Humanities Core Arts

2025 Arts Competition

The Arts Competition encourages Humanities Core students to interpret course themes through artistic expression. Students submit art works in any medium for a prize (1st place: $250, 2nd place: $200, 3rd place $150).

This year, Humanities Core students are invited to submit original works of art in any medium – including photography, original musical composition, and dance – that are centered on the theme Reimagine. Revise. Reclaim. This theme is a springboard for students to expand upon Humanities Core ideas, texts, visual images, artists, narratives, and experiences that have inspired their curiosity, creativity, and sense of connection.

The deadline for all submissions is 4:00 p.m. on Monday, April 7, 2025.  Student submissions are judged by a panel of Humanities Core instructors, and the winners are announced at the Humanities Core Arts Exhibition, which will be held on May 6, 2025.

 

2024 Arts Competition

The 8th annual Humanities Core Arts Competition, sponsored by Humanities Core and UCI Illuminations, encourages Humanities Core students to interpret course themes through artistic expression. Students can submit art works in any medium for a prize (1st place: $300, 2nd place: $200, 3rd place $100).

This year, Humanities Core students are invited to submit original works of art in any medium–including photography, original musical composition, and dance–that are centered on the Humanities Center’s 2023-24 theme: Care and Repair. This theme is a springboard for students to expand upon Humanities Core ideas, texts, visual images, artists, narratives, and experiences that have inspired their curiosity, creativity, and sense of connection.

 

The deadline for all submissions is 4 p.m. on Monday, April 15, 2024. Please submit no more than one artwork. All participants must fill out the Arts Competition Submission Form. Works submitted as digital files can be uploaded with this form. To arrange for delivery of physical art pieces, please contact Professor Castillo at larisa.castillo@uci.edu. Winners will be announced at the 8th Annual Humanities Core Arts Exhibition on May 9th, 2024.

 

2023 Arts Competition

With the generous support of UCI Illuminations: The Chancellor’s Arts & Culture Initiative, the 2023 Humanities Core Arts Celebration welcomed UCI community members to an in-person gathering as well as virtual exhibition celebrating the creative works of Humanities Core students on the theme of portals.

Congratulations to this year’s winners:

First place: “A Populated MIND,” filmed dance performance by Kendal Villa

Second place: “Beautiful Imperfections: A Dance with Life,” musical composition by Tina Roshannia

Third place (tie): “Nocturnal Fermentation,” poem by Matthew Garcia-Ramirez, and “Ink Spill,” poem by Cathy Nguyen

Honorable mention: “Quilting with Others,” quilt by Shannon Au, Vivian Le, and Jenny Ngo

 

The Arts Competition encourages Humanities Core students to interpret course themes through artistic expression. Students submit art works in any medium for a prize (1st place: $350, 2nd place: $250, 3rd place $150).

This year, Humanities Core students are invited to submit original works of art in any medium — including original musical composition and dance — centered on the theme Portals. The theme is a springboard for students to expand upon Humanities Core ideas, texts, visual images, artists, narratives, and more that have inspired their curiosity and creativity. Portals, both literal and metaphoric, pervade the works we are studying. The Brigata in Boccaccio’s Decameron, for example, used their storytelling as a portal through which they could envision a reality safe from the plague. Sanford Biggers and Carrie Mae Weems use reworked quilts and daguerreotypes as portals through which Black histories are retold. The graphic novel adaptation of Parable of the Sower serves as a portal through which Afro-futurist worldscapes are accessed. These and many other works from thinkers such as John Jennings, Gene Yang, and Charles Yu explore possibility through openings, passages, gateways, thresholds, conduits–motifs  resonating with the theme Portals

How have you experienced this theme in Humanities Core? What texts have transported you into new realities? What worlds have you uncovered throughout your Humanities Core journey?

The Exhibition

Students submissions are judged by a panel of Humanities Core instructors, and the winners are announced at the Humanities Core Arts Exhibition, which will be held in-person. The exhibition is at once a celebration of student creativity and an experiential space in which students, instructors, and the public can connect intellectually and socially around the ideas Humanities Core generates. All student artworks are displayed, often alongside the artworks of instructors or thematically-related materials from UCI Libraries Special Collections.

Submission Instructions

The deadline for all submissions is 4:00 on Monday, April 17, 2023. Please submit no more than one artwork. All participants must fill out the Arts Submission Form. Works submitted as digital files can be uploaded with this form; to arrange for delivery of physical art pieces, please contact Dr. Susan Morse at smorse@uci.edu or Professor Castillo at larisa.castillo@uci.edu.

