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Featured Faculty

As an award-winning documentary filmmaker, Jennifer Maytorena Taylor’s filmography is especially impressive. Her insightful perspectives on people and circumstances that usually don’t have a voice in our society, have led her to examine difficult subjects via her discerning camera lens.

Ever since he was a child growing up in New Haven, Conn, Rick Prelinger has held a fascination with history, changing landscapes, and how places transform over time.

As the gaming industry continues to evolve from simple linear programming to cutting-edge artistic and interactive experiences, the Arts Division at UC Santa Cruz is leading the way in this sweeping change by taking education in gaming to the next level – and world-renowned game designer and... [more]

Peter Limbrick, who is currently researching and teaching film and video from across the Middle East and North Africa, has been busy over the summer writing about acclaimed Moroccan director and key figure in Arab cinema, Moumen Smihi. “Having just finished an essay on Moumen... [more]

Peter Limbrick, who is currently researching and teaching film and video from across the Middle East and North Africa, has been busy over the summer writing about acclaimed Moroccan director and key figure in Arab cinema, Moumen Smihi. “Having just finished an essay on Moumen... [more]

The Arts Division was thrilled to welcome five new faculty members at this year's Arts Division Retreat on September 29.

On March 6 Dean of the Arts David Yager announced the first appointments of the Arts Division’s Distinguished Professors. Research Professors are early- to mid-career scholars who have already made substantial research contributions.

Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison — newly appointed Arts Dean's Visiting Eminent Professors — like to call themselves journeymen artists.

Dancer Gerald Casel lives and breathes the art of choreography.

Recently working with a team of environmental architects in Alaska, Film and Digital Media professor Sharon Daniel has been a pioneer explorer in participatory online media.

During his recent tenure as Hooker Distinguished Visiting Professor at McMaster University this academic year, Raoul Birnbaum was able to share a lifetime's research discoveries with students and scholars at one of the finest Buddhist studies programs in North... [more]

Growing up in Dearborn, Michigan, Professor of Theater Arts Kate Edmunds thrived in her Art Department education at Wayne State University.

In a rare pause from fieldwork in remote Central Asia, counseling doctoral students, and performing dutor folk music, music professor Tanya Merchant reflected on an emerging career filled with lucky encounters.

Theater Arts professor Ted Warburton has been working on the kinetic connections between intelligence and dance for the past decade.  Exploring "the major intellecual and artistic decisions behind dance," he seeks paths to outwit the tired cliché that "dancers don't think, they... [more]

Documenting untold stories in bold, and accessible animated imagery is the driving passion of Social Documentation professor John Jota Leaños.

Jazz has been in Karlton Hester's blood since he took up the piano at the age of four. As a lifelong composer and improvisationalist, Hester is currently jamming with colleagues in far-flung disciplines.

Art Professor Beth Stephens and her partner Annie Sprinkle have married the snow. They've married the sea, the sky, the redwood forest, and the earth. These large-scale, highly collaborative and 100% performative events are not merely symbolic rituals, although they are certainly that.

It wouldn't be a stretch to call Patty Gallagher a one-woman show of dramatic scholarship, innovative teaching, and cross-cultural performance practice. In short, a hard act to follow.

Painting on digitally-printed canvas, painter Frank Galuszka is currently embarked on a multi-generational series of works that reflect both his seasoned on-site painting techniques and experimental digital technology.

On the road, seeking sonic inspiration for his upcoming CD News from Afar, David Evan Jones trekked through three continents, ten and a half months, and a kaleidoscope of traditional music, contemporary performers, and spoken words. 

 

A theorist and writer who explores the social implications of emerging technologies, Kate O'Riordan joined the Art Department faculty this fall.

Mysteries of life and death, of rituals and deterioration fill the large-scale photographs Lewis Watts has taken on his many journeys to New Orleans. Hands lifting high a coffin are juxtaposed with shy children taking part in their first Mardi Gras celebrations.... [more]

"It was always Africa," admits Elisabeth Cameron, Associate Professor of the History of Art and Visual Culture, and holder of the Patricia & Rowland Rebele Endowed Chair.

Expressive, energized, and utterly loquacious, B. Ruby Rich is thrilled to find herself the recent cover girl of the SF Chronicle's weekend Calendar section. "I'm pretty bad about honors," she confesses. "I either think, 'what me?

Even before Theater Arts professor Michael Chemers arrived on campus this summer there was huge buzz about his new course entitled Monsters.

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