In his newly released documentary film, Umbria Jazz Feast, UC Davis Professor of Music Pierpaolo Polzonetti investigates the perceptions and identities of jazz as it intersects with the cuisine, art, and culture of locals and visitors in Perugia, a medieval town in central Italy. A musicologist specializing in music and food, Polzonetti focused on how the festival enabled a synesthetic experience; that is, one in which different senses are simultaneously engaged.
This month's Books of the Month list features works authored or edited by faculty, focusing on gender, sexuality and societal norms. Learn more about queer theory, the history of hormone replacement therapy and how topics like gender and sexuality are treated in rural areas.
Researchers at UC Davis are expanding into positive psychology to understand how social connection and the experience of joy can help people across LGBTQ+ communities to thrive.
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. Check out some of these news media highlights from the past month.
UC Davis Professor of Physics and Astronomy Andrew Wetzel has been appointed to the newest class of the U.S. Defense Science Study Group, a program directed by the Institute for Defense Analyses. The program invites outstanding science and engineering professors to apply their skills and research to the United States’ security challenges.
Mathematicians are challenging the idea that dark energy is responsible for the accelerating expansion of the universe. In a new paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society A, mathematicians from the University of California, Davis, provide mathematical proof that instabilities inherent in the Einstein-Euler equations imply that the current model of the expanding universe is not viable.
For her innovative research in Indigenous studies and on the politics of knowledge, de la Cadena was recently elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honorary societies.
From digital data and technology to the environment, healthcare and the body, graduate students from across the College of Letters and Science at University of California, Davis, are pushing boundaries with their experimental research and creative expression. The results, varied in medium and discipline, will be on display at the Arts & Humanities 2026 Graduate Exhibition.
Alum Harry Shontz (LS '12), who majored in history and psychology at UC Davis, received a 2025-26 Milken Educator Award. The award, one of the most highly regarded honors for K-12 teachers, recognizes overall excellence.
When Carson Jeffres looks at the Yolo Bypass, he sees much more than a heavily trafficked strip of I-80 cutting across land meant for water overflow and agriculture. He sees an ecosystem amidst transformation, one integral to making California, as Jeffres calls it, a “salmon society.” Jeffres shared this vision of California as a salmon society with a packed house at G Street WunderBar for the May edition of the Davis Science Café.
