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‘Indigeneity & Climate Justice’ conference foregrounds how to care for rather than manage the earth

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The Feminist Studies Department at UC Santa Cruz presented Indigeneity & Climate Justice, a two-day conference at the Arboretum on May 30-31, 2019.

In a campus news article, Barad described the difference between environmental justice and climate justice, noting that the latter also ‘considers the mix of ecological, cultural, social, political, geological, legal, and biological forces.’

The campus article can be found at: https://news.ucsc.edu/2019/05/feminist-climate-justice.html

More on the conference at: https://feministstudies.ucsc.edu/news-events/department-news/science-conference/index.html

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Call | Undergraduate Researcher for Science & Justice Jail / Care multimedia project

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Interested in the Intersections of the Carceral State, Health Care and Interactive Multimedia?

SJRC will host one undergraduate student to collaborate on a center research project. The project will include guided independent and collaborative research, directed readings, and storytelling of the human condition.

PROJECT

Jail / Care: Amplifying Santa Cruz Community Voices on Health & Incarceration

From 2012 to 2016, there were five preventable deaths in the Santa Cruz County jail, more than twice the national per capita average. Last summer, a preliminary interview study was conducted to investigate the healthcare provided in the jail. This summer, we are expanding on this work with additional interviews (of formerly incarcerated people, healthcare providers, and other involved parties), which will be incorporated into an interactive online documentary on the issue. The Research Assistant will assist in various tasks toward the completion of this project: see below for a tentative list of duties.

Spring 2019

Attend at least one meeting to discuss the project and set workplan.

Summer 2019

Assist with transcribing and analyzing interviews, review literature on healthcare in prisons and jails and related topics, research organizations and institutions, research and analyze policy documents, and possibly other tasks as needed.

Fall 2019

Assist in developing a prototype of the online documentary, continue with data analysis, literature and policy review.

The student should:

  • be an enrolled student at UC Santa Cruz (enrollment during summer not required).

  • be living in Santa Cruz summer 2019; ideally through the end of fall 2019 – at least.

  • know NVIVO software (license provided; if not available).

The student will:

  • be compensated $500; distributed half at the beginning of summer, half at the end of summer.

  • be eligible to enroll in an Independent Study Fall 2019 for continued research.

  • adhere to IRB standards for working with human research subjects.

To Apply:

By Monday, May 20, students should email (scijust@ucsc.edu) expressing interest. Please let us know the following:

  1. Your name, major, college affiliation.

  2. Why you are interested in the project.

  3. Your experiences with NVIVO software and items listed in the above outlined workplan (including human subjects research).

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2019-2020 Call for Graduate Student Researcher

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Interested in the Intersections of Science and Justice?

Want to Develop Responsible Collaborative Research and Public Events?

 

Science & Justice seeks a graduate student researcher who:

  • has successfully completed the Science & Justice Training Program;
  • is able to attend SJWG meetings typically on Wednesday’s from 4-6PM and create rapporteur reports;
  • actively participates in building science and justice research and has an interest in mentoring others on research projects;
  • is interested in facilitating Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) trainings or workshops; and
  • can translate trending news items that integrate components of real world applications with science and justice concerns into blog pieces that are posted on the S&J website and shared on social media.

The Graduate Student Researcher (GSR) is offered a 50% appointment.

 

To Apply: submit materials to scijust@ucsc.edu

BY: Monday, May 20, 2019 (12:00noon)

Applicants should email their CV and a 1-2 page application that presents:

  • what experiences they have that would make them good for this position;
  • their interests in the Center’s research and how their work/research/career goals would benefit from the position;
  • their ideas about cross-divisional and interdisciplinary collaborations, especially among humanists, engineers, natural scientists, artists and social scientists as well as ones that are community/academia partnerships;
  • and what ideas they would bring to S&J.

Key Items for 2019-2020

Research Projects – Assist in Science & Justice research projects (for example: Just Biomedicine, Jail / Care, etc.); assist with developing and maintaining collaborations among humanists, engineers, natural scientists, artists and social scientists as well as community/academia partnerships.

RCR – work with faculty to develop and facilitate Responsible Conduct Research trainings or workshops.

