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A large group of people gathered shoulder to shoulder on a theater stage
Photo Credit
Courtesy LAUNCH PAD
The Amplify Festival brings together veteran and emerging artists to workshop news plays and present public readings.

LAUNCH PAD Amplify Festival pairs student artists with professional playwrights

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woman on stage with cello and composer
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Courtesy
A still from UCSB student Travers Tobis's short film "The Circus Monkey," nominated for a Student Emmy Award.

Student Emmy nomination goes to UCSB team for 'The Circus Monkey'
A women sitting in a red vinyl booth inside a diner
Photo Credit
Courtesy Jason Lapeyre
Nori Muster was a devotee of the Hare Krishna movement of the 1970s and 1980s

Seeking inner peace, finding moral rot
two trucks high five

UCSB psychologist contributes to DreamWorks’ ‘Mighty Monsterwheelies,’ now on Netflix
man of East Asian descent in stadium with dramatic light
Photo Credit
Jeff Liang
Professor Sameer Pandya at UC Santa Barbara's Harder Stadium

In Sameer Pandya’s ‘Our Beautiful Boys,’ teenage secrets are the dark heart of suburbia
blue lights in shape of trees and roots
Photo Credit
Ethan Turpin & Naomi Tague
"Tree Water," detail, 2024

How an artist and a scientist uncovered hidden landscapes  
historical map of US with text in Spanish and flowers
Photo Credit
Illustration by Matt Perko
Flower picking as a metaphor for rediscovery — professor emerita Víctor Fuentes’ "Florilegio" gathers centuries of overlooked Spanish-language literature from the U.S.

Spanish-language writers and the making of a U.S. literary tradition
European Renaissance painting of Black woman blowing bubble gum in a gold frame on a blue wall with highlighted images of other Black Renaissance figures
Photo Credit
Courtesy UCSB MCC
Connecting the past to the present, the documentary "We Were Here" sparks conversations about representation, belonging and historical memory.

Europe’s hidden Black Africans of the Renaissance
Two people have a discussion on a stage
Photo Credit
Jeff Liang
Risa Brainin, right, on stage with a student actor during rehearsals for LAUNCH PAD’s production of “Strange Birds”

An intense thriller with feminist overtones
two colorful prints in exhibition space
Photo Credit
Ingrid Bostrom
Corita Kent (b. Fort Dodge, IA, 1918 - 1986), “harness the sun” and “solw,” details, both 1967, Serigraph on paper, Courtesy of Corita Art Center, Los Angeles. Art, Design & Architecture Museum, UC Santa Barbara.

California artists reimagine language, state’s identity in new exhibition
color photograph of writer Manuel Munoz standing on a staircase
Photo Credit
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
2023 MacArthur Fellow Manuel Muñoz

Manuel Muñoz wins Luis Leal Award for Distinction in Chicano/Latino Literature
A surreal painting by Taeko Tomiyama featuring masked and costumed figures in an underwater-like setting. Human, animal, and mythical characters emerge from a dark, marine background with coral, fish, and a large nautilus.
Photo Credit
Jeff Liang
Tomiyama Taeko, "Theater Beneath the Sea, 'Splendid Banquet for the Empire,'" detail, 2008, oil on canvas, gift of Sakata Natsume in memory of her mother Tomiyama Taeko, Art, Design & Architecture Museum, UC Santa Barbara.

Japanese artist Tomiyama Taeko’s critique of imperialism
A researcher in a hardhat looks off to the right on a boat.
Photo Credit
Courtesy Image

Professor David Valentine’s toxic waste discovery featured in LA Times documentary at SBIFF
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