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Dr. Beth Scaffidi and the Science of Ancient Mobility

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By Josiah Beharry, Graduate Student Researcher, Center for the Humanities, UC Merced 

Dr. Beth Scaffidi, an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at UC Merced, doesn’t simply study the past. She tracks it, molecule by molecule, isotope by isotope, across thousands of miles and thousands of years. Her work uses geospatial data, isotopic analysis, and bio archaeological methods to reconstruct the lives of people who lived long before the idea of migration studies even existed.  

“Every organism carries the geological imprint of where it comes from,” she explained. “Our bones are maps.”  

That line lingered in the room. Because, for Scaffidi, these maps are not just scientific puzzles, they are stories. Each strontium isotope ratio etched into a tooth or bone tells a narrative of movement, a child born in one valley who dies in another, a community pushed by drought or empire, a family that followed the promise of fertile soil.  

Her ongoing book project, a monumental synthesis of isotopic data across nearly a hundred archaeological sites in the Central Andes, seeks to redraw the migration routes of ancient civilizations. The goal is simple and powerful: to understand not just where people moved, but why – what social, environmental, and political forces shaped their journeys.  

Mapping a Moving World  

Scaffidi’s research traces the invisible borders of mobility; borders that, in her view, were far more porous than we imagine. By studying the chemical signatures locked within ancient skeletons, she identifies who was “local” and who was not. This method, she joked, is “the Cadillac of isotopic analysis,” capable of distinguishing even short-distance seasonal movement between highland and coastal communities.  

Her data reveal intricate patterns. Waves of movement that aligned with trade, empire, and ecological change. During the Inca period, for example, entire populations were deliberately relocated, a form of state-engineered resettlement that both consolidated power and redistributed labor. But beyond imperial politics, Scaffidi’s findings complicate neat stories about identity.   

“Mobility is not just about displacement,” she noted. “It’s also about connection […] about how communities absorbed newcomers, how knowledge and culture traveled alongside people.”  

This humanistic thread runs through all of her work. Though grounded in hard science, Scaffidi approaches isotopic analysis as a way to illuminate the emotional and social worlds of the past. The bones, she insists, do not just record movement, they go further by recording meaning.  

Dr. Beth Scaffidi speaks about her research on ancient mobility tracing human movement across the Andes through archaeological evidence.

A Landscape Written in Stone and Skin  

The Andes, with their geological diversity, are both a blessing and a challenge to this kind of research. The geology changes as quickly as the altitude, Scaffidi explained. A valley a few miles away might have a completely different isotopic signature. That complexity makes her work painstaking and exhilarating.  

Her latest project began as an attempt to fill in the missing pieces of her synthesis, the unsampled regions, the overlooked sites, the untested eras. It became a journey of its own. Over the summer, she traveled across the Andes, visiting sites that once sat at the crossroads of ancient trade and migration. She photographed ruins, flew a UAV over sacred valleys, and collected images for a forthcoming digital appendix to her book. What emerged was a vivid understanding of how people navigated one of the world’s most formidable landscapes, a region where snow-capped peaks drop into rainforest, and desert plateaus meet ocean cliffs.  

Seeing the Invisible  

In the final part of her talk, Scaffidi turned to the question that animates her book’s last chapter: How do we recognize the non-locals of the past?  

For centuries, archaeology has read migration through objects: pots, tools, architecture. Scaffidi asks us to look again at the art itself. In pottery, textiles, and wall paintings, she finds subtle signals of difference: the colors of headdresses, the lines of a tattoo, the angle of a figure’s jaw. They were documenting mobility in their own visual language, she finds. They knew the power of showing difference. These aesthetic traces, paired with the isotopic evidence, suggest that the Andes were not a world of isolated villages, but a web of exchange and adaptation. Migration was not an exception to ancient life; it was life.  

The Book Still in Motion  

Scaffidi admits the book remains in progress. The data keep expanding. The Andes, like the stories they contain, resist completion. But her presentation offered something richer than closure, a glimpse of a scholar unafraid to let her research breathe, evolve, and even detour. Fieldwork teaches humility:  you go out looking for answers and come back with better questions. Scaffidi’s work offers a long view. A reminder that movement is neither new, nor unnatural. It is what binds us, in dust and in data, across the vast sweep of human history.   

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Joy as Resistance: What Rural Communities Can Teach Us About Survival

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By Josiah Beharry, Graduate Student Researcher, Center for the Humanities, UC Merced

In times of loss and struggle, joy is often treated as an afterthought—something fleeting, maybe even indulgent. But what if joy is not a luxury at all? What if it is the very condition that allows communities to resist, endure, and imagine beyond the limits imposed on them? 

That question ran through Erica Kohl-Arenas’ presentation, “Public Humanities as Micro Joy: Stories of Joyful Resistance in Troubling Times.” Her reflections—grounded in decades of collaborative work and long-standing partnerships with the Pan Valley Institute (PVI) in California’s Central Valley and the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production (Sipp Culture)—showed how joy lives at the center of community survival from California to Mississippi. 

Their shared projects—poetry slams in historic theaters, immigrant-led cultural festivals, and community farms reclaiming abandoned main streets—remind us that joy is more than happiness. It is not the shallow satisfaction of achievement or recognition. Joy is durable. It holds reverence, pride, connection, and grounding. It persists even alongside sorrow. 

