The AC Course spotlight series is an opportunity for faculty members to discuss how their classes bring their research interests with community partners together to teach undergraduates. If you are interested in featuring your class for an AC course spotlight, please email americancultures@berkeley.edu.
On April 10, 2024, the American Cultures Engaged Scholarship (ACES) Program held a Spring institute, titled “Aspirations of Antiracist Pedagogy: Community-Based Learning.” This page specifically discusses the lunch portion of the event where guest speaker Dr. Brandi Thompson Summers, from the Department of Geography at UC Berkeley, shared her expertise on community-based learning. Dr. Summers shared valuable insights on the opportunities this style of learning presents and the challenges it poses. She also discussed how to implement antiracist pedagogy...
FIRE: Past, Present and Future Interactions with the People and Ecosystems of California
Description: Most Californians today fear catastrophic wild-land fires that each year scorch millions of acres of land, cost hundreds of millions of dollars to fight, and destroy human lives and property. Yet people have not always lived in dread of conflagrations. This class emphasizes how our interactions with wildfires in California have changed dramatically over the centuries, and that there is much that can be learned from earlier fire management strategies—...
Instructor: Jun Sunseri Semester: Fall 2014 - Spring 2016
In Professor Jun Sunseri's ACES Course, Anthropology 2AC, 'Introduction to Archaeology,' students learn about the methods, goals, and theoretical concepts of archaeology by closely examining the impact of archaeology on and the history of the construction of various communities: the Native Americans, Latin Americans, and Euro-Americans. This course also explores professional and ethical problems affecting the practice of...
The AC Podcast was developed so that students, faculty, and community partners could share their experiences in American Cultures courses. If you are interested in participating in a podcast, please contact the American Cultures Center.
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.
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...
"ACES is critical in bridging classroom and community."
"This is the most supportive teaching environment I've ever been in"
"This past year [ACES] courses...worked with community organizations building student and faculty research into the developing fights for Environmental Justice, Prison Abolition, Indigenous movements, the fight for K-12 Education, and the Arts and Social Justice."
The ACES Program Today, ACES courses continue to be...
The American Cultures Engaged Scholarship program hosts various events for faculty and graduate students that focus on how to integrate community-engaged learning.
The American Cultures Engaged Scholarship (ACES) Program offers students and faculty the opportunity to work with community organizations to develop cutting edge research projects associated with some of the nation's most pressing social issues.
The following are a collection of our growing ACES course offerings and previous student projects from these community-learning classes.
