Departments in the Division of Arts & Humanities offer an array of undergraduate gateway courses that fulfill L&S Breadth requirements as well as the American Cultures requirement. Please find a selection of Fall 2026 classes below.
Learn more at https://classes.berkeley.edu/, check out freshman/sophomore seminars and Berkeley Connect classes to round out your schedule, and view the full array of language instruction across A&H on our Languages and Global Engagement page.
Study of the major developments, achievements, and contradictions in Greek culture from the Bronze Age to the 4th century BCE. Key works of literature, history, and philosophy (read in English translation) will be examined in their political and social context, and in relation both to other ancient Mediterranean cultures and to subsequent developments in Western civilization. Satisfies Arts & Literature, Historical Studies, or Philosophy & Values L&S Breadth. Course catalog link
This course introduces the archaeology of the Greek world from the Neolithic to the Hellenistic period (approximately 7000 to 150 BCE) and includes both art historical and anthropological approaches. We will explore the artifacts that ancient people used in their daily lives, as well as the buildings, landscapes, and tombs where they lived, worked, worshipped, and died. We will also examine famous artworks, monuments, and sites, from the gold-filled Shaft Graves of Mycenae to the Parthenon in Athens, tracking key technical and stylistic developments. Above all, we will learn how to situate archaeological sites and artifacts within their larger social, economic, and political contexts, using new methods and theories to interpret the past. Discussions of cultural heritage, repatriation, the antiquities trade, and archaeological ethics will illuminate the many ways in which Greek archaeology is relevant to the concerns of today. Satisfies Arts & Literature or Historical Studies L&S Breadth. Course catalog link
This course covers Homeric and Classical Greece, Rome in its transition from republic to empire, and the world of the Old Testament. Lectures, discussions, and reading assignments will involve interdisciplinary approaches with an emphasis on the development of skill in writing. Satisfies either half of the Reading and Composition requirement plus one of the following Letters and Science breath requirements: Arts and Literature, Historical Studies, or Social and Behavioral Sciences. Course catalog link
A first course in the language, processes, and media of visual art. Course work will be organized around weekly lectures and studio problems that will introduce students to the nature of art making and visual thinking. This course is a prerequisite for applying to the Art Practice major. Satisfies Arts & Literatures L&S Breadth. Course catalog link
Today, the word “Celtic” may bring to mind shamrocks, red hair, or a knot-based style of artwork common to jewelry and tattoos. The Celtics (soft c) are a sports team. But who are the Celtic (hard c) peoples, and what are the origins of these associations? Celtic Studies 70 will provide an introduction to the history of the Celtic-speaking peoples from the time of the Indo-Europeans through to the present day. We will consider a variety of types of evidence for understanding who the earliest Celts were, and discuss the question of whether or not they should in fact be considered as a unified group. Meets Historical Studies or Social & Behavioral Sciences L&S Breadth. Course catalog link
From cutting-edge medical research to the promises of social media influencers, the cure is everywhere. The desire to be relieved of suffering seems as endless as there are remedies. What is it about the potential of the cure that captures our attention? What is it about the possibility of perfect health that captivates us? What are we seeking when we ask to be cured? This class invites students who are ready to think critically about an idea that seems so ordinary that we rarely pause to consider it deeply, and who are willing to think imaginatively about the cure beyond the absence of symptoms. Meets Arts & Literature, L&S Breadth. Course catalog link
Originating in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the bildungsroman, or the novel of formation, is one of the central genres of the Western novel. These coming-of-age stories follow a protagonist as they grow up, undergo an education, pass from innocence to experience, and reconcile their individual desires with their place in society. In the United States, the experience of coming of age is often accompanied by developing awareness of one’s racial or ethnic identity, including what that means to others. Our course will study a variety of 20th and 21st century novels of formation by writers who are, in various ways, “ethnic.” Meets Arts & Literature, L&S Breadth, American Cultures Requirement. Course catalog link
What would it mean to begin modern American history on the island of Manhattan instead of New England? We intend to question the Anglo-American perspective on the representation of cultural identity, national identity, ethnicity, and race by contrasting the traditional foundation story of the United States with that of the 17th-century Dutch colony on Manhattan. Readings will include historical and ethnographic writings, self-representations of the different ethnic groups, and fictional accounts. Meets Historical Studies L&S Breadth and the American Cultures Requirement. Course catalog link
This introduction to the study of Buddhism will consider materials drawn from various Buddhist traditions of Asia, from ancient times down to the present day. However, the course is not intended to be a comprehensive or systematic survey; rather than aiming at breadth, the course is designed around key themes such as ritual, image veneration, mysticism, meditation, and death. The overarching emphasis throughout the course will be on the hermeneutic difficulties attendant upon the study of religion in general, and Buddhism in particular. Meets Philosophy & Values L&S Breadth. Course catalog link
The first in a two-semester sequence, introducing students to Chinese literature in translation. In addition to literary sources, a wide range of philosophical and historical texts will be covered, as well as aspects of visual and material culture. Meets Arts & Literature or Historical Studies L&S Breadth. Course catalog link
This course is an overview of Japanese literature and culture, 7th- through 18th-centuries. No previous course work in Japanese literature, history, or language is expected. Meets Arts & Literature or Historical Studies L&S Breadth. Course catalog link.
