'CULTIVATION' Celebrates Asian and South Asian Cultural Contributions to the Region

As the fruit trees bloom, seeds sprout and gardens fill with flowers, the UC Davis Humanities Institute will delve into the rich cultural landscape of California in the next few months with its year-long public initiative, “CULTIVATION: Food, Farming, and Heritage in the Sacramento Valley and Beyond.” The upcoming events are focused on Asian and South Asian contributions.

The institute will partner with the California Museum in Sacramento to explore Asian American farming this month; “Punjabi Week” in May; and a two-day event in June that will bring together food, fiction and film.

“UC Davis is making major strides in feeding the world through its Sustainable Food Systems Grand Challenge and we wished to build off that in a way that engages the humanities and arts and connects with a wide range of communities,” said Archana Venkatesan, interim director of the DHI and professor of religious studies and comparative literature.

“We will have conversations on a wide range of topics: food labor, food science, the racial roots of farming, community formation around food, sustainability and sustainable traditions, and water rights and agriculture,” she said. “Our goal is to foster dialogue between the humanities and the sciences, the arts and agriculture, the university and its larger communities.” 

The next event, “Enriching Our Roots: Asian American Farmers’ Heritage,” will take place on Earth Day, April 22. Organized in partnership with the California Museum and the Locke Foundation, the event at the museum will include a panel discussion with Nicole Ranganath, assistant professor in Middle East/South Asia studies, chef David Soohoo and others on the history and continuing impact of Japanese, Chinese and South Asian farmers in California. It will include a guided tour of the museum exhibitions "Gold Mountain: Chinese California Stories" and "Uprooted! An American Story" about the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.  Register for the event.  

Vocalist Sikkil C. Gurucharan, artist in residence at the DHI, will give a south Indian classical musical concert — titled “Bijam: Musical Seeds” — on the theme of cultivation. Hailing from a legendary line of musicians, he started singing at age 5. The concert is May 9 at noon at the Ann E. Pitzer Center Recital Hall at UC Davis. 

A focus on Punjabi people during May

The humanities institute is staging “Punjabi Week: Celebrating Punjabi Heritage in the Sacramento Valley” May 15-18 with many events. Further details can be found here.

• May 15, noon — Kickoff event with music and food on the UC Davis Quad.  
• May 16, 6 p.m. — Bibi Rasleen Kaur, an economics student, will perform music from the region of Punjab in north India and Pakistan that extols the beauty of nature. The free concert, “A South Asian Classical Music Concert on Cultivation,” is at the Student Community Center, but registration is required.
• May 17, noon — “Punjabi Recipes and Food Traditions” is a lunchtime webinar tracing Punjabi intergenerational recipes and food heritage. Punjabi American women from the Central Valley will share recipes they learned from their foremothers, as well as those they’ve passed down through the generation. Registration is required.  
• May 18, 6:30 p.m. — The film Unpacking Immigration by Harleen Kaur Bal, a UC Davis doctoral student in anthropology and Mellon Public Scholar, looks at the lives of immigrant meatpackers focusing on a longtime Punjabi Sikh meatpacker in California’s Central Valley. The screening is at 126 Voorhies Hall. 

The week will wrap up with the dedication of Gurdev S. Khush’s papers to the UC Davis Library. Khush (Ph.D., genetics, ’60) received the 1996 World Food Prize for his achievements in enlarging and improving the global rice supply. He was principal plant breeder and plant breeding division head at the International Research Institute. 

Where food and fiction intersect 

In June, artist Amanda Trager will lead an intriguing intersection of ideas with “Food for Thought: Facts & (Science) Fictions.” It will take place June 23-25 at Esther's Park in Sacramento. The event will be guided by the kinds of engagement with food depicted in the movies Sounder, from 1972, and The Martian, from 2015. The two movies examine the life and death struggle to grow food in very different times and environments and will be used as a way to look at food, farming and race in the region.