Students listen to a panel presentation on how to craft a career in the film and tv industry during the Communication Department's 17th Annual Hollywood Shadowing Program which took place over Spring Break in Los Angeles. Professor Michael Whalen led 42 students to Southern California to meet with over 35 alumni working in the film and television industries. They got the chance to tour Netflix Animation Studios, attend meetings at Disney, CAA, United Talent Agency, Hulu, Focus Features, AppleTV, and meet with Emmy and Oscar winning writers, producers and directors, and connect with recent alumni to learn how to jump start their entertainment careers.

Dear College Faculty and Staff,

Greetings from (almost) Earth Day! Did you know that an estimated 20 million people turned out for the first U.S. Earth Day, April 22, 1970? That was about 10% of the U.S. population at the time! Imagine if 33 million Americans turned out for anything today…So it’s fitting that next week is tUrn week and the Environmental Justice conference. See you there!

The deadline for faculty to RSVP for Commencement is this Monday, April 24. If you haven’t registered yet but plan to participate, please do so as soon as possible! We want to make sure the College is well represented at our graduation ceremony. You can find more information and the RSVP form in the Provost Office’s April 10 email. 

As you may have seen, I am happy to announce that we are launching a pilot in collaboration with SCU Presents next academic year to grant free access for students to performances by the departments of Theatre and Dance, and Music. We agree that all SCU students should have access to the performing arts as part of their SCU experience. Our pursuit of cura personalis—care for the whole person—necessarily includes fostering the art that lives in each of us, so removing barriers to our own performances feels both nurturing and liberating!

Daniel

Highlights

After giving some poetry readings in Leon, Spain, Juan Velasco-Moreno (English) was interviewed by Tomas Nestor Martinez on January 7, for the newspaper Astorga Redaccion. Thanks to our English Department's bilingual students, the interview is now available in English on our website.

Hsin-I Cheng (Communication) co-edited Resistance in the Era of Nationalisms: Performing Identities in Taiwan and Hong Kong, recently released by the Michigan State University Press.

This collection engages in a “culture-centered” approach to study cases of glocalized resistance as a communicative process. Specifically, it focuses on how people in Taiwan and Hong Kong, two post-colonial and cosmopolitan societies, strive for autonomy over their democratic ways of life. Occupying a critical stance on the margins, the local perspectives and international relations of Hong Kong and Taiwan challenge a China-centric narrative and those solely focused on the U.S.–Sino power struggle. Situating the inquires in times of rising nationalism of multiple forms, this collection includes topics ranging from rhetoric of political leaders, mis/disinformation combating strategies, language games of mass protesters on social media, to resistant performance in the street. It also includes an interview with Taiwan’s Digital Minister Audrey Tang on the roles communication technologies play in resisting threats to maintaining Taiwan’s democratic ways of life. This book showcases the “geocultural identity-in-the-making” of the Taiwanese and Hong Kong people and offers insights into societies under imminent threats by an aggressive neighbor.

Part of this book is featured in a special issue at Taiwan Insight, an online magazine of the Taiwan Studies Programme at the University of Nottingham, UK.

Francisco Jiménez (Modern Languages and Literatures, Emeritus) gave a presentation on “Writing Family Stories” for the Sonoma County Library and wrote the forward to Arrivals and Departures, a collection of personal stories written by members of the Sonoma County Immigrant Communities and Learners in Sonoma County Library Adult Literacy Programs. Their intimate and moving testimonials are about why they immigrated to the United States and what their life experiences have been since they arrived. They share a range of emotion-filled experiences characterized by joy and sadness, disappointment and success, hope, perseverance, and dreams for their families and themselves and, in some cases, nostalgia for their homeland. This publication was a joint project by Sonoma County Library and the California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Birgit Koopmann-Holm (Psychology) attended the Annual Convention of the Society for Affective Science in Long Beach, CA. She gave an invited talk titled “Compassion in four distinct regions of the world”, in which she presented her and her undergraduate students’ latest research on compassion in Ecuador, China, and Germany. This work suggests that what people consider to be compassionate differs across cultures, which has implications for cross-cultural counseling. She also presented a poster on the specific aspects of culture that can explain cultural differences in conceptualizations of compassion. This poster is based on a paper, for which Birgit and her then undergraduate student co-author Sofia Sandoval Larco '21 (Psychology) have received the invitation to revise and resubmit to a top-tier peer-reviewed journal.

