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its fellows are gone, replaced with small shops and eateries that sell sushi and art supplies, sk... more its fellows are gone, replaced with small shops and eateries that sell sushi and art supplies, skateboards and youth boutique clothes, underwear and lattes. It is a photograph that tells, sotto voce, of a time before the university, of a rest before a morning, of a town on the doorstep of accelerated transformation.
Author(s): Dizikes, John; Regional History Project, UC Santa Cruz Library; Vanderscoff, Cameron |... more Author(s): Dizikes, John; Regional History Project, UC Santa Cruz Library; Vanderscoff, Cameron | Abstract: John Dizikes first saw UC Santa Cruz when it was still rolling hills and the buildings were only artist’s renderings. He agreed to stake his career on this new, untried campus because he understood the vision of UCSC as a place where higher education would be reformed and teaching would be a priority—and he followed through on the gamble, coming here as one of UCSC’s founding faculty in 1965. In his ensuing thirty-five-year career at UC Santa Cruz, he was a professor of history, a professor and co-founder of the American Studies Department, a provost of Cowell College and chair of the Council of Provosts, and throughout and above it all a dedicated educator and an ongoing student. This oral history was conducted in 2011 by Cowell alum Cameron Vanderscoff for the Regional History Project.
Interview History When Harry Berger, Jr. was young, his father ran a company called Kaylon Pajama... more Interview History When Harry Berger, Jr. was young, his father ran a company called Kaylon Pajamas, from the Greek kalon, for beautiful. At the time of these sessions, one of the four books he was working on-each on a different topic, from Plato to Shakespeare-was about Socrates' ironic notion of Kallipolis, meaning 'beautiful city,' which draws on the same root term. Framed this way, this oral history is a narrative of Berger's formation from Kaylon to Kallipolis, stopping off at jazz clubs, Hawaiian radio shacks, New Critical Yale, and the UC Santa Cruz experiment along the way. At this last and most pivotal location, this telling is an account of his perspective as a professor of literature, founding faculty member, and literary critic. Throughout, he traces the parallel tracks of his pedagogy, campus engagement, and scholarship, considering points of intersection and core philosophies, addressing themes of change, conflict and continuity at UCSC. Berger defines himself as a critic above all else, and his training in New Criticism, with its trademark methodology of close reading, proves to be a consistent note both in his writing and in his approach to teaching and working at UCSC. After providing an overview of his early biography, discussing life in New York City and New Rochelle, and recounting, among other things, his hatred of superheterodyne radios as a WWII Marine, he turns to his two loci at UCSC, Cowell College and the literature department. At the former, he was a teacher and dedicated participant in the original UCSC collegiate experiment, and at the latter, he was a passionate advocate of close reading as a core value for the new program.
have a car. It would have been problematic if everybody in the house had a car and there was no p... more have a car. It would have been problematic if everybody in the house had a car and there was no place to park them, even on back streets. But we were okay. No one much seemed to mind. Other families had four, five, six people living in a house. We had ten to twelve living in the same house. It wasn't that large of a house either, much smaller than this house. (laughs) Vanderscoff: You mentioned your Irish and Polish roots. So was there a sense of distinctly Irish and distinctly Polish things in this house, or did they sort of blend together. How did that work? Lynch: Well, I think by numbers the Polish won out by a long shot. My father never learned a word of Polish as far as I could tell. He was the only one who didn't speak any Polish, never tried to speak Polish. He was amazingly tolerant, in the sense that the only relative he had there was his Aunt Bessie. He was her favorite among the brothers and sisters in his family. So when she got ill later on in life she moved in. That was the only person on the Irish side of the family who lived there. All the rest of the people were Polish. My mother and grandfather spoke fluent Polish and my aunts and uncles spoke Polish too. I didn't. I had started out with my grandmother who spoke only Polish, during the war, but after the war my mother insisted that I not speak Polish, because she thought that I would get confused in school. So she actually put a stop to all my Polish baby talk. I continued until age three or four, and after four I stopped speaking Polish. I can understand a fair amount but I didn't speak very much. My mother didn't like the idea of my speaking Polish, even though she did speak Polish herself.
and the founding artistic director of Shakespeare Santa Cruz. In this oral history, Stanley addre... more and the founding artistic director of Shakespeare Santa Cruz. In this oral history, Stanley addresses her life and career in education and theater, which spans from her youth in England to her ongoing tenure in Santa Cruz. Her narrative begins with her childhood in Whitstable, Kent, and London, where she was first introduced to theater through pantomimes at a young age, and was soon inspired to direct her inaugural production with a cast of local friends. Stanley relates both these So while these pages come to a close with Stanley's hope that the festival she and others have put so much time and work into will persist, the spirit of her dedication, and that of her collaborators, indeed continues in Santa Cruz under a new banner. Personally, Stanley explains the merit of ongoing Shakespeare performance with a meditation on what makes his plays so indispensable, saying "there's an empathy that exists [in his works] that I think we should all be trained in." More broadly, she eloquently defends the role of the arts and theatre in society, arguing that staged performance, at its transcendent best, is a joining experience for all present, one where, simply put, "everybody breathes together." This oral history, itself a narrative performance of a life closely connected to the stage as a director, educator, actress, and supporter, is a record of Stanley's efforts to build, sustain and share these features in her adopted community of Santa Cruz. These sessions took place over the summer of 2013 in Stanley's house on the UCSC campus. On my end, I'd like to thank Stanley for her willingness to share her time for this project. When I spoke with her associates for background research, she was consistently praised for her persistence and fortitude as a colleague, artist, and friend; her commitment to this project in spite of a period of health issues is one more testament to her generosity of spirit. I'd also like to thank all the individuals who spoke with me in person, via email, and over the phone to share their experience of knowing Stanley-this group includes colleagues and SSC collaborators such as Michael Warren, Michael Donald Edwards, Danny Sheie and Karen Sinsheimer. Great thanks is also due to Patricia Kelly, UCSC Cowell alumna, whose munificent funding made this project "Chatting with Cameron:" An Oral History with Professor Audrey Stanley 4 possible in the first place, and to Faye Crosby, Provost of Cowell, who played a key role in facilitating this oral history. As always, I'd like to express my appreciation to Irene Reti, Director of the Regional History Project, for her editorial eye, mentorship, and guidance on this project, and to Elisabeth Remak-Honnef and the kind people at Special Collections for their support. Copies of this volume are on deposit in Special Collections and in the circulating stacks at the UCSC Library, as well as on the library's website. The Regional History Project is supported administratively by Elisabeth Remak-Honnef, Head of Special Collections and Archives, and University Librarian Elizabeth Cowell.
