By Carlo Acevedo, Graduate Student Researcher, Center for the Humanities, UC Merced 

On September 11, three weeks into the fall semester, a group of scholars from a wide range of disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, and STEM fields gathered at the UC Merced Center for the Humanities to discuss a key topic that is part of larger ongoing conversations in higher education:  the place of Artificial Intelligence in and beyond the classroom. Our Center’s opening event, ‘Curriculum Design in the Age of AI’, featured guest speaker Dr. Goldberry Long, an associate professor of teaching in Creative Writing at The University of California, Riverside. 

Shortly before 10:00 a. m., attendees started arriving. They were welcomed by two cardboard pitchers full of black coffee and hot water, respectively, and a varied offer of tea bags. Our center’s staff, organizing faculty, and our guest speaker were there, waiting for those who had registered. The space was very well lit by the sunlight coming through the glass wall that looks to the northwest end of our campus; the golden prairies, typical of the Central Valley, and the dim silhouette of the Sierra Nevada in the horizon.  

To kick off the day-long program, Dr. Long gave a talk on ‘The Value & Use of Powerwriting’. She uses the term  powerwriting to describe an innovative and creativity-enhancing process she designed for use in her classes. The result, as she shared her experience with the audience that day, has been a consistent engagement and creative exploration by undergraduate students, from all over the academic spectrum, in her general education creative writing courses.  

Though this process originated in a creative writing environment, Dr. Long emphasized that powerwriting  is a method adaptable to different assessment needs, disciplines, and genres.  

Powerwriting, as a method, is based on two pillars. On the one hand, the fact that writing is a complex cognitive process with different stages; on the other, the importance of letting students, through guidance, formulate the question or questions their text will answer. The presence of these two pillars permits the students to gain agency and autonomy, and it also regulates the process, which leads into scaffolding and approaching in a timely manner the main stages of writing: generating and revising.  

In a metaphorical way,  powerwriting  is “thinking on paper”. This is justified by the fact that “creativity is messy”. Dr. Long made it clear that good ideas do happen, but they need to be written so they can be identified and developed. Inspired by very precise writing prompts, which are completed by the students themselves,  powerwriting  sets three parameters:  1) don’t stop writing, 2) risk, watch, refocus, and 3) type questions, type answers. In this way, students do the reflection, the analysis, the ideas and meaning generation, before technology can be introduced in the revising stage. Implicitly, this answers one of the first questions our guest speaker asked: “What can humans do with writing that AI can’t?” 

Ultimately, Dr. Long’s method also responds to a fundamental pedagogic dilemma: what are we asking/expecting from our students, and how are we as educators setting the ground so they can identify, generate, and organize information, and develop and manage the different tasks that complex processes suppose?  Powerwriting sheds light on two crucial aspects: the importance of giving autonomy to students, so the task becomes engaging and relevant to them, and the necessity of making explicit, as educators, the processes that we have already mastered.  

After introducing the principles of powerwriting, Dr. Long led a training session for the attendees. Dr. Long explained her method and then walked us through it so that we could experience what her students experience in class. At noon, the one-hour lunch break was an ideal opportunity for the attendees and our guest speaker to unwind, interact, and get an additional dose of caffeine to go through the upcoming work in the afternoon.  

The afternoon  program was divided into two sessions. From 1:00 to 2:30, Dr. Long guided a workshop and practice session: attendees were able to ask more specific questions, and Dr. Long shared a few samples of  powerwriting  done by students ranging from general education creative writing students to Medical School students. During the final afternoon session, from 2:30 to 4:30, the main group dispersed into smaller spontaneous groups as our guest speaker provided 1:1 consultations.  

For all of those who were present and for anyone involved in education, it is obvious that writing, whether encountered in reading or generated through composition, is a foundational component of academic life. In terms of higher education, for example, undergraduate students need to familiarize themselves with the jargon and genres of their respective fields, and they are also expected to start producing texts that somehow interact with intellectual and disciplinary conversations. 

In this context,   what needs or blind spot does powerwriting address? The method Dr. Long created is a pedagogical response to the fact that, in the last few years, technology has facilitated the massive appearance of texts that never went through the human process of writing. Instead of playing catch me if you can with students who try to sneak generative AI text into their work, she decided to create an engaging and empowering process that enlists students in the creative process. Consequently, students end up deciding not to skip the initial and most relevant stages of writing. One of the first questions the speaker brought to the audience was “What can humans do with writing that AI can’t?”  With this kind of apparently simple questions, the speaker’s objective was explicit from the beginning: “To break down our ideas of what writing is and what writing can do.”  At the end of the day, participants left with a renewed sense of excitement about how to help their students understand just what human-powered writing can do. 

By: Josiah Beharry, Graduate Student Researcher, Center for Humanities, University of California Merced 

In recent years, there has been growing scholarly and literary attention to memoir, refugee narrative, intergenerational memory, and the politics of telling lives that have been neglected by official history. Within that broader turn, Kao Kalia Yang’s Where Rivers Part: A Story of My Mother’s Life arrives as an especially important text because it does not simply recount migration or survival; it examines how a life shaped by war, displacement, kinship, and silence can be narrated at all. The book speaks to ongoing conversations about memory, diaspora, and the limits of historical documentation, particularly for communities whose stories have often been preserved through oral tradition rather than state archives. As such, it deserves attention not only as a moving memoir, but also as a significant contribution to broader debates about whose lives become legible in literature and history.  

