January 28, 1995 Contact: Francine Tyler (408/459-2495)

PROFESSOR NAMED TO PRESTIGIOUS UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA ENDOWED CHAIR

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SANTA CRUZ, CA--Angela Davis, a professor of history of consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has been appointed to the Presidential Chair at UCSC. Davis is the third UCSC faculty member to receive appointment to the chair, following Professors Hayden White and Richard Wasserstrom.

UC President Jack W. Peltason appointed Davis--whose research focuses on women of color, feminism, and theories of crime and punishment--on UCSC Chancellor Karl S. Pister's recommendation. The appointment, which took effect January 1, will extend through June 30, 1997.

UCSC Executive Vice Chancellor R. Michael Tanner said Davis's proposal was selected from "a number of outstanding nominations" submitted by the campus's academic divisions. "We were particularly impressed by Professor Davis's innovative ideas for the creation of undergraduate courses addressing the ethnic studies requirement of our campus, the involvement of advanced graduate students with faculty in this project, and the cultivation of cooperative interactions with colleagues at the UC Santa Barbara campus," he said.

The UC Regents in 1981 established an endowment fund to support Presidential Chairs on each of UC's nine campuses. The purpose of the chairs is to encourage new or interdisciplinary program development or to enhance the quality of existing university programs. Annual support for each chair is estimated at $30,000, the equivalent of the previous year's interest income from the campus's share of the endowment fund.

Davis plans to use resources from the endowment to work with faculty and students in the Women of Color Research Cluster, affiliated with UCSC's Center for Cultural Studies, and to develop new courses satisfying the general education ethnic studies requirement, to be taught by both graduate students and permanent faculty. "I want to use the chair to encourage graduate student and permanent faculty involvement in undergraduate education," said Davis.

She also plans to continue to pursue several research projects on women in California's prisons, studying the legislative process and "building bridges between academic research, public policy, and community organizing," she said.

Davis will work with UC Santa Barbara to develop a Ph.D. program in African American studies at that campus. She hopes to set up a student exchange between that program and UCSC's history of consciousness program.

Davis joined the UCSC faculty in 1991 after serving on the San Francisco State University faculty for several years. She has also lectured at Stanford University and the Claremont Colleges and served as acting assistant professor of philosophy at UCLA. She studied at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, at Johann Wolfgang von Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, and at UC San Diego.

Since joining UCSC, Davis has worked with the Women of Color Research Cluster, sponsoring research projects, a women of color film festival, and a lecture series.

Davis has written a number of articles and books, including Women, Culture, and Politics (1988); Women, Race, and Class (1982); and Angela Davis, An Autobiography (1974). She has recently completed a book titled "Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday: Black Women's Music and the Shaping of Social Consciousness" for Random House.

History of consciousness is an interdisciplinary graduate program at UCSC concentrating primarily on the humanities and social sciences. Work in the program centers on the history of different cultural organizations and expressions and on the analysis of fundamental ideas of human nature, society, and community that shape social practices and customs. The chief goal of the program is to develop informed scholars interested in relating learning to contemporary social, cultural, and political issues.

Editor's note: For further information or to schedule an interview, call Angela Davis's assistant, Stephanie Kelly, at (415) 751-8778.

This release is also available on UC NewsWire, the University of California's electronic news service. To access by modem, dial (209) 244-6971.

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