Celebrating UCSB English’s Department Through Time

On Tuesday January 13th, the English Department is thrilled to be hosting Professor Noelle Brada-Williams (San Jose State University), Professor Darryl Dickson-Carr (Southern Methodist University), and Professor David Vazquez (American University) for a colloquium celebrating the UCSB English Graduate Program through time.

Professor Brada-Williams is founder & managing editor of Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies; her work focuses on race & ethnicity in American literature, including articles and book chapters on Jessica Hagedorn, Maxine Hong Kingston, Jhumpa Lahiri, Chang-rae Lee, Miné Okubo, Salmon Rushdie, and Karen Tei Yamashita, in venues such as MELUS and Amerasia.

Professor Dickson-Carr is the author of Spoofing the Modern: Satire in the Harlem Renaissance (2015), The Columbia Guide to Contemporary African American Fiction (2005), and African American Satire: The Sacredly Profane Novel (2001).

Professor Vazquez is the Director of Latina/o/x Studies at American University and is the author of Decolonial Environmentalisms: Climate Justice and Speculative Futurity in Latinx Cultural Production (2025), Triangulations: Narrative Strategies for Navigating Latino Identity (2011), co-editor of Environmentalisms: Place, Justice, and the Decolonial (2019)—winner of the MLA Prize for an Edited Collection.

Moderated by Professor Emerita Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Professor Stephanie Batiste (English Department), Professor Melody Jue (English Dept.) and Professor Priscilla Ybarra (Chicano/a Dept.) this event will hear from the three UCSB graduates and what work they’ve done since graduation.