Faculty/Department

Can AI and creativity coexist?

One of the Writers Guild of America’s demands in its current strike is for studios to regulate the use of artificial intelligence for creating, writing and rewriting TV and movie scripts and other material. That might have sounded like a far-fetched concern just a few years ago. But with increasingly sophisticated, easily accessed AI tools already making inroads in other creative fields — literary magazines and fine arts competitions have lately had to contend with a glut of AI-generated submissions — there is a very real concern that expensive, time-intensive human creative labor could soon be outsourced to machines. Higher…

Harryette Mullen among 3 UCLA professors elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

In 1781, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington were among the first members elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honorary societies. This year, three UCLA faculty members were elected to join them. UCLA’s new members for 2023 are: Heather Maynard Maynard is UCLA’s Dr. Myung Ki Hong Professor of Polymer Science and a member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA. A leader in the area of protein-polymer conjugates — important therapeutics for a variety of diseases — Maynard develops new synthetic methods to make the materials, invents new polymers to improve…

3 Humanities professors among 5 UCLA faculty to receive Guggenheim Fellowships

Five UCLA professors — including three from the UCLA Division of Humanities — are among the 171 Guggenheim Fellows for 2023. Presented annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the fellowships recognize the recipients’ prior achievements and exceptional promise. The grants, which vary in amount, are intended to “further the development of scholars and artists by assisting them to engage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of the arts, under the freest possible conditions.” Representing the Humanities Division are professors Michael Berry (Asian Languages and Cultures), Alex Purves (Classics) and Michael Rothberg…

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…

‘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…