Erica Kohl-Arenas

Erica Kohl-Arenas is an Associate Professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of California, Davis. She serves as the Faculty Director of Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life, a national initiative advancing public scholarship and civic engagement in higher education.

Her academic background includes a tenure-track position at The New School in New York City, where she was awarded tenure in 2017 before joining UC Davis. Her foundational education and mentorship were shaped by her relationship with Myles Horton of the Highlander Center, a key influence on her commitment to popular education and movement-based learning.

Her research centers on social movements, radical pedagogy, and the complex relationship between activism and institutional funding. She critically examines how philanthropy and professionalization impact grassroots movements, particularly in contexts of poverty and racial justice. Her work emphasizes liberatory education, community memory, and land reclamation as tools for self-determined futures, especially in rural Black communities in Mississippi.

The themes across her publications reveal a consistent focus on the tensions between institutional support and movement autonomy, the democratization of knowledge, and intergenerational activism. Her scholarship spans geography, American studies, education, and political economy, often bridging academic and public platforms.

• The New School’s Achievements in Social Justice Teaching Award (2014)
• The New School Distinguished University Teaching Award (2016)

As a Co-Principal Investigator, she leads two major research initiatives: the IA Leading and Learning Initiative (Mellon Foundation-funded) on institutional change in higher education, and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-supported project on land, agriculture, and community memory in rural Black Mississippi, in collaboration with Mina Matlon and Carlton Turner of Sipp Culture. She mentors emerging scholars through public scholarship platforms and action research partnerships with cultural and nonprofit institutions.

She directs Imagining America, a national consortium that supports faculty, students, and community partners in creating engaged, democratic scholarship. Through this role, she fosters collaborative research, public humanities projects, and institutional reforms that value community knowledge and activist scholarship.