Community Engaged Scholarship

American Cultures Engaged Scholarship Program (ACES)

English

Instructor: Amy Lee English 31AC

 In Amy Lee’s English 31AC course on Climate Change fictions, students studied how contemporary literature shapes the way we view and understand climate change, narrates its impacts, and envisions the future. Students interned at two organizations, HEAL Food Alliance and the West Oakland Indicators Project (WOEIP). At their internships, students examined the ways in which race, gender, and class structures distribute the effects of climate change unevenly across communities. At HEAL, they developed popular education...

Geography

Instructor: Seth Lunine
Semester: Fall 2016

During the Fall of 2016, students with the UC Berkeley ACES program worked with artist and anti-displacement organizer, Leslie Dreyer, in conjunction with the...

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...

Nutritional Sciences & Toxicology

Nutritional Sciences W104AC 'Food, Culture, and the Environment'

Instructor: Kristen Rasmussen
ACES Fellow: Claire Larkins
Semester: Summer 2024

Nutritional Sciences W104AC, "Food, Culture, and the Environment," broadly addressed the historical, ecological, socioeconomic, biological, political, and cultural environments impacting the human diet in addition to nutrition problems, programs, and consumer protection. A...

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...

Asian American Studies

Asian American Studies 132AC - 'Islamophobia and Constructing Otherness'

Instructor: Hatem Bazian
Semester: Spring 2015 - Spring 2018

Dr. Hatem Bazian's Asian American Studies 132AC ACES Course, 'Islamophobia and Constructing Otherness, ' was designed to help students understand and combat institutionalized racism, focusing on Islamophobia, its origins and progression, and the principle of "otherness": accepting and recognizing differences in others.

As part of the engaged scholarship...

Faculty Grants

About

The American Cultures Center offers various grants and fellowships throughout the year to current AC instructors as well as faculty interested in creating, revising, or further developing an American Cultures course or an American Cultures Engaged Scholarship course. We also offer grants to faculty interested in learning how to develop, use and incorporate film clips as into their teaching. To learn more about these opportunities, please visit the links below.

History Of ACES - UC Berkeley Engaged Scholars Initiative (BESI)

The Berkeley Engaged Scholarship Initiative video project was designed to assist in narrating the meaning of engaged scholarship in UC Berkeley research and teaching. BESI became the foundations for our ACES Program offered today. The final Video Project, features a series of interviews with UC Berkeley faculty discussing their research as it relates to questions of public, community, and accessibility.

Support The ACES Graduate Learning Community

ACES Artist In Residence

ACES Artist In Residence (AIR)

The ACES program appoints an Artist-in-Residence for ACES to work with Berkeley faculty, fellows, community partners, and students, in the integration of new media supporting the courses and collaborative relationships that constitute the engaged scholarship program of the AC Center. The ACES AIR is integral in the development of creating dialogues with campus partners, local artists, and community leaders.