Victoria Reyes' book Global Borderlands: Fantasy, Violence and Empire in Subic Bay, Philippines is the winner of the 2020 Emory Elliott Award. For more information about her work, we are sharing an updated version of her 2019 interview in our In Focus series. A big congratulations to Victoria! *** In Focus Victoria Reyes Participant, Mellon Advancing Intercultural Studies, Contested Histories Seminar Department: Sociology Rank: Assistant Professor # of years at UCR: Entering 4th year at UCR but 3rd year on campus because during my first year [...]

A banner year for UCR in awards from the UC Humanities Research Institute! UCR students and faculty won 10 awards including two of the most competitive awards in the system: the President’s Faculty Research Fellowship, won by Gloria Kim (Media and Cultural Studies), and the White Graduate Student Scholarship in Medicine & Humanities won by Jared Smith (Philosophy). Kudos to all applicants and this year’s awardees! ✪ Multicampus Graduate Student Working Group XIX to XXI: Bringing Spanish language in California to the forefront Álvaro Gonzelz [...]

The Faculty Commons Latinx & Latin American Studies Workgroup recently hosted an online book manuscript workshop for Xóchitl Chavez (Music), who found the virtual workshop to be very helpful. “I'm sure it would have been nice to share a meal to build further collegial ties,” she said, “but otherwise what is essential at this point is the content from the workshop.” All the participants in the two-hour Zoom session agreed, calling the workshop a “success” and a “great template” for future virtual meetings. For [...]

Dear colleagues, In these stressful times, the work of building community is more important than ever. We’re re-designing our book talks, panel discussions, and reading groups so that you can join in online – where ever you are. As we develop our plans, we would love to hear your ideas for meetings, events or programs that help keep us all in engaged and moving forward. Email us at CISevents@ucr.edu. Check back soon for more details!

Congratulations to the following UCR faculty and students for being awarded a UCHRI grant for the year 2019-20! Alisa Bierria, Ethnic Studies Feminist Anti-Carceral Research Initiative ✪ Engaging Humanities Grant Michelle Dizon, Media and Cultural Studies Fugitive Archives ✪ Engaging Humanities Grant Dana Simmons, History Humanities Careers in Science History, Policy, and Communication (H-SCHIP) ✪ Grad Professionalization Workshop Grant Samuel Fullerton, History Sex and the English Revolution ✪ Dissertation Award Chelsea Silva, English Bedwritten: Middle English Medicine and the Ailing Author ✪ Dissertation Award [...]

Congratulations to the following UCR faculty for being awarded a UCHRI grant for the year 2019-20! Ademide Adelusi-Adeluyi Department of History Imagine Lagos: Speculative Cartography and the Making of a 19th Century African City ✪ Junior Faculty Manuscript Workshop --- Alejandra Dubcovsky Department of History At the Frontlines of a Forgotten War: Violence, Gender, and Conflict in the Early South ✪ Mid-Career Faculty Manuscript Workshops --- Dana Simmons Department of History Hungry, Thinking with Animals ✪ Mid-Career Faculty Manuscript Workshops --- Erith Jaffe-Berg Department [...]

Introducing the 2019-20 Mellon Humanities Fellows at the Center for Ideas and Society. Please join us in congratulating our colleagues who have received a year-long residency fellowship at the Center. David Biggs Over the next year, I will conduct a study of base-periphery shorelines in the Pacific (California, Guam, and Vietnam then continuing to sites in the Philippines, Okinawa, Hawai’i, and several atolls) with historical attention focused on the people—scientists, troops, families, refugees, laborers—and non-human life forms that circulated between them. This site-based focus will allow [...]

The Global Nineteenth-Century Working Group at the Center for Ideas and Society invites applications for Graduate Student Fellows in 2019-20. The Fellowship includes participation in two events: 1) A one-day, interdisciplinary workshop, loosely organized around the sub-themes of “Architectures,” “Devotional Practices” and “Empires” in the long nineteenth century, to take place on Friday, September 27, 2019. At this event, three local and three invited faculty will share works-in-progress. Graduate fellows will read these works in advance and participate fully in the discussions, lunch, [...]

Laila Lalami, a creative writing professor and author of several books, is the winner of the 2019 Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize. She was one of five finalists announced last month, selected from authors nominated by publishers, critics, agents, authors, and other author representatives. Lalami, who received a $50,000 prize, said she was thrilled to receive the award and honored to be in the company of the other finalists. “This award is a wonderful gift of time, which I will use to work on [...]

UC Riverside Creative Writing Professor Laila Lalami is one of six finalists for the 2019 Simpson Literary Prize, which honors mid-career fiction authors. Lalami is the author of multiple award-winning novels, including her most recent book, “The Moor’s Account.” Her new novel, “The Other Americans,” will be published later this month. The $50,000 Simpson Literary Prize has been awarded annually since 2017 by the Simpson Project, a collaboration of the Lafayette Library and Learning Center Foundation and UC Berkeley’s English department. The finalists, announced March 6, [...]

Dana Simmons has devoted her life to teaching. She is an associate professor in the department of history and has been teaching at UC Riverside for 13 years. “With very little, if any, compensation, Dana has been tireless in her efforts to advance the careers of women faculty,” said Goldberry Long, UCR professor of creative writing. “She's truly the colleague we all hope for, one who wants all colleagues to be successful.  She works on their behalf without any apparent desire for recognition or [...]

Warm wishes from everyone at the Center for Ideas & Society! This coming year in 2019, the Center will be celebrating its 30th Anniversary. As we move forward into the new year, we will look back at the Center's history and impact over the last 30 years. Stay tuned!

