Jody Murray

A celebration of stories and a concert highlighting the history of San Joaquin Valley’s railroads are the opening acts of the 2024-25 UC Merced Arts season .

Merced LitFest and Train Station Trios reflect the season’s varied offerings. Gallery exhibitions, concerts, theater performances and a film festival are scheduled on and off campus through May 2025. The creators and their work provide a multilayered experience of the Valley’s people, culture and landscape.

UC Merced has received a $750,000 boost to its mission to invest in the San Joaquin Valley’s unique cultural, creative and linguistic wealth by working with the region’s people to strengthen communities and champion social justice.

More than 170 students have enrolled this fall for classes in UC Merced’s new environmental humanities major, a degree that will prepare them to be advocates and storytellers for the living world.

Exploring sources of historical narratives can take you to places where walls seem to move and truth feels fluid and interchangeable. Ma Vang’s research has focused on how people narrate their histories, tracking the lived experiences of people pigeonholed or marginalized by dominant narratives that privilege the record and written text.

Thirteen graduating students were honored by UC Merced’s School of Social Science, Humanities and Arts for outstanding academic careers.

It’s a pair of special birthdays for UC Merced’s two student-run journals for undergraduates. The Vernal Pool , which publishes creative stories, poems and images, turned 10 this academic year. Meanwhile, it’s the sweet 16th for the Undergraduate Research Journal , which provides an early taste of the lifeblood of graduate and post-grad research — peer-reviewed publication.

There’s nothing small about this year’s Shakespeare in Yosemite production. It boasts the largest cast in the program’s seven-year history and, for the first time, features a full band to deliver the score and propel the musical numbers. The headcount for park staff in the cast is an all-time high.

“The stage will be very crowded for the curtain calls,” director Katie Brokaw said.

(Lee este artículo en español.)

Take the cultural rewards of preserving Spanish for babies and toddlers in a bilingual home. Bring in two speech pathologists steeped in techniques that make language learning irresistible for young minds. Sprinkle in bright colors, bold graphics and infectious energy. Bolt everything to the most powerful video-sharing website on the planet.

Add puppets.

"Flora," the latest film by Yehuda Sharim, will have its world premiere later this spring at a festival in Philadelphia, according to the UC Merced global arts professor.

Sharim describes "Flora" as a collective memoir of post-teen daughters of immigrants who must teach themselves about love and tenderness in a world dominated by unnecessary suffering and pain. Filmed in a Mexican restaurant in downtown Merced, "Flora," blends elements of reality and fiction while telling the story of immigrants through music.

UC Merced’s Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) is among 95 programs recognized and supported by the Mellon Foundation in an initiative called Affirming Multivocal Humanities.

CRES will use a $100,000 grant from the foundation to kick-start several student-led activities designed to raise awareness about race, ethnicity and social justice both in the campus community and in the surrounding Merced area.