At its core, the book belongs to a larger body of work concerned with migration, maternal history, and the relationship between personal memory and collective trauma. Yang’s memoir can be placed within conversations about refugee studies, Asian American literature, women’s life writing, and the politics of cultural memory. What distinguishes the book is its insistence that the life of a Hmong mother is not peripheral material. In this sense, the book pushes against dominant narrative conventions that often privilege major events over intimate life worlds. It demonstrates that historical violence is most powerfully understood not only through battles and borders, but through mothers, daughters, family structures, and the everyday labor of survival.  

The story itself unfolds as an act of reconstruction. Rather than presenting a straightforward biography of her mother, Yang pieces together a life through memory, family history, inherited story, and reflective narration. Her mother emerges as the emotional center of the book. a woman shaped by early hardship, war, migration, and family obligation, yet never reduced to a flat symbol of resilience. One of the book’s greatest strengths is that Yang allows her mother to remain fully human—strong, burdened, tender, exhausted, and at times unknowable. She is not turned into a saintly figure, nor is she simplified into a trope of suffering.  

The surrounding characters deepen this portrait. Family members appear as part of the social and historical world that has formed the mother’s life. Their presence reinforces the idea that identity is never individual, but communal, inherited, and relational. The family structure itself becomes one of the memoir’s key subjects. Yang shows how displacement reorganizes roles, responsibilities, silences, and attachments within the home. The result is a narrative in which character is inseparable from history.  

The book’s major contribution lies in its treatment of memory as incomplete, fragile, and ethically complex. Yang does not pretend to have full access to her mother’s life. Instead, she foregrounds the gaps in what can be known. This is one of the memoir’s most compelling formal and theoretical strengths. The fragmented structure is an argument about remembrance itself: some lives come down to us in pieces, and to write them honestly requires acknowledging fracture rather than smoothing it over, a deep reflection on how trauma operates in our brain and body. In this way, the book offers a useful conceptual lesson for readers beyond literary studies. It models a form of trauma somatics that is accountable to uncertainty, forgetting, and that understands narration as an act of remembering and imperfection.

 For readers interested in broader intellectual questions, the book is especially valuable for what it reveals about history from below. It asks what happens when the center of the story is not the state, the war strategist, or the official archive, but a mother whose life has carried the consequences of those forces. Its theoretical payoff lies in this shift of perspective. Yang demonstrates that intimate life is where political history is most deeply lived. That insight gives the book significance beyond its immediate subject matter.  

Stylistically, the memoir’s greatest strength is its prose. Yang writes with restraint and clarity, allowing the emotional force of the material to emerge through detail rather than exaggeration. The language is lyrical without becoming ornamental. Equally strong is the book’s refusal of narrative neatness. This quality may also present a challenge for some readers. Those expecting a tightly linear or conventionally biographical structure may find the text diffuse at times. Because the memoir is shaped by fragments, reflection, and emotional accumulation, it does not always move with the sharp progression some readers may prefer. Still, this is less a flaw than a formal choice consistent with the book’s subject. If the narrative occasionally resists ridgid structure, it is because the life it honors was itself marked by rupture.  

Ultimately, Where Rivers Part represents an important contribution to contemporary memoir and refugee literature because it expands what counts as historical and literary significance. It insists that a mother’s life, especially one shaped by war, migration, and cultural endurance—is not a private footnote to larger events, but a site of history in its own right. The book advances the field by offering a model of intergenerational storytelling that is ethically careful, formally self-aware, and emotionally exacting. More broadly, it suggests that future scholarship should continue to examine how family memory complicates official narratives of war, migration, and resettlement. If this is the direction the field continues to take, Yang’s memoir will stand as an important example of how literature can preserve lives that history has too often allowed to remain unseen. 

While the book is set in Minnesota here in Merced, the story of Hmong communities is mirrors Yang’s, as a vital part of the region’s cultural, historical, and educational landscape. In the Central Valley, where many Hmong families resettled after displacement, their histories are no longer confined to private or familial spaces; they are emerging in classrooms, community organizations, public programming, and scholarly work.¹ This shift reflects a broader recognition that the experiences of Hmong communities—shaped by war, migration, and resilience—are foundational to understanding the region itself. The book becomes more than a personal narrative; it functions as a form of shared historiography, offering language and structure to stories that are actively unfolding in our backyard in the Central Valley. By centering a Hmong mother’s life, Yang contributes to an ongoing effort to make visible and connect the narratives that have long existed across the states, but have not always been fully recognized within dominant academic or public discourse. 

¹ Christian De Jesus Betancourt, “50 Years in the Valley: The Hmong Journey from War to Home,” The Merced Focus, December 15, 2025,  

By: Josiah Beharry, Graduate Student Researcher, Center for Humanities, University of California Merced

The Journal of Teaching and Learning (JTL) is an active intellectual meeting ground: one animated by the belief that teaching and learning are not merely technical practices, but deeply social, political, and human endeavors that all people are a part of, in and beyond the classroom. Positioned as an international, peer reviewed education journal, JTL publishes scholarship that spans both K–12 and higher education, with an explicit orientation toward critical perspectives and the demands of contemporary education. Questions of democracy, sustainability, inclusion and exclusion, anti-oppressive pedagogy, and learning through crisis are not peripheral themes; they function as structuring concerns that shape the journal’s core identity.

In practice, this orientation produces a journal that is deliberately expansive. The range of articles moves across interventions, teacher development, educational leadership, policy analysis, inclusive education, and technology. Recent issues reveal a particularly strong presence of systematic reviews, meta-analyses, empirical quantitative research and qualitative investigations. At the same time, the journal maintains space for work that engages arts-based, performative, and non-traditional methodologies, a recognition that educational inquiry often exceeds singular epistemological frames.