In the 1960s, a small team of innovators gathered on a stunning sweep of land overlooking the Cal... more In the 1960s, a small team of innovators gathered on a stunning sweep of land overlooking the California coast. They envisioned a new and different kind of university—one that could reinvent public higher education in the United States. Through this two-volume oral history of the University of California, Santa Cruz, we hear first-person accounts of the campus’s evolution, from the origins of an audacious dream through the sea changes of five decades. More than two hundred narrators and a trove of archival images contribute to this dynamic, nuanced account. Today, UC Santa Cruz is a leading research university with experimental roots. This is the story of what was learned, what was lost, and what has grown along the way
At the University of California, Santa Cruz and across the world, 2020 was a year of no... more At the University of California, Santa Cruz and across the world, 2020 was a year of not just the COVID-19 pandemic, but pandemics, plural. While the pandemic can be mapped and tracked and tallied with numbers, for it to be understood and felt for many, if not most people, we need stories. This collection of twenty-two oral history interviews, gathered in late 2020 by UCSC students under the auspices of the Library’s Regional History Project, is an impressionistic illustration of an unstable present, exploring a range of ways people have encountered and interpreted this time. Some narrators speak primarily of racism and racial justice; for others, COVID-19 is in the extreme foreground. Others raise questions of economic justice in America and more locally for graduate students at UCSC; still others address climate change, since the CZU Lightning Complex fires also exploded across Santa Cruz County in 2020 and nearly consumed the campus itself. A hardback version of this book can be purchased online from Lulu.com at:https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/irene-reti-and-cameron-vanderscoff/the-empty-year/hardcover/product-2d5q98.html?page=1&pageSize=
While this oral history is Jasper's story, it is also fundamentally a shared effort by the Rose f... more While this oral history is Jasper's story, it is also fundamentally a shared effort by the Rose family. These interviews with Jasper, Jean, William, and Inigo Rose took place in June 2018; Jasper passed away exactly a year later, on June 12, 2019. This oral history is covered by copyright agreement between Jean Rose (also signing for Jasper), Inigo Rose, and William Rose and the Regents of the University of California. Under "fair use" standards, excerpts of up to six hundred words (per interview) may be quoted without the University Library's permission as long as the materials are properly cited. Quotations of more than six hundred words require the written permission of the Head of Special Collections and Archives and a proper citation and may also require a fee. Under certain circumstances, not-for-profit users may be granted a waiver of the fee. For permission contact: Irene Reti
It is Wednesday, November 2 nd , [2011] we are at John Dizikes' house on King Street in Santa Cru... more It is Wednesday, November 2 nd , [2011] we are at John Dizikes' house on King Street in Santa Cruz and we are conducting part one of his oral history. My name is Cameron Vanderscoff, and I will be conducting the interview. John is here with us. With that, let's get started. What made you want to be a teacher? John Dizikes: Well, that's the-curiously, the ultimate 64 million dollar question. I'm not sure what made me want to be a teacher. I grew up in a family that had very little education. My father came from Greece when he was eleven, he'd gone through the fifth grade, my mother left high school in the-I think the 11 th grade-but they were very interested in contemporary affairs. My father would bring magazines home-he worked as a night watchman many years-and so we read and talked about things. I had an older brother who was not very interested in politics, but I was, my father and mother were, and I was a bookish student. I was good at school, I liked school, they encouraged me of course, always, and I think I just assumed-since I did not know what it would be to become a lawyer, or a doctor-I assumed I would be a teacher. That seemed agreeable, and it always did seem agreeable, because you're dealing with ideas, with people, with things I cared about. So I think it was just an assumption that was never very seriously questioned thereafter, and later on, when I became a little more sophisticated and went on to college, I tried different subjects. Literature was a great interest; the classics were an interest, psychology-. But I knew I didn't do science, wasn't a mathematician, and that what I really wanted was American history because it helped explain who I was-or am. Vanderscoff: Right. Dizikes: So I think it was partly the circumstances in which I grew up, and the fact that many, many students have come to understand, and that is if you want some kind of intellectual life-that sounds pretentious, but a life where you talk about ideas with people, and things, not professional, not commercial, teaching is what you have in American culture.
