Core Faculty
Raoul Birnbaum (Emeritus), Buddhist approaches to human vision, especially Chinese Buddhist representations and practices
Elisabeth Cameron, gender, performance, play and iconoclasm in Central Africa
Carolyn Dean, performance, costume and nonresemblant artifacts in Pre-Hispanic and Colonial Spanish America
T.J. Demos, contemporary art and visual culture (especially film, video, and photography), globalization, postcolonial studies, and political ecology
Maria Evangelatou, gender, politics and religion in ancient Greek and Byzantine art and visual culture
Jennifer González, installation and activist art, theories of race and representation, digital art
Donna Hunter, (Emeritus), national identity in western Europe and America since 1750
Stacy Kamehiro, identity politics and colonial histories in Oceania
Yi Yi Mon (Rosaline) Kyo, art and visual cultures of modern and contemporary Tibet and China; visual construction of race, ethnicity, and gender in Asia; art of the Tibetan diaspora; socialist art and visual cultures; colonial visual cultures
Boreth Ly, trauma, gender and sexuality in Southeast Asia and its Diaspora
Derek Conrad Murray, theory and criticism of contemporary art, cultural theory, identity and representation, art of the African diaspora, popular visual culture
Albert Narath, modern and contemporary architecture and design; environmental history, theories of technology, historiography of modernism, anthropology and architecture
Kyle Parry, digital media and visual culture; art, documentary, and disaster; memory and politics; archival theory and practice; data, technology, and environment; history and theory of photography; critical media practice
Kailani Polzak, art and visual culture in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe; visual constructions of race; material cultures of empire and colonialism; natural history illustration; histories of print production and circulation
Affiliated Faculty
Jasmine Alinder (History & Dean of Humanities), history of photography, museum studies, digital/public humanities, Japanese American experience during World War II
Noriko Aso (History), Japanese history, cultural studies, gender and history, race and ethnicity, colonialism, nationalism, Korean history, and popular culture
Karen Bassi (Literature), Greek and Latin literatures; gender; literary and cultural theory; pre- and early modern studies; historiography; visual and performance studies
Hunter Bivens (Literature), twentieth and twenty-first century German literature, culture, and film, Marxism and critical theory, socialist realism and proletarian literature, modernism and left avant-gardes, novel theory
James Clifford (History of Consciousness, Emeritus), anthropology, indigeneity, museum studies, exoticism
Jon Daehnke (Anthropology), critical heritage studies, cultural resource policy and law, Indigenous studies, and the history and archaeology of the Pacific Northwest Coast
Shelly Errington (Anthropology), globalization of folk art, visual and social semiotics, photography, film, the Internet and digital media, Southeast Asia, and Latin America
Kathy Foley (Theater Arts), Southeast Asian drama and dance; puppetry
Dianne Gifford-Gonzalez (Anthropology), zooarchaeology, African archaeology, pastoralism, colonial New Mexico, interpretive theory, visual anthropology, emergence of pastoralism in East Africa; foodways as cultural practices in colonial encounters
Irene Gustafson (Film and Digital Media), producing across the boundaries between "theory" and "practice," non-fiction, gender and queers, production design
Christine Hong (Literature), Asian American literature and cultural criticism; African American literature and black freedom studies; Korean diasporic cultural production; Pacific Rim studies; postcolonial theory; critical race theory; human rights discourse; law and literature; narrative theory; film and visual studies
Lisbeth Haas (History), local histories of globalization; indigenous histories of California; subaltern scholars and their writing and painting; Spanish colonial and Mexican California; the Borderlands, especially the U.S. and Mexico; the Colonial Americas; California studies; global histories of race, ethnicity, and diaspora; gendered stories
Peter Limbrick (Film and Digital Media), postcolonial and transnational cinemas, race, gender, sexuality, queer theory
Amy Lonetree (History), indigenous history, museum studies, commemoration and public memory, Native American cultural production, public history, and Ho-Chunk tribal history
Soraya Murray (Film and Digital Media), new media art, theory, and criticism; visual culture including digital, film, video, and electronic games; theories of technology and globalization; media representations of technological and scientific advancement; representations of otherness, migration, citizenship
Mark Nash (Digital Arts New Media), Postcolonial perspectives on modern and contemporary art, with a particular focus on curating exhibitions most recently Grief and Grievance New Museum NY 2020, founding member of the Isaac Julien Lab at UCSC
Vanita Seth (Politics), early modern European thought, feminist, postcolonial and postmodernist theory, histories of racial discourse, histories of modernity and histories of the body
Warren Sack (Film and Digital Media), theory and practice of digital media, software design and media theory
G.S. Sahota (Literature), Photography, film, Orientalism, South Asia, Marxism, Frankfurt School, aesthetic theory
Shelly Stamp (Film and Digital Media), silent cinema, female filmmakers, film censorship, histories of moviegoing, early Hollywood
Yiman Wang (Film and Digital Media), transnational/trans-regional Chinese cinemas of all periods, Intra-Asian and cross-Pacific film remakes, Pan-East Asian celebrity culture, East Asian cultural studies, and Asian American cinema