JTL’s most compelling feature, however, may be its accessibility. Published in an open-access format with no article processing charges, the journal removes one of the most persistent barriers in academic publishing: cost. This model subtly but powerfully reshapes the journal’s audience. Research published in JTL is not restricted to those with institutional subscriptions, but is instead available to educators, practitioners, and scholars whose professional lives are directly implicated by the questions the journal explores. Submissions are managed through an OJS platform supported by clear templates and formatting expectations, offering contributors a submission process that is structured without being opaque.

JTL states it has a, “double-blind peer review process,” typically involving two to three reviewers, preserving scholarly credibility while sustaining methodological plurality. Sections such as Dialogue & Commentary, which are editor-reviewed rather than peer-reviewed, offer an additional layer of intellectual flexibility. Across the journal, the writing exhibits a recognizable structural coherence. Articles generally adhere to APA style and favor clear organizational frameworks marked by headings and subheadings. Introductions tend to perform an orienting function: they frame the educational problem, situate the research within relevant conversations, articulate the gap, and move toward purpose or argument with notable directness.

The journal’s distinct feature is its wide-ranging scope, which creates a complex dynamic. A typical issue showcases a variety of content, including subjects like mobile learning adoption, inclusive curriculum design, theatre pedagogy, mathematics education meta-analyses, and policy critiques regarding digital classroom risks. This intellectual breadth can be viewed in two contrasting ways. On one hand, scholars who naturally work across disciplines—particularly those focused on equity, innovative teaching methods, and methodology—may find the journal’s inclusive nature to be an ideal publishing platform. On the other hand, researchers seeking a highly specialized disciplinary dialogue may perceive the experience as more akin to publishing in a lively, public setting rather than a focused, theoretical niche. Consequently, the journal’s expansiveness serves as both its fundamental strength and its necessary trade-off.

Importantly, the journal’s evolving editorial direction reflects a distinctly progressive sensibility. This is especially visible in its recent call for special issue proposals on “Joy-Centered Pedagogy,” which signals not merely a thematic preference but a broader epistemological and pedagogical stance. Framed against the backdrop of environmental crisis, political polarization, technological disruption, and rising student disengagement, the call positions joy not as sentimentality but as a serious site of inquiry. The framing is telling joy is understood as something that coexists with difficulty rather than denies it, functioning as a renewable pedagogical resource rather than an affective luxury. In doing so, JTL continues to articulate a vision of educational scholarship that remains attentive to human experience, contemporary pressures, and the lived realities of teaching and learning.

Pragmatically speaking, manuscripts are expected to remain under 10,000 words (excluding references and title materials), with most articles falling within a readable 4,000 to 8,000 word range. Submissions follow APA 7 formatting using journal templates, contributing to a consistent stylistic and structural presentation across issues. These parameters reflect the journal’s underlying editorial philosophy: scholarship should be rigorous, but also readable; methodologically grounded, yet broadly accessible.

JTL‘s fundamental mission is to be a journal for scholars and educators who see teaching and learning as central to intellectual, social, and ethical impact. It offers a publication space where accessibility to a broader audience is widened by contemporary relevance, a wide range of methodologies.

This is one in a series of five essays reviewing public humanities journals. This series was inspired by Wendy Belcher’s website Reviews of Peer-Reviewed Journals in the Humanities and Social Sciences

By: Josiah Beharry, Graduate Student Researcher, Center for Humanities, University of California Merced

Academic publishing operates within a persistent tension between disciplinary rigor and public relevance. Journals frequently prioritize methodological precision, theoretical density, and specialized language that can distance the very community that scholarship seeks to engage. Within this landscape, both Public Humanities (Cambridge University Press) and ENGAGE! Journal represent distinct yet overlapping efforts to reimagine how knowledge is produced, communicated, and mobilized. While both journals challenge traditional academic norms, they do so through different orientations—one emphasizing public discourse and cultural intervention, the other centering community partnership and participatory research. For graduate students navigating where to publish, these distinctions are critical.

Published by Cambridge University Press, Public Humanities represents a progressive, innovative, and pioneering development in fostering exemplary community engagement and the sharing of a cross-disciplinary epistemology. Marketed as “a space for scholars, students, activists, journalists, policymakers, professionals, practitioners, and non specialists,” the journal fundamentally questions who produces knowledge and who benefits from it. Similarly, ENGAGE! challenges conventional hierarchies of knowledge production, but does so by positioning community-engaged research and community based participatory research not as supplementary approaches, but as foundational to scholarship itself. Where Public Humanities expands the audience of academic work, ENGAGE! redefines the process through which that work is created.

As a nascent journal inaugurated in 2024, Public Humanities operates with flexibility, balancing the urgency of public-facing scholarship with the long-term demands of disciplinary rigor. Its mission—“to create a venue for sharing knowledge about the intersections of humanities scholarship and public life”—is reflected in its broad thematicscope, which includes Classics, Cultural Studies, Disability Studies, Ethnic Studies, Gender Studies, History, Law, and Linguistics. By contrast, ENGAGE!, established in 2019, reflects a slightly more developed but still evolving field of community-engaged scholarship, with a particular emphasis on urban contexts where structural inequality, policy experimentation, and cultural dynamism intersect. While Public Humanities casts a wide interdisciplinary net, ENGAGE! offers a more targeted focus grounded in place-based, community-centered inquiry.