The house was in Brooklyn. I was born at Long Island College Hospital, which is on Long Island, I... more The house was in Brooklyn. I was born at Long Island College Hospital, which is on Long Island, I believe, from its name. 6 But we lived pretty much in Brooklyn, and always in apartments. Once we lost the house, we never had a house again in the family. So that when I came to California much later on, at the behest of my grandmother-my grandmother kept encouraging my husband and me to go to California, "That's the place for you," because she knew how much we loved nature. And the story before that is that we had met and married in the south of France, right on the shore of the Mediterranean. So, once you have that south of France in your blood, it's kind of hard to settle for going back to the big walk-ups and the no-tree in-Brooklyn. No going back to, need I tell you about New York and it's not exact, shall we say, deepest relation in the world with nature? 7 Vanderscoff: What was the name of the neighborhood you grew up within Brooklyn? Ellis: Flatbush. I believe it was called Flatbush. Vanderscoff: You talked a little bit about your father's love of languages. What sort of languages were around Flatbush? What was Flatbush like? Ellis: Our house was always open to immigrants, and so they came with all kinds of languages: German, Russian, Polish, or Hungarian, and I don't know what all else. Of course, they were all learning English as best they could. And yeah, we just always had music, and the "other" was always welcome in our house. My parents had been brought here when they 6 There was a Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn (which itself is on Long Island). 7 The interviewer lives in New York City. 20 were two or three months old, so you can really say that they were almost born here, pretty close to that-that huge wave of immigrants in the late nineteenth century that came from all over Europe. Vanderscoff: Where did they come from? Ellis: They came from what was then called the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which became Romania and Hungary and I don't know whatnot else, you know, all these other little states it got chopped up into. And so, languages, yes. Language was always kind of warp and woof. I suspect that with your name that it is not very far distant from your past, as well; that you have been linguistically enhanced in your lifetime, not having just English in your life. Is that wrong of me to think that, or-? Vanderscoff: Well, Vanderscoff is Americanized Dutch. It used to be "van der Schaaf." Then it became "Vanderscoff." Ellis: From the "Schaaf?" What is "Scoff?" Vanderscoff: Well, "scoff" is just some American version of the-Ellis: Stuyvesant, perhaps, or something, whatever the name was. 8 Vanderscoff: Yeah, some long Dutch-8 Stuyvesant is a common place name in New York City, dating back to Dutch New York. Centre de l'art dramatique, appliqué à l'étude du français, Center of Theater Arts, New York City Yeah, so when I was seventeen, I had that chance to go to this contest from the French government. They were trying to keep the French language alive. This was not the occupied French government. The Free French government was trying to do this. 10 They started a troupe in New York City of high school seniors or students who were proficient enough in the language to be able to handle this kind of demand, to do theater in the language. And so, we started the-the title is about that long [indicates lengthy space] The title of it was the École libre-you know the New School that's in the Village? You've heard of the New School, or seen it, I'm sure. 11 [Vanderscoff indicates yes] That's the official entity with which it was associated. So, it was called the École libre-the Free School-des hautes études-of High Studies, or Advanced Studies. And the subdivision that I was in was called the Centre de l'art dramatique, appliqué à l'étude du français, or the Center of Theater Arts, applied to the Study of French. 12 So that was the title of the program to which I won a scholarship. I worked with Madame Ève Danièl, who had married an American and migrated to the U.S. She had been an associée, working with members of the Comédie Française for many years. And when the chance came for her to come to the States and to be part of this project, she was very pleased to be able to work towards keeping her language and culture before the American public. She lived down in the Village. And she had great connections. She knew some of the contemporary playwrights in France. She knew Jean Benoît-Lévy, who was a 10 During the war, there was an occupied French Vichy government, and the Free French government in exile. 11 The New School was and is based in lower Manhattan. 12 We've used French language convention for capitalization of French language titles like this. young artists' programs, right? And we have to find more of them with Monte. There's Marriage of Figaro. Vanderscoff: So, we're scrolling through a bunch of SCOSI programs from the eighties and nineties, showing the series of young artists that they had. And this one here, "Cowell-" Ellis: Oh, here is another one. Here's one with Monte again, and Mark Fox, who was also-Vanderscoff: It's 1981. Ellis:-I think, under contract with San Francisco. Opera for supporting roles, mostly. Maybe he was also in the chorus. I'm not sure of that. See, what I wanted to do as part of SCOSI was this series, which went on for many years, and featured different singers of different levels of expertise in their careers. Will they have a career or is there not to be a career-we didn't know, did we? Vanderscoff: This is the young artists series, for the record. Ellis: The object was to give them a chance to be heard by a live audience. And it was to give Santa Cruz folks a chance to hear some opera right in their downtown, right here. Vanderscoff: So where were you sourcing the performers, where were you-? Ellis: We would get donations. We would get little grants here and there to do, as I think I've spelled out somewhere in my CV, where we would get little grants to do this or that. And we
Vanderscoff here for the Regional History Project with Elizabeth Spedding Calciano, and we are he... more Vanderscoff here for the Regional History Project with Elizabeth Spedding Calciano, and we are here to talk about her life and specifically about her work founding the Regional History Project. Our focus today is going to be her early life, childhood, and education. Calciano: Can I just say I am Elizabeth Spedding Calciano, and that's my professional name, but I married my husband, who's now deceased, about twentysome years ago. So socially I'm Elizabeth Georgeon [pronounced like Georgian]. 