Community Engaged Scholarship

American Cultures Engaged Scholarship Program (ACES)

Social Movements, Urban Histories, and the Politics of Memory

This spotlight feature includes American Cultures Engaged Scholarship faculty member Dr. Sean Burns's course "Social Movements, Urban History, and the Politics of Memory" (IAS 158AC / PACS 148 AC). This course examines the extensive multi-racial social movement history of the San Francisco Bay Area. The primary assignment of the course is a student-defined research project where students, in collaboration with local activists and community partner Shaping San Francisco, carry out original research and writing...

Press Releases

Press Releases

Throughout its decades as the campus's signature curriculum, the American Cultures Requirement has been featured in numerous publications including the the East Bay Express, the Daily Californian, the Berkeley News Center, and the California Report.

Berkeleyan/Berkeley News Center:

Five Years of American Cultures, October 1996

Sociologist Troy Duster Appointed to Lead An...

Antiracism Pedagogy & Equity-Based Learning Winter Institute

Event Description

Since 2018, the CDF program has supported instructors in developing creative design assignments, assignments that are intentionally built to support faculty and students in ways that are adaptive, equity-oriented, and foster antiracism. In the CDF Winter Institute participants developed actionable strategies that build antiracist and equity-based education.

In conversation with CDF faculty, staff, and students, the Winter Institute discussed how within the current condition of remote instruction and the devastating effects of the...

The Problem(s) with Grading: Making a Case for Contract Grading

Event Description

Building on the groundwork of the Antiracism Winter Institute, the CDF Program co-sponsored and co-facilitated a follow-up seminar in late April centered on contract grading. The two-day workshop, The Problem(s) with Grading: Making a Case for Contract Grading, invited participants to explore two models of contract grading, Specifications Grading and Labor-based Contract Grading. On the first day, participants engaged in current research that explores how traditional grading methods structure...

ACES Courses

About

ACES courses represent corners of campus that highlights the intent of the AC requirement, while also deepening the meaning of that intent through a combination of multi-disciplinary research and praxis, the development of students and community partners as co-educators, mentoring opportunities, and increased and sustained accessibility of information.

To learn about projects developed with ACES community partners, please visit the...

American Cybercultures: Principles of Internet Citizenship

Although Professor Niemeyer has taught this course for over ten years, both in an in-person and hybrid format, Spring 2014 marked the first time an AC course was offered entirely online. Fittingly enough, the course examines how the growth of online participation influences the development of and intersects online and residential communities. Students participate in online discussions surrounding internet culture or cyberculture within a modern context, as well as categories of personhood that make up the UC Berkeley American Cultures rubric (race and ethnicity), as well as gender,...

ACES Program Grants

About the ACES Program

Launched in January 2010 as a partnership between the American Cultures Center and the Public Service Center, the American Cultures Engaged Scholarship (ACES) Program aims to transform how faculty’s community-engaged scholarship is valued, to enhance learning for students through a combination of teaching and practice, and to create new knowledge that has an impact both in the community and the academy.

ACES Course Grants are...

Putting the “public” in the public university: the now and possible futures of community-university partnerships

About

From the classroom to the department and the broader campus, scales of learning and scholarship are necessary for intentionally designed partnerships with community organizations. The workshop was held on May 24, 2023, 9 am - 5 pm at the Tilden Room in MLK Student Union, UC Berkeley featuring advice from community-engaged scholars on best practices to advance the University's public mission.

Co-sponsored by: The American Cultures Center and Public Service Center