Events By Quarter
Monterey Park Tragedy Community Processing Space
MCC Lounge
The MCC is hosting a collective and safe space for healing and to process the senseless violence against the AAPI community during a Lunar New Year Celebration. It is devastating when children, friends, families, and communities cannot celebrate their cultures and connections in their sacral ways and spaces without experiencing hatred and violence.
Today and this week may feel heavy, please prioritize your emotional and mental wellness. If you or someone you know need communal support, please join us today at the MCC Lounge from 1:30-3:30PM for a healing and processing space.
This space will substitute for Spiritual Care Club and be one of many healing spaces provided by campus this week. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions.
Lunar New Year Celebration
MCC Lounge
The Asian American Studies Department in collaboration with the MultiCultural Center presents a Lunar New Year Celebration.
Come celebrate Lunar New Year with food, karaoke, and raffle prizes.
Cup of Culture
Sins Invalid: An Unshamed Claim to Beauty (screening #2)
MCC Lounge
5-7:30 PM, 32min documentary begins at 6 PM
Sins Invalid witnesses a performance project that incubates and celebrates artists with disabilities, centralizing artists of color, and queer and gender-variant artists. Since 2006, its performances have explored themes of sexuality, beauty, and the disabled body, impacting thousands through live performance. Sins Invalid is an entryway into the absurdly taboo topic of sexuality and disability, manifesting a new paradigm of disability justice.
Activity Description: For the duration of this event, art supplies and pages of the “Disability Justice from A to Z coloring book” will be available in the MCC lounge for attendees to benefit from the creative, embodied, and self-soothing aspects of coloring. Attendees will have the opportunity to join community discussions before and after the documentary screening. The documentary will be captioned, and an ASL interpreter will be present.
Co-sponsors: Commission on Disability Equity (CODE), DSP, & RCSGD
Resilient Love
**EVENT POSTPONED** - This Arab Is Queer
EVENT POSTPONED
** EVENT POSTPONED **
(1/17/23) - This event has been postponed. Please check back with the MCC for updates.
Building on the ground-breaking anthology consisting of memoirs from queer Arab writers, we will discuss heart-warming connections and moments of celebration as well as the challenges of being LGBTQ+ and Arab. Our panelists will represent and discuss a variety of Arab cultural perspectives and LGBTQ+ identities. The conversation will be moderated by UCSB graduate student Richard Nedjat-Haiem, and panelists will include Elias Jahshan, Palestinian/Lebanese-Australian editor of This Arab is Queer, and Bibi Alabdullah, a Kuwaiti trans woman and advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, among other panelist(s).
Bios: Moderator Richard Nedjat-Haiem (he/him) is a PhD student in the Department of Comparative Literature at UCSB. He was born and raised to Middle Eastern Jewish parents in Los Angeles. Richard works on Middle Eastern cultural anthropology in popular culture. Speaker Bios: Elias Jahshan (he/him) is a Palestinian/Lebanese-Australian journalist, writer, and editor. He is a former editor of Star Observer, Australia’s longest-running LGBTQ+ media outlet. His short memoir “Coming Out Palestinian” was anthologised in Arab Australian Other (Picador, 2019), and he has written freelance for outlets including The Guardian, SBS Voices, and Jordan-based LGBTQ e-zine My.Kali. Born and raised in western Sydney, he now lives in London and is the social media editor at The New Arab. Bibi Alabdullah (she/her) is a Kuwaiti trans woman who immigrated to the US in 2015. Educated in accounting and finance, she is an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ+ rights in the Middle East.