1 So, you know, if you're phoning some places, they know me as Elizabeth Georgeon; others, as Elizabeth Calciano. Vanderscoff: Perfect. Calciano: Okay. Vanderscoff: And so would you mind, then, stating the date that you were born and just a little bit about your childhood. Calciano: Well, I was born July 28, 1939. I always lived in Ames, Iowa but I was born in Des Moines. I grew up in Ames. They lived in an apartment near Campustown the first year, but then moved out to a small Cape-Cod house, 1240 Orchard Drive, when they published a paper together, but I'm not certain of that. Dr. Shane was interested in spectroscopy-stars and the starlight and what does it tell us. 2 Vanderscoff: Tell me a bit more about that. Calciano: When he was in Berkeley, E. O. Lawrence, who I think everybody pretty much knows because of the Lawrence Laboratories, he must have been a postdoc, and my dad was a postdoc. Lawrence had a big, powerful magnet because it was the beginnings of seeing if you could get particles going in a cyclotron. And my father wanted to borrow it for an experiment. He cleared it with the chief of Buildings and Grounds because it drew a great deal of power and so could only be used on the weekends, because otherwise it could blow out the main circuit on campus and all the lights would go out, and all the machines. And, of course, there weren't computers and things like that, but there were light bulbs and stuff that you needed to have electricity for. So, he'd cleared it that he could use it on a Sunday afternoon, and he got his experiment, whatever it was, all set up. He threw it on, and immediately all the lights went out all over the university. The president of the University of California was William Wallace Campbell. I had the interesting experience of interviewing his son, Kenneth Campbell. 3 There's a funny story in that oral history about when Ken Campbell and his little playmate up
The Western Historical Quarterly, 2015
At the University of California, Santa Cruz and across the world, 2020 was a year of no... more At the University of California, Santa Cruz and across the world, 2020 was a year of not just the COVID-19 pandemic, but pandemics, plural. While the pandemic can be mapped and tracked and tallied with numbers, for it to be understood and felt for many, if not most people, we need stories. This collection of twenty-two oral history interviews, gathered in late 2020 by UCSC students under the auspices of the Library’s Regional History Project, is an impressionistic illustration of an unstable present, exploring a range of ways people have encountered and interpreted this time. Some narrators speak primarily of racism and racial justice; for others, COVID-19 is in the extreme foreground. Others raise questions of economic justice in America and more locally for graduate students at UCSC; still others address climate change, since the CZU Lightning Complex fires also exploded across Santa Cruz County in 2020 and nearly consumed the campus itself. A hardback version of this book can be purchased online from Lulu.com at:https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/irene-reti-and-cameron-vanderscoff/the-empty-year/hardcover/product-2d5q98.html?page=1&pageSize=
Author(s): Dizikes, John; Regional History Project, UC Santa Cruz Library; Vanderscoff, Cameron |... more Author(s): Dizikes, John; Regional History Project, UC Santa Cruz Library; Vanderscoff, Cameron | Abstract: John Dizikes first saw UC Santa Cruz when it was still rolling hills and the buildings were only artist’s renderings. He agreed to stake his career on this new, untried campus because he understood the vision of UCSC as a place where higher education would be reformed and teaching would be a priority—and he followed through on the gamble, coming here as one of UCSC’s founding faculty in 1965. In his ensuing thirty-five-year career at UC Santa Cruz, he was a professor of history, a professor and co-founder of the American Studies Department, a provost of Cowell College and chair of the Council of Provosts, and throughout and above it all a dedicated educator and an ongoing student. This oral history was conducted in 2011 by Cowell alum Cameron Vanderscoff for the Regional History Project.
Author(s): Vanderscoff, Cameron; Lynch, John P. | Abstract: John Patrick Lynch is a professor eme... more Author(s): Vanderscoff, Cameron; Lynch, John P. | Abstract: John Patrick Lynch is a professor emeritus of literature and a formative figure in the classics program at UC Santa Cruz, as well as a former provost of Cowell College. Lynch expands on these roles in this account, providing their larger context in his work and philosophies as an educator, and discussing his hopes and priorities in his 37-year career at this institution. He makes sweeps through the personal as well as the professional, and in doing so, affirms a core vocational identity as a teacher above all else, a campus citizen above a researcher. In his work at UCSC, Lynch sought to instantiate a model of learning that is fundamentally shared between teacher and student, one that goes beyond the confines of the classroom to become an experience in community.Lynch proves to be a thoughtful commentator on what has often been called the original UCSC experiment, starting from his decision to pick up and drive cross countr...
John Dizikes first saw UC Santa Cruz when it was still rolling hills and the buildings were only ... more John Dizikes first saw UC Santa Cruz when it was still rolling hills and the buildings were only artist’s renderings. He agreed to stake his career on this new, untried campus because he understood the vision of UCSC as a place where higher education would be reformed and teaching would be a priority—and he followed through on the gamble, coming here as one of UCSC’s founding faculty in 1965. In his ensuing thirty-five-year career at UC Santa Cruz, he was a professor of history, a professor and co-founder of the American Studies Department, a provost of Cowell College and chair of the Council of Provosts, and throughout and above it all a dedicated educator and an ongoing student. This oral history was conducted in 2011 by Cowell alum Cameron Vanderscoff for the Regional History Project.
Author(s): Vanderscoff, Cameron; Reti, Irene | Abstract: For many people, Jasper Rose embodied th... more Author(s): Vanderscoff, Cameron; Reti, Irene | Abstract: For many people, Jasper Rose embodied the spirit and dream of the young University of California, Santa Cruz campus. UCSC first opened its doors in 1965, and Jasper Rose was one of its founding faculty members and a senior preceptor at Cowell College. For Jasper, it meant the inauguration of a powerful shared venture, a space and a time where, as he put it, “it was as though we were a complete society.” He was passionate about that society and his place in it as an educator; animated by a reformer’s vision for change in education, he saw Santa Cruz as a place where something new and remarkable could be realized. In these pages, Jasper Rose recounts his own life journey to that place and to that vision, and shares his convictions and critiques about what has happened in the decades since at UCSC. While this oral history is Jasper’s story, it is also fundamentally a shared effort by the Rose family. Three different family member...
its fellows are gone, replaced with small shops and eateries that sell sushi and art supplies, sk... more its fellows are gone, replaced with small shops and eateries that sell sushi and art supplies, skateboards and youth boutique clothes, underwear and lattes. It is a photograph that tells, sotto voce, of a time before the university, of a rest before a morning, of a town on the doorstep of accelerated transformation.
