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Letters and Science

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people in India working on top of large bags of waste
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Dana Kornberg
Workers in India's waste economy

Race and caste capitalism: Who gets access to status and wealth?

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A large group of people gathered shoulder to shoulder on a theater stage
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Courtesy LAUNCH PAD
The Amplify Festival brings together veteran and emerging artists to workshop news plays and present public readings.
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Christopher Parker, Black man with yellow background and abstract effect
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Photo illustration by Matt Perko
Carnegie Fellow Christopher Parker, a UCSB political science professor, researches how polarization affects communities of color.
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woman on stage with cello and composer
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Courtesy
A still from UCSB student Travers Tobis's short film "The Circus Monkey," nominated for a Student Emmy Award.
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grad student Kirsten Rollins on stage giving her Grad Slam presentation
Photo Credit
Jeff Liang
Grad Slam champion Kirsten Rollins, April 3, 2025
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A fruit fly larva with imagined electric field lines in the background.
Photo Credit
Sakkmesterke vi Adobe Stock
Fruit fly larvae will reorient themselves toward the negative pole of an electric field.
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A women sitting in a red vinyl booth inside a diner
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Courtesy Jason Lapeyre
Nori Muster was a devotee of the Hare Krishna movement of the 1970s and 1980s
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A rat sits on a bag of grain.
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H. Zell via Wikimedia
The non-native black rat was the only small mammal infected with Hantavirus in an immensely biodiverse region of Madagascar. Animals trapped in agricultural fields carried the disease more often than those trapped in homes or in the rainforest.
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Two adults facing each other, surrounded by yellow flowers
Photo Credit
Matt Perko
The sum total of our daily communication comprises our “social biomes.”
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woman in dark light and shadow with red streaks of light
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Matt Perko
Jane Ward is a professor and chair of UCSB's Department of Feminist Studies