UC Santa Barbara (Video)

Ecologist Rudo Sanyanga and filmmakers R. Lane Clark and Stephan Miescher join moderator Janet Walker (Film and Media Studies, UCSB) for a post-screening discussion of Clark and Miescher’s documentary film Ghana’s Electric Dreams. The film concerns the history of Ghana’s Akosombo Dam, and its complex legacy as a strategic modernization project launched during the presidency of Kwame Nkrumah. The panel conversation highlights the impetus for the film and its multi-stage development, the importance of the availability of archival footage and the filmmakers’ personal familiarity with this region of Ghana, and the far-reaching human and ecological impacts of large hydroelectric infrastructure projects. This event was hosted by the Carsey-Wolf Center in collaboration with the Mellon-Sawyer Seminar for Energy Justice in Global Perspective. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 34883]

Bridget “Biddy” Mason, born a slave in Mississippi in 1818, achieved financial success that enabled her to support her extended family for generations, despite the fact that she was illiterate. In a landmark case, she sued her master for their freedom, saved her earnings, invested in real estate, and became a well-known philanthropist in Los Angeles, California. Series: "Innovator Stories: Creating Something from Nothing" [Business] [Show ID: 34785]

Filmmakers Kady Le, Lan Nguyen, and Quyên Nguyen-Le join moderator erin Khuê Ninh (Asian American Studies, UCSB) for a post-screening discussion of their short films “Like Mother, Like Daughter,” “Bị Kẹt,” and “Nước (Water/Homeland).” The directors each speak to their creative process and how they each worked to articulate subtle and often complex themes with their differing narrative, documentary, and experimental approaches. They explain how personal questions of family, home, community, history, and identity shaped their work, as well as the influence of other Vietnamese-American authors, activists, and filmmakers. This event was co-curated by the Viet Film Fest and presented in conjunction with UCSB Reads 2019. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 34770]

Director Leilah Weinraub joins Mireille Miller-Young (Feminist Studies, UCSB) for a conversation about Weinraub’s 2018 documentary Shakedown, a film that documents the L.A.-based underground black-lesbian strip club of the same name. Weinraub explains how she discovered the club and her decade-long project of capturing the experience of Shakedown on film. The talk also includes discussion of black ownership and labor, the visibility of black identities and sexualities, gentrification in the aftermath of historic riots, and the fragility of contingent cultural spaces under the dual pressures of over-policing and the politics of respectability. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 34769]

Ning Wang is a seasoned executive with P&L responsibilities of several SaaS and technology businesses. She also holds a PhD in physics from UC Berkeley. Ning is currently CEO of Offensive Security. Series: "Innovator Stories: Creating Something from Nothing" [Business] [Show ID: 34784]

In "Bad Rabbi and Other Strange but True Stories from the Yiddish Press" Eddy Portnoy mines century-old Yiddish newspapers to expose the seamy underbelly of pre-WWII New York and Warsaw, the two major centers of Yiddish culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Series: "Taubman Symposia in Jewish Studies" [Humanities] [Show ID: 34806]

After 15 years running Partner Management at Yahoo, Josh Cobb became the President of the America's for Media.net, the worlds #2 largest advertising technology company, after Google. He is also a member of the Santa Barbara Angel Alliance, an angel investor group focused on startup and early-stage companies. Series: "Innovator Stories: Creating Something from Nothing" [Business] [Show ID: 34783]

Shannon Jessup is a sales and marketing executive with a 20-year track record of top performance with mobile, internet and technology companies. She started her career in sales at IBM. Shannon makes her home in Santa Barbara, CA with her husband and three children. Series: "Innovator Stories: Creating Something from Nothing" [Business] [Show ID: 34782]

Rachel Kadish is an American writer of fiction and non-fiction, author of several novels and a novella. Her fiction work has won the National Jewish Book Award and the Julia Ward Howe Prize, the John Gardner Fiction Prize, and the Association of Jewish Libraries Fiction Award. She discusses her latest book, "The Weight of Ink," a work of historical fiction set in London of the 1660s and of the early twenty-first century. Series: "Taubman Symposia in Jewish Studies" [Humanities] [Show ID: 34680]

The Taubman Symposia in Jewish Studies at UCSB hosts a live musical performance by The Three Cantors: Cantor Mark Childs (Congregation B’nai B’rith, Santa Barbara) Cantor Marcus Feldman and Organist Aryell Cohen (Sinai Temple, Los Angeles) and Cantor Shmuel Barzilai (Chief Cantor of the Vienna Jewish Community). Series: "Taubman Symposia in Jewish Studies" [Humanities] [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 34681]