Dear College Faculty and Staff,

This week’s issue certainly revolves around a theme—newly published faculty books! I want to congratulate Erick Ramirez (Philosophy), Jesica Fernandez (Ethnic Studies), Linda Garber (Women’s and Gender Studies), and Aparajita Nanda (English) on their books, which you can read more about below. Each of these authors knows that books feel like more than the sums of their parts, often taking years to research and write up, so there's nothing like the moment when the advance copies arrive. Bravo to you all!

Meanwhile, the Omicron COVID variant continues to surge (but we have reason to think this will pass quickly). So I am ever grateful for the varied and creative ways in which faculty are teaching during this bewildering time.

Stay safe and healthy; before too long we’ll see each other on campus!

Daniel

Student Advisory Council

Our second featured student advisory council member is Alisha Burch! She is a sophomore from Greenwood, Mississippi and is studying Chemistry at Santa Clara University. Alisha's desire to be a voice for students who are adjusting to a new environment is what inspired her to join the council. She hopes to create and set into action new resources for students who are struggling with being in a new place such as providing tips for travel and public transportation. In addition to this, Alisha hopes to shine a light on financial instability amongst students and supporting Black STEM students. A fun fact about Alisha is that she has over 15 nieces and nephews!

The Student Advisory Council was started during Fall 2021 and is made up of 10 students from across the College. They meet twice a quarter with Dean Press to discuss their aspirations, suggestions for new initiatives, and their responses to issues of the day.

Highlights

Erick Jose Ramirez (Philosophy) has published The Ethics of Virtual and Augmented Reality: Building Worlds with Routledge. This book offers new ways of thinking about and assessing the impact of virtual reality on users along with exploring the social, political, and ethical dimensions of the metaverse. It argues that we must go beyond traditional psychological concepts of VR "presence" to better understand the many varieties of virtual experiences.

Jesica S. Fernandez (Ethnic Studies) published her first book Growing Up Latinx: Coming of Age in a Time of Contested Citizenship (New York University Press). In Growing Up Latinx, Fernández explores the lives of Latinx youth as they grapple with their social and political identities from an early age, and pursue a sense of belonging in their schools and communities as they face an increasingly hostile political climate. Drawing on interviews with nine-to-twelve-year-olds, Fernández gives us rare insight into how Latinx youth understand their own citizenship and bravely forge opportunities to be seen, to be heard, and to belong. With a compassionate eye, she shows us how they strive to identify, and ultimately redefine, what it means to come of age—and fight for their rights—in a country that does not always recognize them. Fernández follows Latinx youth as they navigate family, school, community, and country ties, richly detailing their hopes and dreams. In this way, she invites us to witness the inspiring power of young people as they develop and make heard their political voices, broadening our understanding of citizenship.

Linda Garber's (Women's & Gender Studies) book Novel Approaches to Lesbian History was published in December by Palgrave MacMillan. The book examines contemporary novels that depict lesbian characters in recognizable historical situations. From the back cover: "These imaginative stories provide a politically vital, speculative past in the face of a sketchy, problematic archive. Among the memorable characters in some 200 novels are pirates, cowgirls, and famous artists, ghosts and time travelers, immigrants and lovers. The best lesbian historical novels are conscientious and buoyant as they engage critical historiographical questions, but Novel Approaches also discusses the class and race biases that weigh on the genre. Some lesbian historical novels are based on archival evidence, others on conjecture or fantasy, but all convey the true fact that identity is elusive without a past, without which its future is nearly impossible."

Elizabeth Drescher (Religious Studies) and Jaime Wright (Religious Studies) have been awarded a $30,000 grant from the Louisville Institute to study seven neighborhood clusters in Silicon Valley whose residents experience negative impacts of corporate development projects such as the Google Transit Village (known locally as “Googleville”). Their two-year project,"Finding God in Googleville: Mapping Christian Presence and Spatial Justice in Silicon Valley," will document how material assets of Christian congregations in neighborhoods impacted by Googleville development are emplaced to support of “the least of these” in a region in which economic inequality is marked out on the landscape. Employing a mixed methodology including GIS mapping, field interviews, and ethnographic photography, the project aims to illustrate how Christian presence participates in the creation of just urban geographies. Drawing on field research with students in place-based religious studies courses, the project will include the development of multilayered geomap of Googleville area and impacted neighborhoods. The Googleville geomap, along with demographic and ethnographic data that can support community organizing and advocacy for policy change, will be available to educators, church leaders, and community advocates on the Religious Studies department's Living Religion Collaborative (LRC) website.

Image: Jaime Wright and Elizabeth Drescher

Aparajita Nanda (Ethnic Studies and English) just published God Is Change: Religious Practices and Ideologies in the Works of Octavia Butler with Temple University Press, 2021. The volume delves into the ways Butler creates and uses religion within her canon. The collection explores Butler’s religious imagination, how her notion of change is the foundation of her mythic religion and her answer to the disruptive and destructive matrix of domination that humanity insists upon perpetuating. Even as the volume looks at Butler's creation of a religion of "change" it also introduces possible sources in alternate religions (Buddhism, Hinduism) that Butler may have tapped.

College of Arts and Sciences Calendar