Author(s): Dizikes, John; Regional History Project, UC Santa Cruz Library; Vanderscoff, Cameron |... more Author(s): Dizikes, John; Regional History Project, UC Santa Cruz Library; Vanderscoff, Cameron | Abstract: John Dizikes first saw UC Santa Cruz when it was still rolling hills and the buildings were only artist’s renderings. He agreed to stake his career on this new, untried campus because he understood the vision of UCSC as a place where higher education would be reformed and teaching would be a priority—and he followed through on the gamble, coming here as one of UCSC’s founding faculty in 1965. In his ensuing thirty-five-year career at UC Santa Cruz, he was a professor of history, a professor and co-founder of the American Studies Department, a provost of Cowell College and chair of the Council of Provosts, and throughout and above it all a dedicated educator and an ongoing student. This oral history was conducted in 2011 by Cowell alum Cameron Vanderscoff for the Regional History Project.
Interview History When Harry Berger, Jr. was young, his father ran a company called Kaylon Pajama... more Interview History When Harry Berger, Jr. was young, his father ran a company called Kaylon Pajamas, from the Greek kalon, for beautiful. At the time of these sessions, one of the four books he was working on-each on a different topic, from Plato to Shakespeare-was about Socrates' ironic notion of Kallipolis, meaning 'beautiful city,' which draws on the same root term. Framed this way, this oral history is a narrative of Berger's formation from Kaylon to Kallipolis, stopping off at jazz clubs, Hawaiian radio shacks, New Critical Yale, and the UC Santa Cruz experiment along the way. At this last and most pivotal location, this telling is an account of his perspective as a professor of literature, founding faculty member, and literary critic. Throughout, he traces the parallel tracks of his pedagogy, campus engagement, and scholarship, considering points of intersection and core philosophies, addressing themes of change, conflict and continuity at UCSC. Berger defines himself as a critic above all else, and his training in New Criticism, with its trademark methodology of close reading, proves to be a consistent note both in his writing and in his approach to teaching and working at UCSC. After providing an overview of his early biography, discussing life in New York City and New Rochelle, and recounting, among other things, his hatred of superheterodyne radios as a WWII Marine, he turns to his two loci at UCSC, Cowell College and the literature department. At the former, he was a teacher and dedicated participant in the original UCSC collegiate experiment, and at the latter, he was a passionate advocate of close reading as a core value for the new program.
have a car. It would have been problematic if everybody in the house had a car and there was no p... more have a car. It would have been problematic if everybody in the house had a car and there was no place to park them, even on back streets. But we were okay. No one much seemed to mind. Other families had four, five, six people living in a house. We had ten to twelve living in the same house. It wasn't that large of a house either, much smaller than this house. (laughs) Vanderscoff: You mentioned your Irish and Polish roots. So was there a sense of distinctly Irish and distinctly Polish things in this house, or did they sort of blend together. How did that work? Lynch: Well, I think by numbers the Polish won out by a long shot. My father never learned a word of Polish as far as I could tell. He was the only one who didn't speak any Polish, never tried to speak Polish. He was amazingly tolerant, in the sense that the only relative he had there was his Aunt Bessie. He was her favorite among the brothers and sisters in his family. So when she got ill later on in life she moved in. That was the only person on the Irish side of the family who lived there. All the rest of the people were Polish. My mother and grandfather spoke fluent Polish and my aunts and uncles spoke Polish too. I didn't. I had started out with my grandmother who spoke only Polish, during the war, but after the war my mother insisted that I not speak Polish, because she thought that I would get confused in school. So she actually put a stop to all my Polish baby talk. I continued until age three or four, and after four I stopped speaking Polish. I can understand a fair amount but I didn't speak very much. My mother didn't like the idea of my speaking Polish, even though she did speak Polish herself.
and the founding artistic director of Shakespeare Santa Cruz. In this oral history, Stanley addre... more and the founding artistic director of Shakespeare Santa Cruz. In this oral history, Stanley addresses her life and career in education and theater, which spans from her youth in England to her ongoing tenure in Santa Cruz. Her narrative begins with her childhood in Whitstable, Kent, and London, where she was first introduced to theater through pantomimes at a young age, and was soon inspired to direct her inaugural production with a cast of local friends. Stanley relates both these So while these pages come to a close with Stanley's hope that the festival she and others have put so much time and work into will persist, the spirit of her dedication, and that of her collaborators, indeed continues in Santa Cruz under a new banner. Personally, Stanley explains the merit of ongoing Shakespeare performance with a meditation on what makes his plays so indispensable, saying "there's an empathy that exists [in his works] that I think we should all be trained in." More broadly, she eloquently defends the role of the arts and theatre in society, arguing that staged performance, at its transcendent best, is a joining experience for all present, one where, simply put, "everybody breathes together." This oral history, itself a narrative performance of a life closely connected to the stage as a director, educator, actress, and supporter, is a record of Stanley's efforts to build, sustain and share these features in her adopted community of Santa Cruz. These sessions took place over the summer of 2013 in Stanley's house on the UCSC campus. On my end, I'd like to thank Stanley for her willingness to share her time for this project. When I spoke with her associates for background research, she was consistently praised for her persistence and fortitude as a colleague, artist, and friend; her commitment to this project in spite of a period of health issues is one more testament to her generosity of spirit. I'd also like to thank all the individuals who spoke with me in person, via email, and over the phone to share their experience of knowing Stanley-this group includes colleagues and SSC collaborators such as Michael Warren, Michael Donald Edwards, Danny Sheie and Karen Sinsheimer. Great thanks is also due to Patricia Kelly, UCSC Cowell alumna, whose munificent funding made this project "Chatting with Cameron:" An Oral History with Professor Audrey Stanley 4 possible in the first place, and to Faye Crosby, Provost of Cowell, who played a key role in facilitating this oral history. As always, I'd like to express my appreciation to Irene Reti, Director of the Regional History Project, for her editorial eye, mentorship, and guidance on this project, and to Elisabeth Remak-Honnef and the kind people at Special Collections for their support. Copies of this volume are on deposit in Special Collections and in the circulating stacks at the UCSC Library, as well as on the library's website. The Regional History Project is supported administratively by Elisabeth Remak-Honnef, Head of Special Collections and Archives, and University Librarian Elizabeth Cowell.
