About

Boom has transitioned from a subscription-only publication to a web-based freely accessible site, BoomCalifornia.com, which is dedicated to featuring content about California and the West. The quarterly subscription journal, Boom: A Journal of California, was published for six volumes from 2011 through 2016. You are currently on the archival site for Boom: A Journal of California. For new content, please visit BoomCalifornia.com.

Boom California is a free refereed online media publication dedicated to inspiring lively and significant conversations about the vital social and cultural issues of our time in California and the world beyond. It aims to be the place where the most serious discussions are happening about the world in California and California in the world. To do this we host academic conversations in the forms of peer reviewed articles that both highlight and advance scholarly discourse about California culture, and do so in a manner that is public-facing and oriented toward the social and practical concerns of ordinary Californians.

Boom hosts important and timely themed critical discussions that are academic yet public-facing, theoretical and practical, blending the approaches of interdisciplinary hybridity for engagement with California’s dynamic culture. For too long, Californians have lacked this venue for vital, lively statewide conversations about our often troubled past, our contested present, and promises of a hopeful future that Californians imagine in innovative ways from within our diverse communities. Consistent with this, Boom California invites new questions, aims to instigate new conversations, and inspire new visions for California in the world. 

Published by the University of California Press, Boom California features academics, journalists, writers, photographers, artists, and students, engaging in a vibrant conversation about the most pressing issues of our day as they play out within the life of our state and beyond. Boom California strives to be the place where scholars and the public come together to contemplate, discuss, and debate what matters most for California in the world. With interest in issues that matter deeply to Californians, we seek to advance the academic discourse that informs a variety of fields of study, moving these forms of inquiry into public space that informs practices and the lived experience of Californians and their diverse narratives.