History of Consciousness is the name of a department in the Humanities Division of the
University of California, Santa Cruz
The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California syste ...
with a 50+ year history of interdisciplinary research and student training in "established and emergent disciplines and fields" in the
humanities
Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at the t ...
, arts, sciences, and
social science
Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of soc ...
s based on a diverse array of theoretical approaches. The program has a history of well-known affiliated faculty and of well-known program graduates.
History
The program was started in the first year of the Santa Cruz campus in a rather informal manner. A small group of faculty members, including the American historian
Page Smith
Page Smith (September 6, 1917 – August 28, 1995) was an American historian, professor and author. In 1964 became the founding Provost of Cowell College, University of California, Santa Cruz and resigned from the university in 1973 in prote ...
, philosopher
Maurice Natanson
Maurice Alexander Natanson (November 26, 1924 – August 16, 1996) was an American philosopher "who helped introduce the work of Jean-Paul Sartre and Edmund Husserl in the United States". He was a student of Alfred Schutz at the New School for S ...
, culture theorist Harry Berger, Jr., and psychology professor Bert Kaplan approached the
University of California
The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...
system-wide Graduate Council with a proposal for a new type of graduate program for the new campus. According to the founding Chancellor of the campus,
Dean McHenry Dean E. McHenry (18 October 1910 – 17 March 1998) was an American professor of political science, and the founding chancellor of the University of California, Santa Cruz.
McHenry was born in Lompoc, California north of Santa Barbara, and receive ...
, they did not consult with him and the program was approved without his input.
For over a decade, there were no direct faculty appointments to the program and all faculty teaching in the program was done by members of established Boards of Studies (at the time, the UC Santa Cruz equivalent of departments). This led to problems in budgeting and program continuity, and coupled with the unorthodox interdisciplinary nature of the program, it also presented challenges in placing History of Consciousness graduates in teaching jobs. The appointment of
Norman O. Brown
Norman Oliver Brown (September 25, 1913 – October 2, 2002) was an American scholar, writer, and social philosopher. Beginning as a classical scholar, his later work branched into wide-ranging, erudite, and intellectually sophisticated cons ...
as Professor of Humanities in 1968 was in part intended to address some of these concerns.
The first graduate student in History of Consciousness was Harvey Rabbin.
Perhaps the best-known graduate of the program is
Huey P. Newton
Huey Percy Newton (February 17, 1942 – August 22, 1989) was an African-American revolutionary, notable as founder of the Black Panther Party. Newton crafted the Party's ten-point manifesto with Bobby Seale in 1966.
Under Newton's leadershi ...
, co-founder of the
Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party (BPP), originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was a Marxist-Leninist and black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, Califo ...
. Newton received his Ph.D. in 1980.
Faculty
Historians
Hayden White
Hayden V. White (July 12, 1928 – March 5, 2018) was an American historian in the tradition of literary criticism, perhaps most famous for his work '' Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe'' (1973/2014).
Career
W ...
and
James Clifford were among the first faculty members directly appointed to the department. White joined the faculty as Professor of History of Consciousness and Chair of the Board in July, 1978, having been recruited by then-Chancellor Angus Taylor to bring stability to the program.
In addition to White and Clifford,
Angela Davis
Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American political activist, philosopher, academic, scholar, and author. She is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. A feminist and a Marxist, Davis was a longtime member of ...
,
Barbara Epstein
Barbara Epstein ( Zimmerman; August 30, 1928 – June 16, 2006) was a literary editor and founding co-editor of ''The New York Review of Books''.
Life and work
Epstein, née Zimmerman, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to a Jewish family, and g ...
,
Donna Haraway
Donna J. Haraway is an American Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department and Feminist Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a prominent scholar in the field of science and technology studies. Sh ...
, Stephen Heath,
Fredric Jameson
Fredric Jameson (born April 14, 1934) is an American literary critic, philosopher and Marxist political theorist. He is best known for his analysis of contemporary cultural trends, particularly his analysis of postmodernity and capitalism. James ...
,
Teresa de Lauretis
Teresa de Lauretis (; born 1938 in Bologna) is an Italian author and Distinguished Professor Emerita of the History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her areas of interest include semiotics, psychoanalysis, film theory, ...
and
Gary Lease
Gary may refer to:
*Gary (given name), a common masculine given name, including a list of people and fictional characters with the name
*Gary, Indiana, the largest city named Gary
Places
;Iran
*Gary, Iran, Sistan and Baluchestan Province
;Unit ...
joined the program, while professors in other disciplines taught "HistCon" courses, supervised HistCon graduate students, and participated in new graduate student admissions. Among those most active at this time were political theorists J. Peter Euben, Robert Meister and
John Schaar John Homer Schaar (July 7, 1928 – December 26, 2011), also known as Jack Schaar, was an American political theorist. He was a professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Schaar was born in Montoursville, Pennsylvania, and rais ...
as well as philosopher David Hoy. Other notable faculty who have taught in the program include
Karen Barad
Karen Michelle Barad (; born 29 April 1956) is an American feminist theorist, known particularly for their theory of agential realism.