In the 1960s, a small team of innovators gathered on a stunning sweep of land overlooking the Cal... more In the 1960s, a small team of innovators gathered on a stunning sweep of land overlooking the California coast. They envisioned a new and different kind of university—one that could reinvent public higher education in the United States. Through this two-volume oral history of the University of California, Santa Cruz, we hear first-person accounts of the campus’s evolution, from the origins of an audacious dream through the sea changes of five decades. More than two hundred narrators and a trove of archival images contribute to this dynamic, nuanced account. Today, UC Santa Cruz is a leading research university with experimental roots. This is the story of what was learned, what was lost, and what has grown along the way
At the University of California, Santa Cruz and across the world, 2020 was a year of no... more At the University of California, Santa Cruz and across the world, 2020 was a year of not just the COVID-19 pandemic, but pandemics, plural. While the pandemic can be mapped and tracked and tallied with numbers, for it to be understood and felt for many, if not most people, we need stories. This collection of twenty-two oral history interviews, gathered in late 2020 by UCSC students under the auspices of the Library’s Regional History Project, is an impressionistic illustration of an unstable present, exploring a range of ways people have encountered and interpreted this time. Some narrators speak primarily of racism and racial justice; for others, COVID-19 is in the extreme foreground. Others raise questions of economic justice in America and more locally for graduate students at UCSC; still others address climate change, since the CZU Lightning Complex fires also exploded across Santa Cruz County in 2020 and nearly consumed the campus itself. A hardback version of this book can be purchased online from Lulu.com at:https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/irene-reti-and-cameron-vanderscoff/the-empty-year/hardcover/product-2d5q98.html?page=1&pageSize=
While this oral history is Jasper's story, it is also fundamentally a shared effort by the Rose f... more While this oral history is Jasper's story, it is also fundamentally a shared effort by the Rose family. These interviews with Jasper, Jean, William, and Inigo Rose took place in June 2018; Jasper passed away exactly a year later, on June 12, 2019. This oral history is covered by copyright agreement between Jean Rose (also signing for Jasper), Inigo Rose, and William Rose and the Regents of the University of California. Under "fair use" standards, excerpts of up to six hundred words (per interview) may be quoted without the University Library's permission as long as the materials are properly cited. Quotations of more than six hundred words require the written permission of the Head of Special Collections and Archives and a proper citation and may also require a fee. Under certain circumstances, not-for-profit users may be granted a waiver of the fee. For permission contact: Irene Reti
It is Wednesday, November 2 nd , [2011] we are at John Dizikes' house on King Street in Santa Cru... more It is Wednesday, November 2 nd , [2011] we are at John Dizikes' house on King Street in Santa Cruz and we are conducting part one of his oral history. My name is Cameron Vanderscoff, and I will be conducting the interview. John is here with us. With that, let's get started. What made you want to be a teacher? John Dizikes: Well, that's the-curiously, the ultimate 64 million dollar question. I'm not sure what made me want to be a teacher. I grew up in a family that had very little education. My father came from Greece when he was eleven, he'd gone through the fifth grade, my mother left high school in the-I think the 11 th grade-but they were very interested in contemporary affairs. My father would bring magazines home-he worked as a night watchman many years-and so we read and talked about things. I had an older brother who was not very interested in politics, but I was, my father and mother were, and I was a bookish student. I was good at school, I liked school, they encouraged me of course, always, and I think I just assumed-since I did not know what it would be to become a lawyer, or a doctor-I assumed I would be a teacher. That seemed agreeable, and it always did seem agreeable, because you're dealing with ideas, with people, with things I cared about. So I think it was just an assumption that was never very seriously questioned thereafter, and later on, when I became a little more sophisticated and went on to college, I tried different subjects. Literature was a great interest; the classics were an interest, psychology-. But I knew I didn't do science, wasn't a mathematician, and that what I really wanted was American history because it helped explain who I was-or am. Vanderscoff: Right. Dizikes: So I think it was partly the circumstances in which I grew up, and the fact that many, many students have come to understand, and that is if you want some kind of intellectual life-that sounds pretentious, but a life where you talk about ideas with people, and things, not professional, not commercial, teaching is what you have in American culture.
