Faculty/Department

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…

Assistant professor of Italian Andrea Moudarres receives Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Publication Award

On January 5, 2019, Assistant Professor of Italian Andrea Moudarres received the twenty-first annual Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Publication Award for a Manuscript in Italian Literary Studies from the Modern Language Association of America. Moudarres accepted his award at the annual convention in Chicago in front of thousands of attendees for his book, The Enemy in Italian Renaissance Epic: Images of Hostility from Dante to Tasso. In this work, Moudarres explores the question of violence, enmity and the representation of the enemy in influential works like Dante’s Divina Commedia, Luigi Pulci’s Morgante, Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, and Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme…

Professor Barbara Fuchs takes leadership role in Modern Language Association

Barbara Fuchs, professor of Spanish and Portuguese in the UCLA College, has been elected second vice president of the Modern Language Association. Founded in 1883, the Modern Language Association of America provides opportunities for its members to share findings and teaching experiences with colleagues and to discuss trends in the academy. Fuchs, who is also a professor of English, will serve in the office of second vice president from Jan. 7 through the close of the January 2020 convention and will automatically become first vice president in 2020, serving in that office through the close of the January 2021 convention….