How Writing Rewires Your Brain to Face Everyday Challenges
Written words can do more than communicate. They can also unlock the writer’s ability to process distress, identify hurtful feelings and take control of personal conflict.
Written words can do more than communicate. They can also unlock the writer’s ability to process distress, identify hurtful feelings and take control of personal conflict.
UC Merced has debuted a writer-in-residence program with one of California’s premier chroniclers of its history, especially the titanic power plays for land and water that have shaped the state’s growth and loom over its future.
Mark Arax, a Fresno native, author and former Los Angeles Times journalist, will host workshops about his craft throughout the academic year. His presence on campus also will offer inside access to a working author.
If Arden, the sprawling, wild forest in William Shakespeare’s “As You Like It,” were in the United States instead of the Bard’s imagination, it would certainly be a national park.
Like Yosemite.
That is why this light comedy is an ideal fit for the annual UC Merced theater project that weaves modern issues of environmental stewardship into the 16th-century playwright’s words.
Among the UC Merced students’ impressive creations in the dimly lighted room — dioramas, poems, photo collages, paintings in bold colors — Derek Miller’s creation attracted attention.
Because it gurgled.
It was a tall box open on one side. Balanced on top was a miniature footbridge made of red Popsicle sticks. Through the open side you could see clear beads dangling from the lid. At the bottom of the box, water trickled noisily into a tray glowing in sky-blue light.
The Huntington Library in San Marino is one of the world’s greatest sources for independent research in the humanities, with documents and artifacts that span 11 centuries. Scholars from more than 30 nations visit its reading rooms or tap into its digital services.
Each year, the library awards 15 long-term fellowships for high-quality research. Of those, six are named distinguished fellows, an honor for exceptional work in their field of study.
Educators from across California will gather at UC Merced for an up-close look at a curriculum that teaches schoolchildren about Hmong Americans — their history in Southeast Asia, their cultural traditions, and their journeys to the United States to escape war and deadly oppression.
Todo Cambia, UC Merced’s annual Human Rights Film Festival, is about more than film this year.
Deborah Taffa, an Indigenous author and educator whose book about growing up in a mixed-race home and struggling with social acceptance was hailed as one the best memoirs of 2024, will make a special visit to Merced this month.
Katherine Cai is on stage, reminiscing about high school.
“My dad tried to teach me geometry. You know how that goes. The questions get more and more difficult and Dad gets more and more frustrated, which leads to both of us having a crisis.”
“We’re all just victims of word problems.”
Laughs ripple through the 100 or so students, faculty and friends in the audience. They can relate.
Cai, a UC Merced psychology major, is halfway through her standup comedy routine, a final performance for Writing 122. And she’s crushing it.
Tsitsi Dangarembga spread the spirit of ubuntu over UC Merced on Wednesday night, imparting its message of “how we can be good people who live well together.”