The house was in Brooklyn. I was born at Long Island College Hospital, which is on Long Island, I... more The house was in Brooklyn. I was born at Long Island College Hospital, which is on Long Island, I believe, from its name. 6 But we lived pretty much in Brooklyn, and always in apartments. Once we lost the house, we never had a house again in the family. So that when I came to California much later on, at the behest of my grandmother-my grandmother kept encouraging my husband and me to go to California, "That's the place for you," because she knew how much we loved nature. And the story before that is that we had met and married in the south of France, right on the shore of the Mediterranean. So, once you have that south of France in your blood, it's kind of hard to settle for going back to the big walk-ups and the no-tree in-Brooklyn. No going back to, need I tell you about New York and it's not exact, shall we say, deepest relation in the world with nature? 7 Vanderscoff: What was the name of the neighborhood you grew up within Brooklyn? Ellis: Flatbush. I believe it was called Flatbush. Vanderscoff: You talked a little bit about your father's love of languages. What sort of languages were around Flatbush? What was Flatbush like? Ellis: Our house was always open to immigrants, and so they came with all kinds of languages: German, Russian, Polish, or Hungarian, and I don't know what all else. Of course, they were all learning English as best they could. And yeah, we just always had music, and the "other" was always welcome in our house. My parents had been brought here when they 6 There was a Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn (which itself is on Long Island). 7 The interviewer lives in New York City. 20 were two or three months old, so you can really say that they were almost born here, pretty close to that-that huge wave of immigrants in the late nineteenth century that came from all over Europe. Vanderscoff: Where did they come from? Ellis: They came from what was then called the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which became Romania and Hungary and I don't know whatnot else, you know, all these other little states it got chopped up into. And so, languages, yes. Language was always kind of warp and woof. I suspect that with your name that it is not very far distant from your past, as well; that you have been linguistically enhanced in your lifetime, not having just English in your life. Is that wrong of me to think that, or-? Vanderscoff: Well, Vanderscoff is Americanized Dutch. It used to be "van der Schaaf." Then it became "Vanderscoff." Ellis: From the "Schaaf?" What is "Scoff?" Vanderscoff: Well, "scoff" is just some American version of the-Ellis: Stuyvesant, perhaps, or something, whatever the name was. 8 Vanderscoff: Yeah, some long Dutch-8 Stuyvesant is a common place name in New York City, dating back to Dutch New York. Centre de l'art dramatique, appliqué à l'étude du français, Center of Theater Arts, New York City Yeah, so when I was seventeen, I had that chance to go to this contest from the French government. They were trying to keep the French language alive. This was not the occupied French government. The Free French government was trying to do this. 10 They started a troupe in New York City of high school seniors or students who were proficient enough in the language to be able to handle this kind of demand, to do theater in the language. And so, we started the-the title is about that long [indicates lengthy space] The title of it was the École libre-you know the New School that's in the Village? You've heard of the New School, or seen it, I'm sure. 11 [Vanderscoff indicates yes] That's the official entity with which it was associated. So, it was called the École libre-the Free School-des hautes études-of High Studies, or Advanced Studies. And the subdivision that I was in was called the Centre de l'art dramatique, appliqué à l'étude du français, or the Center of Theater Arts, applied to the Study of French. 12 So that was the title of the program to which I won a scholarship. I worked with Madame Ève Danièl, who had married an American and migrated to the U.S. She had been an associée, working with members of the Comédie Française for many years. And when the chance came for her to come to the States and to be part of this project, she was very pleased to be able to work towards keeping her language and culture before the American public. She lived down in the Village. And she had great connections. She knew some of the contemporary playwrights in France. She knew Jean Benoît-Lévy, who was a 10 During the war, there was an occupied French Vichy government, and the Free French government in exile. 11 The New School was and is based in lower Manhattan. 12 We've used French language convention for capitalization of French language titles like this. young artists' programs, right? And we have to find more of them with Monte. There's Marriage of Figaro. Vanderscoff: So, we're scrolling through a bunch of SCOSI programs from the eighties and nineties, showing the series of young artists that they had. And this one here, "Cowell-" Ellis: Oh, here is another one. Here's one with Monte again, and Mark Fox, who was also-Vanderscoff: It's 1981. Ellis:-I think, under contract with San Francisco. Opera for supporting roles, mostly. Maybe he was also in the chorus. I'm not sure of that. See, what I wanted to do as part of SCOSI was this series, which went on for many years, and featured different singers of different levels of expertise in their careers. Will they have a career or is there not to be a career-we didn't know, did we? Vanderscoff: This is the young artists series, for the record. Ellis: The object was to give them a chance to be heard by a live audience. And it was to give Santa Cruz folks a chance to hear some opera right in their downtown, right here. Vanderscoff: So where were you sourcing the performers, where were you-? Ellis: We would get donations. We would get little grants here and there to do, as I think I've spelled out somewhere in my CV, where we would get little grants to do this or that. And we
