UCI DIY
The UCI DIY project, in partnership with the Division of Undergraduate Education, UCI Illuminations and the Humanities Center’s ‘To Form a More Perfect Union?’ series, invites undergraduates to submit a range of creative and critical work in robust conversation with the speakers appearing this coming academic year. In 2021-2022, Illuminations will feature some of our country’s must important, award-winning writers and thinkers, including Tracy K. Smith and Joy Harjo (fall), Viet Thanh Nguyen (winter), and Sandra Cisneros (spring).
Students will have the opportunity to create their own work responding to these speakers’ writing. For each writer, starting with both Smith and Harjo, the UCI DIY website will issue a challenge and call to participate, asking students to create their responses to a speaker using a particular form. Work can be poems, stories, art work, sound essays, or videos. Selected student work will be posted on the Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE) website for the UCI DIY project.
Sandra Cisneros, Award-winning author of “House on Mango Street”
This term, we especially invite submissions responding to the work of Sandra Cisneros, who will be appearing virtually on campus April 28 and 29. Work can be poems, stories, artwork, sound essays, or videos. We would particularly like submissions to address, in response to Ms. Cisneros’s work, the following questions: “What does home feel like? How do you know you are ‘at home’? What kind of home do you need to survive and thrive? How have you come to make a home for yourself in the world?” Selected student work will be posted on the Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE) website for the UCI DIY project.
Submissions Now Open!
UCI DIY is sponsored by the Division of Undergraduate Education. For more information, contact associate dean Jonathan Alexander at jfalexan@uci.edu. Submissions are accepted on an ongoing basis. For the Tracy K. Smith event, submissions are encouraged before October 31, 2021 and for the Joy Harjo event, please submit before November 30, 2021. Please submit them via the Google form below.