Professors Have (Ful)bright Futures

Two UCSB faculty members were chosen among 800 academic and professional researchers to receive Fulbright Scholar Awards to conduct research at foreign universities.

Spanish and Portuguese professor Eduardo Raposo will begin his research on comparative romance languages in April at the Center for Linguistics of the University of Lisbon. He will be there for three months with his family.

“I will have a lot of time to work on my research, but it’s also my home,” Raposo said. “There are many colleagues there and my work there will influence my work here at the university.”

Associate professor of music Patricia Hall has already left for Vienna, Austria, to conduct her research on Berg’s Sketches and the musical language of Wozzeck at the Austrian National Library.

The Fulbright Program is sponsored by the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Every year, the program sends scholars to study abroad and accommodates foreign researchers to study in the United States.

The scholars who are visiting UCSB this year are Srivathsan Aravamuthan from Chennai, India, who will conduct research on Hindu temples in America; Sigrid Lien from Norway, who will study the history of photography in Norway; and Laurence Simmons from New Zealand, who will study film on the South Seas.

Documentary Promises New Insight Into Conflict

Arts and Lectures will present Promises, a documentary about children in the Middle East, on Sunday at 3 p.m. at UCSB’s Campbell Hall.

The three filmmakers chose to present the lives of seven children in Palestine and Israel and their reactions to the Middle East crisis. They arranged to have the children meet and documented their relationships and reactions to the crisis afterward.

The film, which was released to the public in 2001, was never shown in Santa Barbara commercially, although it did premiere on PBS.

“What’s interesting about the film is that it looks at the Middle East conflict and the way it affects children,” Arts and Lectures manager Roman Baratiak said. “Children have a connection that maybe their parents can’t look beyond.”

Co-director Justine Shapiro, who is the host of The Lonely Planet Travel Show, will introduce the film and lead a discussion afterward.

“It’s a really great film,” Baratiak said. “It gives a different perspective than you get from the television news about what’s going on.”

Promises is presented as part of the Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Foundation Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies, the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, the Religious Studies Dept. and the Santa Barbara Jewish Federation.

Tickets are $6 for the general public and $5 for UCSB students.

– Compiled by Sarah Gorback