As the theater faculty at fictional Riverbottom College brainstorm ways to shore up their department’s faltering budget, some interesting proposals emerge. These include issuing a departmental meme coin, creating a faculty boudoir calendar, and selling blood plasma. “You get $85 for plasma if you’re over 175 pounds,” says Burt (...

Does consciousness depend on flesh and blood? The answer is almost certainly no, according to Eric Schwitzgebel, a distinguished professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. In a new working paper, Schwitzgebel and Jeremy Pober, a former UCR graduate student who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the...

The numbers are startling. Chronic illnesses afflict an estimated 129 million Americans and cause roughly 70% of all deaths nationwide. Of the more than $4 trillion spent each year on healthcare in the United States, 90% is incurred by people with chronic and mental health conditions. These statistics and many...

A spirited new multimedia exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution tells the story of salsa with the help of a UC Riverside associate professor of music. Xóchitl Chávez contributed research and writing about the genre’s history, luminaries, and cultural influence to the curation of “ ¡Puro Ritmo! The Musical Journey of...

UC Riverside faculty and alumni authors are set to appear at the 31st annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, the largest book festival in the country, which runs April 18-19. For the second year in a row, UCR’s Palm Desert Low-Residency MFA Program is sponsoring the festival, which takes...

UC Riverside’s annual festival of prose and poetry kicks off May 5 and runs through May 8 with a diverse slate of presenters, including several of today’s most distinguished authors. Writers Week, California’s longest-running free literary festival, marks its 49th year with readings by 11 fiction writers, nonfiction writers, and...

UCR professors Jennifer Nájera and Catherine Gudis provide thoughts on how we should assess and recognize the contributions César Chávez made to the farmworkers’ movement in light of the allegations against him.

Miguel Zavala, an associate professor of teaching at UCR, addresses the challenges of teaching about César Chávez in light of the sexual-abuse allegations against the late labor leader.

In a new book, sociologist Brandon Andrew Robinson calls for abolishing sexual identities. Robinson, an associate professor of gender and sexuality studies at UC Riverside, knows it’s a provocative thesis.

What is the secret of happiness? Sonja Lyubomirsky, a distinguished professor of psychology at UC Riverside, used to dread that question; she considered it reductive. As a leading expert on the science of happiness, however, it was an occupational hazard, and she would answer it by explaining that there are...

A teacher-incentive program in South Carolina has led to striking long-term benefits for students, including lower rates of felony arrest and reduced reliance on government assistance in early adulthood, a new study reports. Ozkan Eren, a professor of economics at UC Riverside, co-authored the study with colleagues at the University...

With Venezuela in the thrall of U.S. oil demands and Cuba confronting massive fuel shortages due to an American blockade, the two countries face a more uncertain future than at any time since becoming close allies at the start of the 21st century. We turned to David Pion-Berlin, a distinguished...

Undergraduate enrollment at UC Riverside surged in fall 2025, with nearly 8,300 first-year and transfer students matriculating as Highlanders — the largest entering class in the university’s history.