HumArts Clusters

Faculty Coordinator: Matthew Vernon (English)

Visions of Black futurity during the Age of Jim Crow testify to strategies of resilience and alternative political worlds that have yet to be fully plumbed; they are at once understudied and fascinating. Our group will use texts that imagined new futures in a period once called the “nadir” to chart new directions for reading the injustices of our age. Moreover, we aim to foster discussion among faculty and, especially, graduate students interested in Black life during the late 19th-20th century, but who are all too often divided from each other by disciplinary boundaries and the physical layout of campus. This group aims to build common ground for graduate students in English, History, and African American and African Studies, in hopes that they and faculty both learn from each other and develop sustaining connections. We will begin with the novel Imperium in Imperio by Sutton E. Griggs, that narrates a shadow Black government based in Waco, Texas in the last years of the 19th century that plans to remake the U.S. government from within in order to facilitate the creation of a Black nation in Texas. From there we will read other interlocking texts both in and about the notion of Black futurity both in Jim Crow America, potentially including Harp of Ethiopia, Righteous Propagation, and Jim Crow Wisdom.

Faculty Coordinator: Jose Juan Perez Melendez (History)

"Extractive Pasts and Hollowed Futures: Mining in Perspective" is an interdisciplinary social sciences and humanities laboratory for examining the historical impacts of mining and other extractive activities. In the context of climate breakdown, our group brings together scholars and civil society voices to reflect on ongoing environmental justice issues arising from past and present-day extractivisms. Sited in the historical landscape of the mid-nineteenth century gold rush and in close vicinity to new lithium-mining frontiers, our home base at UC Davis compels us to interrogate the toxic legacies of mining while sounding the complex social and global circumstances that allow for mining enterprises to take hold and continue to grow. Our speaker series, workshops and activities feature guests from disciplines including History, Geography, Comparative Literature, and Anthropology,  and from Native American, Latin American, and Women’s Studies whose work explores mining issues from around the world.