Erica Kohl-Arenas: joy as resistance, connection, and community.

The Fresh Poets of the Fillmore 

Three decades ago, in San Francisco’s Western Addition, a group of middle school students—labeled “troubled” by their teachers and dismissed by the city—decided to tell a different story. Guided by a youth organizer, they mapped the assets of their neighborhood: barber shops where homework got done, storefronts turned into classrooms, a bowling alley that doubled as sanctuary. 

Their work culminated in a dream that felt outlandish: to perform their own raps and poems on the legendary stage of the Fillmore Theater. Against all odds, the “Fresh Poets of the Fillmore” stood under the same lights that once held Billie Holiday and Jimi Hendrix. Their words brought parents, shopkeepers, and grandparents to their feet in ovation. 

This project, which predated Kohl-Arenas’ partnerships with PVI and Sipp Culture, was an early example of her own community-based organizing. It was more than a performance—it was a declaration: we exist, and we are worthy of celebration. 

Tamjavi: A Festival Against Fear 

Five years later and 200 miles south, Fresno’s immigrant and refugee communities were living under a different kind of shadow. After 9/11, immigration raids swept through the Central Valley, seeding fear and silence. Out of that climate, and through years of collaboration with community partners, the Pan Valley Institute (PVI) helped organize the Tamjavi Cultural Exchange Festival—a three-day takeover of Fresno’s Tower District that blended Cambodian opera, Oaxacan food traditions, Hmong comedy, Mexican bandas, and Indigenous storytelling. 

Over 3,000 people filled the streets. What could have been a moment of hiding became instead an act of public defiance and joy. The festival wasn’t just about art, it was about survival. About insisting that cultures too often marginalized or criminalized could claim space, laugh loudly, and be seen. 

Utica, Mississippi: Reclaiming Main Street 

Across the country in Utica, Mississippi, another story was unfolding. For decades, the town had been hollowed out: its textile factories gone, its grocery store shuttered, its high school closed. Yet the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production – known locally as SIPP Culture – saw something else. 

They asked residents to imagine their most beautiful food future. Elders wrote letters to future generations, describing town squares with cafés, gardens, and music. Teenagers interviewed their grandparents about recipes carried across generations. 

From that process, SIPP Culture began buying back the town’s abandoned main street. What was once a symbol of abandonment is now an industrial kitchen, a farmers’ market, a performance space, and a 17-acre community farm. Founder Carlton Turner calls it “taking the keys back from the Confederacy.” 

In Utica, joy looks like collard greens grown in backyard gardens, oral history circles with teenagers on the edge of their seats, and the smell of biscuits stamped with a grandmother’s three-finger brand. 

Joy as Public Humanities 

These stories matter because they challenge how we think about resistance. Too often, resistance is reduced to protest, policy, or opposition. But the Central Valley and Mississippi Delta remind us that resistance also looks like a story carried across oceans, a meal shared across cultures, a festival dancing with laughter in the face of fear. 

The Pan Valley Institute and SIPP Culture call this agri(cultural) justice: reclaiming land, food, and culture from the same systems that once dispossessed them. But their work also embodies something larger. They show that joy itself is infrastructure and a resource that sustains movements, binds communities, and makes survival not just possible, but beautiful. 

As Grace Lee Boggs once wrote, revolutions are not only about tearing down but also about creating. To create under conditions of scarcity, repression, or trauma requires more than strategy. It requires joy. 

Erica Kohl-Arenas shares how joy fuels communities into acts of resilience and celebration.

The Work Ahead 

Partnerships between academics and communities, between California and Mississippi, are not simple. They take decades of trust, humility, and showing up as full selves rather than institutional representatives. They require letting go of control and letting community wisdom lead. 

But the reward is immense: not only thriving festivals, gardens, and performances, but also the reawakening of imagination itself; because joy is not the opposite of struggle. Joy is what makes struggle bearable. Joy is the language of survival. And joy shared, celebrated, cultivated is what points us toward the futures we have yet to build. 

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Beyond the Lecture Hall: How Video Is Reframing Scholarship

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By Josiah Beharry, Graduate Student Researcher, Center for the Humanities, UC Merced

The Center for the Humanities opened the academic year with the first event in this year’s capacity-building workshops, which are designed to bring fresh energy and vital tools to campus. “Making Videos to Showcase Your Research: Create, Edit, Share,” led by Staff Research Associate Man Zhang, set the stage for what will be a year of conversations that blend creativity with scholarship. More than a technical workshop, it marked the beginning of a series committed to expanding how research lives in public — not just written on the page, but shared, seen, and understood.

The gathering drew graduate students and faculty into a shared experiment. At its center was a simple but radical question: what happens when scholars treat video not as an afterthought but as a primary language of communication? Zhang’s instruction moved through practical terrain: storyboarding, camera movement, audio clarity, editing software, but the resonance was larger. The message was that research, often confined to conferences and journals, gains new life when framed visually. A well-crafted clip can transform a poster into an experience, extend a presentation beyond the room, and bring local projects to global audiences.

