Chicano Studies 174AC: “Chicanos, the Law, and the Criminal Justice System” situates itself within an abolitionist paradigm to understand the connections between Chicano, Latino, and migrant urbanization, race, poverty, state violence, and the criminal justice system. The project for this course asked students, as groups, to select a topic or theme that they wanted to engage and to create a Spark presentation introducing the topic, as well as produce a podcast on the chosen topic or theme.
With the Creativity Discovery Grant from the Art + Design Program at UC Berkeley, the class endeavored to create a project that brings awareness and visibility to the Japanese American internment, an event that is often brushed over in history classes or lost in the context of World War II. Particularly, they sought to make it clear that there were over 500 UC Berkeley students who were forcibly removed from campus and interned, preventing them from finishing their degrees completely altering their lives....
Since Spring 2019, Dr. Palau has taught and continues to teach Comparative Literature 60AC: “(Re)making American History,” a course that explores Post-Civil Rights (re)makings of American History by studying works by writers and artists who participate in the urgent project of producing alternative and corrective visions of the United States’ past. The creative project in this course asks students to experiment actively with (re)making history themselves by selecting a course material that would serve as a starting...
IAS/E 157AC: “Engineering, Environment, and Society” forefronts the political and social concerns that are of decentered in favor of the technical aspects of environmental engineering. Originally developed as part of the American Cultures Engaged Scholarship (ACES) program, the project developed for IAS/E 157AC allowed for students to explore alternative ways of centering the knowledge produced in the communities...
English 135AC: “Race, Class, & Disability: An American Foundling Museum” analyzed race, ethnicity, and disability in American cultures, focusing particularly on histories of family separation. A final project for the course asked students to curate an artifact for an “American Foundling Museum," with an opportunity to work in a variety of different mediums: conventional papers, podcasts, video, graphic art, and more. Across the semester, students applied writing and arts-based practices to generate a major...
This course considers America as contested territory, where multiple Americas are not just written but also performed. By studying performance we look at how different meanings of America have been constructed over time. This class especially focuses on race intersecting with class and gender in the United States towards stronger anti-racist and anti-imperialist collective strategies for artists, scholars, and other cultural producers. Course materials include plays, live performances, popular media, music,...
Every year, a cohort of faculty fellows are drawn from multiple disciplines who design and implement an assignment in their course with support from the program. This page is an archive of a number of case studies of courses that have been a part of the fellowship.
Each year, approximately 10 faculty from a wide variety of disciplines are selected to participate in the Creative Discovery Fellows (CDF) program. Faculty participate in a year-long developmental program that includes a 3-day Institute, monthly cohort meetings, and various workshops, as well as individual consultations with media and pedagogy experts. During implementation, their students also receive support in the form of workshops, in-class demonstrations, individual consultations, group feedback, online resources, and tutorials.
The following is an archive of past faculty and...
The Creative Discovery Fellows curriculum appeals to faculty interested in developing and implementing a well-structured, meaningful creative assignment. These resources are based in the anti-racist and student-centered philosophy of the CDF program and are designed around a set of "premises" underlying our four phases of development to help instructors teach storytelling and navigate pedagogy, technology, and student learning.
For information about support available for individual instructors, please email...
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...