A survey of pre-modern Korean literature and culture from the seventh century to the 19th century, focusing on the relation between literary texts and various aspects of performance tradition. All readings are in English. Meets Arts & Literature or Historical Studies L&S Breadth. Course catalog link
English R17 offers an introduction to the study of Shakespeare. The premise of our class is that Shakespeare's texts are remarkably good to think with—remarkably pleasurable, remarkably productive. The class will give sustained attention to half a dozen major plays, using them to develop a rich set of themes and ideas as the semester unfolds: ideas about beauty and cruelty, performance and nature, citizenship and individuality, companionship and solitude, future and past. We will also think with Shakespeare about the nature of writing, reading, and performance. English R17 is also an R1B Reading and Composition course. In addition to lecture meetings, you will meet for two hours per week in section. Course catalog link
What is the English literary tradition? Where did it come from? What are its distinctive habits, questions, styles, obsessions? This course will answer these and other questions by focusing on five key writers from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: the anonymous Beowulf poet; Geoffrey Chaucer; Christopher Marlowe; John Donne; and John Milton. We will start with the idea that the English literary tradition is a set of interrelated texts and problems that recur over the course of several centuries. Meets Arts & Literature L&S Breadth. Course catalog link
Readings in prose fiction, poetry, and autobiography from the British Isles and the Atlantic world from c.1680 through c.1850: a century and a half that sees the formation of a new, multinational British state, with the political incorporation of Scotland and then Ireland, the global expansion of a maritime commercial and colonial empire, the revolt of the North American settler colonies, and the expansion and abolition of the British Atlantic slave trade. Our readings explore the relations between home and the world in writings preoccupied with journeys outward and inward, real and imaginary, voluntary and forced. Satisfies Arts & Literature Breadth requirement. Course catalog link
This course will provide an overview of the aesthetic shifts captured by such terms as realism, modernism, and postmodernism, with an emphasis on the relation between literary form and historical context. We will explore how literature responds to the pressures of industrialization, war, and empire, as well as to an ever-growing awareness of a diverse, interconnected world. Attention will also be paid to the relation between literature and other forms of cultural expression, e.g., painting, music, and film. Satisfies Arts & Literature Breadth. Course catalog link
This course is intended to introduce undergraduates to the study of a range of media, including photography, film, television, video, and print and digital media. The course will focus on questions of medium "specificity" or the key technological/material, formal and aesthetic features of different media and modes of address and representation that define them. Also considered is the relationship of individual media to time and space, how individual media construct their audiences or spectators, and the kinds of looking or viewing they enable or encourage. The course will discuss the ideological effects of various media, particularly around questions of racial and sexual difference, national identity, capitalism, and power. Satisfies Arts & Literature L&S Breadth. Course catalog link
This course provides a general introduction to translation studies. Translation studies is a relatively new field which lies at the intersection of a range of disciplines from literature and linguistics, through gender and postcolonial studies, to cognitive and computer science. We will explore the history of the way that people have thought about translation from the ancient world and thinkers such as Cicero and Dao’an to the formal field of translation studies which emerged in the 1980s. We will also explore translation studies as a field today, discovering the many different theories and methods that can be used to understand what translation is as a linguistic, textual, and socio-cultural practice. This will involve looking not just writing about translation but also analyzing specific translations and the choices made by translators. One thread running throughout the course is the central role that translation plays in our multilingual world. Satisfies Social & Behavioral Sciences L&S Breadth. Course catalog link.