Equally important was the emphasis on accessibility. Zhang highlighted the use of subtitles, concise formatting, and clear audio as non-negotiables, not extras. These choices make research videos not only professional but democratic, reaching audiences across languages, backgrounds, and abilities. In an era when information moves at the speed of a swipe, these practices ensure that academic knowledge keeps pace without leaving people behind.

Man Zhang guides participants in creating research videos that make scholarship visible, accessible, and engaging beyond the classroom.

For a university community in the Central Valley where visibility, representation, and access remain urgent, the implications are profound. Videos created here can circulate far beyond campus walls: introducing first-generation students to research culture, connecting with policymakers who may never read an academic paper, or amplifying work that might otherwise remain hidden in archives.

Workshops like this do more than teach technique; they invite scholars to see themselves as translators of knowledge. The medium of video demands clarity without sacrificing complexity, accessibility without diminishing rigor. 

The Center’s capacity-building workshops promise not just guest speakers but access to new tools for a scholarly community committed to breaking barriers: between disciplines, between campus and public, between research and the world it hopes to change.

The workshop closed with participants imagining where these skills might lead: drone footage of fieldwork, short explainers that travel across social media, digital archives that students and families can access from anywhere. The possibilities are expansive, and so is the charge. Scholarship, after all, is not just about producing knowledge. It is about making it matter.

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Building Community Futures: Collaboration, Care, and Cultural Revitalization

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By Shiraz Noorani, Graduate Student Researcher, Center for the Humanities, UC Merced

The Center for the Humanities at UC Merced has been hosting a series of community lunches on the theme of “Our Interwoven Futures.”  Our second lunch took place on May 2nd, 2025, at the UC Merced Downtown Campus Center, where people representing various communities from Merced County gathered to discuss how to better envision a prosperous future. 

The sub-themes for the community lunch included: Risk, Durable Justice, and Reconciliation; Transformative Communities of Care and Mutual Aid; Migrations, Diasporas, and the Future of Cultural Revitalization; and Designing Responses to Climate Impacts – from Wildfires to Floods. 

Christina Lux, Managing Director of the Center for Humanities and Principal Investigator of the Mellon Grant, introducing the themes of the Mellon Grant 

The event provided a chance for community members to establish connections with each other and with faculty and staff at UC Merced. The lunch began with Ignacio López-Calvo, Professor of Latin American Literature and Culture and Presidential Endowed Chair in the Humanities, welcoming attendees before Christina Lux, Managing Director of the Center for Humanities and Principal Investigator of the Mellon Grant, introduced the themes and goals of the three-year Mellon Grant for participants.  

One of the groups presents their insights and concepts on our interwoven futures.

The participants sat in four groups of six to develop the primary and secondary themes of the Mellon Grant for this year. Using a MindMap format, attendees brainstormed their concerns and visions for the future in a  collaborative manner. Then, each group presented outstanding insights and concepts about co-creating and co-designing our futures together. 

Later, two UC Merced professors, Patricia Vergara, Assistant Professor of Music, and Nigel Hatton, Associate Professor of Literature and Philosophy, presented their summer projects, “Soundscapes of Merced,” and “Universities, Prisons, and the Public” and received input and questions from community members. Eight graduate fellows worked together with them and in collaboration with community partners on public humanities initiatives throughout Merced County as part of these projects during the summer. 

Attendees sketching out Mindmaps on notepads to collaboratively imagine the future.

In the end, the community lunch became a meaningful space of dialogue, partnership, and collaborative imagination. Emphasizing justice discourses, care, migration, and response to climate change, the event made fruitful intersections between project leaders, scholars, and members of the surrounding community. This event illustrated the potential of public humanities to connect varied voices towards building our shared futures.  

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Public Humanities Boot Camp Features Methods and Best Practices from Across California

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By Shiraz Noorani, Graduate Student Researcher, Center for the Humanities, UC Merced

A one-day Public Humanities Boot Camp was held in the Public Humanities Design Studio last spring, featuring seven speakers from across California who shared examples, methods, and best practices related to engaging communities.

Susan Derwin, the director of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center and professor of German and comparative literature at UC Santa Barbara, launched the boot camp and shared several of UCSB’s public humanities projects, including, “The Making of Monuments.”

Professor Susan Derwin offering reflections on monuments and the role of humanities in society.

In her project, she works with teachers from the Santa Barbara Unified School District to develop lesson plans that introduce students to the significance of historical memory and their role as caretakers of those memories and the public narratives surrounding them. According to Derwin, doing public humanities does not only mean spreading knowledge but also working with communities and valuing their cultures.

Next, Rosemary A. Joyce, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and a former museum director at UC Berkeley presented, “Exhibition Curation and Cultural Equity: Lessons from Teaching and Practice.” She explained how museums can represent various voices, narratives, and histories. She expressed that museums do not only portray different communities’ stories but also ask the communities for an active engagement in presenting their own stories. She emphasized respecting the historical narratives and cultural objects of different communities. 

Rosemary A. Joyce highlighting the role of museums in amplifying community voices and fostering inclusive representation.