Both journals share a deep commitment to accessibility, though they operationalize it differently. Public Humanities achieves accessibility through form and dissemination. Its open access model ensures that scholarship is not only publicly relevant but publicly available. Articles typically
range from 6,000 to 8,000 words and are structured with concise, engaging introductions and abstracts that foreground stakes, arguments, and public significance. The journal’s “Of the Moment” section, featuring shorter 1,000–2,000 word pieces, further demonstrates its responsiveness to contemporary issues, allowing scholars to intervene in real time cultural and political conversations.

In contrast, ENGAGE! prioritizes accessibility at the level of language and audience. Its editorial philosophy explicitly encourages clear, multilingual, and non-exclusionary writing, challenging the assumption that intellectual rigor requires jargon. This is reinforced through reviewer guidelines that emphasize clarity, usability, and relevance to both scholars and community stakeholders. For graduate students, this distinction is crucial: publishing in Public Humanities requires the ability to translate complex ideas for a broad public audience, while publishing in ENGAGE! demands an ability to communicate across academic and community contexts simultaneously.

The journals also diverge in their criteria for scholarly legitimacy. Public Humanities maintains more traditional academic structures, including anonymous double-blind peer review and an emphasis on well-sourced, theoretically grounded analysis. Its innovation lies in its subject matter and presentation. For example, Lisa D. Andres’s article on Taylor Swift demonstrates the journal’s willingness to engage with contemporary pop culture through rigorous analysis while incorporating multi-modal sources such as TikTok and Threads. This reflects a methodological openness that legitimizes digital culture and lived experience as sites of scholarly inquiry.

ENGAGE!, however, redefines rigor itself. Its reviewer guidelines prioritize the central involvement of community partners, shifting evaluation criteria from purely methodological soundness to relational ethics and community impact. The question is not only whether the research is rigorous, but whether it is accountable to the communities it represents. This is further exemplified in its calls for special issues, such as those addressing cancer disparities, which emphasize collaborative, action-oriented research that responds to real-world inequities. In this sense, ENGAGE! moves beyond representation toward intervention.

Methodologically, Public Humanities tends to favor interpretive, theoretical, and qualitative approaches rooted in cultural analysis, historical inquiry, and media studies. It excels in producing scholarship that is timely, interventionist, and engaged with public discourse. ENGAGE!, on the other hand, foregrounds community-based participatory methods,
emphasizing co-creation, applied research, and the integration of practice and scholarship. For graduate students, this distinction signals different expectations: Public Humanities is ideal for those seeking to translate disciplinary expertise into public-facing argument, while ENGAGE! is better suited for those conducting collaborative, community-embedded research.

Ultimately, both journals represent critical interventions in a publishing ecosystem still shaped by disciplinary silos and inaccessible discourse. Public Humanities works to dismantle the boundary between academia and the public by making scholarship timely, readable, and widely available. ENGAGE! works to dismantle the hierarchy between researcher and community by embedding collaboration into the very structure of knowledge production.

For emerging scholars, the choice between these journals is not simply about topic fit, but about orientation. Public Humanities asks: how can scholarship speak to the world?ENGAGE! asks: how can scholarship be produced with the world? Together, they signal a broader transformation in academic publishing—one that values accessibility, accountability, and relevance alongside rigor.

This is one in a series of five essays reviewing public humanities journals. This series was inspired by Wendy Belcher’s website Reviews of Peer-Reviewed Journals in the Humanities and Social Sciences

By: Josiah Beharry, Graduate Student Researcher, Center for Humanities, University of California Merced

For many graduate students, the words Institutional Review Board can trigger instant anxiety. The IRB is often imagined as an intimidating gatekeeper. But a recent workshop, “Working with IRB,” hosted by our center, offered a much more useful and humane picture. What emerged was guidance, ethics, and the shared responsibility of protecting people involved in research.

Led by Danielle Dai’Re Benziger, Executive Director and Rhanda Rylant, Research Compliance Analyst of UC Merced’s Office of Research Compliance and Integrity, the session walked attendees through what the IRB actually is, what it does, and what researchers should understand before they begin projects involving human participants. The tone was practical, candid, and refreshingly clear; ask questions, do not guess, and do not wait until the last minute to figure out whether your project needs review.

At its core, the IRB exists to protect human subjects in research. But one of the most important clarifications from the workshop was that the IRB and the IRB office are not the same thing. The IRB itself is an independent campus committee tasked with reviewing research protocols and assessing risk. The IRB office, by contrast, is there to help researchers navigate the process– guiding faculty, staff, and students through federal regulations, UC policy, California law, and campus procedures. That distinction matters. The office is not there to punish researchers; it is there to help them conduct ethical, compliant research.

One of the most valuable parts of the workshop was its breakdown of the definitions that determine whether a project falls under IRB oversight at all. Research, in the federal sense, is defined as a systematic investigation designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge. A human subject is a living individual about whom a researcher obtains data through interaction, intervention, or identifiable private information. Those definitions sound straightforward until they are applied to real projects, especially in the humanities and social sciences, where the line is often less obvious.

That is where many researchers get tripped up. Not every project involving people requires IRB review. A survey, for instance, is not automatically human subjects research simply because a person is answering questions. If the questions are about a program, a process, or an environment—and not actually about the individual—then the project may fall outside IRB purview. The same is true of some forms of program evaluation or internal assessment. The workshop made clear that researchers need to think carefully not just about how they are collecting information, but what that information is about and why it is being collected.

