Literature
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Shining a light on Bleak House: 46th annual Dickens Universe embraces Charles Dickens’s dark masterpiece
Bleak House, a 377,000-word page turner about family intrigue, wicked lawyers, and grinding legal bureaucracy, will be the focus of the 46th annual Dickens Universe this summer.
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From Homer to Hollywood: The enduring fascination with The Odyssey
Ahead of Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster film release, UC Santa Cruz classics professors discuss the enduring fascination with The Odyssey
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Alumnus John Kim receives multiple film festival selections for his debut independent feature film Reunion
John Kim’s (Porter ’84, creative writing and literature) debut independent feature film Reunion follows an Asian American funeral home worker who attends his high school reunion hoping to jump-start his life, only to be mistaken for a successful alumnus from another school—a billionaire whom no one has seen since graduation.
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A reckoning in fiction: Karen Tei Yamashita returns to Bookshop Santa Cruz with acclaimed new novel Questions 27 & 28
Bookshop Santa Cruz will host the celebrated novelist and Emeritus Professor of Literature Karen Tei Yamashita for the launch of her new book, Questions 27 & 28, in conversation with History Professor Alice Yang.
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Alumna and Anthropic co-founder Daniela Amodei and civil-rights activist Dolores Huerta named in Time’s 100 Most Influential People of 2026
Daniela Amodei graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 2009 with a B.A. in literature and a minor in politics. In 2022, UCSC’s Research Center for the Americas was renamed in honor of social justice icon Dolores Huerta; the university continues to collaborate with the Dolores Huerta Foundation.
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Humanities EXPLORE Fellows bridge history, culture, and community
This year’s Humanities EXPLORE Program fellows are adventurous and ambitious, transcribing 300-year–old texts, helping to revitalize forgotten languages, exploring archives, and learning from faculty mentors. This winter, two fellows were given film cameras to preserve and share their experiences of connection, creativity, and purpose.
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Humanities skills are transferable skills
UC Santa Cruz humanities students graduate with a toolkit of transferable skills in high demand across fields ranging from academia to the entertainment industry and high-tech startups. Here are the stories of UC Santa Cruz humanities graduates thriving in a wide range of jobs.
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Humanities graduates apply human-centered thinking in impactful careers
Across disciplines, they point to critical thinking, ethical reasoning, adaptability, and empathy as core strengths developed through humanities coursework.
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Distinguished Professor of Literature Carla Freccero dies at 69
Carla Freccero, distinguished professor and chair of the Literature Department and a beloved mentor to hundreds of graduate students, died this week at Stanford Hospital, surrounded by loved ones. She was 69.
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Shaping the future of artificial intelligence
UC Santa Cruz experts are working to guide AI in ethical, sustainable, and socially beneficial directions
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Uncovering the troubling legacy of racism in fairy tales
In Specters of the Marvelous: Race And The Development Of The European Fairy Tale, Literature Professor Kimberly Lau reveals how “innocent” stories often encoded virulent prejudice.
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Using speculative fiction to fill the silences of Colonial history
In his acclaimed new book, First Contact, Associate Professor of Literature Zac Zimmer draws on the power of speculative fiction to revisit, question and upend stories and tropes about early contact between European explorers and Indigenous populations.