This class will offer students a historical exploration of the urban artifact that is Paris. Proceeding “forensically,” the class aims to peel back what is visible to today’s observer in order to uncover the historical, economic, and ideological forces that have produced one of the most visited cities in the world. Students can expect, first, to gain knowledge of the city’s infrastructure, from its historical center to its marginalized outer suburbs. More generally, we will attend to the overlapping layers in Paris’s built environment, which is also to say the way that the Instagrammable urban present is haunted by the displacements and traumas of the past. And beyond Paris itself, we’ll be thinking a lot about how all human-made environments inscribe the needs, values, and technologies that have made them possible. Meets Arts & Literature or Historical Studies L&S Breadth. Course catalog link.
One of the most significant and thought-provoking 20th century writers, Franz Kafka created works and fragments that continue to puzzle, inspire, deprogram, and transform their readers. We will explore Kafka’s writings in their literary qualities, their multifaceted cultural range, and their religious dimensions. Meets Arts & Literature L&S Breadth. Course catalog link
This course will focus on the theory and practice of propaganda during the 12 years of the Third Reich. It takes a close look at the ideology the Nazis tried to transmit, the techniques, organization, and effectiveness of their propaganda. Challenging the idea of the total power of propaganda, it looks for the limits of persuasion and possible other reasons for which Germans might have decided to follow Hitler. Sources will include the press, radio, film, photography, political posters, and a few literary works of the time. Meets Historical Studies and Social & Behavioral Sciences L&S Breadth. Course catalog link
This course is an examination of ancient art from the Prehistoric through the Medieval periods (with a focus on and questioning of the Western perspective). You will be introduced to major (and minor) artifacts and works of art and architecture from various time periods and regions and asked to reflect on their artistic significance, visual rhetoric and cultural context. As you are acquainted with different ways of looking at and interpreting art, you will develop your own critical sense of art history. Through exploring an assortment of paintings, sculptures and buildings from various perspectives, you will learn to develop and refine your ideas about art through writing and class assignments. In this way you will deepen your understanding and appreciation of some of the most iconic works of art from the ancient (Western) world. Satisfies Arts & Literature or Historical Studies L&S Breadth. Course catalog link
This course offers an overview of contemporary art and architecture from South, Southeast, and East Asia. Paying special attention to new avant-garde and experimental art and architecture from 1945 to the contemporary, the lectures trace the emergence of abstraction, pop, conceptualism, video and photography, performance, multi-media installations, new media and video art, feminist and queer practices, postmodernism, site-specific projects, participatory practices, and art, urbanism, and architecture after globalization more broadly. Regions covered include Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Philippines, Myanmar, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand. Meets Arts & Literature or International Studies L&S Breadth. Course catalog link.
This interdisciplinary course is a broad-based introduction to the culture and history of the Italian peninsula, from the Middle Ages to the present day. It offers a survey of major developments in politics, music, art, architecture, cinema, literature, and various forms of popular culture. We will encounter numerous individual artists, writers and political figures, from Dante in the 1300s through Michelangelo and Verdi to Berlusconi today, placing them and their achievements in a rich social and historical context. In describing the development of Italy as a nation-state and Italians as a people, we will trace continuities and changes from the independent city-states of the medieval period through the princely courts of the Renaissance, the foreign occupations of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the nationalist movements of the 1800s, and the challenges faced by an autonomous Italy in the last century and a half, as it has experimented in turn with liberalism, colonialism, and totalitarianism, before settling down as the fractious Republic it is today. Meets Arts & Literature, Historical Studies, or Social & Behavioral Sciences L&S Breadth. Course catalog link.
