The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz

05/30/2026

David has been such a wonderful supporter of the humanities and our work at THI. It's terrific to see this story recognizing his remarkable career as a UCSC alum. We're grateful for his continued contributions!

05/27/2026

Join us for a free, public event on May 31 with author and mycologist Merlin Sheldrake. He’ll discuss his New York Times best-selling book “Entangled Life: How Fungi Make our Worlds, Change our Minds, and Shape our Futures” with Associate Professor of History Benjamin Breen.

The Deep Read is for everyone—students, alumni, parents, friends, neighbors, and readers everywhere who want to engage with big ideas and join meaningful conversations.

Together, we’ll explore the dependence of all life—human, plant, animal, and beyond—on fungal networks and how the resulting interconnections provoke us to reconsider our understanding of existence, identity, intelligence, and more.

05/26/2026

We love our local Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History! ✨

As the MAH marks 30 years, we’re celebrating a decade of partnerships with the UC Santa Cruz Humanities Division and The Humanities Institute. Since 2016, we’ve worked together on exhibitions, public programs, community-engaged research, and experiential learning opportunities for students.

Check out a few favorite moments from the last ten years. Here’s to many more collaborations ahead!

📸 Image descriptions:

1. Rebecca Snyder (literature, ‘23) trains Elsie (critical race & ethnic studies, ‘26) to handle and preserve local archival materials at the MAH.

2. Panelists at THI’s 2025 Night at the Museum on Amending Worlds. Photo by West Cliff Creative.

3. Top photo from left to right: THI's Managing Director Irena Polić, Rick Baldoz, Rudy P. Guevarra, Jr., Humanities Dean Jasmine Alinder, Catherine Ceniza Choy, Kathleen Gutierrez, Steve McKay at the 2024 exhibition Sowing Seeds: Filipino American Stories from the Pajaro Valley by Watsonville is in the Heart. The bottom photo shows attendees at THI’s Night at the Museum "From the Archives: Conversations on Filipino America." Photos by Crystal Birns.

4. Visitors view a pop-up exhibition at the MAH featuring images from a 1968 photography project on California’s Black Panther Party, preserved by UC Santa Cruz’s Special Collections & Archives. Photo from 2018.

5. Visitors view the Kinsey African American Art and History Collection at the MAH, one of the first major collaborations between UC Santa Cruz Humanities and the museum. Photo from 2016.

05/20/2026

Come join our second Deep Read salon of the year at the UC Santa Cruz Hay Barn at 6pm on May 26, 2026, to explore fungi’s role in literature and poetry.

Led by professors Hannah Cole, Brenda Hillman, Laurie Palmer, Jennifer Tseng, and Laura Martin, our discussion will be focused on the literary, artistic, and poetic approaches to fungi, fungal webs, and the major themes of Merlin Sheldrake’s “Entangled Life.” Participants can attend both in person and online.

05/19/2026

Joshua Lieberstein is a first-year MA student in Linguistics and was a 2024-25 THI Undergraduate Research Fellow. His research is on K’iche’, a Guatemalan Mayan language spoken by around a million people. He specifically focuses on the Chichicastenango dialect, a regional variety with only 70,000 speakers, and works with native speakers in Chichicastenango to document the uniqueness of their variety.

We recently caught up with Joshua to learn more about his research as a THI Fellow, his fieldwork in Guatemala, and his experience in the Linguistics Department. Joshua reflects, “The THI fellowship I received enabled me in a big way to pursue my burgeoning research program on Chichicastenango K’iche’. It was empowering to have the opportunity to conduct my own independent research and put into practice the tools I had learned in my undergraduate coursework up until that point.”

📷 Image descriptions:
1. Photo of Joshua Lieberstein with the text “2024-25 THI Undergraduate Research Fellow.”
2. Photo of Juan and Miguel Leon Cortez, ajq’ijab’ (Maya daykeeper), wearing their su’t (ceremonial headpiece), and photo of Juan Genardo Saquic Jorge, Joshua’s friend and collaborator, beautifying the world with his murals with Joshua’s quote.

05/13/2026

Join the UCSC Center for Cultural Studies for the 2026 Helene Moglen Lecture in Feminism and Humanities with Donna Haraway, “Staying with the Trouble for Still Possible Times.” Donna Haraway is a Distinguished Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department and writes and speaks in science and technology studies, feminist theory, and multispecies studies.

The lecture will be held next week on Wednesday, May 20th at the Merrill Cultural Center and via Zoom. Doors open at 5:00pm, the lecture begins at 5:30pm and will be followed by a Q&A.

Presented by UCSC’s Center for Cultural Studies and made possible by the Helene Moglen Lecture in Feminism and Humanities for the Center for Cultural Studies Endowment, and The Humanities Institute.

📸 Image description:
Photo of Donna Haraway with paper-crafted insects on her shoulders and the lecture title and time.

05/12/2026

Join us at 6pm on May 19, 2026, at the UCSC Hay Barn for our first Deep Read salon exploring Merlin Sheldrake’s “Entangled Life.”

Moderated by Laura Martin and featuring presentations from Professors Benjamin Breen, Greg Gilbert, and Donna Haraway, we’ll explore Sheldrake’s take on fungal webs and their role in our world from the perspectives of history, environmental studies, philosophy, and more. Faculty presentations will be followed by an audience Q&A and community discussion. Participants can join both in person and online.

05/12/2026

We're looking forward to the Santa Cruz County History Fair this weekend!

Thank you The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz for sponsoring the presenters!

05/11/2026

Inez Lynch Alfaro is a senior majoring in Feminist Studies and Studio Art at UC Santa Cruz and a 2025–26 THI Undergraduate Research Fellow. Her THI project combines feminist auto-ethnography, oral history, and photography to examine how ideas about gender are constructed and passed down across multiple generations in her family. Last December, Inez traveled to Brazil to conduct interviews with family members, explore family archives, and create photographs for the project.

Inez reflects on how her research experience has changed how she sees her family: “This project has changed so much about how I think about my family because it has given me so much new information, so many new stories. It was an incredibly beautiful experience to conduct the interviews with my own mother by my side, and for both of us to learn things that we didn’t know about people who we have considered family for dozens of years. I keep wishing that I could do this project on every side of my family; it really underscored the importance of asking questions, even to people that you think you know well.”

📸Image description:
Slide 1: Image of Inez Lynch Alfaro with a black and white photo of Inez’s grandmother. Text reads “Undergraduate Student Profile: Inez Lynch Alfaro.”
Slide 2: Black and white photo of a Bible and rosary inside Inez’s grandmother’s house, and text with Inez’s quote.

05/06/2026

Applications are open for THI Faculty Funding opportunities! 📚✨

THI Research Clusters support groups of faculty exploring innovative ideas and collaborations that can grow into larger, self-sustaining programs. These experimental initiatives serve as incubators for interdisciplinary research, helping scholars build dynamic connections across disciplines.

THI Faculty Research Grants provide direct support for Humanities faculty research projects. Funding may be used for travel, publication costs, student research assistants, research materials, manuscript workshops, and other research-related expenses.

Proposals are due by May 15.

📸 Image description:
In a box on the left, former THI Faculty Fellow Madhavi Murty types at her computer. In a box on the right, scholars gather in room 210 for a THI Research Cluster meeting. The text shares that THI Faculty Research funding opportunities are due May 15.