UC Merced arts – lots to talk about

A UC Merced arts program kicks off a series of lectures Sunday that is set to run through May.

Music Professor Jayson Beaster-Jones, who organized the series of speakers from the Global Arts Studies Program, will give the first talk at 3 p.m. Sunday in the Black Box Theater at the Merced Multicultural Arts Center at 645 W. Main St.

Each of the lectures, which are free and open to the public, are at the same time and place, according to a news release.

“We see this as an opportunity to provide the general public with a sense of what we do as a faculty at UC Merced and how our research informs our teaching practice and involvement in the community,” Beaster-Jones said in the release.

The series is also meant to let the community know about UC Merced’s relatively new Global Arts Studies major, according to the news release.

Here’s the list of speakers and their areas of expertise, according to a news release:

Oct. 2: Jayson Beaster-Jones (ethnomusicology, Bollywood, India)

Nov. 6: Chris Peck (composition, electronic music)

Dec. 4: Emily Gale (musicology, early 20th-century American music)

Jan. 15: Richard Gomez (painting, Chicano art)

Feb. 12: Ken Yoshida (art history, postwar Japan)

March 12: Jenni Samuelson (opera, American musicals)

April 9: Maria DePrano (women in Renaissance art)

May 7: Stephen Mandiberg (media studies, game studies)

For more, email Beaster-Jones at jbeaster-jones@ucmerced.edu.

This story was originally published September 29, 2016 at 3:37 PM with the headline "UC Merced arts – lots to talk about."