Humanities Event Series

The Humanities Event Series invites students to engage with the ancient and modern core texts we teach in our courses in ways that encourage students to self-consciously reflect on what gives one’s life value and meaning. With each new event, we hope to create and strengthen partnerships with other colleges, academic departments, and campus organizations that result in a more connected and engaged student community.

2025

Book jacket of with my back to the world. Victoria chang and her two weenie dogs.

Victoria Chang is a Guggenheim fellow and author of With My Back to the World (2024), a collection of poetry that engages with the abstract artist Agnes Martin and explores the interior life of the self. It focuses on the navigation of the challenges of a world too often marked by indifference with wonder, beauty and humor.

Offered in partnership with the New Writing Series, and co-sponsored by Revelle College, Marshall College's Dimensions of Culture Program, Asian American Pacific Islander Studies, and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.

UCSD Today article, "UC San Diego honors Asian and Pacific Islander Americans (APIA) during APIA Heritage Month."

2024

Stage actors in play, one is gesticulating wildly with his hand.

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, "The Mexican Pheonix," was a philosopher, poet, and playwright. Her last work, Love is the Greater Labyrinth, updates the classical Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur for a late seventeenth-century Mexican audience. Director Ludmila de Brito and Stage Manager Stephanie Carrizales, UCSD Theater FMA graduate students, brought a dramatic stage reading to life with a cast of UC San Diego students.

Love is the Greater Labyrinth was translated and offered in partnership with UCLA's Diversifying the Classics and co-sponsored by the Humanities Program at Revelle College, the UC San Diego Parents Fund, the Revelle College 60th Anniversary Committee, the UC San Diego Alumni Association, Chicanx and Latinx Studies, and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.

UCLA's Diversifying the Classics article.

2023

Headshot of montas, and book jacket of rescuing socrates, which has a statue of socrates in a lifebouy.

Roosevelt Montás, author of Rescuing Socrates, is a senior lecturer and director of Columbia University’s Freedom and Citizenship Program, which introduces low-income high school students to the Western political tradition. In Rescuing Socrates, Montás offers an intimate account of the relevance of the Great Books today, especially to members of historically marginalized communities.

Offered in partnership with Chicanx and Latinx Studies, and co-sponsored by Revelle College, Roosevelt College's Making of the Modern World, and the UC San Diego Parents Fund.

2022

12 people are on stage, seated at microphones, while rows of people look onto them.

The Suppliants Project presents dramatic readings by acclaimed actors of scenes from Aeschylus’ play The Suppliants—an ancient tragedy about fifty refugees who seek asylum in the ancient city of Argos, and the struggle within that city about whether to receive them—as a catalyst for powerful, candid discussions about immigration, domestic and gender-based violence, human trafficking, and the refugee crisis.

In partnership with Theater of War, and co-sponsored by Revelle College, The Center for Hellenic Studies, Chicanx and Latinx Studies, and the UC San Diego Parents Fund.
_{Additional support from The Institute of Arts and Humanities, Office of the Dean of the School of Arts and Humanities, Vice Chancellor’s Office for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, Society for Classical Studies, Gerry and Jeannie Ranglas Chair in Ancient Greek History, Making of the Modern World, Eleanor Roosevelt College, Classical Studies Program, History, Latin American Studies, The Ancient Jewish Civilizations Chair, and Middle East Studies. Support for digital programming is provided, in part, by the Mellon Foundation.}

UCSD Today article, "Using Ancient Texts to Foster Compassion and Empathy Today."

2022

Headshot of jericho brown, book jacket of the tradition, which features an illustration of a black boy in a flower crown and amongst a field of flowers

Jericho Brown is the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and author of The Tradition (2019), which questions why and how we’ve become accustomed to terror: in the bedroom, the classroom, the workplace, and the movie theater. Brown interrupts complacency by locating each emergency in the garden of the body, where living things grow and wither—or survive.

Offered in partnership with the New Writing Series, with additional support from the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, Black Resource Center and LGBT Resource Center.

UCSD Today article, "Pulitzer Prize-Winning Poet Brings The Tradition to Campus."

2021

Headshot of matthew zapruder, and book jacket of father's day, which features a photograph of a young zapruder in profile, opposite of his father.

Matthew Zapruder, Guggenheim fellow, is also the author of Why Poetry (2017), an impassioned call for a return to reading poetry, as well as four other poetry collections, including Father’s Day (2019). This collection brings forth the events and inner questions that shape the life of a new father, a husband, a citizen attempting to think clearly as a nation convulses and changes. The title refers not just to our nuclear families, but to our problematic, limited, founding fathers.

2020

Headshot of ada limon, and the book jacket of the carrying, which is red, black, and white textured paint in broad strokes.

Ada Limón, 24th Poet Laureate of the United States and Guggenheim fellow, is the author of The Carrying (2019). The poetry collection explores with honesty the ambiguous moment between the rapture of youth and the grace of acceptance. There, Limón meets topics of aging parents and infertility with the persistence of hunger, love, and joy.