Rosemary emphasized the ethical responsibilities that museum exhibit curation and design should address. She said that a common mistake anthropologists make is speaking for communities rather than speaking with them, which leads to misrepresentation. She talked about the necessity for collaborative protocols that include community representatives in the decision-making process. She also stressed the need for flexibility in curatorial approaches, respect for culturally sensitive collections, and thoughtful consideration of language. She highlighted the issues of knowledge appropriation and the need to respect community-imposed restrictions on how cultural materials are displayed or interpreted.

Later in the day, Professors Benjamin D. Weber and Ofelia Ortiz Cuevas from UC Davis along with Assistant Professor Marlene Mercado from California State University, San Marcos, shared their project titled, “Beyond the Barriers and Open Letters from Prison.” In this project, the aim is to publish artwork and writing from four prisons in California. This project helps many people to be heard while they are behind bars, people who might have been silenced for years. This project was a good example of how public humanities can assist in healing open wounds and seeking justice.

Professors Weber, Cuevas, and Mercado present Open Letters from Prison.

Finally, Robin DeLugan, professor of Anthropology at UC Merced, presented a summary about the history of UC Merced and its collaborations with local communities highlighting our Carnegie Classification for Community-Engaged Research and our Luce Foundation Grant. She explained how community-engaged research projects have helped faculty, staff, and graduate students to be connected with local communities.  At the end of this session, Christina Lux, the managing director of the Center for the Humanities at UC Merced, talked about the differences and similarities between public humanities and community-engaged research. 

We ended the day by asking attendees to do a group activity, sharing their thoughts about public humanities and community-engaged research using a deck of “Public Scholar Conversation Cards” developed by Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life.

Boot Camp participants engage with the Public Scholar Conversation Cards during a group activity.

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Lessons on Public Philosophy from Andrew Fiala

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By Shiraz Noorani, Graduate Student Researcher, Center for the Humanities, UC Merced

As part of our Public Humanities Speaker Series, Andrew Fiala, professor of philosophy and founding director of the Ethics Center at California State University, Fresno, gave his talk “700 Words at a Time: Lessons Learned from Doing Philosophy in the Newspaper,“ in our Public Humanities Design Studio at UC Merced last spring.

Professor Andrew Fiala Shares insights on public philosophy.

Professor Fiala has been practicing the art of public philosophy for many years. As a columnist with The Fresno Bee, he has written hundreds of columns on philosophy, ethics, and public discourse. His journey as a public philosopher has been motivating but challenging. Fiala’s talk was on how philosophy can be communicated to the masses through the media, via newspaper columns in particular. He spoke about how to condense and translate profound ethical and philosophical ideas into understandable columns that everyone can relate to.

Writing for a newspaper has helped Fiala learn to clarify complex ideas. He observed that public philosophy has to make people think and not react, and a good article should make people brainstorm, ask questions, and not just agree or disagree. He emphasized that the need for philosophical engagement is still strong, even as we move into a new era of technology. He feels that bringing philosophy to the public calls for passion, effort, and flexibility. Whether through blogs, newspapers, or social media, the task is to make philosophy applicable in everyday life.

Andrew Fiala reflects on making philosophy accessible through newspaper columns.

To illustrate the work of public philosophy further, Fiala gave some samples of his writings at The Fresno Bee, showing how he has dealt with ethical issues and philosophical questions in ways that ordinary readers can grasp, engaging with real world issues and promoting reflective conversation.

The talk was followed by a Q&A where Fiala discussed the challenge of moving philosophy into new media and emphasized the importance of keeping philosophical conversation relevant in a constantly changing world.

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Public Humanities in Practice: Selected Annotated Case Studies

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By Shiraz Noorani, Graduate Student Researcher, Center for the Humanities, UC Merced 

Crumme, Hannah Leah. “Building Community Archives: Vietnamese Portland.” The Routledge Companion to Public Humanities Scholarship. Routledge, 2024. 128-138.  https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003248125-10/building-community-archives-hannah-leah-crumm%C3%A9

In “Building Community Archives: Vietnamese Portland,” Hannah Leah Crumme describes an initiative of Lewis & Clark College’s Special Collections to broaden Portland, Oregon’s historical record by building a community-based digital archive regarding the Vietnamese American community. Recognizing that traditional archives are far too often centered on white settler histories, Crumme and her team wanted to document the diverse experiences that shape the city explicitly, especially those of Vietnamese immigrants and their descendants, in their contributions and struggles. It also represents an alarmingly underrepresented population in Portland. The project, launched in 2017, grew from the college’s initiative to create more inclusive collections to better represent Portland’s multicultural legacy. It has collaborated with community leaders, like Thao Tu, who is president of the Vietnamese Community of Oregon, for cultural sensitivity and authenticity by collecting oral history, photographs, and documents; often, translators have been used to capture stories in both languages, English and Vietnamese. For the most part, it has been grant-funded by institutions, including the National Endowment for the Humanities, allowing Crumme and her team to hire student workers and cultural consultants, as well as reach out to local Vietnamese groups via events such as the annual Tet Festival. It is an initiative that not only looks to preserve the heritage of Vietnamese Portlanders but also works to incorporate their stories into local education through materials for public school curricula and exhibitions in community spaces, broadening public understanding of the city’s historical landscape. 

