HOT Projects
As Director of Programming and Publications for the Humanities Out There (HOT) program at UC Irvine., working alongside faculty Directors Julia Lupton and Robert Moeller, we paired graduate students with teachers in the Santa Ana Unified School District to bring workshops in humanities topics to the classroom which would result in published curriculum and anthologies of student work.
The HOT World History Curriculum begins in the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century and takes students through time to the Cold War.
Jupiter Launches describes the creative writing arm of the program and the interactive on line journal /student publishing website that was ahead of its time back then. The stellar crew on this project was fiction writer Belle Boggs, poet Elaine Bleakney and poet/photograher Allison Miller.
The first book I had the pleasure of seeing into print was Life As Me, an original play written by high school students at Santa Ana High with their teacher, actress Stephanie Keefer.
Collette LaBoeff Atkinson and I worked together to create Humanifest ll, a showcase of the depth and breadth of the HOT Program at the time.
HOT Curricular Units are tied to the California Content Standards and offer readings and images from primary sources. The Popu Vuh was created by History Professor Omar Valerio-Jimenez and Comparative Literature Professor Tracey McNulty with Sonia Valesquez as Teacher-Consultant.
