid Guiv Graduate Fellowship in Zoroastrian Studies has been established in…