Oral history came up as a particularly important example for humanities scholars. In most cases, oral histories do not require IRB review. But there is a major caveat, if those oral histories are being collected to build a repository or archive that will be made available to other researchers, then IRB review may be required. A paper based on interviews is one thing; a maintained, accessible research collection is another. The workshop underscored how oral history often does not fit neatly into standard IRB categories because its goals can differ so dramatically from traditional human subject’s research. Oral history may prioritize identity, voice, and public record, whereas IRB frameworks are often built around privacy, confidentiality, and minimizing harm.

And harm, the speakers reminded the audience, is broader than many researchers assume. Harm is not just physical injury. It can also be psychological, social, reputational, or tied to confidentiality breaches. A participant may face consequences if sensitive information becomes public, even unintentionally. The discussion highlighted how privacy violations can themselves constitute harm, even when the content disclosed seems minor. This was especially important in examples involving politically charged or criminalized topics, where data exposure could place participants at serious risk.

The presenters also demystified what happens once a study does require IRB review. Researchers must complete CITI training, prepare a protocol in Cayuse, and respond to detailed questions about recruitment, eligibility, data collection, risks, benefits, participant protections, and data security. Some of these questions may seem excessive at first, but the workshop showed why they matter. A small detail—such as offering raffle-based compensation instead of a direct payment—can trigger entirely different legal considerations under California law. What feels minor to a researcher may have serious regulatory implications.

The different levels of review were also explained clearly. Exempt review still involves IRB review, despite the confusing name. Expedited review is used for certain minimal-risk studies that need closer attention. Full board review is reserved for studies that fall outside those categories or involve greater than minimal risk. Most graduate student projects, attendees were assured, do not end up at full board. Even so, the timeline varies, and researchers were encouraged to build in more time than they think they need.

Perhaps the most reassuring takeaway from the session was that researchers do not need to have everything perfectly figured out before contacting the IRB office. In fact, they should not wait. The office wants researchers to ask questions early, especially when they are unsure whether their work constitutes human subjects research at all. That point matters for graduate students, who are often navigating these systems for the first time while also trying to complete theses, dissertations, and degree milestones on tight timelines.

What this workshop ultimately offered was a reframing. The IRB is part of the ethical architecture of research. It asks researchers to slow down and think seriously about people, who is involved, what is being asked of them, what risks they may face, and what responsibilities the researcher carries. For graduate students and early-career scholars, that is not a burden to resent. It is part of becoming a better researcher.

By: Josiah Beharry, Graduate Student Researcher, Center for Humanities, University of
California Merced

Academia and scholarship face a complex, urgent challenge in the 21st century, defining their central purpose and determining whose perspectives they value and include. As institutions nationwide grapple with rising academic uncertainty and constraints on viewpoint, the imperative for public engagement in higher education is becoming undeniable. The integration of public service and community collaboration is now essential, whether welcomed by universities or not. Some academic journals have proactively addressed this shift for years , championing community engagement. The Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship (JCES) and Gateways: International Journal of Community Research and Engagement, both established in 2008, serve as significant platforms within this evolving landscape. While they share a commitment to engaged scholarship, they differ in structure, tone, and how they operationalize accessibility, rigor, and participation.

Both journals are built upon the principle that meaningful scholarship is not confined to university settings. Rather, it is generated through the active fusion of teaching, research, and community involvement. JCES embodies this philosophy by offering a space where faculty, staff, students, and community partners can share work that unites these domains instead of keeping them separate. Similarly, Gateways positions itself as a refereed journal devoted to collaborative, critical, and change oriented community-university research. However, where JCES emphasizes integration across roles and institutional boundaries, Gateways places stronger emphasis on relational accountability, explicitly framing scholarship as something that exists within relationships—between universities and communities, between theory and practice, and between knowledge and responsibility.

A central characteristic of both journals is their embrace and acceptance of diverse forms of scholarship. JCES actively seeks submissions across all disciplines and welcomes multiple methodologies, including empirical studies, reflective practice, creative approaches, and community-authored perspectives. This broadened definition enhances accessibility, allowing readers with varying interests and knowledge backgrounds to genuinely engage with the work. Gateways mirrors this openness but leans more heavily into critical and evaluative case studies, partnership analyses, and theoretical reflections that interrogate the very structure of engagement. In practice, this means JCES may feel slightly more flexible and inviting for emerging scholars experimenting with form, while Gateways may appeal to those looking to situate their work within a more explicitly critical and globally comparative framework.

This flexibility reflects a practical understanding of how knowledge is generated. Scholarship stems not only from controlled research and statistical models but also from lived experiences, collaborative partnerships, experimentation, and thoughtful reflection. Today’s audience seeks a relational connection with scholarship, moving beyond distant academic pronouncements. Both journals respond to this shift, though in distinct ways. JCES achieves this by centering practitioner voices and lived experience, as seen in Cody Harris’s (2025) article on juvenile justice education, which illustrates how community partnerships reshape institutional environments and student identity. Gateways, by contrast, often interrogates the conditions of that relationality itself, asking whether engagement produces real change or simply reproduces institutional narratives.

One of the most consequential similarities between the two journals is their commitment to Diamond Open Access, journals that are free for readers to access and free for authors to publish in, with no processing charges. JCES’s open access policy functions as a foundational “golden master key,” ensuring that all content is freely available without embargo and without article processing charges. Gateways operates under the same model, removing both reader paywalls and author fees. In contemporary publishing environment frequently characterized by restrictive access and high costs, this shared commitment is deeply significant. For graduate students, early-career researchers, and community scholars, these journals make participation possible.

