In Memoriam: Jo Ann Stabb, Professor Emerita and Namesake of Design Collection

Jo Ann Stabb, a founding member of the UC Davis Department of Design and a widely recognized scholar of textiles, died Feb. 13 in Walnut Creek, California. She was 80.

“Jo Ann Stabb essentially started the textile and fashion curriculum in the department,”  design professor Susan Taber Avila said in a 2017 interview. “She captured the zeitgeist of the wearable art movement and brought that creativity into her teaching. She understood and championed the value of studying actual textiles and artifacts.”

UC Davis Alumnus Brings Attention to Armenian Genocide With Lecture Series

When Shant Garabedian was a student at UC Davis, he and a few others founded the Armenian Student Association to draw attention to the Armenian Genocide of the early 20th century. Garabedian and his wife, Robin, recently made a donation to establish a lecture series as part of the Human Rights Studies program. “This is a way to continue what I started 30 years ago,” said Garabedian.

A Zero-Sum Game

New York comedy duo Nehemiah Markos and Jed Feiman have released a 50th anniversary edition of the racially conscious Monopoly-style game, Blacks & Whites, created in 1970 by the late psychology professor Robert Sommer.

Asteroid Named for UC Davis Astronomer Tony Tyson

Asteroid 179223 was officially named Tonytyson in February in honor of Tyson’s vision and leadership in building the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile. Scheduled to start full science observations in 2024, the Rubin Observatory will image the entire visible night sky every three nights for 10 years.

Ridgecrest Shows How Earthquakes Damage Earth’s Crust

In July 2019, a series of earthquakes — including two major shocks of magnitude 6.4 and 7.1 — struck near Ridgecrest, California, between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. For local residents, it was a violent interruption to the Fourth of July holiday. For seismologists, it was a rare opportunity to study how earthquakes damage the Earth’s crust.

New Ways to Understand Collective Behavior

When a flock of birds or a school of fish turn and act as one, they are exhibiting collective behavior. The same kind of behavior can be seen in something as simple as a group of cancer cells. Understanding how individuals can spontaneously act together in this way can give insights into biology from animal behavior to disease processes, as well as into phenomena such as traffic patterns.

Art History Colloquium Examines Women’s Representation in 20th-Century Western Asia

The annual Templeton Colloquium in Art History at UC Davis this year brings together scholars speaking about the women’s movement and how women were portrayed in the media during 20th-century modernization in Tehran, Cairo, Istanbul and Beirut.

The presenters, coming from around California, Michigan, Indiana and Lebanon, will show the shifting ways women activists and organizers were encouraged to be modern, then criticized and satirized for doing so.

Few Hourly Workers Receive Pay Required by Law for Shift Cuts

In California and seven other states, and Washington, D.C., some hourly workers, by law, have to be compensated if they report to work only to have their shift cut short. But some hourly workers may not be receiving this pay, and if they are not, it’s often on the employees to call attention to the law, according to a UC Davis study.