News

Leah Binkovitz (History of Art, ‘10), a senior editorial writer at the Houston Chronicle, has been awarded the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing as part of the Chronicle’s editorial board.

Héctor Muñoz-Guzmán is a first-year MFA student from South Berkeley. Captivated by art at an early age, he strives to represent his immigrant family and community in the world of fine art. UC Berkeley writer Alexander Rony interviewed Muñoz-Guzmán at an open studio event where he displayed his paintings from the past year.

We are proud to share that two exceptional graduate students from the Division of Arts & Humanities have been named 2025–26 Rome Prize Fellows by the American Academy in Rome, one of the most esteemed honors in the humanities and arts.

The Armenian language and literature program at Berkeley will be supported in perpetuity thanks to an effort led by alum Eric Esrailian (B.A. ‘96 Integrative Biology) and his family.

When Dr. Esrailian first came to Berkeley in the early 1990s, it was a large and often impersonal place. Seeing a flyer about the Armenian Students Association helped him find community and feel at home.

Eleni Berg is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores themes of nature, immigration, consumerism, and indigeneity.

Berg spoke with UC Berkeley writer Alexander Rony at a recent open studio event for MFA (master’s in fine arts) students. At the time, Berg was hosting a workshop where visitors were sculpting clay filled with native seeds.

On a sunny Saturday in March, dozens of onlookers watched Jasmine Nyende charge, pull, twist, and duck under ropes held by six other performers. Nearby, portable speakers blared punk rock. Nyende’s performance — titled “Sankofa Moshpit” — was a joyful memorial to her late friend, Láwû. It was also one of the featured events during UC Berkeley’s MFA Open Studios.

In the early 2000s, UC Berkeley rhetoric professor Winnie Wong visited Dafen village in China, where artists painted replicas of famous pieces like the Mona Lisa and Starry Night. It dramatically changed how she thinks about art and those who make it.

When Winnie Wong first saw Dafen Oil Painting Village in 2006, it was nothing like she’d imagined. 

It’s hard to pinpoint when synesthesia, the rare neurological condition where a stimulus that affects one sense prompts a response in a different sense, was first documented. Scientific literature marks its beginning in 1812, when it appeared as an aside in a Bavarian medical student’s dissertation. Toward the end, there’s a small section where he detailed how he associated musical tones and letters with colors. 

Orestes Sophocleous is a re-entry undergraduate student at UC Berkeley. He is majoring in Film and Media with a minor in Rhetoric. He is currently a teaching assistant for Film 155, under professor Nicole Starosielski, on film infrastructure. Outside of academia, Orestes has a career as an actor, featured in films such as The End of a Pandemic (2020), A Brave Face (2018), and Committed (2014). 

In the early 2000s, UC Berkeley rhetoric professor Winnie Wong visited Dafen village in China, where artists painted replicas of famous pieces like the Mona Lisa and Starry Night. It dramatically changed how she thinks about art and those who make it.

Listen here.

When Winnie Wong first saw Dafen Oil Painting Village in 2006, it was nothing like she’d imagined. 

This month, The Berkeley Center for New Media (BCNM) at the University of California, Berkeley, launched the Certificate in Global Digital Infrastructure, the first and only program of its kind in higher education. Created and led by internet infrastructure expert and Professor Nicole Starosielski of UC Berkeley’s Department of

Nataliia Goshylyk is a lecturer in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, where she teaches Ukrainian. Dr. Goshylyk received her M.A. in Philology from Lesya Ukrainka Volyn State University, and her PhD in linguistics from Kharkiv National University. She is the recipient of the Berkeley Language Center Summer Fellowship in 2022, as well as a U.S. Fulbright Scholarship from 2021-2022, and she was an Erasmus Mundus Ianus II recipient in 2015, where she did research in Graz, Austria.