Where the journals begin to diverge more clearly is in their publishing ecosystems and editorial framing. JCES demonstrates a strong commitment to inclusivity through flexible submission guidelines and notably includes a dedicated graduate student submission section. This separate track is highly beneficial, as it lowers barriers for students who might otherwise struggle to compete with established academics. Gateways, while also accessible, is embedded within the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) ePress ecosystem, which emphasizes structured peer review, ethical governance, and global scholarly standards. Its use of double blind peer review, plagiarism screening, Codes of Conduct for Journal Publishers and Journal Editors (COPE)-aligned ethics practices, and transparency requirements,including disclosures around funding, conflicts of interest, and AI use, signals a more formalized and internationally standardized publishing infrastructure.

For graduate students, this distinction is important. JCES offers a more entry-accessible pathway, particularly for those producing practice-based or community-centered work for the first time. Gateways, while still accessible, may require a stronger alignment with established research frameworks and a clearer articulation of theoretical contribution within global conversations on engagement.

Another key difference lies in scope and scale. JCES is deeply rooted in community engagement within a broadly U.S. focused context, with an emphasis on practitioner knowledge and local impact. Gateways operates at a distinctly international scale, publishing work from across multiple continents and framing community-engaged research as part of a global intellectual and political movement. Its themed volumes— such as the 2025 focus on “writing research differently” and the 2026 call questioning whether engagement produces real change or institutional window dressing—demonstrate a willingness to push the field conceptually and methodologically. This gives Gateways a slightly more theoretically provocative and globally comparative edge, while JCES maintains a strong commitment to accessibility and grounded practice.

Despite these differences, both journals are united by a shared philosophy that challenges conventional academic publishing norms. They operate from a set of guiding assumptions that scholarship can be intellectually rigorous without being exclusionary, community knowledge is not peripheral but foundational, students are contributors rather than subjects, and accessibility is an ethical responsibility. JCES embodies this through its inclusive authorship model and practitioner centered approach, while Gateways extends it through critical interrogation and global dialogue.

Ultimately, the choice between these journals depends on the goals of the author. For graduate students seeking an accessible entry point into publishing, especially those working with community partners or practice-based research, JCES represents an intellectual commons where diverse forms of knowledge are welcomed and valued. For those aiming to situate their work within broader theoretical debates about engagement, accountability, and global research practices, Gateways offers a platform that is both rigorous and expansive.

For the general public, both journals offer something equally important, a vision of scholarship that is not trapped behind institutional walls. They demonstrate that research can be collaborative without losing rigor, critical without losing hope, and scholarly without becoming inaccessible.

That, ultimately, is what makes both journals worth paying attention to. Not just because they are free. Not just because they are established. But because they ask a deeper question that should sit at the center of all public scholarship; What would it mean to build research in a way that communities can actually recognize it as theirs?

This is one in a series of five essays reviewing public humanities journals. This series was inspired by Wendy Belcher’s website Reviews of Peer-Reviewed Journals in the Humanities and Social Sciences

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

A comparative review between Reviews in Digital Humanities, The Public Historian, and The Journal of Public Scholarship in Higher Education suggests a fundamental shift in contemporary humanities publishing, one that transcends conventional humanities research and embraces a more collaborative, socially oriented, and publicly engaged form of knowledge production. Despite the different focus of each journal publication, the journals share a common endeavor to reconsider the nature of scholarly research, its authors, and its audience. 

The Journal of Public Scholarship in Higher Education (JPSHE) is primarily interested in the pedagogical and institutional aspects of public engagement. Its articles emphasize the role of service learning, community-based research, and civic engagement in teaching. Reviewing JPSHE’s recent publications, it becomes clear that one of the key themes discussed in its articles is the ability of universities to go beyond their symbolic commitments to engage more deeply in public scholarship activities and incorporate public scholarship in teaching, academic rewards, and institutional priorities. The structure of JPSHE articles mirrors its goals: articles are relatively concise, readable, and action-oriented. Introductions often begin by identifying a gap between the stated public mission of higher education and its institutional realities, positioning community engagement as both a critique of traditional approaches and an alternative. As for methodology, JPSHE is predominantly based on case studies, participatory research, and reflective essays, focusing on actions rather than theories. In this way, JPSHE frames public scholarship as a transformative practice that reshapes both the classroom and the university itself. 

The Public Historian adopts an approach to public engagement through the field of history, with a strong emphasis on applied, collaborative, and ethically grounded historical work. The journal has established itself as a significant voice in scholarship that seeks to combine academic research with practice in the public sphere. Not only is its range quite broad, covering areas like oral history, museum studies, historic preservation, and digital history, but it is interested in varied types of media, including exhibitions, films, and digital projects. In closely looking at articles from the last five years, a recurrent theme seems to be the practice of history as an ethical and political practice. In the journal, topics like slavery, racial violence, Indigenous histories, migration, and environmental crises are approached not as remote topics, but as living, contested conditions that call for ongoing critical engagement. 

In terms of its structure, The Public Historian is somewhat traditional compared to JPSHE, featuring longer articles (approximately 10,000-12,000 words) with extended introductions. Nevertheless, the unique feature of its articles consists of their focus on a specific project in public history followed by reflections on it. Instead of emphasizing theoretical aspects, the journal examines theory applied to practice and discusses how the histories are constructed, mediated, and communicated to a public audience. For instance, the article on motion comics as an approach to digital public history clearly exemplifies this point as it covers all three stages of this process: a description of a problem, a discussion of narrative and visual methods, and finally the reflection on an audience reaction to a story. This structure highlights the journal’s commitment to understanding history not only as content but as a form of communication shaped by medium, audience, and context. 