Vanderscoff here for the Regional History Project with Elizabeth Spedding Calciano, and we are he... more Vanderscoff here for the Regional History Project with Elizabeth Spedding Calciano, and we are here to talk about her life and specifically about her work founding the Regional History Project. Our focus today is going to be her early life, childhood, and education. Calciano: Can I just say I am Elizabeth Spedding Calciano, and that's my professional name, but I married my husband, who's now deceased, about twentysome years ago. So socially I'm Elizabeth Georgeon [pronounced like Georgian]. 1 So, you know, if you're phoning some places, they know me as Elizabeth Georgeon; others, as Elizabeth Calciano. Vanderscoff: Perfect. Calciano: Okay. Vanderscoff: And so would you mind, then, stating the date that you were born and just a little bit about your childhood. Calciano: Well, I was born July 28, 1939. I always lived in Ames, Iowa but I was born in Des Moines. I grew up in Ames. They lived in an apartment near Campustown the first year, but then moved out to a small Cape-Cod house, 1240 Orchard Drive, when they published a paper together, but I'm not certain of that. Dr. Shane was interested in spectroscopy-stars and the starlight and what does it tell us. 2 Vanderscoff: Tell me a bit more about that. Calciano: When he was in Berkeley, E. O. Lawrence, who I think everybody pretty much knows because of the Lawrence Laboratories, he must have been a postdoc, and my dad was a postdoc. Lawrence had a big, powerful magnet because it was the beginnings of seeing if you could get particles going in a cyclotron. And my father wanted to borrow it for an experiment. He cleared it with the chief of Buildings and Grounds because it drew a great deal of power and so could only be used on the weekends, because otherwise it could blow out the main circuit on campus and all the lights would go out, and all the machines. And, of course, there weren't computers and things like that, but there were light bulbs and stuff that you needed to have electricity for. So, he'd cleared it that he could use it on a Sunday afternoon, and he got his experiment, whatever it was, all set up. He threw it on, and immediately all the lights went out all over the university. The president of the University of California was William Wallace Campbell. I had the interesting experience of interviewing his son, Kenneth Campbell. 3 There's a funny story in that oral history about when Ken Campbell and his little playmate up
The Western Historical Quarterly, 2015
At the University of California, Santa Cruz and across the world, 2020 was a year of no... more At the University of California, Santa Cruz and across the world, 2020 was a year of not just the COVID-19 pandemic, but pandemics, plural. While the pandemic can be mapped and tracked and tallied with numbers, for it to be understood and felt for many, if not most people, we need stories. This collection of twenty-two oral history interviews, gathered in late 2020 by UCSC students under the auspices of the Library’s Regional History Project, is an impressionistic illustration of an unstable present, exploring a range of ways people have encountered and interpreted this time. Some narrators speak primarily of racism and racial justice; for others, COVID-19 is in the extreme foreground. Others raise questions of economic justice in America and more locally for graduate students at UCSC; still others address climate change, since the CZU Lightning Complex fires also exploded across Santa Cruz County in 2020 and nearly consumed the campus itself. A hardback version of this book can be purchased online from Lulu.com at:https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/irene-reti-and-cameron-vanderscoff/the-empty-year/hardcover/product-2d5q98.html?page=1&pageSize=
Author(s): Dizikes, John; Regional History Project, UC Santa Cruz Library; Vanderscoff, Cameron |... more Author(s): Dizikes, John; Regional History Project, UC Santa Cruz Library; Vanderscoff, Cameron | Abstract: John Dizikes first saw UC Santa Cruz when it was still rolling hills and the buildings were only artist’s renderings. He agreed to stake his career on this new, untried campus because he understood the vision of UCSC as a place where higher education would be reformed and teaching would be a priority—and he followed through on the gamble, coming here as one of UCSC’s founding faculty in 1965. In his ensuing thirty-five-year career at UC Santa Cruz, he was a professor of history, a professor and co-founder of the American Studies Department, a provost of Cowell College and chair of the Council of Provosts, and throughout and above it all a dedicated educator and an ongoing student. This oral history was conducted in 2011 by Cowell alum Cameron Vanderscoff for the Regional History Project.
Author(s): Vanderscoff, Cameron; Lynch, John P. | Abstract: John Patrick Lynch is a professor eme... more Author(s): Vanderscoff, Cameron; Lynch, John P. | Abstract: John Patrick Lynch is a professor emeritus of literature and a formative figure in the classics program at UC Santa Cruz, as well as a former provost of Cowell College. Lynch expands on these roles in this account, providing their larger context in his work and philosophies as an educator, and discussing his hopes and priorities in his 37-year career at this institution. He makes sweeps through the personal as well as the professional, and in doing so, affirms a core vocational identity as a teacher above all else, a campus citizen above a researcher. In his work at UCSC, Lynch sought to instantiate a model of learning that is fundamentally shared between teacher and student, one that goes beyond the confines of the classroom to become an experience in community.Lynch proves to be a thoughtful commentator on what has often been called the original UCSC experiment, starting from his decision to pick up and drive cross countr...
John Dizikes first saw UC Santa Cruz when it was still rolling hills and the buildings were only ... more John Dizikes first saw UC Santa Cruz when it was still rolling hills and the buildings were only artist’s renderings. He agreed to stake his career on this new, untried campus because he understood the vision of UCSC as a place where higher education would be reformed and teaching would be a priority—and he followed through on the gamble, coming here as one of UCSC’s founding faculty in 1965. In his ensuing thirty-five-year career at UC Santa Cruz, he was a professor of history, a professor and co-founder of the American Studies Department, a provost of Cowell College and chair of the Council of Provosts, and throughout and above it all a dedicated educator and an ongoing student. This oral history was conducted in 2011 by Cowell alum Cameron Vanderscoff for the Regional History Project.
Author(s): Vanderscoff, Cameron; Reti, Irene | Abstract: For many people, Jasper Rose embodied th... more Author(s): Vanderscoff, Cameron; Reti, Irene | Abstract: For many people, Jasper Rose embodied the spirit and dream of the young University of California, Santa Cruz campus. UCSC first opened its doors in 1965, and Jasper Rose was one of its founding faculty members and a senior preceptor at Cowell College. For Jasper, it meant the inauguration of a powerful shared venture, a space and a time where, as he put it, “it was as though we were a complete society.” He was passionate about that society and his place in it as an educator; animated by a reformer’s vision for change in education, he saw Santa Cruz as a place where something new and remarkable could be realized. In these pages, Jasper Rose recounts his own life journey to that place and to that vision, and shares his convictions and critiques about what has happened in the decades since at UCSC. While this oral history is Jasper’s story, it is also fundamentally a shared effort by the Rose family. Three different family member...