Ryan Lee Cartwright, an American studies professor in the UC Davis College of Letters and Science, has received a $1.5 million award from the Mellon Foundation for a project to explore the intersection of research on disability and chronic illness. The three-year project in partnership with Yale University aims to develop a national network of scholars, culture workers and organizers who will bring disability justice approaches to the study of chronic illness.
Two students and three alumni of the UC Davis College of Letters and Science have been awarded Fulbright U.S. Student Program grants to study and teach in other countries.
Through a rich and interwoven mix of the humanities — literature, human rights, ethnic studies, art — UC Davis faculty and students are deepening the world’s understanding of climate change and its lasting grip on the human experience.
Recent graduate Jumana Esau (B.A., English, ’20) combined her passions for literary scholarship and human rights to explore climate change and its impact on overlooked and vulnerable populations. Her honors thesis examines African futuristic works in climate fiction.
Erica Kohl-Arenas, faculty director of the UC Davis-based Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life and an associate professor of American studies, has received a Freedom Scholars Initiative award of $250,000. She is one of only 12 winners of the new award given by the Marguerite Casey Foundation and Group Health Foundation.
With the United States taking its place as a global power after World War I, scholars began exploring questions that would develop into a discipline known as American studies in the 1930s. Over the next several decades, American studies programs were created across the United States, including in 1969 at UC Davis. The program, a department in the College of Letters and Science since 2016, is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. It is the only Department of American Studies in the University of California system.
Technological innovation is transforming agriculture and a UC study funded by a $492,000 grant from the National Science Foundation will explore the booming connections between new technologies, agriculture and food. Charlotte Biltekoff, associate professor and chair of the UC Davis College of Letters and Science’s American studies program, is part of the multi-campus study team.
After graduating, Seth Bardacke turned a successful internship at the Sacramento Kings Game Operations department into a full-time position coordinating, producing, and directing all aspects of the in-arena entertainment, as well as off-site events.
For some, nothing is more American than football. So it seems appropriate that Jacob Frank, who earned a degree in American Studies in 2011, works for the National Football League.
The UC Davis Division of Humanities Arts and Cultural Studies (HArCS) has two new departments: American Studies and African American and African Studies have been elevated from programs to full departments.
A symposium at UC Davis on April 5 will gather historians, cultural studies scholars, artists, designers, gamers and others from diverse disciplines to explore the intersection of visual culture and drone warfare.