Reviews in Digital Humanities stands out as the most groundbreaking innovation within the area of academic publishing out of all three journals mentioned. Unlike the other two journals, Reviews in Digital Humanities does not publish research articles but focuses only on reviewing and assessing digital humanities projects. This is because the field needs better ways to evaluate the many digital works being produced, which often do not receive enough peer review or scholarly feedback. It also recognizes that scholarship is not limited to written work and includes other forms as well. 

The most unique feature of this academic journal is its structure. Every issue of the journal usually contains two separate parts: the descriptions of the digital humanities projects by their authors and the review of those projects by an expert in the relevant sphere, thus creating a unique dialogic type of writing, different from the standard single-authored research paper. The articles are quite brief, containing about 500 words, and concentrated on analyzing the intellectual, practical, visual, and public aspects of a digital humanities project. Thematically, the journal organizes issues around key areas within digital humanities and digital pedagogy among others, indicating an ongoing discussion of such topics as representation, equity, and interdisciplinarity. 

These journals emphasize that scholarship is not an isolated activity. Instead, they stress that it is important to collaborate, whether this means working between universities and community partners (JPSHE), historians and the public (The Public Historian), or scholars and digital humanities professionals (Reviews in Digital Humanities). Moreover, these journals share the same concern about the accessibility of the scholarship presented in them, which means not only employing easy-to-understand language but also making it accessible to non-academic audiences (in the case of Reviews in Digital Humanities and the Journal of Public Scholarship in Higher Education through open access). Finally, they all question the existing hierarchy of scholarly activities, as they appreciate those types of work which may have been previously considered marginal. 

At the same time, their differences are just as important to understand. JPSHE is primarily concerned with transforming higher education institutions and pedagogical practices; The Public Historian focuses on the ethical and political dimensions of representing the past in public contexts; and Reviews in Digital Humanities redefines scholarship through its emphasis on digital production and evaluation.  

The value of comparing such journals is due to the fact that, when put together, they exemplify a trend emerging in the area of the humanities. The emergence of these journals implies a departure from conventional practices in terms of knowledge generation into something broader and more socially responsible. Thus, by challenging academic borders in terms of both form and content, these journals not only broaden the scope of academic publication but also give new meaning to its very concept, allowing the humanities to become fully involved in contemporary life. 

This is one in a series of five essays reviewing public humanities journals. This series was inspired by Wendy Belcher’s website Reviews of Peer-Reviewed Journals in the Humanities and Social Sciences

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

The Public Philosophy Journal and Collaborations: A Journal of Community-Based Research and Practice are both rooted in the same commitment to public engagement and accessibility. The Public Philosophy Journal rethinks the discipline of philosophy through the lens of collaboration and accessibility. On the other hand, the key strength of Collaborations is the journal’s emphasis on the value of community-based participatory research and on the role of universities in fostering a mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge between communities and higher education institutions. Thus, comparative analysis of these journals can demonstrate how humanities scholars can engage with the public sphere. 

This comparison not only pays attention to how journals engage with the public, but it also highlights fundamental distinctions in how they produce and evaluate knowledge within the sphere of public scholarship. For instance, The Public Philosophy Journal addresses how knowledge is understood, evaluated, and discussed by introducing new ways of thinking about peer review through its Collaborative Community Review framework, focusing on the importance of ethical conversation, inclusion, and accessibility. Collaborations, in contrast, addresses how knowledge is created in practice by focusing on community engagement, participatory processes, and the quantifiable impact of research. 

Both journals frame their work as alternatives to traditional academic journal publishing, yet they pursue this aim through distinct intellectual frameworks. They are clearly committed to public participation and a participatory approach to knowledge creation, and each takes a unique disciplinary and methodological approach to these values. It is easy to see how Collaborations focuses on community-based partnerships and research, while The Public Philosophy Journal reimagines philosophical journal publications around ethical public discourse and a collaborative review process. 

Collaborations is a peer-reviewed and open-access journal focused on scholarly research and practices emerging from university-community partnerships. The journal clearly emphasizes research that explains, analyzes, and critically assesses various types of collaborations, and its editorial policy supports this mission by having separate portals for submissions, including a Scholarly-Research Portal, a University-Community Collaborations Portal, and a Reflections on Experiential Learning Portal. This indicates that the journal prioritizes research not only in the academic setting but also in the community setting, along with student (undergraduate and graduate) reflections, making it especially suitable for scholars whose work is grounded in participatory and practice-based methodologies. Recent publications on topics such as refugee governance, sustainability, and nonprofit-community collaboration further demonstrate the journal’s focus. 

In contrast, The Public Philosophy Journal is more oriented towards the transformation of philosophy as a public and collaborative practice. From the information provided on the submission guidelines page, it seeks to engage in scholarship that would enhance people’s understanding and deliberations about issues that affect the community. What makes the journal unique is the Collaborative Community Review process that differs from the traditional peer review process through its formative nature and ethics-oriented approach.  The journal is not simply implementing an administrative and editorial process such as paper acceptance and peer review. It also puts into practice all that it stands for like ethics, inclusiveness, and collaboration. 

One notable similarity between the two journals is that both journals resist the idea of scholarship viewed as isolated and disconnected from real life. In addition, both journals appreciate research that is engaged in society and responsible toward the wider community outside of universities. Each journal emphasizes accessibility in its scholarly work. However, the difference lies in the type of contribution each one foregrounds. Collaborations emphasize collaboration, community-based research, institutional collaboration, and engagement for the sake of producing social impact in disciplines like public health, education, nonprofit organizations, and participatory action research. Whereas The Public Philosophy Journal invites scholarship to be analytical and theoretically informed, it compels philosophers to communicate their views in a clear and ethical way to the public. 

