The Center for Creative Ecologies welcomes participation at all levels of contact, from planning events, collaborating on research, organizing discussions of events, and programming. If you are UC faculty, a graduate or undergraduate student, member of the Santa Cruz community, or virtual visitor to the website, please get in touch (creativeecologies@ucsc.edu).
The Center for Creative Ecologies also offers regular undergraduate student internships in exchange for course credit. If you are interested in such an opportunity, and would like to learn more about the workings of our organization and help out, please get in touch with us!
Externally funded graduate student research residencies and post-doctoral positions of UCSC Research Associates are also possible for emerging scholars who would like to participate in the Center for Creative Ecologies (unfortunately we have no funded positions at present). If interested, please send a letter of inquiry, a statement of your research plan including proposed time of visit, your fellowship information, and a CV to creativeecologies@ucsc.edu.
Testimonials
The internship with the Extraction project under the Center for Creative Ecologies has been a unique experience at UC Santa Cruz. What I enjoyed most was that I was given the opportunity to combine my major field of study, History of Art and Visual Culture, with my minor in Sustainability Studies. I learned more about individualized documentary forms focusing on natural resource extraction and labor exploitation. Moreover, the Extraction project is a platform for artists, photographers and filmmakers to address and explore these issues, which I am glad I was able to be involved with.
- Caroline (Molly) Patruno, HAVC major, March 2017
Despite the harrowing and destructive problems the environment faces, the people involved in the center are constantly looking for innovative ways to inform others and solve these issues. The Center for Creative Ecologies is an opportunity to collaborate with intellectuals from various disciplines who have unique voices and I hope others will add on to its projects.
-Jessica Oo, Environmental Studies major, June 2017
My internship at the Center brought me into contact with a diverse and energetic group of artists, activists, and scholars all of whom are dedicated to disentangling humanity from the colonial-extractive ideology. Through several field trips and the Extraction conference, I was able to explore the multiple spaces where these folks do battle. As an art major at UCSC, I found that the internship was helpful in stimulating my thoughts in regards to green thought and the ways that artists can be participants in the reshaping of humanity’s place in the world ecology.
-Owen Thomas, Art major, June 2017
The Center for Creative Ecologies (CCE) hosts a regular reading group for interested faculty and students.
We encourage participants from any discipline or area of interest to join. The CCE Reading Group was initiated in Fall of 2016 and represents an interdisciplinary assembly of academics and graduate students interested in engaging with current texts written at the intersection of art, culture, politics, and ecology. The group meets every two or three weeks during the school year. Meetings are held across the UCSC campus at various locations, usually outside or in non-formal settings. The aim of the reading group is to develop useful arts-led interdisciplinary research dialogue to examine and explore how cultural practitioners critically address and creatively negotiate environmental concerns in the local, regional, and global field. These concerns include anthropogenic climate change and global warming, and relate to factors such as habitat destruction, drought, species extinction, and environmental degradation. We strive to create an inclusive atmosphere to collectively share and explore new avenues of thought and practice.
Recent texts considered: Donna Haraway’s (2016) Staying with the Trouble, McKenzie Wark’s (2015) Molecular Red, Jason Moore’s (2016) Capitalism in the Web of Life, and Glen Coulthard’s (2014) Red Skin, White Masks, and Fred Moten and Stefano Harvey’s Undercommons (2013), among others. Readings are collectively determined and aligned with current events, recent publications, and exhibitions at and around UCSC.
More information can be found at the CCE Reading Group website.