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 Spring 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.
Investigation of the main achievements and tensions in Roman culture from Romulus to the High Empire. Key sources for literature, history, and material culture are studied in order to reveal Roman civilization in its political and social context. All materials are read in English. Satisfies Arts & Literature, Historical Studies or Philosophy & Values Breadth. Course catalog link
Telling stories is one of the most common ways that humans make sense of the world and their lives in it. For the ancient Greeks and Romans, these stories were very often in the form of tales of the adventures, triumphs and sufferings of gods and heroes – what we call classical myths. This class examines many of these myths, what they meant to Greeks and Romans, and what they still mean for us. Satisfies Arts & Literature or Philosophy & Values Breadth. 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 Breadth. Course catalog link
A comparative introduction to modern Celtic cultures: principally Irish, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic and Breton. The development of the distinctive cultures of the Celtic "nations without states" from 1500 to the present; an examination of the role of minority cultures and minority languages in larger political cultural entities. Theme topics will vary, but will include folklore, nationalism and linguistic history from time to time. Satisfies Arts & Literature or International Studies, L&S Breadth. Course catalog link
Physically, New York and Los Angeles spread across the map and encompass multiple neighborhoods and communities, seemingly facilitating our ability to explore, access, and find new connections within the concrete jungle of the metropolis. Socially and economically, both cities have been figured as distinctly “American” dreamscapes—places of refuge and freedom, success, and self-invention—that hinge on the promise that the American city works like an open circuit, enabling unrestricted movement and mobility to and for everyone who visits or decides to make it home. But who comes to the American city and why? How do visitors, residents, and (im)migrants negotiate and move through “The Big Apple” and “The City of Angels,” reimagining urban life in the process? With these questions in mind, we'll spend the semester tracing the crises of (im)mobility that mark the histories of New York City and Los Angeles, as well as exploring the possibilities for place-making forged by marginalized communities in these two U.S. urban centers. Satisfies Arts & Literature Breadth and American Cultures requirement. Course catalog link
The second of 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. 7B focuses on late imperial, modern, and contemporary China. The course will focus on the development of sound writing skills. Satisfies Arts & Literature Breadth. Course catalog link
A survey of modern Korean literature and culture in the 20th century, focusing on the development of nationalist aesthetics in both North and South Korea. Topics include "new woman" narratives, urban culture, colonial modernity, war and trauma, and diaspora. Texts to be examined include works of fiction, poetry, art, and film. All readings are in English. Satisfies Arts & Literature Breadth. 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 cataloglink
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 will focus on the development of film art, technology, and industry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 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 Breadth. Course catalog link
This course explores medieval France through its surviving objects—holy grails, caskets, maps, painted ceilings, stained glass, chess sets, and more—to understand how people in the Middle Ages made sense of their world through things. Focusing on material culture, we will examine how objects communicated ideas about power, gender, devotion, love, violence, race, and time. From a battle horn tied to heroic death to a unicorn tapestry suggesting courtly desire, each week centers on a specific artifact or class of objects studied in its cultural and historical contexts. Alongside these materials, we will read poems and stories that flesh out their original environments and show them in action. In addition to some analytical writing, students will complete a final creative project that reimagines, remixes, or responds to a medieval object—through experimental writing, visual art, digital media, or another craft—as a way of exploring its form, function, and symbolism. This hands-on engagement means that we'll approach medieval materiality not only as scholars, but also as active makers, translators, and interpreters. In English. Meets Historical Studies, L&S Breadth. Meets Social & Behavioral Sciences, L&S Breadth. Course catalog link
The story of Germany in the 20th century is a dramatic one, comprising two world wars, genocide, Allied occupation, a division into two states on opposing sides of the Cold War, and recently an unexpected unification. This course offers an introduction to the history and culture of contemporary Germany. It aims at a systematic account of German history in the 20th century, and it intends to provide a better understanding of today's German culture and politics. In addition to following a chronological approach, we will frequently stop to explore issues that are crucial to providing insights into current developments. Satisfies Historical Studies or Social & Behavioral Sciences Breadth. Course catalog link
Teaching you how to see; how to see historically; how to see like others see; how to see art’s politics of gender and race and class. Teaching you how to describe what you see with words. An introduction to the history of art in Europe and the U.S. since the 14th century focusing primarily on painting and sculpture. Explores how art can function as a stabilizing force but also how it can contribute to social and political transformation, even revolution. Meets Arts & Literature or Historical Studies, L&S Breadth. Course catalog link.
This course, for which no prior experience of Chinese art or history is required, will provide an overview of developments in the visual arts of China from the Neolithic period to the present. Special attention will be devoted to relating these developments to broader changes within culture. Some of the questions we will address include: What are the conventions and limits of representing deities in art? How do we understand different notions of naturalism in painting? How did artists take on political issues? Who were the various audiences that artists addressed in their work? How do we gauge their responses? Throughout this course, we will also consider the relationship between collecting and art history, how art collecting shaped and was shaped by changing notions of “China,” and the challenges of studying artifacts that have been removed from their original contexts. Meets Arts & Literature or Historical Studies, L&S Breadth. Course catalog link
We live in times of extreme uncertainty, but one thing is undeniable: we are living through catastrophe. From the ongoing wars in Gaza and Ukraine to environmental collapse, global pandemic, political upheaval, and the rise of authoritarian regimes, rupture has become a defining feature of our moment. What can Jewish history teach us about the emergence, experience, and consequences of catastrophe? And what is catastrophe to begin with?