Garcia-Medina, William. Making Black Public Humanities in South Florida: Fugitive Pedagogies, Self-Making, and Memory Work. Diss. University of Kansas, 2022. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2679773033?pq-origsite=gscholar&fromopenview=true&sourcetype=Dissertations%20&%20Theses

This dissertation by William Garcia-Medina gives a descriptive framework to understand the intersections of memory work with Black public humanities. He introduces theoretical methods underpinning the study of Black public humanities, including: fugitive pedagogy, a term that describes the educational practices Black educators have utilized to resist systemic oppression; and self-making, a concept that highlights the active ways in which Black individuals and communities shape their identities through cultural, intellectual, and political practices. These strategies are used in Black memory work, in the conservation and distribution of Black collective memory, and in making sure that histories are recorded and passed on through community-led initiatives.

Additionally, the dissertation discusses modern forms of public humanities within digital landscapes, demonstrating how the AARLCC embraces technology to expand its reach. It inspires further investigation into the ways digital platforms can magnify Black voices while staying rooted in local, community-based memory work. 

Hill, Cecily Erin, and Mariel Aquino. “Community Case Studies: How the Humanities Enrich Community Life.” National Humanities Alliance. https://nhalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/NHA-COMMUNITY-CASE-STUDIES-OVERVIEW-2024.pdf

This document provides an in-depth exploration of how communities across the United States are utilizing the humanities to address societal challenges, preserve cultural heritage, and foster social equity. It showcases case studies from Nogales, Arizona; Rapid City, South Dakota; and Charleston, South Carolina, each illustrating how humanities-based initiatives are empowering local populations. Through partnerships with local organizations, these initiatives utilize history, storytelling, and cultural practices to address issues such as economic inequality, racial divisions, and environmental challenges. 

In Nogales, history and storytelling are used to reshape the narrative surrounding life on the U.S.-Mexico border, fostering a sense of pride and community resilience. In Rapid City, efforts focus on bridging divides between Native and non-Native populations through cultural recognition and historical research, leading to improved community trust and mental health outcomes. Charleston’s case study highlights initiatives aimed at confronting its legacy of slavery while promoting dialogue around the impacts of gentrification and climate change on African American communities. Together, these studies emphasize the vital role the humanities play in community-building and social progress. 

Ramirez, Mario H., and Lorena Gauthereau. “Documenting Transborder Latinidades.” The International Journal of Information, Diversity, and Inclusion 6.4 (2022): 1-7. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/48720302.pdf?refreqid=fastly-default%3A83b2d3271332df2053e846c62e909d08&ab_segments=&initiator=&acceptTC=1   

The article “Documenting Transborder Latinidades” by Mario H. Ramirez and Lorena Gauthereau explores the dynamic relationship of archives, libraries, and digital humanities in the documentation of the lived experience of transborder Latinx communities. The authors have shown a rich history and identities formed across migrating journeys and colonial legacy.

This article underlines how community-based archives preserve and celebrate diverse histories formed with and within Latinx communities. These projects, in turn, collaboratively create an active form of memory-building participation among the archivists, academics, and people in these communities. This provides access on a wider scale and, consequently, allows self-identity and contributions of marginalized groups to have their voices heard at global and local levels. 

Shang, Haoyi. Telling Our Own Stories: An Analysis of Asian American Community Museums in the U.S. Diss. University of Pennsylvania, 2023. https://repository.upenn.edu/entities/publication/11d7eaaf-693d-4b62-bd01-ec9a24cbf358. 

This dissertation explores the importance of community museums in showcasing the stories of American communities from a cultural standpoint. The paper also highlights efforts to address the historical oversight of Asian American contributions in mainstream U.S. heritage narratives through case studies of three institutions: the Portland Chinatown Museum, the Wing Luke Museum in Seattle, and the National Cambodian Heritage Museum & Killing Fields Memorial in Chicago. The study delves into the significance of community museums in bridging history with shared memory and effectively involving the public in cultural engagement activities. Haoyi Shang touches upon the roles of museums as historical interpreters that support and safeguard local identities. Additionally, the dissertation explores the origins of these museums and their community-centric method of organizing exhibits to showcase a variety of narratives. 

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Public Humanities: An Annotated Bibliography of Statements from Professional Associations and Organizations

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By Shiraz Noorani, Graduate Student Researcher, Center for the Humanities, UC Merced 

This annotated bibliography is a compilation of guidelines and statements from various scholarly professional associations working in the field of Public Humanities. It was written with the aim to provide practitioners and scholars with a simple yet clear overview of how public humanities is practiced across disciplines. The sources annotated here delineate the ways that professional scholarly organizations engage communities through different initiatives. It also offers a foundation for understanding the role of public humanities in shaping more engaged, accessible, socially responsive academic work.     

“About the Field.” National Council on Public History, https://ncph.org/what-is-public-history/about-the-field/. Accessed 31 Oct. 2024. 

This webpage contains a comprehensive overview of public history, explains what public history is, and why it extends beyond academia. It explores how public history as a practice encompasses museums, archives, oral history, and historical consultancy. The source shows how public historians communicate with the public and share inclusive narratives. This is applicable to scholars who are involved in the process of outreach, collaboration, and public engagement in historical interpretation. More than that, this page indicates how public history can be part of community engagement and involvement; it introduces a set of guidance and training on how to be a Public Historian. The page also distinguishes between the understanding of public history and regular or traditional history and provides a robust definition of their distinctions.

