I'm a graduate student in the Slavic Languages and Literatures program at Berkeley. I also have a designated emphasis in Jewish Studies. I speak English, Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Polish, Yiddish, Lithuanian, and French.
There is an academic department at Arizona State University that may surprise many people: More than 90% of undergraduates that do a local internship are employed when they graduate.
The department? Not business or computer science, as many people may initially guess.
English.
When Ann Wai-Yee Kwong entered UC Berkeley as a student, she had never heard of disability studies, an interdisciplinary field that examines the social structures and cultural depictions that shape — and are shaped by — the experiences of people with disabilities.
“There's no chapter in high school that focuses on disability,” said Kwong, who is blind. “The idea that disability is something you can be proud of — that it’s a field with rich socioeconomic and historical identity you can study — was relatively new to me.”
This next interview is very exciting for us, because it’s our first interview with an undergraduate student! I personally met Fabiola Vazquez Espinoza through a literary magazine we’re both editors for: Vagabond Multilingual Journal. But Fabiola is an extremely active part of the arts and humanities community here on campus and is a part of several other incredible organizations that we will be speaking more about.
I speak English, