What opportunities and tensions arise in the production of public scholarship at the intersection of scholar-activism and civic engagement in California's Central Valley?

UC Davis faculty Erica Kohl-Arenas and Robyn Rodriguez investigate this question and much more as guest editors of a special issue of Imagining America's journal PUBLIC, titled "Public Scholarship, Place, and Proxmity: Imagining America at the University of California at Davis."

The Central Valley is home not only to both rich agricultural production and some of the poorest congressional districts in the nation, but also to inspiring cultural workers, educators, students, and scholars.  It is through their cultural, activist, and academic work that Kohl-Arenas and Rodriguez interrogate the role of public scholarship at this land grant institution. 

Highlights

Community-based cultural praxis combines with feminist scholar-activism in Natalia Deeb-Sossa and Xabi Martinez's case-study with Las Ramonas, a youth group at Knights Landing, "Las Ramonas' Fototestimonios: Youth Advocacy and Resilience in Knights Landing," and FRI Seed Grant recipient Vajra Watson's "Cultural Keepers as Movement Makers: Towards the Alignment of Artists, Activists, and Academics." 

FRI Research Fellow Mayra Sánchez Barba and fellow Mellon Public Scholars Roy B. Taggueg Jr. and S. Alana Haynes Stein contribute important reflections in "Public Scholarship in a Time of Crisis."

View the entire issue at PUBLIC's website.

(Full disclosure: the author is also a contributor to the special issue).