This course explores how a film style known as Italian neorealism traveled across the Atlantic and became a powerful means of narrating the lives and experiences of diverse individuals and communities that are often left out of Hollywood’s more glamorous–though narrow–depictions of everyday life in the US. We begin with an introduction to major works of the Italian neorealist canon by De Sica, Rossellini, and Visconti. We move on to explore how neorealist style was taken up by independent filmmakers in the US to bring to the center the vibrant contours, sounds, and textures of lives lived at the margins, revealing larger structural and historical violences. Includes influential and lesser-known works by filmmakers like John Cassavetes, Shirley Clarke, Barbara Loden, Wayne Wang, Charles Burnett, Billy Woodbury, Kelly Reichardt, Ramin Bahrani, Efraín Gutiérrez, So Yong Kim, and Sean Baker. Satisfies American Cultures Requirement. Course catalog link
This course introduces students to the diversity of Jewish communities across time and geographies through a survey of literatures, histories, and cultures. Jewish cultures have always been co-produced in interaction with their non-Jewish neighbors. Through this study of Jewish cultural pluralism throughout history, we will investigate complex issues of identity and layers of belonging. Students from all majors and backgrounds are welcome. No previous knowledge of Judaism or Jewish Studies is necessary. – Meets Philosophy & Values, Historical Studies, or Arts & Literature L&S Breadth – Counts towards the Jewish Studies Minor. Course catalog link
This course introduces students to the Ancient Middle Eastern world through its languages, texts, art, and material culture. Emphasis is placed on Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia as well as their neighbors in Iran, Turkey, Arabia, and Africa. Students are introduced to techniques scholars use to study this evidence, including philology, archaeology, visual analysis, and digital humanities. Topics include urbanism, kingship, science, religion, and death. Students interact with original materials in campus and Bay Area museums. No prior coursework is required. Meets Arts & Literature or Historical Studies L&S Breadth. Course catalog link.
The course focuses on the impacts of migration and displacement of people from postcolonial Middle East region and the U.S. legal, political, social, and religious discourse on cross-cultural and ethical issues which arise in immigration practice while placing the phenomena within a global and transnational context. Three separate groups in the US will be examined; Middle Eastern immigrants, El Salvadoran diaspora, and rightwing white communities. The course seeks to draw connections between Middle Eastern migration and diaspora in the colonial and postcolonial periods leading to the modern period of restrictive immigration policies, building of walls, targeting Arab and Muslim immigrants as well as all immigrants from the Global South. Meets American Cultures Requirement. Course catalog link
Two perspectives are developed: 1) diverse music of groups in America, and 2) American music as a unique phenomenon. Groups considered are African, Asian, European, Hispanic/Latino, and Native American. Lectures and musical examples are organized by topics such as music of socio-economic subgroups within large groups, survival of culture, pan-ethnicity, religious and concert music, and the folk-popular music continuum. Meets the American Cultures Requirement. Satisfies Arts & Literature or Social & Behavioral Sciences, L&S Breadth. Course catalog link
Introduction to the study of music history; required for music majors. This writing-intensive course offers an in-depth study of musical genres and styles in relation to conditions of production and reception. Through listening, reading musical scores, and studying historical documents, students will draw connections between specific features of music and the ways in which listening, performance, and the function of music have changed over time. Satisfies Arts & Literature or Historical Studies, L&S Breadth. Course catalog link
Introduction to ethical and political philosophy. Satisfies Philosophy & Values or Social & Behavioral Sciences Breadth. Course catalog link.
