Landesman Lecture

 Ancestral Matter, Shared Humanity, Beyond Borders and Labels

This evening blends science, poetry, and storytelling to explore our deepest origins and shared humanity. Tracing the cosmic formation of the elements that make our bodies, we reflect on an ancestry older than nations, borders, and labels. Through verse and story, we connect stellar history with lived experience, inviting us to see how our many identities arise from the same ancestral matter. Together, we explore how storytelling can soften divisions, cross boundaries, and remind us that we are forged from one common origin.

Register to attend in-person or virtual

Doors open at 5:30 p.m. for guests attending in person
Lecture: 6 p.m.
Followed by a reception for in-person guests
Free and open to the public
Parking is $6

Presented by the UC Santa Cruz Emeriti Association

Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz studies some of the most powerful explosions since the birth of the universe by looking not at the heavens but at computer models. Eager to understand our origins, he uses simulations to explore the cataclysmic death of stars that give rise to many of the elements of the periodic table. His work tests ideas at the edge of human experience, challenging how we imagine the universe and our place within it.

Jasmine Schlafke, better known by her stage name Queen Jasmeen, is a poet, slam coach, diversity trainer, and a doula from Santa Cruz, CA. Her first book, Crowned, published in 2019 by Bay Company Books, is a widely respected expression of the complexity of compounded identities, reflecting on mental health, race, teen parenting, womanhood, ministry, and so much more. Currently, she works as a privately contracted poetry and performance coach and is a proud single mother of two grown children.