Faculty / Department

The Humanities Division is pleased to announce the launch of a three year collaborative project between UCLA and the Université François Rabelais of Tours (France), based on a research program titled « From Passions to Emotions : Non-Fictional Representations of the Individual (1680-1850) » and financed jointly by the PUF (Partner University Fund USA-France), and by the two…

UCLA professor Michael Cooperson of Near Eastern languages and cultures has won the Sheikh Hamad Award for his Arabic-to-English translation of the “Virtues of the Imām Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal” by Ibn al-Jawzī. Published by NYU Press in two volumes, Cooperson’s translation of the biography of Ibn Hanbal was penned by Ibn al-Jawzi, a Baghdad preacher, scholar. Full…

UCLA English Professor Uri McMillian to Receive MLA’s William Sanders Scarborough Prize for An Outstanding Scholarly Study for African American Literature or Culture New York, NY – 6 December 2016 – The Modern Language Association of America today announced it is awarding its fifteenth annual William Sanders Scarborough Prize to Uri McMillan, of the University of…

Teaching computers to read is one thing. But by designing an algorithm that examined nearly 2 million posts from two popular parenting websites, a multidisciplinary team of UCLA researchers has built an elegant computational model that reflects how humans think and communicate, thereby teaching computers to understand structured narratives within the flow of posts on…

Professor and Chair of French and Francophone Studies, Dominic Thomas  speaks on CNN International about France’s next Presidential Election, see clips below: CNN International, November 28th, 2016 http://www.snappytv.com/tc/3361991 In addition, Professor Thomas speaks with CCTV- America on the current status of the French Economy on November 28th, 2016

  On November 21, a group of distinguished scholars, artists, activists and leaders will come together to discuss how human and humanistic knowledge can help inform action and make the world a better place. The two-hour conversation will take place in the Senate Room, the Senate House, London, and include David Theo Goldberg, Director of…

While the #OscarsSoWhite controversy raged over the dearth of people of color nominated for Academy Awards this past year, a group of digital humanities students at UCLA channeled their frustration into meticulously reconstructing the little-known history of silent films made for and by African Americans in the early 20th century. What they found, and sought…

From the Chronicle of Higher Education How Humanities Can Help Fix the World By John McCumber (UCLA Germanic Languages Faculty) OCTOBER 02, 2016 As academe’s hoped-for recovery from the 2008 financial crisis recedes before it like the shimmer of water on a hot roadway, the problems of its humanities component are up close and all…

It all began with the adoption of a Jardine’s parrot in the mid-1990s. Ursula Heise, UCLA English professor and the Marcia H. Howard Chair in Literary Studies, author and leader in the growing study of environmental humanities, was surprised by the animal’s intelligence and ability to communicate. She began observing birds and other animals in…

Professor of English Richard Yarborough is the recipient of the 2016 Darwin T. Turner Distinguished Scholar Award from the African American Literature and Culture Society. The society recognizes outstanding achievements and scholars to encourage dialogue, scholarly publications and projects devoted to the study of African American literature and culture. Yarborough teaches African American literature and 19th and…

What can Shakespeare, Cervantes, Proust, and even contemporary playwrights and filmmakers contribute to the study of neuroscience? A lot, says UCLA professor of integrative biology and physiology Scott Chandler. “When we are talking about the brain, we are talking about our essence,” Chandler said. For the last four years, Chandler has been teaching and coordinating…

Author, critic and UCLA emerita English professor Carolyn See, 82, died July 13 in Santa Monica as a result of congestive heart failure. Among her 10 books are a critically acclaimed memoir, “Dreaming: Hard Luck and Good Times in America,” the nonfiction primer “Making a Literary Life” and the novels “There Will Never Be Another…

Within the warm, terra-cotta-colored walls of her office in Dodd Hall, Charlene Villaseñor Black has assembled a whimsical mini-museum of Mexican folk art that includes two baby Jesus dolls, a sacred heart painting, a tiny Frida Kahlo chair and a wooden skeleton with moveable arms and legs. In the corner stands a pair of 5-foot-tall…

UCLA professor and recently named Guggenheim Fellow Zrinka Stahuljak spent the last three years helping the J. Paul Getty Museum bring an important 15th-century Flemish manuscript to life for the general public. “The Romance of Gillion de Trazegnies” is a lushly illustrated tale of chivalry and romance. It follows a fictional 15th-century Burgundian knight on…

Professor Sharon Gerstel of the UCLA Department of Art History has won the 2016 Runciman Book Prize for “Rural Lives and Landscapes in Late Byzantium” (Cambridge University Press, 2015). The annual award is given by the Anglo-Hellenic League in London to recognize the best book focused on Greek or Hellenic culture. Gerstel received the award, which…

by Fred D’Aguiar as reported in the LA Times Op-Ed on June 2nd, 2016 I got to my office at Virginia Tech a bit before 9 a.m. on April 16, 2007, and set about my day as most professors do, prepping for class, commenting on student papers and answering emails. I took a call from home…

Professor Robert Buswell of Asian Languages and Cultures has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  His election, which the Academy announced on April 20, 2016, comes exactly one year after the election of Professor Gregory Schopen, also of Asian Languages and Cultures. Robert Buswell is Distinguished Professor of Buddhist Studies in…