Humanities and Communication
2014-2015
Recently HCOM students in Oral History and Community Memory, under the direction of HCOM faculty member Rina Benmayor, completed interviews with members of Seaside, California's African American community.
Recently retired faculty member Cecilia O’Leary is an advisor to the Director of the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). Scheduled to open in 2016, the museum is under construction on the National Mall in Washington D.C. on a five-acre tract adjacent to the Washington Monument. On behalf of the museum, she met with 21 Scholars, Directors and Senior Curators of museums in Europe over the summer of 2015. Some examples include, International Slavery Museum (Liverpool), Rijks Museum (Amsterdam) and the Musée du quai Branly (Paris). She also has been invited to give a talk at the Plenary Session of the American Society for Theatre Research Conference on what was involved in creating the exhibition "Taking the Stage" at the NMAAHC.
HCOM faculty member Debra Busman's book, like a woman, will be published by Dzanc Books. Described as a "vivid coming-of-age story, revealing the lives of teenage girls on the streets of Los Angeles, trying to hold onto their sense of humanity against a backdrop of racism, poverty, sexism, and violence," Busman co-directs the Creative Writing and Social Action concentration in the HCOM major. Read more about the book at the publisher's site, and a write-up about the book in the Santa Cruz Sentinel.
Congratulations to HCOM Professor Jennifer Fletcher. Her new book, Teaching Arguments: Rhetorical Comprehension, Critique and Response will be published by Stenhouse Publishers in early February 2015.
Several HCOM faculty members will participate in a CSU Symposium on University Teaching in March 2015. Their presentations include Patrick Belanger and Ajit Abraham on Motivation, Resilience and Concrete Student Experience and Jennifer Fletcher, Natasha Oehlman (UROC), and Olga Blomgren (HCOM and the University Writing Program) on Fostering Resilience, Persistence and Self-Reflection in Today’s Students. Read more at the conference's website.