SUBJECT:

The Center for Global California Studies

I am pleased to announce the establishment of the Center for Global California Studies (CGCS), which fosters creative and activist interdisciplinary research, teaching, and collaboration among California's communities, faculty, and students. California, in all its dimensions, is the object of the Center's focus.

CGCS grew out of and replaces the California Cultures in Comparative Perspective (CCCP) initiative and UCSD's efforts to explore new epistemological, conceptual, and methodological challenges created by the diverse demographics and challenges in a changing California. A critical examination of the stratified economic conditions, resulting power relations and social formations that have reconfigured California at the nexus of local struggle and global process at the turn of this century are all central to these efforts. California is the prism through which CGCS explores these challenges as they intersect with immigration, the environment, health, education, language, cultural production, citizenship, democracy and diversity.

CGCS approach to California Studies is global in several senses.

First, CGCS remaps California within a complex global cartography, and accentuates the state's multiple geopolitical borders and transnational frontiers: Mexico and the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, and regions represented by emerging diasporic relations with Africa and the Middle East.

Second, CGSC adopts an interdisciplinary perspective and promotes an understanding of the relationship among California's political-economic, social-cultural, and historical dimensions.

Third, CGCS is committed to understanding intersections among diverse populations within California.

Fourth, CGCS emphasizes the need for new and inclusive knowledge as well as practical engagement. The Center's goal is to foster new dialogue, frameworks and collaborations in research and practice between the University of California and local communities. Local communities are not only instrumental in this design but are at the heart of the center's global interdisciplinary commitments.

Faculty or students interested in participating in the CGCS should contact Director Roberto Alvarez: http://globalcalifornia.ucsd.edu (formerly http://calcultures.ucsd.edu), Department of Ethnic Studies 0522, oloberto@ucsd.edu, 858-534-1739.

Roberto Alvarez Director Center for Global California Studies (formerly California Cultures in Comparative Perspective)