Humanities
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Review: Isaac Julien at The Cosmic House
Arts writer Rob Wilson praised Distinguished Professor of History of Consciousness and the Arts Isaac Julien for his “sumptuous” installation, All That Changes You: Metamorphosis, created with his longtime partner, History of Consciousness Professor Mark Nash
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Sculpture! Champagne! Celebrities! Inside the Serpentine’s Glitzy Summer Party
Celebrities, patrons, and art world luminaries – including Sir Isaac Julien, Distinguished Professor of History of Consciousness and the Arts – descended on London’s Kensington Gardens in droves on Tuesday night for the much-anticipated, invitation-only Serpentine Summer Party.
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Look, choose: the museum is a dream. The visions of Isaac Julien in the gres art 671 cultural space
An Italian newspaper covered Museum Dreams, a major immersive exhibition and retrospective by pioneering British filmmaker and UC Santa Cruz Distinguished Professor Isaac Julien that’s on display through early October. The article mentions the Moving Image Lab at UC Santa Cruz that Julien co-leads with Professor Mark Nash.
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Why are so many Bay Area theaters staging ‘Dracula’ in 2026?
If you need a symbol for fascism, economic precarity or rapid technological advancement, try “Dracula.” Renee Fox, an associate professor of literature at UC Santa Cruz and a co-director of the school’s Center for Monster Studies, sees a throughline in the eras when vampire stories peak.
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Luminous new historical fiction
The New York Times’ book columnist Alida Becker called Emeritus Professor of Literature Karen Tei Yamashita’s new book ‘luminous’ and listed it among the month’s best new book releases.
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The Book That Plunges You Into Messy American History
The Atlantic Monthly ran a detailed feature story about Professor Emeritus of Literature Karen Tei Yamashita’s new book and how she “challenges readers to join her in deciphering a shameful moment from the nation’s past.”
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Karen Tei Yamashita began with Japanese American History. Then She Made Things Up.
In her sprawling new novel, Professor Emeritus of Literature Karen Tei Yamashita sprinkles fanciful details (a trombone narrator!) into the bracing story of World War II internment.
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7 Books That Use Family Archives to Break Generational Silence
Tamiko Nimura of Electric Literature named Emeritus Literature Professor Karen Tei Yamashita’s book Letters To Memory in its list of acclaimed books that tell untold stories by delving deeply into family archives. “It’s difficult to describe this inventive journey through family history, wartime incarceration and resettlement, but it’s poetic, funny, and deeply intelligent,” writes Nimura.
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The 18 Best Books of 2026 (So Far) – Esquire
In an Esquire books roundup, reviewer Adam Morgan said that Emeritus Literature Professor Karen Tei Yamashita deserves to be a literary household name and that he “devoured” her ambitious fifth novel, Questions 27 & 28, titled after the “so-called loyalty questionnaire” that 120,000 Japanese Americans were forced to take during their internment in concentration camps.
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Talking Talmud On Tik Tok
Nathaniel Deutsch, professor of Jewish studies, was quoted in a story about Shalom Landau, a 48-year-old Hasidic rabbi in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn who has become an unlikely star on Instagram and Tik Tok.
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The Novelist Reimagining the Japanese American Internment
The New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu wrote an in-depth laudatory review of Emeritus Professor of Literature and Creative Writing Karen Tei Yamashita’s new book Questions 27 & 28, which “opens an inquiry into how the story of the past gets made.”
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Five overlooked films you must watch
A group of experts experts including the directors Charles Burnett and Ava DuVernay recommended Distinguished Professor of The Arts and History of Consciousness Isaac Julien’s 2008 film “Derek” as one of the five best movies not enough people have seen.