Erica Kohl-Arenas

Erica Kohl-Arenas is an Associate Professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of California, Davis, within the College of Letters and Science. She serves as Faculty Director of Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life, a national consortium advancing public scholarship. Her work bridges academia and activism, focusing on social movements, liberatory pedagogy, and the politics of philanthropy.

Her research centers on the dynamics of social movements, particularly how radical imaginations are shaped or constrained by institutionalization and funding structures. She is the author of The Self-Help Myth: How Philanthropy Fails to Alleviate Poverty (2016), and her scholarship appears in journals such as Antipode, Social Movement Studies, and Public: A Journal of Imagining America. Her work is deeply informed by popular education principles, inspired by Myles Horton of the Highlander Center.

The trends in her recent publications reflect a sustained engagement with activist scholarship, institutional change in higher education, land reclamation in Black rural communities, and intergenerational freedom struggles. Her articles span critical philanthropy, public humanities, liberatory pedagogy, and grassroots organizing, demonstrating an interdisciplinary and community-engaged approach.

Scientific Awards:

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

As an advisor and research leader, Erica Kohl-Arenas mentors emerging scholar-activists through her role at Imagining America and her co-leadership of major research initiatives. She was awarded tenure at The New School in 2017 before joining UC Davis. Her current projects include the IA Leading and Learning Initiative (Mellon Foundation) and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded study on land and memory in rural Mississippi, conducted in partnership with Mina Matlon and Carlton Turner.

She leads action research partnerships with cultural institutions and nonprofits and is developing a book on intergenerational freedom fighters. Her leadership in public scholarship platforms underscores her commitment to democratizing knowledge and transforming higher education.