Fisher, Daniel. “Goals of the Publicly Engaged Humanities.” Humanities for All. https://humanitiesforall.org/essays/goals-of-the-publicly-engaged-humanities. Accessed 17 Oct 2024. 

This document thoroughly explores the involvement of the public in humanities projects by delving into four real-life examples that highlight the collaborations between universities and local communities. These case studies from the Humanities for All database illustrate the advantages that arise from partnerships between institutions and different partners like K-12 schools and community organizations. They showcase activities such as safeguarding history records and developing educational materials while also fostering community leadership initiatives. This material is also useful for grasping how the humanities can forge ties between academia and the public domain as well as appreciating the role of such alliances in preserving culture and driving educational advancements.  

“For the Public.” Archaeological Institute of America, https://www.archaeological.org/programs/public/. Accessed 24 October 2024. 

“For the Public,” an initiative by the Archaeological Institute of America, demonstrates how archaeology is shared with the public through engaging activities, an element of public humanities practice. Their programs feature events like International Archaeology Day to encourage participation in activities and Interactive Digs that provide online access to real-time excavations. Moreover, the Site Preservation Program aims to protect archeological sites around the world by raising awareness, education, and outreach. With these programs, the American Archeological Institute not only fosters a deeper understanding of safeguarding future archeological heritage but also makes the past accessible to the public.

“Guidelines for Broadening the Definition of Historical Scholarship.” American Historical Association, 5 Jan. 2023, https://www.historians.org/resource/guidelines-for-broadening-the-definition-of-historical-scholarship/. Accessed 17 Oct. 2024. 

This American Historical Association document attempts to broaden the scope of scholarship, to include diverse forms other than books and articles, such as digital initiatives or a public history project, amongst others. It guides academics and organizations on how best to incorporate public humanities projects into their academic evaluations in the field of history. This page also offers a framework for reviewing traditional contributions by incorporating both examples of digital history and public history projects on different media platforms. It can thus be a helpful document for public historians and historians who are involved in public humanities projects in their attempts to correlate their work with established academic conventions. 

“Guidelines for Evaluating Publicly Engaged Humanities Scholarship in Language and Literature Programs.” Modern Language Association, August 2022. https://www.mla.org/content/download/187094/file/Guidelines-Evaluating-Public-Humanities.pdf.  

This document is a recommendation from the MLA’s Ad Hoc Committee for evaluating public humanities scholars in language and literature programs. The document emphasizes the ethical considerations in collaborating with communities, especially multilingual ones, and provides ways of evaluating projects that do not fit the conventional peer-review framework. The guidelines also explore the scope, impact, dissemination, collaboration, and deliverables of public humanities projects. 

This document also stresses the development of a system for rewarding faculty members for their work in the public humanities. It focuses on the effects of the projects on communities, the growth of the humanities, and the right approach to collaboration. It will be a significant and useful tool for institutions and departments looking to revise their faculty evaluation processes outside of conventional peer-reviewed publications. The guidelines also signify the need for diverse outputs of public humanities: podcasts, blogs, community reading groups, or exhibitions. It raises questions of ethics when working on community-based projects and suggests that the approach should be collaborative and non-extractive.  

Oliver, Younger. “Documenting the Impact of the Public Humanities in Higher Education: A Toolkit.” National Humanities Alliance, 2023. https://humanitiesforall.org/media/pages/resources/documenting-the-impact-of-the-public-humanities-in-higher-education-a-toolkit/58758ed5af-1689611837/impact-research-toolkit-final.pdf.

The toolkit offers a pathway to capturing the impacts of public humanities endeavors within higher education institutions. It describes helpful methods, including questionnaires, focus groups, and interviews, which can help practitioners understand the outcomes of their programs. In addition, it considers best practices in regard to ethics, inclusion, and the qualitative and quantitative data analysis that is critical for capturing program impacts related to public and community-based humanities work. The section on ethics and accessibility emphasizes the importance of protecting anonymity and advising on conducting research that respects participants’ backgrounds, as well as analyzing and using data one has collected to craft stories, showcasing the importance of public humanities work. 

“Public Education Programs.” American Anthropological Association, 9 June 2023, https://americananthro.org/learn-teach/public-education-programs/. Accessed 29 Oct. 2024.  

The American Anthropological Association’s webpage outlines its goals to promote public understanding of complex social issues through anthropological research. The webpage also emphasizes how these complex social issues are tackled through a multi-disciplinary approach, including science, history, and lived experience, in order to educate the public. Moreover, the AAA seeks to deal with social problems, including migration as well as racism, through projects like the RACE Project and World on the Move. These projects are funded by organizations like the Ford Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation. This webpage aims to link scholarship and the public in a way that fosters a more profound and inclusive understanding of contemporary social problems.

“Public Engagement Programs.” American Academy of Religion, https://aarweb.org/AARMBR/Who-We-Are-/Public-Engagement-Programs.aspx. Accessed 17 Oct 2024. 

