Academics
Undergraduate
East Asian Studies Minor
East Asian Studies at UC Santa Cruz offers an interdisciplinary exploration of China, Japan, and beyond. Students build language skills in Chinese or Japanese, study the region’s historical foundations, and engage with diverse fields such as literature, politics, art, film, and sociology to gain both depth and breadth in understanding East Asia.
Affiliations
Center for the Study of Pacific War Memories
The Center for the Study of Pacific War Memories, founded in 2006 and housed in the Institute for Humanities Research, fosters collaborative and transnational research on how the Asia Pacific War has been remembered across the region. Its work explores how war memories shape identities, inform politics, economics, science, and culture, and circulate among Pacific societies to create shared regional connections.
Association for Asian Studies
Founded in 1941, the Association for Asian Studies (AAS)—the largest society of its kind, with approximately 8,000 members worldwide—is a scholarly, non-political, non-profit professional association open to all persons interested in Asia.
Okinawa Memories Initiative
The Okinawa Memories Initiative is a collaborative, international public history project that explores the founding years of the American military occupation of Okinawa. The project is inspired by a collection of photos taken in Okinawa in 1952 by an American Army Captain: Charles Eugene Gail.
News
A vision of freedom: the overlooked Black women activists who rallied for the vote in the Pacific Northwest
Long before women gained the right to vote nationwide in 1920, Black women in the Pacific Northwest were already working to shape political life—organizing clubs, building party networks, and mobilizing voters.
Assistant Professor of History Quin’Nita Cobbins-Modica’s research shines a light on these overlooked political strategists. Her scholarship has earned her the 2025 Judith Lee Ridge Award, which recognizes the best article in any field of history published by a member of the Western Association of Women Historians (WAWH).
New book chronicles the life of an enslaved man on the run in the 1700s
David George was born enslaved in Virginia in 1742, but he never gave up on his fight for freedom. Running by night, fording rivers and crossing borders, George embarked on a decades-long odyssey in and out of captivity that carried him thousands of miles. Those repeated getaway form the heart of The Escapes of David George: An Odyssey of Slavery, Freedom, and the American Revolution (St. Martin’s Press), a forthcoming book by History Professor Gregory O’Malley.
PhD history student Linda Ulbrich helps bring Santa Cruz’s past to life in the city’s expanded online history page
Santa Cruz’s official government website now offers a brisk virtual tour through influential, intriguing, tragic and overlooked moments from the city’s past.
The updated and lavishly illustrated Santa Cruz history timeline is the handiwork of history Ph.D. candidate Linda Ulbrich, whose work encourages further exploration.