In response to Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s recent death, "Navalny," a documentary focused on his 2020 poisoning and life thereafter, will be screened at Cruess Hall on Feb. 26. The screening is free and open to the public.

UC Davis Granada Artist-in-Residence Scott Ebersold discusses "The Laramie Project," the production about the 1998 killing of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student at the University of Wyoming. The riveting contemporary play will be presented by the UC Davis Department of Theatre and Dance from Feb. 22 to March 2.

UC Davis art professor Beatriz Cortez, a multidisciplinary artist and sculptor, has been invited to participate in the prestigious Venice Biennale arts and culture showcase, marking the first time in 40 years a current faculty member has been tapped for the honor.

UC Davis alumna and lecturer Linda Noveroske-Tritten centers on a philosophical analysis of creative acts at the Burning Man Festival and their roles in wider social change. With particular focus on the Ten Principles of Burning Man, Noveroske-Tritten posits a re-interpretation of common notions of "self" and "other" as they apply to identity.

Malaquías Montoya, a professor emeritus of Chicana and Chicano studies at UC Davis, has influenced several generations of students. His art has addressed social and political issues: farmworkers rights, the Vietnam War, U.S. intervention in Central America, and the torture of prisoners by many governments. Montoya's art was recently celebrated at exhibitions in Davis and the Bay Area.

So, what’s the U.S. State Department doing in the music business? Actually, the State Department has a long music diplomacy history, and an expert on this is Carol A. Hess, a musicologist and Distinguished Professor of Music in the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis.

The new book American Purgatory: Prison Imperialism and the Rise of Mass Incarceration tells the story of American incarceration, from its roots in racial slavery and colonialism to the present day, through the stories of the people who built resistance and freedom movements from within its confines.

The UC Davis Department of African American and African Studies is launching a new speaker series to introduce the campus and larger community to new research in global Black studies. The series will bring in scholars from around the country. Titled “New Directions in Black Studies,” the free talk will be held in 3201 Hart Hall at noon. Register for the talks.

The UC Davis Department of Art and Art History will launch its 2023–24 public lecture series with talks by artists Katya Grokhovsky (Oct. 12) and Sky Hopinka (Oct. 26) at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art. The talks are free and open to the public.

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that there is an association between how songs sound and their place in our emotional lives. Sourcing songs from across the globe, Manvir Singh and his fellow researchers found that people from different types of societies can successfully identify a song’s type by how it sounds, regardless of the language of its words.