The webpage titled “Public Engagement Programs” outlines efforts by the American Academy of Religion to improve discussions about religion in the public sphere. The programs range from the American Lectures in the History of Religions, whose purpose is to stimulate scholarship in the history of religions, to the Public Scholars Project, which prepares scholars to be more effective public intellectuals in the study of religion. Other projects include the Religious Literacy Guidelines for College Graduates, which works to ensure religious literacy is integrated into undergraduate education, and the Guidelines for Teaching about Religions in K-12 Public Schools, which gives strategies for teaching religion in a constitutional and educationally sound way. The paper also acknowledges religious pluralism and public service by training chaplains through the Chaplaincy Program in order to accommodate religions in areas such as prisons and the military.  

It also covers the efforts towards combating Islamophobia by using a three-year project that trains educators on how to handle this kind of bias within classrooms. AAR/Luce Fellowships in Religion and International Affairs bring into view how religious scholarship is put into practice within secular government agencies to develop policies related to public health, human rights, and foreign affairs. The Levantine Refugee Project offers AAR members an opportunity to serve displaced Syrian and Iraqi populations, thereby humanizing the refugee crisis in the U.S. and bringing attention to the religious dimensions of that crisis. These efforts aim to link knowledge with discussions and policy decisions in the realm of religious studies for the benefit of public engagement and education. 

“Public Humanities Network.” Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes,  https://chcinetwork.org/networks/public-humanities-network. Accessed 29 Oct. 2024.  

This network intends to develop collaborations between academic institutions and civic communities. Topics they have included are defining “public humanities,” identifying the role of audiences, and establishing collaboration between academic institutions and the public. This network also shared its archive of recordings, which include videos like Conversation About the Black Studies Collaboratory; Public Humanities Mentoring Workshop; Public Humanities and Design Justice Workshop; Reckoning with Settler Colonialism and Imagining Just Futures Workshop; and How Do You Do Public Humanities? This network provides the necessary resources for both the scholar and the public to develop and implement robust and inclusive public humanities projects.

“Statement on Valuing Public Philosophy.” American Philosophical Association,  https://www.apaonline.org/page/publicphilosophy. Accessed 14 Oct. 2024.  

The American Philosophical Association, in this statement, explains its position on the value of philosophy and urges universities to acknowledge and appreciate philosophers who interact with non-academic people. The statement underscores the importance of philosophers getting involved in public discussions by linking ideas to real-world problems that may impact public policies. This statement emphasizes that public philosophy can take place in dialogue with other disciplines like humanities, arts, natural sciences, and social sciences. The APA also promotes the establishment of guidelines that acknowledge and adequately assess the impact of public philosophy on decisions regarding career advancement in academia. 

Wagner, Laura. “Taking Linguistics to the Public: An Outreach Guide.” Linguistic Society of America. https://www.lsadc.org/rc_files/12/Taking%20Linguistics%20to%20the%20Public_0.pdf. Accessed 16 Oct. 2024.

The Linguistic Society of America has created a guide to assist linguists in participating in public outreach endeavors by recommending engaging approaches such as partnering to host events with public institutions. For instance, mentoring programs with local high schools, collaborating with universities to organize a linguistics summer boot camp or hosting a booth at a university festival to reach audiences. The guide is significant for its focus on involving the community in raising awareness of linguistics in society. This document also provides strategies for effective public outreach, such as creating an engaged and trust-based space while working within a team. It also emphasizes understanding the background knowledge of the intended audience for public-facing events when choosing the type of activities or topics. 

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The Door Is Open: Why Our Monday Writing Group Matters

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By Josiah Beharry, Graduate Student Researcher, UC Merced Center for the Humanities

A quiet ritual at UC Merced’s Center for the Humanities turns writing from a private test of willpower into a shared practice of showing up. 

There’s a lie that floats through graduate school: writing is a solitary ordeal. You, your laptop, the blank page whispering, prove yourself. I don’t buy it, and it’s never worked for me! Scholarship is communal. It moves when we move together. That’s why every Monday, 9 a.m.–12 p.m., the Center for the Humanities opens a room and makes a simple promise: you won’t have to start alone. 

We don’t run a bootcamp with speeches and performances. Just a table, coffee, an outlet, a chair, and a culture of showing up. The room fills with scholars from every discipline—sharing a nod, parking the chaos at the door, and building an interdisciplinary calm around the one assignment we all share: writing (and grad school stress of course).  

Our Graduate Writing Group

Time Is the Real Barrier: Body Doubling, Minus the Hype
For many graduate students, the hardest part of writing isn’t craft—it’s time. And time is never neutral. If you’re teaching, caregiving, commuting, doing community work, or juggling jobs, the myth of the six-hour “ideal writing day” isn’t a strategy; it’s a mental prison—for anyone who can’t contort their life to fit it. Our room is the opposite: a low-barrier, three-hour block that respects life as it’s actually lived. You don’t need to clear your week to be a writer; you just need a door that opens  and fills with community. Call it co-working. Call it body doubling. The psychology is simple: when we work alongside others, the cost of beginning drops. The mind stops bargaining. The cue: quiet but firm, people here are writing—and your brain falls in line. No public check-in. No shame. Just the unglamorous mercy of co-presence. 

