Creative Discovery Fellows Program

Creative Discovery Fellows Program pages

Susan Schweik

Susan Schweik is a researching professor who brings in her interest in Twentieth-Century Poetry, late Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Women's Studies and Gender Theory, Urban Studies, war literature and children's literature into her Creative Discovery Fellows course, English 135AC, Race, Class,...

Harvey Dong

Harvey Dong teaches Ethnic Studies courses as a lecturer in Ethnic Studies and Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies at UC Berkeley. Initially, Dr. Dong took part in the 1969 Third World Liberation Front, a student movement to establish Ethnic Studies. Once Ethnic Studies was established, Dr. Dong taught some of the department’s first communities issues courses based on extensive fieldwork carried out in San Francisco Manilatown and Chinatown, while also active in struggles to save the International Hotel in Manilatown and to protect Asian immigrant labor rights. Dr. Dong...

Theater 25AC: Performance in América

About the Course Assignment

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,...

Seth Lunine

Seth Lunine is extensively involved with the American Cultures Engaged Scholarship (ACES) Program and explores issues of power, race, and class in the contemporary city in his course: Geography X50AC: “California.” This course explores the complex history of California and dives into the darker histories of racism and oppression. Originally developed as part of the American Cultures...

Geography X50AC: “California”

About the Course Assignment

California is a broad, introductory course that explores the material places and social spaces that create both astonishing wealth and intractable inequality in California. Created by Dr. Seth Lunine and Chancellor’s Public Fellow Sophia Fenn, the American Cultures Engaged Scholarship (ACES) / Creative Discovery component of the course enabled the Fall Program for First Semester (FPF) students to extend and contextualize topics related to gentrification and the...

ACES Projects

About

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.

History 131C: In the Shadow of War

Over the course of the semester, students in History 131C, In the Shadow of War: A Social History of the U.S. Military, investigate together how the military shaped and was shaped by the experiences of African American, indigenous American, Mexican American, Asian American, and white American soldiers, officers, and their families. Alongside race, ethnicity, and national origin, the course considers how personnel policies and exigent circumstances of war rendered gender, sexuality, class, religion, and disability visible and invisible, acceptable and...

English 135AC: "Race, Class & Disability: An American Foundling Museum"

About the Course Assignment

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...

Creative Projects as Political Possibility

As we engage with the work of anti-racism and equity-based learning, what concrete examples are available and what strategies are necessary to create anti-racism and equity-based pedagogy in the classroom?

Creative Projects as Political Possibility, offered by the American Cultures Center, will present an overview of the ...

Team Biographies

Laura Armstrong

Laura (she/her) is an education researcher focused on mixed methods research and program evaluation. She has a B.S. (Southern Oregon University) and Master’s (UC Berkeley) in chemistry and is currently a PhD candidate in science and math education at UC Berkeley. She has been working with the Creative Discovery Fellows since 2018 and has collaboratively developed a program model and evaluated targeted student, instructor, and program outcomes. Her research interests include exploring how best to make research and evaluation data accessible and...