All Events
Race & Religion Series
Black Without God: A Conversation about Atheism in African American Life
MCC Theater
This panel works with and across the boundary between the secular and religious to discuss the question of Black atheism and how it affects Black lives. Sikivu Hutchinson is the author of Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars— first book on atheism to be published by an African-American woman. William David Hart, professor at Macalester College, researches the intersection of religion, ethics, and politics. James Edward Ford III, Assistant Professor at Occidental College, researches African-American literature, black radicalism, psychoanalysis, and Messianism.
Resilient Love in a Time of Hate Series
Collective Songwriting
MCC Lounge
A person’s life views, triumphs, and struggles can be expressed in song lyrics. When practiced in community, songwriting can be a powerful exercise in consensus building and collective knowledge production. Martha Gonzalez and Quetzal Flores will briefly discuss the collective songwriting process and then engage participants in the process. If you play an instrument, please bring it. But you don't need to be a musician or have any musical abilities to participate.
Martha Gonzalez is a Chicana artivista (artist/activist) musician, feminist music theorist and Assistant Professor in the Intercollegiate Department of Chicana/o Latina/o Studies at Scripps/Claremont College..
Quetzal Flores grew up in social movements as the son of grassroots organizers. Since 1993, he has worked as the founder and musical director of the Grammy® Award-winning East LA Chican@ rock group, Quetzal.
Register for this workshop online: Click here
Resilient Love in a Time of Hate Series
An Evening of Chican@ Rock: Quetzal
The Hub
A Grammy-Award winning East LA Chican@ rock group, Quetzal is the collaborative project of Quetzal Flores (guitar), Martha González (lead vocals, percussion), Tylana Enomoto (violin), Juan Pérez (bass), Peter Jacobson (cello), and Alberto Lopez (percussion). The ensemble is influenced by an East LA rock soundscape composed of Mexican ranchera, cumbia, salsa, rock, R&B, folk, and fusions of international music. Their political vision is based in social activism, feminism, and the belief that there is radical potential in expressive culture.
Tickets on sale now: $5 for UCSB students and children under 12. $15 general admission.
Watch performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu5laJPLn7g
Co-sponsored by: the Chicana/o Studies Department, the Division of Student Affairs, the Black Studies Department, the Center for Black Studies Research and the Chicano Studies Institute.
A Poetry Reading with Yusef Komunyakaa
MCC Theater
Internationally renowned poet Yusef Komunyakaa is this year’s Diana and Simon Raab Writer-in-Residence, a program created to bring distinguished practitioners of the craft of writing to the UCSB community. Komunyakaa is the author of seventeen books of poetry, including Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems (1994), winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Currently he serves as Distinguished Senior Poet in New York University’s graduate creative writing program and is the State Poet of New York.
Co-presented by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center and the Writing Program
