Matrix Teach-In: Seth Lunine

Recorded on November 17, 2025, this recording features a talk by Seth Lunine, Lecturer in the UC Berkeley Department of Geography, who presented a talk reflecting on his experiences with collaborative scholarship between UC Berkeley undergraduates and community-based organizations in Oakland's Fruitvale District.

Lunine's courses are part of the American Cultures Engaged Scholarship (ACES) Program, which aims to transform how faculty's community-engaged scholarship is valued, to enhance learning for students through a combination of teaching and practice, and to create new knowledge that has an impact both in the community and the academy.

In Fall 2024, students in Lunine's Geography 50AC: California collaborated with Canticle Farm and Restorative Media, two nonprofits located in the Oakland Fruitvale District. ACES students developed story maps to represent the spatial histories of the Canticle Farm site. To create these story maps, they analyzed historical newspaper articles, real estate promotions, archeological reports, and city planning documents, revealing legacies of Indigenous stewardship, the Brown Power movement, redlining, and criminalization that has shaped Canticle Farm. Another group of ACES students collaborated with the Executive Director of Restorative Media, an organization led by formerly incarcerated and systems-impacted people, to interview Canticle Farm stakeholders about their movement activism and life stories.

This event was co-sponsored by the Berkeley Public Service Center, and presented as part of a new event series featuring talks by UC Berkeley lecturers and professors who earn praise from students for their teaching. The speakers are invited to deliver a favorite standalone lecture, reimagined for anyone curious to learn.

A transcript of this talk is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/seth-lunine.