A new exhibition of work by recent University of California alumni highlights UC's artistic legacy and shows California’s world-class public university is ready to step in as art schools across the country disappear.

Noah Guynn, professor of French and comparative literature, accepts appointment as Associate Dean of Faculty for Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies in the College of Letters and Science.

Engaging with cultural history, political anthropology, and critical, feminist, and queer theory, Guynn shows that french farce does not pander to the rabble in order to cultivate acquiescence or curb dissent. Rather, it uses the tools of comic theater—parody and satire, imitation and exaggeration, cross-dressing and masquerade—to address the urgent issues its spectators faced in their everyday lives: economic inequality and authoritarian rule, social justice and ethical renewal, sacramental devotion and sacerdotal corruption, and heterosocial relations and household politics.