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| August 4, 2023 | Submit a Note |
 Director Karina Gutiérrez (Theatre and Dance) joins her cast for the Opening Night curtain call of Cruzar la Cara de la Luna. See story below. Photo: M. Graham Smith.
Happy August! For the lovers of summer fruits and vegetables among you, here is a picture of my annual melon patch; harvest is right around the corner! We’ve got some great updates included in this week’s issue. I’m going to keep it short and sweet and let them do all the talking. Stay cool in this summer heat! Daniel Highlights
Sonja Mackenzie (Public Health) published an article in Feminist Studies, entitled “More Than a Blue Sky: On Being a Queer Parent Researcher and ‘Uncomfortable Reflexivity.’” Sonja's autoethnographic essay considers challenges faced by queer parents raising children in homophobic societies. This piece is part of Feminist Studies’ current issue on the rise of a virulent right-wing through systems of white supremacy and the criminalization of trans and gay people alongside threats to reproductive rights. Sonja's writing contributes to a growing literature on auto-ethnographic methods while decentering heteropatriarchal understandings of kinship and of research itself. Mackenzie identifies processes of ‘kinning,’ or the ways in which we come to be and know family, as a discursive act, finding that “kin is just as much what is not there as what is before our eyes.” Sonja is conducting research this summer at The Kinsey Institute at Indiana University on histories of the transgender child and at Cambridge University on direct-to-consumer genetic testing and LGBTQ families. Her research took place behind the locked doors of the historic Kinsey Institute archives currently threatened by a state budget that blocks funding on sex research, at a time when five new anti-LGBTQ laws have just gone into effect, including laws banning gender-affirming care for trans youth, prohibiting bans on conversion therapy, and book bans.
Heather Clydesdale (Art and Art History) presented her paper “Buddhist Art as Experience and Transformation” at the United Kingdom Association of Buddhist Studies 2023 conference held at St. Andrews University in Scotland. Integrating findings from phenomenology, psychology, and neuroaesthetics, Heather argued that an aim of early Chinese Buddhist art and architecture was to dislodge the devotee’s mindset from conventional modes of consciousness. Using the example of a well-known fifth-century Buddhist cave at the Mogao complex in western China, the paper explains how the use of space, multiplicity, color, and composition seem calculated to pique the senses and play with perception in order to stimulate new mental states. Because consciousness is central to Buddhism, it further suggests that this kind of approach to Buddhist art can also advance our understanding of the human mind. The presentation and conference participation were supported by a College of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Grant. Additionally, a Faculty-Student Research Assistant Program grant made the invaluable contributions of research assistant Sophia Irinco '26 (Neuroscience) possible.
Lindsay Halladay (Psychology, Neuroscience) was invited to chair a conference panel at the Gordon Research Conference: Amygdala Function in Emotion, Cognition, and Disease. Lindsay traveled to Barcelona, Spain, to lead a research talk session, "Sex Differences in the Amygdala" with top researchers in neuroscience studying the amygdala, a brain structure implicated in several mental health disorders including anxiety and addiction. Historically, the majority of basic research has been conducted in male subjects, but more recently, many researchers including Lindsay have pushed the field to investigate sex differences in the brain, especially given that mental health disorders like anxiety and depression are more prevalent in women than men. The conference session covered exciting new findings in both animal models and human clinical research that are beginning to unravel complexities in understanding and treating mental health in both women and men.
Aparajita Nanda (English) published her article “Colonial Hangover and the Politics of Space” in a special issue, The Cultural Politics of Space (Part II Urban Spaces) in Gramma: Journal of Theory and Criticism. Gramma is an international, peer-reviewed journal, published once a year by the School of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. It offers a forum for scholarly debate in the field of literary and cultural studies and welcomes submissions from a wide range of areas within the theory and criticism of literature and culture. Founded in 1993, Gramma has combined a commitment to interdisciplinarity with a vital concern for issues in contemporary criticism and culture, appealing to a broadly informed and a more specialized readership.
Nancy C. Unger (History) experienced a career highlight when she spoke to a sold-out crowd at The Breakers (the Vanderbilt mansion in Newport, Rhode Island). Nancy’s talk, “Under the Gold-Plating: Everyday Americans in the Gilded Age,” was the final talk in a six-lecture series on various aspects of the Gilded Age (1877-1920) and she surveyed an array of topics including race, labor, leisure, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, legislation, and non-profits. It was followed by a book signing and a dinner (with board members and select donors) in the mansion.
Alberto Ribas-Casasayas (Modern Languages and Literatures) co-directed, with Ana Luengo (San Francisco State University), the panel “Other Enlightenments: Culture, Society, and the Law under Psychedelics” at the International Conference on Ibero-American Literature in Athens, Greece. He presented the talk “Psychedelic Pharmacology and Ecocultural Appropriation in La mirada de las plantas by Edmundo Paz Soldán,” which is part of a longer-term project on psychedelic practices and discourse in contemporary Transhispanic cultures.
Karina Gutiérrez (Theatre and Dance) directed Cruzar la Cara de la Luna (“To Cross the Face of the Moon”) with music by José “Pepe” Martínez and libretto by Leonard Foglia, which opened on July 23 at West Edge Opera to critical acclaim. Joshua Kosman, from his review for the San Francisco Chronicle: "Director Karina Gutiérrez, an assistant professor at Santa Clara University, staged the action with virtuosic skill, moving the performers this way and that on Carlos Aceves’ ingenious guitar-shaped set to create an array of distinctive worlds in Texas, Mexico and the treacherous border country. From the early joyous scenes of Laurentino's marriage (vivaciously plotted by San Francisco choreographer César Lino) through the somber final moments, Gutiérrez found an apt emotional tone for each permutation."
Sheila Yuter (Sociology) is teaching her first course for OLLI@SCU this summer. In “A Look Inside the American Healthcare System,” she discusses the benefits and pitfalls of the American healthcare system, as well as possible improvements for the future. Professor Yuter also compares the U.S. healthcare system to that of other countries and discusses arguments for healthcare as a right or a privilege.
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Monks from the Tashi Lhunpo Monastery finish a sand mandala on the final day of the conference. That evening, as part of a closing ceremony, they dismantled the mandala and ritually released some of the sand into the North Sea.
Last month, Katy Bruchmann (Psychology) attended the triennial European Association of Social Psychology conference in Krakow Poland. She presented a talk co-authored by Chan Thai (Communication) called "If I could look like that, I should look like that: Fitspiration and implicit theories of body shape." This talk described two studies that show that social comparisons with fitspiration (i.e., "fitness inspiration") accounts on social media can have negative effects on body image and health-related behaviors, particularly for people who believe that their body shape is changeable. This work adds to evidence about the detrimental effects of social media, and shows that mindsets matter.
Nancy speaking in the Great Hall of The Breakers.
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