With the start of the new year and upcoming presidential inauguration, we’ve chosen to focus on politics, advocacy and community organizing. At the College of Letters and Science, we’re thinking deeply about these topics and the work of our faculty and lecturers demonstrates just that.
Welcome to Books of the Month, where once a month, L&S staff select works from our Bookshelf of UC Davis authors. Our December 2024 selections take a different direction with a focus on poetry.
We are very sad to share news of the passing of Sandra Gilbert, Distinguished Professor Emerita of English at UC Davis. Gilbert was a distinguished and prolific literary critic, poet, memoirist, editor and teacher.
Telling women’s stories is what excites writer Iris Jamahl Dunkle. Since 2019, the biographer, poet and creative writing instructor has been shedding light on these previously underappreciated women in two books as well as a weekly online newsletter. Her latest book, "Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb," is about a female writer who, while living among Dust Bowl refugees in California.
Scholars in the Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS) program are working to dispel the caricatures of this era by de-centering European history from the discourse and showing how, in fact, much of the world was experiencing acculturalization, or borrowing, adapting and mixing traits from various cultures.
The National Endowment for the Humanities awarded a $500,000 grant to launch and fund the UC Davis Center for Artificial Intelligence and Experimental Futures (CAIEF). CAIEF will promote the democratic governance of AI systems by engaging diverse stakeholders in processes of creative worldmaking — crafting the world of tomorrow, together.
