WHASC Profile: Sarah Amador
Last August, Sarah Arantza Amador joined Linguistics as our new Department Manager. Sarah came to us most immediately from Community Studies, but she’s brought us over a decade of experience from her career here at UCSC, with roles in Stevenson, Merrill, Politics, LALS, MCD Bio and EEB, spanning undergraduate teaching, graduate advising and program management.
We recently had the opportunity to sit down with Sarah and pose to her the WHASC Questionnaire (which, the Editors aver, ranks somewhere below Andy Warhol’s but probably above James Lipton’s).
Joining Linguistics, in the Humanities Division, represents a kind of homecoming for you. (Before completing the M.A. at NYU, Sarah earned the B.A. at UCSC in 2005, in Literature and in Philosophy, with Honors). What has changed or surprised you?
I’m a UCSC Humanities alumna and Stevensonian (Maria has a pretty good view of my old dorm room from her office window!), and when I joined Linguistics last August, I was surprised by how good it felt to come back to Stevenson. Stevenson Academic feels like home, and everyone in our department and division has been so welcoming. A nice change: I’m happy to see that the “smokers’ bench” at the southeast corner of our building has been replaced with a patch of wildflowers.
In the Fall Quarter, you made a pretty special journey to Iceland. What took you there, and what did you do?
I went to Iceland for a writing retreat with fellow flash fiction writers who I’d only had the pleasure of working with online previously – it was wonderful! Afterwards, my partner Richard and I spent another week eating cinnamon buns, stocking up on Icelandic novels and wool, and chasing sheep and the aurora. We drove six hours through snow and black ice to visit the Icelandic Museum of Sorcery and Witchcraft in a remote corner of the island — it was a dream!
What’s on your horizon in 2022? Any more trips, special projects, or things you’d like to try?
Knitting sweaters, finishing my novel by the end of the year, and visiting my family and friends in Spain, if COVID allows.
She did go chasing waterfalls: Öxarárfoss, in Þingvellir National Park