Biography
They are currently Professor of Feminist Studies, Philosophy, and History of Consciousness at the ...
,
Victor Burgin
Victor Burgin (born 1941) is a British artist and writer. Burgin first came to attention as a conceptual artist in the late 1960s (Harrison & Wood, 1992; Walker, 2001) and at that time was most noted for being a political photographer of the le ...
,
Isaac Julien
Sir Isaac Julien (born 21 February 1960Annette Kuhn"Julien, Isaac (1960–)" BFI Screen Online.) is a British installation artist, filmmaker, and distinguished professor of the arts at UC Santa Cruz.
Early life
Julien was born in the East End ...
,
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse (; ; July 19, 1898 – July 29, 1979) was a German-American philosopher, social critic, and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Born in Berlin, Marcuse studied at the Humboldt University ...
,
David Marriott
David Marriott (born 1963) is a British philosopher and Charles T. Winship Professor of Philosophy at Emory University. He is known for his works on comparative literature, psychoanalysis
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theorie ...
,
Kobena Mercer
Kobena Mercer (born 1960) is a British art historian and writer on contemporary art and visual culture. His writing on Robert Mapplethorpe and Rotimi Fani-Kayode has been described as "among the most incisive (and delightful to read) critiques o ...
,
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (born 24 February 1942) is an Indian scholar, literary theorist, and feminist critic. She is a University Professor at Columbia University and a founding member of the establishment's Institute for Comparative Lite ...
and
Neferti Tadiar
Neferti X. M. Tadiar is a Filipino scholar and critical theorist. She is a professor of women's, gender, and sexuality studies at Barnard College, chair of the Barnard department of women's, gender, and sexuality studies, and director of the Co ...
.
As of November 2021, the department's faculty include
Banu Bargu
Banu Bargu is a U.S.-based political theorist and professor of History of Consciousness and Politics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Career
Bargu completed her B.A. at Boğaziçi University in 1997, where she also completed her M.A. ...
, Chris Connery, Carla Freccero, Robert Meister, Eric Porter, and Massimiliano Tomba.
In 2018,
Gopal Balakrishnan
Gopal Balakrishnan was a professor in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, until he was fired due to allegations of sexual assault.
Balakrishnan studied European intellectual history and historical ...
was the subject of an investigation regarding his violation of the university's sexual harassment policy. He was ultimately found guilty of violating it and was fired from the university.
Notable graduates
*
William Drea Adams
William Drea "Bro" Adams is an American educator and advocate for the humanities. He was the tenth Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 2014 to 2017. He served as the 14th President of Bucknell University from 1995 to 2000, and ...
*
Bettina Aptheker
Bettina Fay Aptheker (born September 13, 1944) is an American political activist, radical feminist, professor and author. Aptheker was active in civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and has since worked in developing feminis ...
*
Joanne Barker
*
Thomas Bass
Thomas Alden Bass (born March 9, 1951) is an American writer and professor in literature, journalism, and history.
Biography
Bass graduated with an honors A.B. from the University of Chicago in 1973 and earned his Ph.D. in the History of Co ...
*
Julian Bleecker
*
Lisa E. Bloom
*
Greg Calvert Gregory NeVala Calvert (April 16, 1937 – August 12, 2005) was National Secretary of Students for a Democratic Society in 1966–67.
Biography Early years
Gregory Calvert was born during the Great Depression, in a squatter's shack on the slopes of ...
*
Ron Eglash
*
S. Lochlann Jain S. Lochlann Jain is an author and artist, in addition to being a Professor in the Anthropology Department at Stanford University, where they teach medical and legal anthropology, and a Visiting Professor of Social Medicine in the Department of Globa ...
*
Caren Kaplan
Caren Kaplan is a professor of American Studies at University of California at Davis, and a prominent figure in the academic discipline of women's studies. Together with Inderpal Grewal, Kaplan is best known for her work as a founder of the field ...
*
Noelani Goodyear-Ka'opua Noelani is a Hawaiian female given name, meaning "heavenly mist". People with the given name Noelani include:
*Noelani Arista, Hawaiian and American historian
* Noelani Goodyear-Ka'opua, Kanaka Maoli scholar and educator
*Noelani Pantastico
Noel ...
*
J. Kēhaulani Kauanui
*
Carol Mavor
Carol Jane Mavor is an American writer and professor. Her work includes the books ''Pleasures Taken: Performances of Sexuality and Loss in Victorian Photographs'', ''Becoming: The Photographs of Clementina, Viscountess Hawarden'', and ''Blue Mytho ...
