Arts & Culture

UC Merced Arts Opens Season with East L.A. Band Las Cafeteras

October 3, 2025

UC Merced Arts has announced its 2025-26 season of performances, exhibitions and public art programs, beginning with the return of East L.A.’s electrifying band Las Cafeteras. The band’s Día de los Muertos-themed production, “Hasta La Muerte,” comes to Merced on Wednesday...

20th anniversary UC Merced architecture as art

20th Anniversary Exhibit Presents UC Merced Architecture as Art

Before the first walls were raised or walkways paved, UC Merced existed as an idea on paper. The vision consisted of a campus master plan, detailed architectural designs and artistic renderings that...

Writer-in-Residence Mark Arax Chronicles California's Lifeblood: Water

UC Merced has debuted a writer-in-residence program with one of California’s premier chroniclers of its history, especially the titanic power plays for land and water that have shaped the state...

As Yosemite Likes It UC Merced performers

Into the Woods: Nature Works its Magic in Shakespeare in Yosemite

If Arden, the sprawling, wild forest in William Shakespeare’s “As You Like It,” were in the United States instead of the Bard’s imagination, it would certainly be a national...

Film Documents the Struggle of Growing Old Behind Bars

A UC Merced professor entered the bleak world of a fading, 64-year-old man in a Virginia state prison to illustrate the challenges of being elderly and incarcerated. “Where’s My Coffee...

UC Merced political science mock legislative hearing

Social Sciences Graduate Programs Shine in U.S. News Rankings

UC Merced’s School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts made a splash in the latest rankings of university graduate programs compiled by U.S. News and World Report. The university...

Central Valley Stories event attendees and one painting

Central Valley Stories Seminar Connects Students to Community

Among the UC Merced students’ impressive creations in the dimly lighted room — dioramas, poems, photo collages, paintings in bold colors — Derek Miller’s creation attracted...

Huntington garden and two UC Merced professors

UC Merced Doubles Down on Huntington Distinguished Fellowships

The Huntington Library in San Marino is one of the world’s greatest sources for independent research in the humanities, with documents and artifacts that span 11 centuries. Scholars from more...

Todo Cambia Festival Takes New Artistic Directions

Todo Cambia, UC Merced’s annual Human Rights Film Festival, is about more than film this year. The seven-day festival kicks off Saturday, March 1 with a talk and readings by a former...

5 Questions for Indigenous Author of Acclaimed Memoir Coming to UC Merced

Deborah Taffa, an Indigenous author and educator whose book about growing up in a mixed-race home and struggling with social acceptance was hailed as one the best memoirs of 2024, will make a...

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