This course traces voices of rupture across Jewish thought and literature—from biblical laments and rabbinic midrash to modernist poetics and contemporary prose. Moving between philosophy, theology, psychoanalysis, and literary criticism, we will read foundational texts by figures including Walter Benjamin, Freud, Clarice Lispector, S. Yizhar, and Mahmoud Darwish alongside biblical, rabbinic, medieval, and modern Jewish sources. In so doing, the course also offers an introduction to two millennia of Jewish thought, history, and textual traditions, as well as their ongoing dialogue with neighboring cultures and languages. While telling a story of tragedies, we will also ask ourselves in what other terms, more hopeful perhaps, we could narrate an alternative history of the human experience; and what these other stories could afford us in imagining a peaceful (or at least, less violent) world. Course catalog link
This course provides a multidisciplinary introduction to the Middle East, an area that has long dominated the news but remains relatively unknown to most Americans. In a broad sense, the Middle East refers to “Arab” countries in general as well as Israel, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and the region of Kurdistan. The course aims to help students expand their knowledge and understanding of the social, economic, and cultural complexities that underlie current events and politics in the Middle East. We will examine the interplay of cultures, societies, and economies of various regional communities that remain central to the dynamics of Middle Eastern identities. Satisfies Historical Studies or International Studies Breadth. Course catalog link
A general introduction to ancient Egypt, providing overview coverage of ancient Egyptian culture and society (history, art, religion, literature, language, social structure), Egyptian archaeology (pyramids, tombs, mummies, temples, cities, monuments, daily life), and the history and development of the modern discipline of Egyptology. Assumes no prior knowledge of subject. Almost all lectures are illustrated extensively by power point presentation. Discussion sections include meetings in the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology, which has the best collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts west of Chicago. Satisfies Arts & Humanities Breadth or Historical Studies Breadth or Social and Behavioral Sciences Breadth. Course catalog link
This course introduces students with little or no previous musical experience to the fundamentals of Western music theory, analysis, and notation. After an introduction to basic terminology and how notes, rhythm, meter, tempo, and other expressions are notated, the course covers the fundamentals of music theory and specialized notation for common instruments of the symphony orchestra. The second half of the semester focuses on notational analyses of medieval and renaissance music, jazz, popular music, and twentieth century graphic and electronic music. Satisfies Arts & Literature Breadth. Course catalog link
Devoted to the development of listening skills, and a survey of major forms and types of Western art music. Satisfies Arts & Literature 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 Science. Satisfies Philosophy & Values Breadth. Course catalog link
Introduction to the study of rhetorical interpretation, examining how language and performance generate and communicate meaning, from literature, art, film and politics to visual and material culture.Satisfies Arts & Literature or Philosophy & Values Breadth. Course catalog link
Exploration of the heroic narratives of the Northern Middle Ages with a focus on both the hero and the heroic ethos in a period of radical cultural, social and religious change and on a particular body of literature, the Scandinavian versions of Germanic heroic narrative. Satisfies Arts & Literature Breadth. Course catalog link
Russian, Soviet and post-Soviet literature from the 1900 to the present viewed in a socio-cultural and political context. 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. Satisfies Arts & Literature Breadth. Course catalog link
Books written for children emerge from specific and complicated social and historical contexts, as do the children (and adults) who read these books. In recent years, the world of children's books has been rocked by productive debates about the kinds of stories told and the identities of the voices telling those stories. In this class, we will read a wide assortment of books written (both long ago and very recently) for children, with particular attention paid to books addressing the experiences of Native, Latinx and African American children in the United States. We will also read scholarly, critical, and theoretical articles as we engage with our texts. Assessment will be based on class participation, written papers, and exams. Satisfies American Cultures requirement. Course catalog link
This course is a survey of South Asia from the 10th century to the present. 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. Students will study the broad patterns of historical change in South Asia from the 10th century to the present, the major cultural shifts and religious formations that have shaped South Asia over the past thousand-plus years, discuss cultural texts that reflect the history of South Asia and explain South Asia’s shifting relations with the world over the longue duree. Meets Historical Studies or International Studies, L&S Breadth. Course catalog link
This course considers a period in American and Philippine history when the two countries were formally intertwined through law and violence. It begins with the Philippine-American War of 1898 and ends at the start of the postwar Philippine Republic in 1946. The Philippines is the only former formal colony of the US. Yet its history is understudied, mainly because it is inconvenient to think of the US as a European-style colonial power. This course’s primary goal is to help write the colonialism of the Philippines back into US history. Meets American Cultures Requirement. Course catalog link
This course provides an introduction to theater through the study of values and issues fundamental to cultural identity, the comparison of selected cultural groups and their relationship to American society as a whole, and the study of drama as an instrument for understanding and expressing cultural identity. Theater of specific cultural groups to be included will be determined by the availability of live theater productions offered on campus and in the Bay Area. Satisfies Arts & Literature Breadth and American Cultures requirement. Course catalog link
This beginning-level Modern Dance class requires no prior experience. Students will explore movement through Gaga, improvisation, floorwork, inversions, and athletic standing phrases. Classes include technical exercises—both freeform and set—to build strength, flexibility, endurance, coordination, and expressiveness. The course also introduces the foundations and history of Modern Dance to provide context for contemporary practices. Course catalog link
