History of Consciousness is the name of a department in the Humanities Division of the

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the ed ...

with a 50+ year history of interdisciplinary research and student training in "established and emergent disciplines and fields" in the

humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at t ...

, arts, sciences, and

social science Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of s ...

s based on a diverse array of theoretical approaches. The program has a history of well-known affiliated faculty and of well-known program graduates.

History

The program was started in the first year of the Santa Cruz campus in a rather informal manner. A small group of faculty members, including the American historian Page Smith, philosopher

Maurice Natanson Maurice Alexander Natanson (November 26, 1924 – August 16, 1996) was an American philosopher "who helped introduce the work of Jean-Paul Sartre and Edmund Husserl in the United States". He was a student of Alfred Schutz at the New School for ...

, culture theorist Harry Berger, Jr., and psychology professor Bert Kaplan approached the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, University of Califor ...

system-wide Graduate Council with a proposal for a new type of graduate program for the new campus. According to the founding Chancellor of the campus, Dean McHenry, they did not consult with him and the program was approved without his input. For over a decade, there were no direct faculty appointments to the program and all faculty teaching in the program was done by members of established Boards of Studies (at the time, the UC Santa Cruz equivalent of departments). This led to problems in budgeting and program continuity, and coupled with the unorthodox interdisciplinary nature of the program, it also presented challenges in placing History of Consciousness graduates in teaching jobs. The appointment of Norman O. Brown as Professor of Humanities in 1968 was in part intended to address some of these concerns. The first graduate student in History of Consciousness was Harvey Rabbin. Perhaps the best-known graduate of the program is

Huey P. Newton Huey Percy Newton (February 17, 1942 – August 22, 1989) was an African-American revolutionary, notable as founder of the Black Panther Party. Newton crafted the Party's ten-point manifesto with Bobby Seale in 1966. Under Newton's leadership ...

, co-founder of the

Black Panther Party The Black Panther Party (BPP), originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was a Marxism-Leninism, Marxist-Leninist and Black Power movement, black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. New ...

. Newton received his Ph.D. in 1980.

Faculty

Historians

Hayden White Hayden V. White (July 12, 1928 – March 5, 2018) was an American historian in the tradition of literary criticism, perhaps most famous for his work '' Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe'' (1973/2014). Career ...

and James Clifford were among the first faculty members directly appointed to the department. White joined the faculty as Professor of History of Consciousness and Chair of the Board in July, 1978, having been recruited by then-Chancellor Angus Taylor to bring stability to the program. In addition to White and Clifford,

Angela Davis Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American political activist, philosopher, academic, scholar, and author. She is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. A feminist and a Marxist, Davis was a longtime member of ...

Barbara Epstein Barbara Epstein ( Zimmerman; August 30, 1928 – June 16, 2006) was a literary editor and founding co-editor of ''The New York Review of Books''. Life and work Epstein, née Zimmerman, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to a Jewish family, and g ...

Donna Haraway Donna J. Haraway is an American Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department and Feminist Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a prominent scholar in the field of science and technology studies. S ...

, Stephen Heath,

Fredric Jameson Fredric Jameson (born April 14, 1934) is an American literary critic, philosopher and Marxist political theorist. He is best known for his analysis of contemporary cultural trends, particularly his analysis of postmodernity and capitalism. Jam ...

Teresa de Lauretis Teresa de Lauretis (; born 1938 in Bologna) is an Italian author and Distinguished Professor Emerita of the History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her areas of interest include semiotics, psychoanalysis, film theory ...

and Gary Lease joined the program, while professors in other disciplines taught "HistCon" courses, supervised HistCon graduate students, and participated in new graduate student admissions. Among those most active at this time were political theorists J. Peter Euben, Robert Meister and John Schaar as well as philosopher David Hoy. Other notable faculty who have taught in the program include Karen Barad,

Victor Burgin Victor Burgin (born 1941) is a British artist and writer. Burgin first came to attention as a conceptual artist in the late 1960s (Harrison & Wood, 1992; Walker, 2001) and at that time was most noted for being a political photographer of the le ...

