As the fruit trees bloom, seeds sprout and gardens fill with flowers, the UC Davis Humanities Institute will delve into the rich cultural landscape of California in the next few months with its year-long public initiative, “CULTIVATION: Food, Farming, and Heritage in the Sacramento Valley and Beyond.” The upcoming events are focused on Asian and South Asian contributions.
Tom Lin, a UC Davis doctoral student in English, has won the American Library Association's Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction for his debut novel The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu. At 25, Lin is the youngest writer to ever win the award.
Ben Wang began his fight for prisoners’ rights as a UC Davis student. Nearly 20 years later, he’s still at it. Wang (B.A., Asian American studies, ’04) is co-director of the Asian Prisoner Support Committee, a San Francisco Bay Area organization that assists Asians and Pacific Islanders in U.S. prisons.
UC Davis senior Nina Forest, competing as Miss Idaho for the Miss America title, finished in the pageant’s top 10 on Sunday. An aspiring civil rights attorney who is majoring in international relations and minoring in Chinese, Forest promoted her “Leave Childhood Hunger Behind” platform, focused on decreasing food insecurity in Idaho.
Nina Forest’s summer got off to an unexpectedly busy start—with a series of news interviews, official appearances at parades, festivals and other community events, and preparations for the Miss America competition. A UC Davis senior majoring in international relations and minoring in Chinese, Forest was crowned in June as Miss Idaho 2018.
Allyson Nicole Camino, Political Science-Public Service and Chinese ’17
Allyson Nicole Camino attended the UC Davis Washington Program in Fall 2017.
Political Affairs Program Assistant, US-Asia Institute
“As someone who was often soft-spoken and inactive in the political space, this program instilled in me a deeper understanding of public service.
