the UCTV BLOG

Category: Humanities

  • Bearing Witness

    “For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.” – Elie Wiesel Following Eva Clarke’s presentation, you may be forgiven for thinking the title “Against All Odds: Born In Mauthausen” is an understatement. Clarke was one of only three children (the “miracle babies”) born into captivity in the notorious KZ Mauthausen concentration camp in…

  • Celebrating Paper Theater

    Paper theater (also called toy theater) is a form of miniature theater dating back to the early Victorian era. Paper theaters were often printed on posters and sold as kits at playhouses, opera houses, and vaudeville theaters, and proved to be an effective marketing tool. The kits were assembled at home and the plays performed…

  • Sally Ride Forever!

    When the United States Postal Service chose UC San Diego as the site to unveil its new Sally Ride Forever postage stamp, the UCSD community could not have been more thrilled. Ride, the first American woman in space, taught physics at UCSD after finishing her stellar run at NASA and then, through Sally Ride Science,…

  • Music Is Powerful

    “I say I survived for a reason: to tell my story. I believe that…Music is powerful. It is the only thing that can speak into your mind, your heart and your soul without your permission.” – Emmanuel Jal The Second Sudanese Civil War from 1983 to 2005 was one of the longest and bloodiest civil…

  • Bring Back Mammoths

    Remember Dolly the sheep? How in 1996 she made international news as the first cloned mammal? Now, imagine using those techniques to bring back extinct animals, such as the mammoth or the passenger pigeon. While the concept may no longer be science fiction, the costs and consequences of this research are still unknown. MacArthur Award…

  • Golda Meir Through a Feminist Lens

    Author and Boston University law professor Pnina Lahav discusses her forthcoming biography, “Golda Meir: Through the Gender Lens.” She explores the first and only woman prime minister of Israel, and her complex relationship with her role as a female leader in a man’s world. As a child, Golda migrated from Russia to Wisconsin and received…

  • Providing Hope

    “Gang violence is about a lethal absence of hope. Nobody has ever met a hopeful kid who joined a gang.” St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, exhorted Jesuits to strive to find God in all things while actively engaging the world, and to focus on cultivating the whole person. Put another…

  • Bridging the Gap of Understanding Between Liberals and Conservatives

    Conversations with History host Harry Kreisler welcomes Professor Arlie Hochschild, 2017 Moses Lecturer at Berkeley for a discussion of her book Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right which strives to bridge the gap of understanding between liberals and conservatives. In 2011, Hochschild noticed a resurgence of the American right…

  • Nosferatu with Werner Herzog

    Contributed by John Menier “For such an advanced civilization as ours to be without images that are adequate to it is as serious a defect as being without memory.” ― Werner Herzog The Carsey-Wolf Center at UC Santa Barbara has created a series entitled “Hollywood Berlin,” featuring screenings and discussions of films by five prominent…

  • Micro-Fiction

    Contributed by John Menier In modern English, the word “amateur” is often used in a condescending or pejorative sense, which is unfortunate. It is a borrowed French word that derives from the Latin “amator,” meaning “lover.” Hence, the term amateur was originally applied to someone who does something purely for the love of it rather…