Latinx Faculty Fall Fellowship Back row (L-R): Jose Villagrana (English), Alberto Ribas-Casasayas (Modern Languages and Literatures), Rocio Segura (Civil Engineering). Middle row: Alice Villatoro (Public Health), Vanessa Errisuriz (Public Health), Veronica Miranda (Anthropology), Luis Calero, S.J. (Anthropology emeritus, Rector of the SCU Jesuit Community), Ana Maria Pineda, R.S.M. (Religious Studies), Ana Casareto (Anthropology), Isaura Cruz (Anthropology), Abel Cruz Flores (Modern Languages and Literatures). Front row (L-R): Pancho Jiménez (Art and Art History), Jason Gallardo (Music), Allan Báez Morales (Frugal Innovation Hub), Pedro Hernandez-Ramos (Education), Chris Tirres (Religious Studies), Erick Ramirez (Philosophy). Not pictured: Veronica Villa (LEAD), Cruz Medina (English), Marco Murillo (Education). Co-convened by Ana Maria Pineda and Veronica Miranda.

Dear College Faculty and Staff,

I recently learned that I am not so special. Here I was, thinking I was the College’s only dean trained as an enologist (also known as the chem engineering of wine). Alas, Thomas Terry, S.J., dean from 1961-66 and SCU President from 1968-76 had his Ph.D. in agricultural chemistry from UC Davis with a specialization in enology. I guess it’s not surprising that one of my Jesuit predecessors specialized in wine making!

On another note, this weekend campus will host hundreds of prospective students and their families at SCU’s annual Open House. Our office has been planning since this summer to ensure that the College is well represented at the event. Thanks to all the faculty, staff, and students who will be here representing our wonderful College tomorrow. For those of you who interact with our prospective students and families - please make them feel welcome and like Santa Clara is the place for them!

Sincerely,

Daniel

Highlights

Rohit Chopra (Communication) was invited to speak at a panel "Streaming Islamophobia: Bollywood and Beyond?" at the University of Texas at Dallas on September 20, 2023. The discussion, featuring academics as well as actors and scriptwriters from Bollywood, focused on how Bollywood and streaming services like Netflix India, Amazon India, and Hotstar both reflected and resisted increasingly dominant Hindu right wing and Islamophobic narratives in public, political, and media discourse in present-day India.

David Gray (Religious Studies) is happy to announce the publication of his new book, The Buddhist Tantras: A Guide, just released by Oxford University Press. It provides the first introduction to this genre of religious literature, for scholars, students and the interested public.

Daniel Morgan (Religious Studies) recently had an article published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, "Letter writing as the mingling of souls: remote knowledge exchange among eighteenth-century Naqshbandis." The article looks at the way Islamic knowledge was exchanged remotely via letters in early modern South Asia (challenging older ideas that have focused on the idea of the central place given to oral knowledge transmission in South Asian Muslim contexts).

Also, Daniel presented a paper entitled "Shah Walī Allāh of Delhi’s Hawāmiʿ and Islamic reform in South Asia" at the Muslim Intellectual History in Mughal South Asia conference held at UC Berkeley on October 6. The paper shows that although Hawami, a text written by the famous South Asian Muslim reformer Shah Wali Allah, has been dismissed as juvenalia, it was, in fact, the product of the last decade of Wali Allah's life. Given that this text focuses on angel invocation (theurgic summoning of angels for the sake of healing, protection etc), its late dating suggests the limitations of current narratives around the central place of "disenchantment" in early modern Islamic reform.

Takeshi Moro (Art and Art History) opened his photography exhibition at the Military Intelligence Service Historic Learning Center in Presidio, San Francisco.

Benign Neglect features sixty bonsai photographs that were cultivated by Issei (first generation) and Kibei (born in the U.S., educated in Japan, and later returned to the U.S.) Japanese Americans. These bonsai were started after the Japanese Americans returned from WWII American concentration camps. Some of the plants were likely started from seeds.

Dennis Makishima, a bonsai and aesthetic pruning master, inherited the bonsai after the initial creators of the bonsai passed away. He took care of them for over thirty years, trying to honor the style envisioned by the original practitioners. In 2022, Dennis retired and donated his entire bonsai collection. The bonsai have likely dispersed all over the state and country, flourishing, just like so many other aspects of Japanese American culture. Moro photographed the bonsai before they dispersed and published a book to go along with the exhibition.

Military Intelligence Service Historic Learning Center
640 Mason Street, San Francisco, CA 94129
Open on Saturday and Sunday 1pm-5pm
September 16th - October 22nd, 2023

Image: Untitled Benign Neglect Bonsai

Kai Harris (English) was recently awarded the Phillis Wheatley Book Award in Fiction for her debut novel, What the Fireflies Knew. Named after America’s first published African American poet, the Harlem Book Fair has given the Phillis Wheatley Award to authors including Maya Angelou, Gordon Parks, and Terry McMillan for their body of work. The Wheatley Book Award is given annually to best-in category books in Fiction, Nonfiction, Children’s Books, Young Adult books, and Poetry.

Image: The 2023 Phillis Wheatley Book Award in Fiction, presented to Kai Harris at the Harlem Book Fair.

The Environmental Justice and the Common Good Initiative’s Christopher Bacon (Environmental Studies and Sciences) and Chad Raphael (Communication) were invited to teach workshops to leaders from Jesuit conferences around the world at the 2023 Ecojesuit Meeting on Commitment, Communication, and Collaboration. The meeting was held at Balay Laudato Si’ in the ancestral domain of the Pulangiyēn community in Bendum, Malaybalay City, Mindanao, Philippines. Chris led a session on Community-Based Research on Food and Water Justice - Methods and Process of Accompaniment, in which he shared insights gained from long-term community-based participatory action research partnerships and how agroecology serves as a framework for food systems change and advancing food and climate justice. Chad led a workshop on Communications and Networking for Advocacy and Climate Action, in which participants sketched initial designs for campaigns to engage youth in advocacy for environmental justice in their regions.

Jimia Boutouba (Modern Languages and Literatures) recently attended an international colloquium organized by the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages at the University of Oxford, UK. The colloquium centered on the politics of resistance and transgression as deployed in contemporary French & Francophone literature, cinema and other cultural productions. Jimia’s presentation, “Poétique de la transgression,” drawn from her most recent research, discussed French imperial history and its long-lasting effects on minoritized groups whose stories have been neglected, silenced or simply suppressed from French national history. It also examined how recent cultural productions have challenged official history to center the voices, perspectives, and historical agency of subordinated groups. The colloquium opened with a keynote address by Sir Michael Edwards, poet, philosopher and cultural historian, knighted in 2014 and Member of the highly exclusive Académie Française, a hallowed institution founded in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu.

Francisco Jiménez (Modern Languages and Literatures, Emeritus) had a special edition of his book Cajas de cartón published by the prestigious Fondo de Cultura Económica, a Spanish language, non-profit publisher in Mexico City, founded in 1934. It is based in Mexico but it has subsidiaries throughout the Spanish-speaking world. He also gave two presentations on his writing, one in English, the second one in Spanish, at the Gilroy Public Library, September 9. In addition, he made a presentation on his book, Breaking Through to all first-year students at Los Gatos High School on September 12. His book was selected for their summer reading.

College of Arts and Sciences Calendar