Silhouette of person in a narrow lit doorway in a dark hallway
Silhouetted swimmer gliding above a rocky seabed as sunbeams pierce green water
Lishan Az, "What Lies Beyond" from the exhibition "Eugene's Cove." On July 27, 1919, at a segregated beach on the south side of Chicago, 17-year-old Eugene Williams was stoned to death after floating across the imaginary color line in Lake Michigan. Building on the legend of an underwater paradise prevalent in African folklore, Eugene’s Cove imagines an underwater world where those we thought drowned actually sank and became something more.

Professor AZ Awarded UCHRI Fellowship

  • by UCHRI

Quick Summary

  • Professor AZ has been awarded a 2026–27 UC Underrepresented Faculty Mentorship Fellowship
Portrait of a Black woman with dreadlocks in a black turtleneck, resting head on hand
Lishan AZ (courtesy)

Assistant Professor of Cinema and Digital Media Lishan AZ is a multi-disciplinary artist working in immersive installation, interactive media, photography and film. She explores themes of home, intimacy, and interiority. Her work revives lost narratives in order to contextualize contemporary issues and discover/recover possibilities for our present condition.

The Underrepresented Faculty Mentorship Fellowship is a multi-year fellowship program designed to build a network of underrepresented scholars for professional mentorship and development across the UC system. This program provides support to diverse junior scholars and mid-career faculty through a broad range of activities as they progress through the ranks. The aim is to build spaces of support, to share best practices and challenges, and to respond to unspoken expectations in the academy. Underrepresented academics across all registers and first-generation scholars often face unique obstacles to their professional advancement and often unrecognized potential to transformatively impact the university.

The University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI) awarded eight UC Davis faculty and graduate students with fellowships, grants, and prizes. Recipients were selected among a pool of applicants from the UC system’s ten campuses, and hail from a range of disciplines — from Asian-American Studies, to Science and Technology Studies, Cinema and Digital Media, Russian, Spanish and Portuguese, History, and English. Awardees:

Primary Category

Cinema and Digital Media

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Fellowship UCHRI