Engaging Audiences and Pressing Issues: The UCI Humanities Center's Fall Program on Oceans and the 1619 Project

Over the past few months, the travel restrictions that have attended the COVID-19 pandemic have forced humanities centers and institutes (HCI) have been forced to adapt and innovate in the space of virtual events.

One HCI that has made this transition particularly well is the Humanities Center at the University of California Irvine. This year, they have organized two signature series that connect not only with the local campus and community partners, but also with larger conversations happening at the national and international levels.

The first series, titled “Oceans,” will explore the relationship between humanities-based inquiry and cultural production and the vast bodies of water that surround and connect the continents. Over the course of the academic year, the Oceans series will engage topics of both historical and contemporary importance and provide an opportunity to foster a variety of partnerships: Between the Humanities and STEAM disciplines; between the university and community organizations engaged in social justice and sustainability issues; and across university campuses through the environmental humanities. The fall line up will feature events on “Blackness in the Indian Ocean” and another on the sixteenth century slave trade to the America. Also, the center is working in partnership with the local public library to sponsor a “Stories from the Sea” internship to train UCI undergraduate students to help preserve and share meaningful and diverse community stories about the sea.

The theme of race in the “Oceans” programming connects directly with the other series organized by the Humanities Center at UCI concerning the New York Times’ 1619 Project. Throughout the month of October, the Humanities Center will host multiple events per week designed to engage the Center’s different audiences by exploring the past, present, and future of race and racism in politics, education, banking, health care, visual arts, and music.

The series culminates with two events on October 29 featuring Nikole Hannah-Jones, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author who initiated and oversaw the 1619 Project. The penultimate event is an informal conversation between Hannah-Jones and students at UCI. The 1619 Project series concludes with a keynote conversation with Hannah-Jones facilitated by Professor of Law and co-author of The 1619 Project Mehrsa Baradaran, whose own works concerns banking among Black Americans.

All CHCI member organizations are encouraged to attend these virtual events. For event descriptions and event registration, please visit the UCI Humanities Center website.

The Oceans and 1619 Project series programming carry a host of co-sponsors, from departments and divisions to interdisciplinary research centers and professional organizations. The Oceans series will engage with campus partners such as the UCI Library system and the communities of southern California, most notably with k-12 teachers who are interested in integrating The 1619 Project into their curriculum. For The 1619 Project, the UCI Libraries have collected related podcasts and reading materials, and dozens of classes across the university have connected their classes to the Project. To further engage students, the Humanities Center is sponsoring a student showcase that encourages undergraduates to reflect on how the 1619 Project has impacted them directly through 1-minute, publicly shared YouTube videos.

Bringing together inter-disciplinary conversations and working with other campus units and community members, the fall events of the Humanities Center at UCI demonstrate that capacity of HCIs to develop programming that forges community, engages various local and non-local audiences, and explores the pressing issues of today in a multi-dimensional and socially distanced fashion.

UCI Humanities Center:

The Humanities Center fosters intellectual dialogue between the faculty and students of UCI and the communities of Orange County and beyond. Our goal is to promote a wide range of interdisciplinary work in the humanities, and to facilitate the sharing of that work with audiences within and beyond the disciplinary units that we represent. The Center works to fulfill these goals through awarding grants to faculty and graduate students for research in the humanities; coordinating and sponsoring special events on campus; offering professionalization and diverse career opportunities for students; and sponsoring research projects that foster student-community collaboration.