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Spring Quarter, 2009
Special Event - "Noche de Estrellas"
Our 2009 honorees for Merrill College's eighth annual "Noche de Estrellas" (Night of the Stars) presentations held on May 13, 2009 at the Cultural Center at Merrill. Each of this year's honorees overcame obstacles to achieve academic success at UCSC. They shared their journeys as they presented their senior research projects. Pictured from left to right:
Stephanie Dennis
- Major: Anthropology (Faculty Mentor: Nate Dominy)
- "The Role of Microhabitat Variation in the Parasite Counts of Mantled Howling Monkeys (Alouatta palliata)"
Rachel Murray
- Major: Anthropology (Faculty Mentor: Olga Najera Ramirez)
- "The Festival Complex of San Pedro and Inti Raymi: Creating and Reaffirming Communal Identity in Cangahua"
Jhovani Estrada
- Major: Film and Digital Media (Faculty Mentor: Irene Gustafson) Gustavo Vasquez, professor of Film & Digital Media, also a mentor to Jhovani, is pictured.
- "Fort Thunder"
Environmental Justice Speakers at Merrill (sponsored by Merrill College, CJTC, LALS and College Eight)
April 7 - Bradley Angel, Executive Director of Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice spoke on "The Fight for Environmental Justice"
May 7 - Sheila Davis, Executive Director, Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition and a UCSC alumna, spoke on "Toxics and the High-Tech Industry"
May 26 - Christian Poirier, Pan Amazon Coordinator for Amazon Watch and UCSC/LALS Alumnus, spoke on "Environmental Threats to Indigenous Peoples in the Brazilian Amazon"
Merrill sponsors a Faculty Lecture Series, where faculty fellows of the college discuss their current research. These lectures sustain an intellectual community among faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates.
Matt O'Hara, Assistant Professor, History Department
"Matthew D. O'Hara, in 'The Orthodox Underworld of Colonial Mexico,' takes us to the back alleyways of urban neighborhoods in eighteenth-century Mexico City and Querétaro, and to a different kind of imposture, one based on simulation rather than outright deception. O'Hara studies the phenomenon of unauthorized 'monasteries,' 'orders,' and similar religious organizations that existed beyond the control and sometimes beyond the knowledge of the Mexican Church, organizations that allowed for forms of popular devotion imitative of officially sanctioned ones. By focusing on the performative aspects of these organizations, as traceable within archival documents – mostly Church inquests O'Hara finds surprising evidence of the 'orthodoxy' of these organizations, both on their own terms and in the Church's ultimate judgment of them, despite its efforts to stamp them out. O'Hara thus counters the scholarly trend to see forms of resistance, parody, or confrontation in such popular, extra-official religious practices."
--Frederick Luciani, Colonial Latin American Review
Winter Quarter, 2009
Cecilia Rivas, Assistant Professor, Latin American and Latino Studies
"Limits and Borders: Citizenship and Salvadoran Emigrant Voting Rights"
Dr. Rivas' research focuses on practices of globalization: transnational migration, consumption, and new uses of print and electronic media, with particular attention to contemporary Salvadoran society (within El Salvador and in diaspora), examining how certain subjects are presented as "global" and particularly useful to post-civil war projects in El Salvador, while others are excluded. She engages three research sites, spaces where Salvadorans come together as a social imaginary and "make sense" of globalization: the "Departamento 15" section of the newspaper La Prensa Grafica, the bilingual call center sector, and shopping malls in San Salvador.
Fall Quarter, 2008
 
Daoud Hari, Writer/Human Rights Activist
Author of "The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur"
Daoud Hari, writer/human rights activist and author of "The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur" visited Merrill College on October 7 and 8, 2009. On October 7 he met with the Merrill Fellows. On October 8 he met with small groups of students over lunch and later that day he addressed the 400 Merrill frosh who had read his book for the Merrill core course. Mr. Hari currently resides in Maryland and frequently speaks to college students all around the U.S.
Barbara Rogoff, Professor of Psychology
Cultural Aspects of How People Learn
The Rogoff Research Group investigates the organization of teaching-and-learning processes in family settings and schools. They are especially interested in the idea that in indigenous communities of Central America and North America children are supported in learning through keenly observing ongoing community events in anticipation of growing participation, and collaborative group engagement. Barbara Rogoff is currently UC Santa Cruz Foundation Professor of Psychology and holds the University of California Presidential Chair. Her book Apprenticeship in Thinking (1990) received the Scribner Award from the American Educational Research Association. Learning Together: Children and Adults in a School Community (2004) was finalist for the Maccoby Award of the American Psychologist Association, and The Cultural Nature of Human Development (2003) won the William James Book Award of the American Psychological Association.
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