Join us this quarter for our exciting Spring 2026 Programming!

 

Weekly Writing Group: Snacks, coffee, and companionship! Join us to get some writing done, do your readings, or answer annoying emails on Mondays from 12-1, in the 6th Floor Phelps Grad Lounge!

Professional Writing Workshop: Join Professor Christene D'Anca from the writing program for the return of her popular writing workshop on Professional Writing April 28th, 5-6:30, Phelps 6206C. Designed to equip graduate students with the skills necessary to craft cover letters and grant proposals through targeted instruction and hands-on practice, students will learn to articulate their qualifications, research interests, and professional goals in clear, concise, and impactful ways.

Op-Eds and Public Writing Panel: Casual panel on public writing with experienced peers and faculty! Discuss the role of graduate students in public discourse, art, and politics outside of the institution! May 18, 5:00 via Zoom

Spanish Language Literature Group: Students across displinces are invited to explore selected readings together in this casual reading group. Reading and discussions in Spanish. Email nadiaescalante@ucsb.edu if you're interested in joining! Last week of every month, flexible scheduling.

GCLR Annual Conference: The GCLR is excited to announce that the call for papers for our 2026 Graduate Student conference is out! We are now accepting applications for, "Humor, Comedy, and Play" in Times of Crisis," which will take place on May 30th here on campus and features Professor Dorota Dutsch from the Classics department as our keynote speaker!

Our 2026 program invites you to reflect on the humor in your research—and lives—as graduate students. We ask scholars working within comic traditions, philosophies of humor, studies of play, and beyond, to join us in interrogating the stakes of laughing in these times of crisis. Works on games, play, humor, levity in media or culture are accepted, as well as projects that practice comedic or playful approaches to research.

What Graduate Students Are Reading

Anna Lechintan is reading "A Report for an Academy" by Franz Kafka (1917).

This short story rekindled her "long-standing obsession" of Kafka while attending Professor Kittler's lecture course last quarter, providing a little mid-quarter philosophical enrichment. Red Peter, a human ape, speaks at an academic conference of his assimilation from animality into human culture. Much to think on in regards to the culture of academia as students!

"Tender, funny, and devastating"  -Anna

Qirui He is reading Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication (1999) by John Durham Peters.
 
Peters highlights that media and communication's key traits---their dissemination and fated misconnumication---is rooted in deep cultural conceptions of religion, faith, and connection. His unique approach is beautiful and almost mystic, placing communication into the realm of angels, spirits, and aliens. He welcomes incommunicatibility as a deeply human blessing. 
 
"Opened a completely new world to me" -Qirui

Charlie Squire is reading Masochism by Felix Deleuze and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

Masochism combines both von Sacher-Masoch's Venus in Furs and the Deleuze essay "Coldness and Cruelty." Squire's research concerns the relationship between political economy and eroticism, and Deleuze's essay takes a unique focus solely on masochism, rather than the typical masochism-sadism dualism. 

Metamorphosing Dante explores what authors, artists and thinkers from the XX and XXI century have engaged with Dante's works through rewritings, dialogues, and transpositions. The hypothesis is that Dante has provided a field of tensions in which to explore and question one's own time

"I loved the more intuitive and associative approaches the book takes on the Divine Comedy which has been long explored through a strictly philological lense."  - Martina

Nicole Smirnoff just finished Notes from the Underground, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Dostoyevsky's first-person, confessional novella from the perspective of a isolated, obsessive, contradictorily proud and insecure, man. Both a horribly reassuring and terrifyingly familiar read while trying to complete an exam. Nicole offers you the following quote:

“Gentlemen, do you know, perhaps I consider myself an intelligent man, only because all my life I have been able neither to begin nor to finish anything. Granted I am a babbler, a vexatious babbler, like all of us. But what is to be done if the direct and sole vocation of every intelligent man is babble [...] the intentional pouring of water through a sieve?” -Dostoyevsky

Pause

GCLR Event Proposal 

As we begin working to fill our calendar for the upcoming academic year, students and faculty, please submit your event suggestions for the GCLR by completing this form. All submissions will be reviewed by the GCLR board.