Fall/Winter/Spring Programming – work with a planning committee on Science & Justice programming.

General Scope – In consultation with the Center Manager and Director(s), the GSR will assist to implement Center programming and research. Correspond with Project Leaders on the development of research projects and help oversee undergraduate student researchers. Responsibilities may include: organizing, planning, and co-facilitating focus groups; training and coordinating a team of undergraduate researchers who may co-facilitate focus groups and assist with documentation, interviews, transcription and data analysis; fostering collaboration and teamwork among researchers; reviewing research relevant to Center themes and areas of inquiry; creating infographics, outreach materials, and reports based on findings or events; develop and contribute to Center communication channels (ie: blog posts, news articles) for sharing research findings on campus and to the broader public; and participating in core SJRC activities and happenings.

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Science & Justice Fellow Erica Zurawski interview with the Association for the Study of Food and Society

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Science & Justice Fellow Erica Zurawski (sociology) was interviewed by the Association for the Study of Food and Society.

Zurawski discusses her work in food justice and colonization, how her Juris Doctorate and yoga teaching informs her work and teaching, social media for academics, and the transdisciplinary programming at the UC Santa Cruz Science & Justice Research Center!

CITRIS logo

SJTP receives funding for comparative cross-campus review of graduate curriculum that make questions of gender and social justice fundamental to STEM training

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With colleagues at UC Davis, Sociology@UCSantaCruz Professor and SJRC Director Jenny Reardon with Feminist Studies Professor and SJRC Director of Teaching Karen Barad received a CITRIS grant to collect data on two graduate curriculums at UC Santa Cruz and UC Davis.

The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) aims to leverage the interdisciplinary research strengths of multiple UC campuses to advance the University of California’s mission and the innovative spirit of California. The institute was created to shorten the pipeline between world-class laboratory research and the development of cutting-edge applications, platforms, companies, and even new industries.

More at:

UC Santa Cruz researchers win four CITRIS seed funding awards

This research is supported by a 2019 Seed Fund Award from CITRIS and the Banatao Institute at the University of California under “2019-0112: Comparative Analysis of Interdisciplinary Training for STEM Scholars”.

The Software Arts (2019) by Warren Sack

Book Release! Warren Sack on The Software Arts (MIT Press, 2019)

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With his new book, Warren Sack provides an alternative history of software that places the liberal arts at the very center of software’s evolution. Sack invites artists and humanists to see how their ideas are at the root of software and invites computer scientists to envision themselves as artists and humanists.

The book is available at: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/software-arts

The Software Arts (2019) by Warren Sack

The Software Arts (2019) by Warren Sack

Warren Sack is a media theorist, software designer, and artist whose work has been exhibited at SFMoMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Walker Art Center, and the ZKM Center for Art and Media. Warren is an affiliate of the Science & Justice Research Center, Chair and Professor of Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Join the release party: Monday, June 3 from 3:00-4:30pm in Communications 139. (Poster)
Overview

In The Software Arts, Warren Sack offers an alternative history of computing that places the arts at the very center of software’s evolution. Tracing the origins of software to eighteenth-century French encyclopedists’ step-by-step descriptions of how things were made in the workshops of artists and artisans, Sack shows that programming languages are the offspring of an effort to describe the mechanical arts in the language of the liberal arts.

Sack offers a reading of the texts of computing—code, algorithms, and technical papers—that emphasizes continuity between prose and programs. He translates concepts and categories from the liberal and mechanical arts—including logic, rhetoric, grammar, learning, algorithm, language, and simulation—into terms of computer science and then considers their further translation into popular culture, where they circulate as forms of digital life. He considers, among other topics, the “arithmetization” of knowledge that presaged digitization; today’s multitude of logics; the history of demonstration, from deduction to newer forms of persuasion; and the post-Chomsky absence of meaning in grammar. With The Software Arts, Sack invites artists and humanists to see how their ideas are at the root of software and invites computer scientists to envision themselves as artists and humanists.

Endorsements

“Warren Sack’s creative thinking across the arts and sciences has kept my cyborg on her toes, provoked again and again to test out how to reinvent practices for thinking, designing, working, and playing together for less deadly worlds. Sack’s historically attuned book investigates the folded zones linking the mechanical and liberal arts as new languages called programs have been built for emerging worlds. Rhetorics, epistemologies, and procedures are at stake in the digital media that shape and are shaped by the arts of computation. This is an important book about how things come to be in the workshops of the software arts that can never pretend to the separation of interpreting, making, and thinking.”

Donna Haraway, Distinguished Professor Emerita, University of  California, Santa Cruz

Ben Crow

In Memoriam: Sociology Professor and Science & Justice Advisor Ben Crow Dies at 71

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The Sociology Department at UC Sant Cruz has announced that Professor Ben Crow, a longstanding faculty member and advisor to Science & Justice passed away on Tuesday April 9, 2019.

The Science & Justice Research Center is deeply saddened to lose such a gentle and thoughtful presence. He will be missed greatly.

More: https://sociology.ucsc.edu/news-events/news/crow-memorial.html

Elaine Gan

Film and Digital Media Alum and Science & Justice Fellow Elaine Gan, receives 2019 Distinguished Graduate Student Alumni Award

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Film and Digital Media Alum and Science & Justice Fellow Elaine Gan, receives 2019 Distinguished Graduate Student Alumni Award

Of her experience at UC Santa Cruz’s cross-disciplinary approach, Gan says, “My studies were intense, particularly because they were so interdisciplinary”. “I studied alongside artists, filmmakers, theorists, anthropologists, historians, physicists, plant ecologists, marine biologists, and researchers from many disciplines.”

Gan teaches at New York University, Center for Experimental Humanities and Social Engagement (NYU Graduate School of Arts & Science), where she also leads the Multispecies Worldbuilding Lab. More on Gan’s work can be found at: http://elainegan.com/

More at: From scholarship to achievement, five grads make their mark

Book cover for Reporting Inequality Tools and Methods for Covering Race and Ethnicity (Routledge, 2019)

New Book! Reporting Inequality (Routledge, 2019)

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Reporting Inequality: Tools and Methods for Covering Race and Ethnicity, 1st Edition

Overview
Book cover for Reporting Inequality Tools and Methods for Covering Race and Ethnicity (Routledge, 2019)

Book cover for Reporting Inequality Tools and Methods for Covering Race and Ethnicity (Routledge, 2019)

Under increasingly intense newsroom demands, reporters often find it difficult to cover the complexity of topics that deal with racial and social inequality. This path-breaking book lays out simple, effective reporting strategies that equip journalists to investigate disparity’s root causes.

Chapters discuss how racially disparate outcomes in health, education, wealth/income, housing, and the criminal justice system are often the result of inequity in opportunity and also provide theoretical frameworks for understanding the roots of racial inequity. Examples of model reporting from ProPublica, the Center for Public Integrity, and the San Jose Mercury News showcase best practice in writing while emphasizing community-based reporting. Throughout the book, tools and practical techniques such as the Fault Lines framework, the Listening Post and the authors’ Opportunity Index and Upstream-Downstream Framework all help journalists improve their awareness and coverage of structural inequity at a practical level.

For students and journalists alike, Reporting Inequality is an ideal resource for understanding how to cover structures of injustice with balance and precision.

The book is available at: https://www.routledge.com/Reporting-Inequality-Tools-and-Methods-for-Covering-Race-and-Ethnicity/Lehrman-Wagner/p/book/9781138849884

Authors:

Sally Lehrman is an award-winning reporter on medicine and science policy with an emphasis on race, gender and social diversity. Her byline credits include Scientific American, Nature, Health, the Boston Globe, the New York Times, Salon.com and The DNA Files, three public radio series distributed by NPR. Honors include a Peabody Award, a duPont-Columbia Award, and the JSK Fellowship at Stanford University. She started and leads the Trust Project, a global network of newsrooms that is addressing the misinformation crisis through transparency. Sally is an affiliate of the Science & Justice Research Center.

Venise Wagner is a professor of journalism at San Francisco State University, where she has taught since 2001. She has a 12-year career as a reporter for several California dailies, including the Orange County Register, the San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle. She has covered border issues, religion and ethics, schools and education, urban issues and issues in the San Francisco Bay Area’s various black communities.