Virtual Events
Virtual Events
Wherever you live, connect with UC Santa Cruz by joining us for virtual events. Engage in meaningful conversations, gain professional insights, or network with fellow Slugs, gain professional insights, or simply catch up with fellow Slugs—all from the comfort of your own home.
Slugs & Steins
Slugs & Steins is a monthly series of informal discussions highlighting UC Santa Cruz’s amazing faculty members. Talks are held on the 2nd Monday of each month with topics ranging from organic artichokes to endangered zebras, self-driving cars to Shakespeare.
All are welcome, and audience participation is encouraged. We encourage you to share the link far and wide as slugs and friends from around the world may join us.
Career development webinars
Whether you’re exploring your next move or sharpening the skills you already have, our virtual career development programs are here to help you grow. Join live, online workshops and webinars led by industry professionals and career experts.
Kraw Lecture Series
The Kraw Lecture Series in Silicon Valley is made possible by a generous gift from UC Santa Cruz alumnus George Kraw (Cowell ‘71, history and Russian literature) and Raphael Shannon Kraw. The lecture series features acclaimed UC Santa Cruz scientists and technologists who are grappling with some of the biggest questions of our time.
These talks are hybrid, free, and open to the public. Attend in person at UC Santa Cruz Silicon Valley extension or via livestream.
October 2025
Race and the European Fairy Tale: The Making of a White Genre
Virtual Event
Professor Kimberly J. Lau
Monday, October 13
6:30pm to 8:00pm
In this talk, Kimberly Lau offers intertwined readings of several cognate fairy tales that revolve around true and false brides, beginning with Black slaves and white fairies in 17th-century Naples and tracing their evolution into (implicitly raced but unmarked) kind and unkind girls in 19th-century Germany. Through her readings, Lau illustrates some of the ways that culturally specific, historical ideas about race, racial thinking, and racism have contributed to the development of the European fairy tale as a genre as well as to the creation of the fairy tale’s enduringly white world.
Speaker
Kimberly J. Lau is Professor of Literature and Provost of College Nine and John R. Lewis College. She is the author of Specters of the Marvelous: Race and the Development of the European Fairy Tale (2025); Erotic Infidelities: Love and Enchantment in Angela Carter’s “The Bloody Chamber” (2015), Body Language: Sisters in Shape, Black Women’s Fitness, and Feminist Identity Politics (2011), and New Age Capitalism: Making Money East of Eden (2000), as well as articles in a number of interdisciplinary journals. Her research interests include fairy tales, folklore, and fantasy; feminist theory and critical race studies; the intersection of popular and political cultures; and monster studies.
Questions? Please contact University Events at specialevents@ucsc.edu.