As someone with ADHD, body doubling isn’t a fad; it’s harm-reduction for attention. Clinicians and ADHD coaches note how co-presence lowers the “activation energy” to start and softens time-blindness and task-switching. I feel that in my bones. K–12 told me “good writing” meant sitting still, alone, and “just focusing”—a setup I routinely failed. Put me in a quiet room with other people working and the calculus changes. In this shared space the laundry/YouTube/TikTok spiral loses its grip; the shame soundtrack goes quiet; I borrow the room’s momentum. The accountability is gentle and external—no performance, just proof that starting is possible. For me, body doubling is the structure that makes showing up doable and staying put humane. 

The Schedule (and Why It Sticks) 

We draw, unabashedly, from Paul J. Silvia’s slim manifesto, How to Write a Lot. His premise is disarmingly simple: pages come from schedules, not inspiration. I agree and will  add this: schedules stick when they’re humane. Our room doesn’t tell you how many words to hit or which method to use. It gives you a recurring appointment and gets out of your way. Discipline, yes. Drills, no. 

How I Use the Room 

  • Arrive with one concrete task. Not “work on a chapter,” but “draft methods paragraph” or “clean up footnotes 8–12.” 
  • Draft messy on purpose. Brackets are my best friend: [check citation], [add quote], [figure out later]. 
  • Change the task, not the room. If I stall, I outline for ten minutes, then return to drafting. 
  • Leave a path back. I end by writing the first sentence I’ll tackle next time. 

None of this is required. It’s just how I make the most of a space designed to protect attention. 

Why It Works 

Humanities writing asks for depth. STEM writing asks for precision. Creative work asks for stamina. All three need uninterrupted stretches where attention can land and stay. That’s what this room provides. It lowers the temperature on productivity theater and raises the odds you’ll finish the paragraph you’ve been avoiding. 

And something else happens, harder to quantify: relief. The kind you feel in your shoulders. Relief that you didn’t postpone it again. Relief that you kept faith with your future self. Relief that the draft you feared is now a document you can actually revise. 

It works because the decision is already made. By the time Monday starts, you don’t have to negotiate with yourself: Will I write today? The answer is on the calendar. Week by week, your pipeline moves—drafts lift off the starting blocks, paragraphs find shape, and submissions leave your hard drive for someone else’s desk. 

Pages don’t pile up because we force them. They pile up because we return—to the same room, at the same time, with the same quiet intention. 

Mondays, 9 a.m.–12 p.m.: Center for the Humanities. The door is open. Bring your purpose and project. Stay for community and coffee. Leave with motivation and momentum. 

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Tsia Xiong’s Advice for Sustaining Community Relationships

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By Martin Ojeda, Staff Research Associate, “Stronger Together, Community-Engaged Research in the San Joaquin Valley” Luce Foundation Grant, UC Merced

This past fall, the Hlub Hmong Center Program Director, Tsia Xiong, came to UC Merced for the second time to give a workshop on building and sustaining relationships in community-engaged research. The purpose of the workshop was to train faculty members and graduate students on maintaining and growing relationships with community members.

Participants learned about four key steps to developing sustainable community relationships: maintaining, proposing, agitating, and celebrating/assessing. The workshop included hands-on activities such as a role-playing session and worksheets meant to track your intentions for developing relationships with community members. During the role play, participants partnered with others to find common interests and suggested roles they would like each other to fill based on their common interests. During the workshop, Tsia offered three main tips for navigating the four steps listed above.

Tsia Xiong, Hlub Project Director, speaking on celebrating and assessing outcomes with your community partner.

Tsia’s first tip for maintaining a relationship when conducting community-engaged research is having intentional one-on-one meetings. Tsia highlighted two key steps to consider before the meeting. The first is to reflect on the purpose of the meeting and what motivates you to meet with that person. The second is to list some actions and goals you want to reach. Knowing the purpose and the goal of the meeting is what makes the meeting intentional and clear to the person you are meeting with. Ultimately, one-on-ones show whether you and the other person can find a common goal and whether the person would be interested in investing their time with you.

The second tip that Tsia gave is that proposals need to be relational, meaning your partnership is built on mutual understanding and agreement. We create an effective proposal when we invite our partner to embrace a bigger role rather than simply assigning it. This can be accomplished by discussing why the new role matters, how someone’s skills can improve outcomes, and giving them space to reflect on how they feel and to provide feedback.

The third tip Tsia gave for the agitational phase is the need to be bold when assessing outcomes with your community partner. Tsia explained that the purpose of agitation is to raise awareness of shortcomings and give your community partner time to self-reflect. Boldness is necessary during this phase as the purpose of the conversation is to ask probing questions and recognize contradictions. Recognizing the gap between a set goal and realized results can be uncomfortable for both parties involved. Because of the risky nature of the agitational phase, Tsia emphasizes reiterating the importance of talents, and how the two of you can work together going forward.

The workshop underlined the importance of connecting and sustaining the relationship between researchers and community partners. Tsia equipped the audience with the tools required for effective relationship building and getting community partner buy-in. Overall, the tools given by Tsia can be helpful for developing an effective community-engaged relationship because they ensure mutually beneficial outcomes for both parties by having clear goals, mutual agreement, and honest conversations about outcomes.