*
Stephen Nachmanovitch
Stephen Nachmanovitch is a musician, author, computer artist, and educator. He is an improvisational violinist, and writes and teaches about improvisation, creativity, and systems approaches in many fields of activity.
Biography
Born in 1950, Na ...
*
Huey P. Newton
Huey Percy Newton (February 17, 1942 – August 22, 1989) was an African-American revolutionary, notable as founder of the Black Panther Party. Newton crafted the Party's ten-point manifesto with Bobby Seale in 1966.
Under Newton's leadershi ...
*
Marisa Olson
Marisa Olson is an artist, writer, curator, and former punk singer. In 2004 she auditioned for popular American television show American Idol as an artistic project. Over the course of three months of daily "training exercises," it is revealed th ...
*
Mike Rotkin Mike Rotkin is a lecturer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, long-term city council member, and the 5 time mayor of Santa Cruz, California. source: https://scmtd.com/en/fares/38-agency-info/administration/board-of-directors/103-bod-bio-mik ...
*
Chela Sandoval
Chela Sandoval (born July 31, 1956), associate professor of Chicana Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara, is a noted theorist of postcolonial feminism and third world feminism. Beginning with her 1991 pioneering essay 'U.S. Third W ...
*
Ruth Frankenberg
Ruth Alice Emma Frankenberg (17 September 1957 – 22 April 2007) was a British–American social scientist and feminist, known for her pioneering work in the field of whiteness studies.
Biography
Ruth Frankenberg was born in Cardiff, Wales, 17 S ...
*
Claudia Castaneda
*
Kevin Fellezs
*
Katie King
*
Andrea Smith
*
Sandy Stone
*
Marita Sturken Marita Sturken (born 1957) is an American scholar, author, professor, and critic.
Life and work
Marita Sturken is Professor and former Chair of the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University's Steinhardt School of Cul ...
*
Kim TallBear
Kim TallBear (born 1968) is a Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate professor at the University of Alberta, specializing in racial politics in science. Holding the first ever Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience and Environment, TallBear ...
*
Adam Geary
Adam; el, Ἀδάμ, Adám; la, Adam is the name given in Genesis 1-5 to the first human. Beyond its use as the name of the first man, ''adam'' is also used in the Bible as a pronoun, individually as "a human" and in a collective sense as ...
*
Eva Hayward
*
Luz Calvo
*
Teresia Teaiwa
*
Michael Tobias
Michael Charles Tobias (born June 27, 1951) is an American author, environmentalist, mountaineer, and filmmaker. In 1991, Tobias produced a ten-hour dramatic television series, ''Voice of the Planet'', for Turner Broadcasting; the series starre ...
*
Howard Winant
Howard Winant (born 1946) is an American sociologist and race theorist. Winant is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Winant is best known for developing the theory of ''racial formation'' along wi ...
*
Gurbhagat Singh
See also
*
Critical race theory
Critical race theory (CRT) is a cross-disciplinary examination, by social and civil-rights scholars and activists, of how laws, social and political movements, and media shape, and are shaped by, social conceptions of race and ethnicity. Goa ...
*
Feminist theory
Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, fictional, or philosophical discourse. It aims to understand the nature of gender inequality. It examines women's and men's social roles, experiences, interests, chores, and feminist ...
*
Film theory
Film theory is a set of scholarly approaches within the academic discipline of film or cinema studies that began in the 1920s by questioning the formal essential attributes of motion pictures; and that now provides conceptual frameworks for und ...
*
Marxism and anarchism
Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialect ...
*
Philosophy
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
*
Psychoanalysis
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...
*
Political economy
Political economy is the study of how Macroeconomics, economic systems (e.g. Marketplace, markets and Economy, national economies) and Politics, political systems (e.g. law, Institution, institutions, government) are linked. Widely studied ph ...
*
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or Rhetorical modes, mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by philosophical skepticism, skepticis ...
*
Science studies
Science studies is an interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary research area that seeks to situate scientific expertise in broad social, historical, and philosophical contexts. It uses various methods to analyze the production, representation an ...
*
Social movement
A social movement is a loosely organized effort by a large group of people to achieve a particular goal, typically a social or political one. This may be to carry out a social change, or to resist or undo one. It is a type of group action and may ...
s
*
Visual culture
Visual culture is the aspect of culture expressed in visual images. Many academic fields study this subject, including cultural studies, art history, critical theory, philosophy, media studies, Deaf Studies, and anthropology.
The field of ...
References
Further reading
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External links
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* Regarding the perception of the program by its campus administration, as of 2009.
{{University of California, Santa Cruz
University of California, Santa Cruz
Critical theory
1965 establishments in California
Graduate schools in the United States