The Covered series highlights the remarkable contributions of UC Davis faculty who have published books across diverse fields, from scholarly research to creative works. Each program includes author presentations, Q&A and light refreshments.
Covered is co-sponsored by the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum and the UC Davis Library. The partnership is part of Elevate the Arts, a campus-wide initiative fostering collaboration among UC Davis faculty in the arts to support and amplify one another’s work.
Liza Grandia
Kernels of Resistance: Maize, Food Sovereignty, and Collective Power
Carl Whithaus
Swarms, Viral Writing, and the Local: Rhetorical Dynamics across Networked Publics
Tuesday January 13
5:30–7:30 PM
Join us for an evening with UC Davis faculty authors Carl Whithaus and Liza Grandia as part of Covered, a campus-wide collaboration celebrating recent books from the College of Letters and Science. Whithaus, professor of writing and rhetoric, discusses Swarms, Viral Writing, and the Local, which examines how emerging writing technologies and born-digital texts circulate, mutate and shape contemporary public discourse. Grandia, chair and professor of Native American Studies, shares insights from Kernels of Resistance, tracing how Mesoamerican farmers and food-sovereignty movements confronted corporate power to build more climate-resilient, community-driven agricultural systems.
Javier Arbona-Homar
Explosivity: Following What Remains
Bettina Ng’weno
No Place Like Home in a New City: Anti-Urbanism and Life in Nairobi
Tuesday, February 17
5:30–7:30 PM
Javier Arbona-Homar, associate professor of American Studies and Design, discusses Explosivity, a sweeping investigation of the Bay Area’s landscape through episodes of militarism, racialized capitalism and historical erasure. Drawing on archival research, oral histories and site visits, he traces how past detonations continue to shape public memory and geography. Bettina Ng’weno, professor of African American and African Studies, shares from No Place Like Home in a New City, an intimate account of how residents of Nairobi resist anti-urban ideologies to build life, belonging and new urban futures amid rapid redevelopment.
Emily Klancher Merchant & Meaghan O’Keefe
DNA, Race, and Reproduction
Talinn Grigor & Houri Berberian
The Armenian Woman, Minoritarian Agency, and the Making of Iranian Modernity, 1860–1979
Tuesday March 10
5:30–7:30 PM
Emily Klancher Merchant, associate professor of Science and Technology Studies, discusses DNA, Race, and Reproduction, an interdisciplinary volume exploring how genomic ideas shape racial identity and reproductive decision-making. Talinn Grigor, professor of art history, and Houri Berberian, professor of history and director of the Center for Armenian Studies at UC Irvine, share insights from The Armenian Woman, which traces Armenian women’s cultural, political and intellectual influence on Iranian modernity.
Lisa G. Materson
Radical Solidarity: Ruth Reynolds, Political Allyship, and the Battle for Puerto Rico’s Independence
Corrie Decker
The Age of Sex: Custom, Law, and Ritual in Twentieth-Century East Africa
Tuesday April 14, 2026
5:30–7:30 PM
Lisa G. Materson’s Radical Solidarity traces civil rights activist Ruth Reynolds’ deep involvement in the movement for Puerto Rico’s independence, offering a nuanced account of political allyship, anti-colonial struggle and cross-racial collaboration. Corrie Decker’s The Age of Sex examines how colonial courts and ethnographers in 20th century East Africa transformed complex rites of passage into simplified “puberty rites,” reshaping legal understandings of childhood, adulthood, gender and sexual maturity.
Claire Goldstein
In the Sun King’s Cosmos: Comets and the Cultural Imagination of Seventeenth-Century France
Michael Dylan Foster
The Book of Yōkai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore
Expanded Second Edition
Tuesday May 12, 2026
5:30–7:30 PM
Claire Goldstein, professor of French and Italian, discusses In the Sun King’s Cosmos, her engaging study of how comets shaped scientific, political and cultural imagination in 17th century France. Michael Dylan Foster, professor of Japanese, presents the expanded edition of The Book of Yokai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore, exploring the history and ongoing cultural life of Japan’s supernatural beings.