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UCLA Institute of American Cultures
Four adults at a conference

Fast Facts

Institute of American Cultures

  • Financial and academic support to hundreds of faculty and students to pursue ethnic studies research and scholarship.

American Indian Studies Center

  • Hosted the 2018 national NAISA (Native American Indian and Indigenous Studies Association) conference bringing hundreds of Native American scholars to Los Angeles.
  • Digital “story maps” that bring to life the history and current challenges facing the Los Angeles indigenous people.
  • Hate Crimes Mapping project, a searchable online database that allows policymakers to pinpoint problem areas and generate solutions.
  • Cultural literacy materials for incarcerated American Indians to help ease the transition back into society.

Asian American Studies Center

  • The only university-based press in the world entirely committed to publishing scholarship on Asian American and Pacific Islander history.
  • Publishes Amerasia Journal, a leading interdisciplinary journal in Asian American studies.

Bunche Center for African American Studies

  • Tracking of leading causes of arrest in Los Angeles County that counters popular misunderstanding that incarceration advances public safety by removing violent and serious offenders from the streets.
  • Provides data on the high cost of jailing LA County residents who are the most economically vulnerable, geographically isolated, and racially marginalized populations.

Chicano Studies Research Center

  • CSRC Library is the recipient of the first Society of American Archivists Diversity Award, which “recognizes an individual, group, or institution for outstanding contributions to advancing diversity within the archives profession, SAA, or the archival record.”
  • CSRC Library has over 500 archival collections and over 700,000 individual items. In addition to aiding research, materials from these collections are regularly lent to art and social history museums around the world.
  • CSRC Press has received 48 international book awards, with recognitions in history, ethnomusicology, art, poetry, and reference.
  • CSRC has organized 10 major museum exhibitions featuring Chicano and Latino art, including Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement (2008) listed in Show Time: The 50 Most Influential Exhibitions of Contemporary Art. The most recent, Home—So Different, So Appealing (2017-18), was listed in The Art Newspaper among the most popular exhibitions in the world during its run.CSRC is a founding member of the national Inter-University Program for Latino Research (est. 1983), a national consortium of Latino research centers that now includes 24 institutions.
  • CSRC provides research grants to graduate students and faculty, work-study opportunities, and undergraduate summer internships to foster learning and scholarship pertaining to the Chicano-Latino community.
  • CSRC serves as a professional pipeline for students and project research staff, leading to tenure-track faculty positions at research universities and key program positions at foundations, community-based organizations, and museums.
  • CSRC organizes and co-sponsors over 60 public programs per year on campus and in the community.