Introduction to the philosophy of mind. Topics to be considered may include the relation between mind and body; the structure of action; the nature of desires and beliefs; the role of the unconscious. Satisfies Philosophy & Values L&S Breadth. Course catalog link
The history of ancient philosophy with special emphasis on the Presocratics, Plato, and Aristotle. Satisfies Historical Studies or Philosophy & Values L&S Breadth. Course catalog link
This course will chart the multiple meanings of "reason" in modern thought, beginning with Descartes and Hobbes, and ending with an investigation of contemporary concepts of reason and intelligence, and their relationship to technology, Readings will include texts from Descartes, Hobbes, Kant, Peirce, Turing, Stiegler and others. Satisfies Philosophy & Values L&S Breadth. Course catalog link
This course explores the most important cultural contributions of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. It focuses on an interdisciplinary historical examination of the emergence of three central contemporary Nordic value systems: environmentalism, gender equality, and social solidarity/trust. The readings range in approach from social-science-inflected readings in political science, history of science, ethnography, and public policy, to those examining more humanistic forms of expression (literature, theater, film). Taught in English with readings in English. Meets Historical Studies or Social & Behavioral Sciences L&S Breadth. Course catalog link
Nineteenth-century Russian literature, including Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov. The class is taught in English, on the basis of English translations; students with knowledge of Russian are encouraged to do at least some of the reading in the original. Meets Arts & Literature L&S Breadth. Course catalog link
This introduction to the study of Buddhism will consider materials drawn from various Buddhist traditions of Asia, from ancient times down to the present day. However, the course is not intended to be a comprehensive or systematic survey; rather than aiming at breadth, the course is designed around key themes such as ritual, image veneration, mysticism, meditation, and death. The overarching emphasis throughout the course will be on the hermeneutic difficulties attendant upon the study of religion in general, and Buddhism in particular. Course catalog link
This course is a survey of ancient South Asia, from around 2500 BCE to the 10th century CE. Close attention will be paid to the geography and ethnography of the region, its political and economic history, the religious, philosophical, literary, and artistic movements that have shaped it and contributed to its development as a unique, diverse, and fascinating civilization. We will cover broad patterns of historical change in ancient South Asia from the 10th century to the present, major cultural shifts and religious formations that have shaped South Asia over the past thousand-plus years, cultural texts that reflect the history of South Asia, and South Asia’s shifting relations with the world over the longue duree. Meets Historical Studies or Philosophy & Values, L&S Breadth. Course Catalog link
This course is a survey of the histories, cultures, and religions of mainland Southeast Asia from the period of the early Khmer empire until the 2000s. It surveys the countries of Cambodia, Myanmar/Burma, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. By the end of the course, students are expected to: (a) explain the broad patterns of historical change in mainland Southeast Asia from the 10th century to the present, (b) explain the major cultural shifts and religious formations that have shaped mainland Southeast Asia over the past thousand-plus years, (c) discuss cultural texts that reflect the history of mainland Southeast Asia, and (d) explain mainland Southeast Asia’s shifting relations with the world over the longue durée. Satisfies Historical Studies or International Studies L&S Breadth. Course catalog link
We all know what culture is. It’s what people make or do: their customs, food, and religious practices. It can also be objects: music, art, literature and other books, or movies. But it’s not always something tangible, something concrete. It can be expressive, like dancing, singing, or myths. But some people also talk about “having” culture or “being cultured,” implying that someone is “cultivated” or has a good appreciation of the highest values of that society. But how can all of these things be categorized under “culture”? In this course, we will unpack all of these meanings of culture. In doing so, we will be in a better position to offer more nuanced interpretations of what we mean by “culture.” Taught in English. Satisfies Arts & Literature or Social & Behavioral Sciences L&S Breadth. Course catalog link.
This course introduces the critical terms and practices of the contemporary study of performance. Several key terms and important genres of artistic and social performance will be engaged; the course will draw critical and disciplinary methods from anthropology and ethnography, from the theory of dance and theater, from literary and cultural theory. Critical and theoretical concepts will be used to analyze a wide range of live and recorded performances, as well as performance texts. Satisfies Arts & Literature Breadth. Course catalog link
Dance as a meaning-making expressive form. Develop the tools necessary for looking at dance, analyzing it, writing about it, and understanding its place in larger social, cultural, political structures. We will look at a variety of U.S. American dance genres, understanding them through their historical and cultural contexts, to explore how issues of race, gender, sexuality and class affect the practice and the reception of different dance forms, and how dance might help shape representations of these identities. Ethnic groups that the course studies include African, Asian, and European Americans, indigenous peoples of the U.S., and Chicanos/Latinos. Accessible to students with no dance experience. Not a studio-based class. Satisfies Arts & Literature Breadth and American Cultures requirement. Course catalog link
