Maria Sestito

Maria Sestito 

Department Editor, Arts & Humanities

Maria Sestito writes about all things arts and humanities as part of the College of Letters and Science’s marketing and communications team. She is an award-winning writer and journalist. Prior to joining UC Davis, she worked for a decade in newsrooms across California and in North Carolina as a photographer, reporter and columnist. She’s also taught journalism to high school students through TRIO Upward Bound and Oregon State University.

Sestito earned her bachelor’s degree in Middle Eastern Studies with a Women and Gender Studies minor at Rutgers University in New Jersey. She earned her master’s degree in journalism at UC Berkeley.

She is an alumna of AmeriCorps and Report for America. Some of her past fellowships were through the U.S. Department of Education Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS), Columbia Journalism School, USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism and the Bloomberg Journalism Diversity Program.

Sinéad Rushe

Shakespeare, Meet Sinéad Rushe

  • by Maria Sestito
UC Davis Granada Artist-in-Residence and "Who’s There?" director Sinéad Rushe and a crew of six student actors are turning William Shakespeare’s "Hamlet" inside out. The production, which debuts May 16 at the Wyatt Pavilion Theatre in Davis, seeks to explore human psychology through Hamlet’s shifting roles, thoughts and desires. 

Drawing From Observation

  • by Maria Sestito
Four UC Davis alumni spent the winter learning how to draw from observation at the Royal Drawing School in London with the support of an international scholarship. Students curated their own programs, choosing from a variety of courses such as life drawing, etching and printmaking.
Halifu Osumare's headshot

From the Stage to the Page

  • by Maria Sestito
Professor Emerita Halifu Osumare returns to campus this month to read from and celebrate her new memoir, Dancing the Afrofuture: Hula, Hip-Hop and the Dunham Legacy, with the Department of African American and African Studies.