The submissions requirements of the two journals highlight the differences in the focus of each journal. Collaborations follows a more recognizable research-journal structure, with articles commonly organized around abstract, introduction, background, methods, findings, discussion, and implications. However, the guidelines of the journal place more emphasis on collaborative practices such as trust, reciprocity, authority-sharing, and cultural sensitivity, illustrating the connection between methodology and ethics in the editorial policy of the journal. On the other hand, The Public Philosophy Journal integrates academic and public aspects in its submission requirements. While the journal requests an abstract, it also expects authors to include a Community Ethics Statement. Such a statement necessitates the involvement of scholars and communities affected by the issue being addressed in the article. 

In terms of audience, Collaborations is likely relevant to researchers practicing community-based participatory research, public scholarship, nonprofit/civic engagement, education, and social research applications. This publication will be very appropriate for those whose main aim is to publish the result of their collaboration and joint efforts toward collaborative problem-solving. The Public Philosophy Journal suits scholars seeking to address philosophical, political, or ethical issues while writing for both academic and nonacademic audiences. The publication will interest people involved in topics like justice, public discussion, race, gender, disability, civic ethics, and the social relevance of the humanities. 

In general, the two journals have a common focus and commitment to challenging current conceptions of how knowledge is produced, evaluated, and distributed, although they do so from different starting points. Collaborations views knowledge as an object created through a process of mutual engagement between universities and communities, focusing strongly on the practical applications and the impact of the research. On the other hand, The Public Philosophy Journal looks at knowledge as an ethical and intellectual enterprise that must be open to discussion in a public forum. Overall, both journals reflect a trend away from the isolation of academic publication towards a new approach to scholarly publishing. 

This is one in a series of five essays reviewing public humanities journals. This series was inspired by Wendy Belcher’s website Reviews of Peer-Reviewed Journals in the Humanities and Social Sciences

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

There’s a quiet art to being interviewed. Most people don’t think about it until a reporter is standing in front of them, notebook open, recorder on, waiting. That moment can feel like you’ve lost control of the narrative—but as Merced Focus journalist Brianna Vaccari reminded a room of UC Merced faculty, students, and staff last week, it doesn’t have to be that way. 

Vaccari, a longtime Central Valley reporter, has spent over a decade telling stories about the region she calls home. At this workshop, she wanted to make something clear: talking to a journalist should feel like a collaboration, not a confrontation. 

Too often, people assume they have no agency once a reporter calls. But the first lesson Vaccari shared was simple: you can always say no. You don’t owe anyone your story. You can ask questions before you agree to an interview, about the topic, the angle, who else is being interviewed, or when it’s running. These aren’t defensive moves; they’re the groundwork for trust. 

She also explained one of the most misunderstood parts of journalism: “off the record.” It isn’t a magic phrase you can invoke after you’ve already spoken. Both sides have to agree before the conversation begins. If they don’t, everything you say is fair game. “Off the record,” she said, “is a mutual agreement, not a retroactive request.” 

When the interview does happen, it’s okay to set conditions. You can discuss when, where, how long, and whether it’s recorded or filmed. Most journalists prefer to record to ensure accuracy. “I can’t write as fast as people talk,” Vaccari admitted. But you have the right to know when it’s happening. California law requires two-party consent for private recordings, meaning everyone involved has to agree. 

Once the story is published, your role doesn’t end. Vaccari encouraged everyone to read their quotes, check the context, and reach out if something seems wrong. “Accuracy, accuracy, accuracy,” she said, quoting an old newsroom mantra. Good outlets will correct mistakes publicly. 

The session also touched on what happens when things go wrong. Sometimes a headline oversimplifies or a single comment becomes the story. Vaccari said the best thing to do is reach out directly to the reporter, explain your concerns, and request a correction if it’s factual. If the issue is about framing, you can still ask for clarification or additional context. What you can’t do, once the story is out, is take it back entirely. 

The conversation eventually turned toward how faculty and community members can build better relationships with local media. Vaccari said journalists value experts who can translate complex ideas into plain language. The goal isn’t to sound rehearsed or academic, it’s to connect with everyday readers. She also emphasized that journalists, like their sources, operate under pressure: tight deadlines, limited staff, constant competition for attention. “The more information you can give us upfront,” she said, “the better your story will be.” 

Several faculty members asked about the difference between local and national media. Vaccari described Merced Focus as serving “casual news consumers”: residents who scroll through stories on their phones, not people reading policy papers. “Our audience lives here,” she said. “We want our stories to matter to someone going about their daily life in Merced.” 

Another question lingered over the discussion: should journalists take a stance on social issues? Vaccari’s answer was clear. “I’m not the community’s voice,” she said. “My job is to pass the mic.” Objectivity, she explained, isn’t the goal; fairness and accuracy are. Journalism’s strength comes from transparency and depth, not from pretending reporters have no opinions. 

By the end of the session, what emerged wasn’t a set of rules but a kind of mutual understanding. Reporters have a job to do, and so do sources. Both depend on honesty, preparation, and respect. Talking to a journalist doesn’t mean surrendering control of your story – it means learning how to share it responsibly. 

For those interested in seeing how that work plays out, Vaccari encouraged everyone to follow Merced Focus, a nonprofit newsroom covering issues that shape life in the Central Valley. Their stories are free to read and republish, reflecting the belief that information, like trust, shouldn’t sit behind a paywall.