, Isaac Julien,

Herbert Marcuse Herbert Marcuse (; ; July 19, 1898 – July 29, 1979) was a German-American philosopher, social critic, and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Born in Berlin, Marcuse studied at the Humboldt University ...

, David Marriott, Kobena Mercer,

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (born 24 February 1942) is an Indian scholar, literary theorist, and feminist critic. She is a University Professor at Columbia University and a founding member of the establishment's Institute for Comparative Lit ...

and Neferti Tadiar. As of November 2021, the department's faculty include Banu Bargu, Chris Connery, Carla Freccero, Robert Meister, Eric Porter, and Massimiliano Tomba. In 2018, Gopal Balakrishnan was the subject of an investigation regarding his violation of the university's sexual harassment policy. He was ultimately found guilty of violating it and was fired from the university.

Notable graduates

* William Drea Adams *

Bettina Aptheker Bettina Fay Aptheker (born September 13, 1944) is an American political activist, radical feminist, professor and author. Aptheker was active in civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and has since worked in developing femini ...

Joanne Barker Joanne Barker (Lenape, citizen of the Delaware Tribe of Indians) became a faculty member within the American Indian Studies Department at San Francisco State University, in 2003. Much of her work focuses on indigenous feminism and the sovereignty ...

Thomas Bass Thomas Alden Bass (born March 9, 1951) is an American writer and professor in literature, journalism, and history. Biography Bass graduated with an honors A.B. from the University of Chicago in 1973 and earned his Ph.D. in the History of Co ...

Julian Bleecker Julian Bleecker is an artist and technologist with a history developing innovative mobile research projects. Career Bleecker holds a Ph.D. from the History of Consciousness Program at University of California, Santa Cruz. He's been an artist-in ...

* Lisa E. Bloom * Greg Calvert *

Ron Eglash Ron Eglash (born December 25, 1958 in Chestertown, Maryland) is an American who works in cybernetics, professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan with a secondary appointment in the School of Design, and an author widel ...

* S. Lochlann Jain * Caren Kaplan * Noelani Goodyear-Ka'opua * J. Kēhaulani Kauanui *

Carol Mavor Carol Jane Mavor is an American writer and professor. Her work includes the books ''Pleasures Taken: Performances of Sexuality and Loss in Victorian Photographs'', ''Becoming: The Photographs of Clementina, Viscountess Hawarden'', and ''Blue Mytho ...

* Stephen Nachmanovitch *

Marisa Olson Marisa Olson is an artist, writer, curator, and former punk singer. In 2004 she auditioned for popular American television show American Idol as an artistic project. Over the course of three months of daily "training exercises," it is revealed th ...

* Mike Rotkin *

Chela Sandoval Chela Sandoval (born July 31, 1956), associate professor of Chicana Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara, is a noted theorist of postcolonial feminism and third world feminism. Beginning with her 1991 pioneering essay 'U.S. Third W ...

* Ruth Frankenberg * Claudia Castaneda * Kevin Fellezs * Katie King * Andrea Smith * Sandy Stone * Marita Sturken * Kim TallBear * Adam Geary * Eva Hayward * Luz Calvo * Teresia Teaiwa *

Michael Tobias Michael Charles Tobias (born June 27, 1951) is an American author, environmentalist, mountaineer, and filmmaker. In 1991, Tobias produced a ten-hour dramatic television series, ''Voice of the Planet'', for Turner Broadcasting; the series starre ...

Howard Winant Howard Winant (born 1946) is an American sociologist and race theorist. Winant is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Winant is best known for developing the theory of ''racial formation'' along wi ...

* Gurbhagat Singh

References

External links

* * * * * Regarding the perception of the program by its campus administration, as of 2009. {{University of California, Santa Cruz University of California, Santa Cruz Critical theory 1965 establishments in California Graduate schools in the United States

History

Faculty

Notable graduates

See also

References

Further reading

External links