 

Winners will be announced at the 7th Annual Humanities Core Arts Celebration on May 4, 2023, from 5-7 pm, in HG 1010. Artworks will also be exhibited in the Humanities Core Digital Art Gallery. Please direct questions to Larisa Castillo (larisa.castillo@uci.edu) or Susan Morse (smorse@uci.edu).

This program has been funded by Illuminations: The Chancellor’s Arts & Culture Initiative

 

2022 Arts Competition

The 2022 Celebration of Humanities Core Arts once again exhibited virtually the creative works Humanities Core students submitted, on the theme Dreams.

Congratulations to this year’s winners:

First Place: Anonymous, Counterattack of the Sea
Second Place: Adison Brager, Wasteland Baby
Third Place: Corinna Cannell, The Beginning of a Dream

Honorable Mentions: Abby Redmond, Achieving Mindfulness Through the Unconscious Mind; Chloe Wilson, am I real?; and Caitlyn Cheung, Just a Dream.

 

Humanities Core students are invited to submit original works of art in any medium centered on the theme: Dreams. Winners will be announced at the virtual Humanities Arts Celebration on May 6, 2022, 11 a.m. on UCI Zoom. Artworks will be exhibited in the Humanities Core Digital Art Gallery.

The deadline for all submissions is 4:00 p.m. on April 4, 2022. Please submit no more than one artwork. All participants must fill out the Arts Submission Form. Works submitted as digital files can be uploaded with this form; to arrange for delivery of physical art pieces, please contact Professor Castillo at larisa.castillo@uci.edu.

 

---

 

2019 Arts Competition

Our congratulations to:

Aliza Hasnain, first place award for the painting Worldliness in Cordoba

 

Sherry Valle, second place award for the digital collage A Desolated World

Gabriel Gonzales, third place award for the screenplay Benvenuti a Roma

And thanks to all who joined us in celebrating students’ creative work at this year’s Arts Gala.

Submission Guidelines:

Submit no more than one entry by 4pm on January 25, 2019. Physical works, such as paintings, should be easily transportable and should be submitted to the Humanities Core office, HIB 185. Digital documents, such as digital art or texts, should be submitted electronically, and recorded performances–drama, dance, film, music–should not exceed 10 minutes and should also be submitted electronically.

A signed submission form must be turned in to HIB 185. It can be downloaded and printed out or filled out in the office.
Submission Form Electronic File Upload

 

2018 Arts Competition Award Winners: The Tempest

She is utterly alone and
she is all her people.
Her people,
cheated
trafficked
killed
abhorred monsters

She is her grandmother at 43
The day they all remember, 1980
the symbol of equality and humanity shot down in His home
Her people screaming and hiding and running and fighting
Another Napoleon taking power;
a different Napoleón echoing false hope for democracy

She is her mother at 16
in the back of a van
scared and wide-eyed as they pass golden poppy fields
-blinding coins, blond hair, the burning sun
culture tainted by a deep golden ichor-
happy to adapt and learn the ways of the white man

‘Ban
‘Ban
Im
-Immigrant ban

She is brown and white and new and next
And with confusing mestizo-ness
She is X

 

 

I lie here thinking I can sleep
for the rest of my life
Although I’m not too sure my shirts will be happy about that
They are lonely and the closet is too small for them
Their sleeves cramp from being folded too long
and they are starting to smell funny
A sort of mustiness and dandruff
that is enough to make the saris cough

Threads unraveling,
dust filling moth holes to make up for this mess
It’s about time they get some sunlight
But the girl who wore them decided
that the closed life suits her
So after years of stains, spills, and knots
she succumbs into the dark with them

And yet

There are days when the smoke stitches a flame
into my fingers,
When the fiends who call themselves rulers
slap the needles out of my hand
These pants,
they are too big for our homes
Let us rest something lighter on our shoulders
Only fire may free us from scars so white
where even enemies are branded upon Indian arms
We are tired, we are lonely,
Our spines cramp from bending over heaps too long
And this stench of death,
it is licking its way through combustion

So for now, I will spin a song of free breath, of free spirit
and our cotton nights will be pulled into sparks

Yes, I lie here thinking I can sleep
for the rest of my life
Although I’m not too sure I could rest
Under these burning skies tonight