Brita Bookser (Child Studies) recently presented research at the Society for Research in Child Development's Biennial Meeting in Salt Lake City, UT. Her poster, "Extra-Exclusionary Discipline: A Mixed Methods Study of Trapdoor Pathways Out of Preschool," described her mixed methods research on "extra-exclusionary" discipline—unregulated forms of exclusion beyond traditional, regulated forms like suspension and expulsion.

Earlier in March, she delivered an invited presentation to the docents and staff of the de Saisset Museum, entitled, "Field Trip to Field Study: Facilitating Experiential Learning from a Developmental Perspective." This presentation connected developmental science, cultural humility, and bell hooks' concept of "engaged pedagogy" as a frame for facilitating fourth-grade field trips to the museum.

Image: Brita A. Bookser presenting her research at the Society for Research in Child Development's Biennial Meeting.

OLLI@SCU is excited to announce an exciting new cohort of Santa Clara University faculty and staff who will be teaching for our program. This spring, OLLI@SCU popular instructor Marilyn Edelstein (English) will return to speak about family in contemporary short fiction. This quarter we have a few new instructors teaching in the program, James McKenna (Anthropology) and Maura Tarnoff (English). Back by popular demand is Philip Kesten (Physics), who will return to teach a variety of exciting concepts in physics, and Jeffrey Bracco (Theatre and Dance) will take OLLI members behind the scenes of the SCU spring musical, Into the Woods.
   
OLLI@SCU will be featuring notable instructors periodically in the College Notes. The average course ranges from 4 to 10 hours of instruction per quarter. We hope this will inspire you to stay updated on OLLI news and possibly teach a class for our members. OLLI instructors are compensated for their time and knowledge; to learn more about the joy of teaching adult learners, contact olliatscu@gmail.com.

Iris Stewart-Frey (Environmental Studies and Sciences) and community partners at the California Rural Legal Assistance, Inc. (CRLA) received a $100,000 grant from the Windward Foundation to advance the human right to water in disadvantaged, rural California communities. The goal of this project is to increase access to safe drinking water in California’s Central Valley by collecting and analyzing data that will increase CRLA’s capacity to advocate for safe, sufficient water and ultimately policy change. In addition, this project will build capacity for community-based data collection and spatial data analysis and visualization through the work of a Water Justice Science Fellow and SCU undergraduate student researchers.

Anna Sampaio (Ethnic Studies) recently presented two new research papers at the Annual Meeting of the Western Political Science Association (WPSA) in San Francisco. The first paper, “Trauma, Intimidation, and Critical Resilience: Examining the Intersectional Impacts of Escalating Political Violence on Latina Congressional Candidates and Representatives,” draws upon interviews and empirical data to analyze the impacts of escalating threats, and political violence aimed at women of color in public service and the implications for future Latina candidates. The second paper, “Mujeres y Movidas: Latinas Congressional Candidate Emergence and Political Mobilization in California and Texas,” creates a comparative case study of Latina Congressional candidates during the 2018, 2020, and 2022 election cycles when a record breaking number of Latinas both ran and won election to national office. Both papers emerge from a multi-year study of Latina candidates and political mobilization made possible through a $30,000 grant she received from the Center for American Women and Politics. At the WPSA, Prof. Sampaio also chaired a panel entitled “Diverse Legislatures: Exploring Why Intersectionality Matters for Political Representation,” and presented the 2023 WPSA Betty Moulds Lifetime Service Award.
   
She also delivered a recent virtual talk on her book Terrorizing Latinas/os: Race, Gender, and Immigration Politics in the Age of Terrorism at Gustavus Adolphus College.

College of Arts and Sciences Calendar