Two UC Davis professors are busy preparing for the inaugural issue of Boom, a new journal about California’s cultures, politics and histories. Louis Warren, W. Turrentine Jackson Professor of Western U.S. History, and Carolyn de la Peña, associate professor of American Studies and director of the UC Davis Humanities Institute, have been selected by the UC Press to co-edit the new publication scheduled to debut in February 2011.

Boom: A Journal of California will be the first and only scholarly journal to explore the contemporary and historical connections among California’s culture, society, industry, politics and arts, as well as how the state both influences and is influenced by the larger world.

The journal will publish quarterly with funding from a $722,000 grant the UC Press received from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The grant also will underwrite an annual conference on California Studies at UC Davis.