This concentration draws connections between migration, identity, culture and economy with a focus on the links that radiate from California to the North American West, the Americas, and their Pacific and Atlantic connections. Research within this theme may encompass any part of the Americas, the Pacific Rim, or the Atlantic World, and may include archaeological, historical and contemporary contexts. We investigate the intersections of race, gender, class, space and cultural production as they dovetail with contests over belonging, boundaries, nations, polities, and citizenship. Rather than a fringe area, Merced and the Central Valley have been critical nodes in layered and overlapping human migrations and interrelated economic, spatial, and cultural transformations during pre-colonial times and since the nineteenth century. UC Merced offers an ideal vantage from which to explore in multidisciplinary ways notions of intersection, power, history, language, migration and movement within California and the Americas, and throughout the Pacific and Atlantic worlds.
