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.
Every day faculty and students from the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis are highlighted in the news media, having their research featured and commenting on the most pressing issues facing the world.
With flavor and flair, a community of academics, chefs and food justice advocates are sparking conversation at UC Davis and beyond through the new seminar Thinking Food at the Intersections: Justice and Critical Food Studies. The seminar series is supported by a $225,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation received earlier this year.
The Davis Humanities Institute is on track to start anew. By fall 2025, it will become the campus hub for making connections and sharing ideas across the arts, humanities and beyond. Its goals include making a deeper impact on campus and in the community, providing more research opportunities for undergraduate students and supporting cross-collaborations between disciplines within the College of Letters and Science as well as other colleges within UC Davis.
From March to June 2024, graduate student Arsalan Adil traversed across the northern region of his home country of Pakistan on an adventure that was peppered with science outreach efforts.
Alum Lieza Danan, CEO and co-founder of LiVeritas Biosciences, discusses her journey in startups and life, including her years at UC Davis, where she earned a Ph.D. degree in biological chemistry in 2009.
The imaginative life of 15th century artist, inventor, scientist and engineer Leonardo da Vinci takes center stage in Ken Burns' latest documentary. The two-part documentary titled Leonardo da Vinci premiered Nov. 18 and 19 on PBS stations. UC Davis Associate Professor of Design James Housefield and art studio alumna Julia Couzens (M.F.A. ‘90) led a discussion on da Vinci at an advanced partial-screening of the documentary at PBS KVIE in Sacramento on Nov. 14.
A research team has found the strongest evidence yet of a novel type of superconducting material, a fundamental science breakthrough that may open the door to coaxing superconductivity — the flow of electric current without a loss of energy — in a new way.
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.
New research shows that the anti-anxiety and hallucinogenic-like effects of a psychedelic drug work through different neural circuits. The study, in a mouse model, shows that it could be possible to separate treatment from hallucinations when developing new drugs based on psychedelics.
