Students

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…

Students make remarkable finds in ‘Encountering Arabic Manuscripts’ course

If there was any question that UCLA Library Special Collections’ vast array of handwritten medieval manuscripts in Arabic, Persian and early Ottoman Turkish contained undiscovered historical gems and unique avenues for groundbreaking research, just ask doctoral student Brooke Baker. While studying an untitled text as part of UCLA’s “Encountering Arabic Manuscripts” course, Baker found that it contained a work by Abd al-Wahhab al-Sha’rani, the 16th-century mystic and scholar who founded an Egyptian order of Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam. Thinking she might have stumbled onto something rare, she showed it to Associate Professor Luke Yarbrough, who teaches the course. “On a…

English department celebrates launch of Digital Media Lab

The UCLA Department of English will celebrate the launch of its new Digital Media Lab on Friday, May 6 at noon at its location in Kaplan Hall 211. The Digital Media Lab is the result of an initiative by a group of English faculty members whose students were increasingly interested in using multimedia resources in their scholarly work, according to department chair Ursula Heise, the Marcia H. Howard Professor of Literary Studies and director of UCLA’s Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies. “[The lab] is not only about the creation of digital works, or research on digital works,” Heise said. “We’re…

New course helps students make educated decisions when entering workforce after graduation

Humanities students often face structural gaps when it comes to preparing for careers after graduation. A new class, Careers in Humanities (COMPLIT 191P/ENG M191P) aims to change that, offering students career advice; opportunities to build their personal portfolio, CV or resume; and help with general interviewing skills. It is a collaborative effort between the Department of Comparative Literature and the UCLA Career Center, with Professor David MacFadyen teaching the course and Senior Director of Alumni Career Engagement Gloria Ko arranging alumni speakers to bolster students’ understanding of the concepts and career pathways taught. “I just felt that there was a…