The Center for Ideas and Society is pleased to announce that the winner of the annual Emory Elliott Book Award is Sang-Hee Lee for Close Encounters with Humankind. Please join us in congratulating Sang-Hee for her outstanding contribution to scholarship in CHASS. An award celebration will be hosted in winter 2019. Details coming soon. About the Book What can fossilized teeth tell us about the life expectancy of our ancient ancestors? How did farming play a problematic role in the history of human evolution? How [...]

UCR News Article on upcoming Hot off the Presses speaker, Jade S. Sasser and her new book: "On Infertile Ground: Population Control and Women's Rights in the Era of Climate Change." Jade S. Sasser's new book highlights contemporary population control’s consequences for poor women in the Global South. Over the past 100 years, the popularity of population control in the United States has ebbed and flowed. Once considered a responsible way to safeguard the planet and ensure its future viability, population control [...]

Author and UC Riverside Professor Rachelle Cruz gives a speech as she accepts an American Book Award on Sunday, Oct. 28. (Photo courtesy of Cati Porter, Inlandia Institute) UC Riverside Professor Rachelle Cruz accepted an American Book Award on Sunday, Oct. 28, an honor that the Inland literary community says is a milestone not just for her but also for the region. Cruz’s poetry collection, “God’s Will for Monsters,” was among 15 winners that the Before Columbus Foundation chose to recognize for  “outstanding literary achievement from [...]

Photo by Jimmy Lai/ Student Photographer, CHASS Marketing & Communications "Close Encounters with Humankind" is not your typical textbook. Every chapter starts with a question. Questions can be about the birth of fatherhood, or farming, or our changing brains. "A lot of the textbooks talk about the beginning that happened billions of years ago,” Lee said, “but this book starts with a question each chapter.  Each chapter is an exploration." The questions challenge the traditional progression of evolution and provide intriguing insights [...]

In a bold acknowledgment of the University of California, Riverside’s humanities programs, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded $1 million to the university’s Center for Ideas and Society. The award, which comes on the eve of the Center for Ideas and Society’s 30th anniversary in 2019, is the largest the center has ever received. It will support a series of fellowships for faculty members pursuing humanities and humanities-related scholarship, said UCR’s Georgia Warnke, center director and distinguished professor of political science. “This award [...]

Congratulations to Catherine Gudis (History), recipient of a UCHRI Engaging Humanities Grant for her project: Skid Row History Museum and Archives. Catherine Gudis is Director of the Public History Program at UCR and teaches classes in public history and 20th century U.S. history, building on her twin interests in modern consumer culture and cultural and urban constructions of race, space, and place. She received her B.A. in Philosophy from Smith College and Ph.D. in American Studies (with distinction) from Yale University, where she also won [...]

Catharina Santasilia (UC Riverside, Ph.D. Candidate, Anthropology) has been featured in Medium's latest issue. Santasilia was a participant in the Rise of Civilization in Mesoamerica Conference back in February 2018. Forget the hat and whip made famous by Indiana Jones. For a preteen Catharina E. Santasilia, her love of archaeology started with Daniel Day-Lewis. It was the actor’s star-making performance in “The Last of the Mohicans” that inspired the Denmark-born Santasilia’s lifelong interest in indigenous peoples and the things they left behind. “I’ve always [...]

Congratulations to Jody Benjamin (History), recipient of a UCHRI Junior Faculty Manuscript Workshop award for his project: The Texture of Change: Cloth, Commerce and History in Western Africa, 1700–1850. Additional kudos for two UCR graduate students who have received Graduate Student Dissertation Support Grants from UCHRI: Mackenzie Gregg: Plagues that Fascinate: Literary Leprosy and Queer Affect in the Victorian Fin de Siècle Hannah Manshel: The Freedom of a Broken Law

Congratulations to CIS Senior Fellow Stephen Sohn (English), recipient of a 2018 NEH Summer Stipend for his project: The Korean War (1950-53) in Poetry by Korean Americans. NEH Summer Stipends support individuals pursuing advanced research that is of value to humanities scholars, general audiences, or both. The fellowship sponsors continuous full-time work on a humanities project for a period of two consecutive months. Stephen Sohn, a former University of California President’s Postdoctoral fellow (2006-2007), has edited or co-edited a number of different works and [...]

Loubna Qutami (Ethnic Studies) has been awarded a UC Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship at UC Berkeley. Congratulations! Loubna, a recent recipient of a CIS Humanities Graduate Student Research award, will complete her dissertation and graduate in June. She has completed a Masters of Arts degree in the College of Ethnic Studies: Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative at San Francisco State University. Her Master’s Thesis Transnational Belonging: Palestinian Youth Searching for Home interrogates the imagined and real boundaries impacting transnational Palestinian youth movements and belonging to homeland. [...]

Congratulations to Eric Stanley (Gender & Sexuality Studies), recipient of the 2018-19 UC President’s Faculty Research Fellowship for "Queer Remains: Race, Trans Resistance, and the Aesthetics of Violence​."  The award program, administered through UCHRI, provides UC faculty with fellowship support to carry out an extended research project in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. 

If you’ve ever wondered what it means to be human, what our purpose is in the world, and why things happen the way they do, you’re not alone. That’s the mission of the Center for Ideas and Society at the University of California, Riverside — to encourage and nurture humanities-related inquiry and discussion. “The academic disciplines referred to as ‘the humanities’ are often seen as either indulgences or extras in a university setting, which is more likely to be associated with research and innovation [...]