News & Events

Ghostly Labor: A Dance Film explores the history of labor in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands through tap dance, Mexican Zapateado, Son Jarocho, Afro-Caribbean movement, and live music. The film is the culmination of a years-long collaboration between new media artist John Jota Leaños, San Francisco-based dance company La Mezcla, and non-profit Ayudando Latinos a Soñar or…

In their book Solidarity Economics, Chris Benner and Manuel Pastor invite readers to imagine an approach to the economy grounded in mutuality – “in the human instincts for connection and community.” Arguing that the current economy is already dependent on mutuality, they outline the theoretical framework, policy agenda and social movements needed to counter the…

The Okinawa Memories Initiative, a collaboration between Associate Professor of History Alan Christy and the Okinawan Association of America (OAA), aims to rethink the history of postwar Okinawa by focusing attention on the Okinawan diaspora. An interdisciplinary and transnational public history project, the initiative was inspired by a collection of photographs taken in Okinawa in 1952-53 by American…

Assistant Professor of Computational Media David Lee leads the Tech4Good Lab, directing research on scaling experiential education and supporting community collaboration at the intersection of computing and society. Seeking to build sustainable relationships with community partners and to offer experiential learning opportunities to undergraduates, Tech4Good recently started a pilot matchmaking program that pairs different community…

Over the course of the 2021-22 academic year, Professor of Psychology Regina Langhout and Associate Professor Steve McKay, both Campus + Community Fellows at UC Santa Cruz, worked with the Youth Action Network (YAN) to pilot an engaged research project titled We Belong Too. We Belong Too is a continuation of We Belong, an earlier…

In Fall 2021, Sharon Daniel, Professor of Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz, launched a new, two-quarter course titled “Reasonable Doubts: Making an Exoneree.” Offered for the first time at UC Santa Cruz, “Reasonable Doubts” was co-taught with Georgetown professors Marc Howard and Marty Tankleff who originally developed the course…

Watsonville is in the Heart (WIITH) is an initiative organized by Assistant Professor of History Kathleen Gutierrez and Associate Professor of Sociology Steve McKay in collaboration with Roy Recio, founder of the Tobera Project aiming to preserve and uplift the history and heritage of Filipino families in Watsonville and the Pajaro Valley. In April 2022, the initiative launched a digital archive, directed by History…

The Blum Center, directed by Professor of Psychology Heather Bullock, conducts community-engaged research on poverty alleviation – with a specific focus on food and housing insecurity, fiscal equity, and women and families– to advance economic justice. Since 2018, the Center has collaborated with their long-standing partner Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Cruz County, the…