2021 Mellon Public Scholars Program

Application Details

• CV (2 pages max.): Please include contact information, academic department, relevant employment history, academic accomplishments, and academic advisor’s name.
   
• Proposal Narrative (3 pages max., at least 11-point font): The narrative should address your interest in this program and your ability to plan and carry out an intellectually grounded, mutually beneficial arts- or humanities-based project with a community partner. If you have discussed this project with a potential faculty partner or community partner, please list them. If you are interested in working on one of the pre-established projects, outline your qualifications for that project. Each application should address your general suitability for the program and ability to carry out the project in question, and explicitly address the evaluation criteria.

CapRadio is the NPR affiliate serving California’s Central Valley and Sierra Nevada. Seven frequencies, hundreds of thousands of listeners, and one mission: to build stronger communities. CapRadio works collaboratively with community partners to understand and voice community needs, concerns, and aspirations. Working closely with Senior Community Engagement Strategist jesikah maria ross, the Mellon Public Scholar will assist in developing and assessing engaged journalism projects at CapRadio that focus on underserved audiences and/or underreported issues.

The principles of participatory journalism guiding this project are inclusion, co-creation, face-to-face events, public service, and civic infrastructure. The Mellon Public Scholar can expect to select and develop stories in conversation with communities; design a reporting process that generates understanding, connection, and trust; strengthen existing networks and forge new alliances that build community resilience beyond reporting. Day-to-day work over late spring and summer will involve independent research, writing, project management, and event programming, which may include tasks such as attending meetings, updating databases, assessing and evaluating projects, and organizing and facilitating community information sessions. The Mellon Public Scholar will be part of a newsroom that handles breaking news and investigative reporting alongside daily coverage; the position requires some flexibility and the scholar should anticipate afternoon work hours with the possibility of evenings or weekends depending on community needs.

California State Parks is developing pilot California Native American Walking Tours for Marshall Gold Discovery Park in Coloma, California and Sutter’s Fort State Historic Park. With Governor Newsom’s apology for California Native American Genocide in California, California State Parks is in the beginning stages of reviewing interpretation at Parks with an Indigenous nexus. This project will be the first of several reviews of other Gold Rush-era parks through current interpretation and education standards. The scholar will assist the Tribal Affairs Program, Interpretation and Education Division, and the Cultural Resources Program at Gold Fields District with engaging and consulting tribes whose history, culture, and traditions interact with Marshall Gold Discovery Park and Sutter’s Fort State Historic Park. This includes scheduling and attending tribal consultations, reviewing current interpretive models at the Park, and creating walking tours with recommendations from both the tribes and the Public Scholar for developing an inclusive Indigenous history through interpretive design (digital tools, etc.). California State Parks will mentor the student through close partnership and professional development opportunities.

The Center for Sacramento History (CSH) is a repository and research center for the City and County historic collections and provides exhibition materials for the Sacramento History Museum in Old Sacramento, which is devoted to Sacramento and California Gold Rush history. The CSH is undertaking a significant effort to diversify their collections in order to better tell the stories of underrepresented communities in Sacramento’s history. In particular, the CSH is collecting objects and stories that highlight the contributions of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and Asian people during California’s Gold Rush period. From BIPOC perspectives, the CSH plans to demonstrate how this era was marked by a racialized legal system (including enslavement as punishment) that unevenly harmed Black and Indigenous people (as compared to White people) and persists into the present day.

The Mellon Public Scholar will analyze (digitized) Indian Indentures, jail registers and mug books from the Gold Rush era in the CSH’s collection to first identify the kinds of convictions and sentences that Black and Indigenous people received. Using that data, the scholar will then compare those offenses and sentences to White people in the same time period. In addition to the data collection and analysis, the Mellon Public Scholar will work closely with CSH staff to conceptualize future exhibits of materials for the Sacramento History Museum which connect the historical archive to contemporary issues in policing and criminalization in this region.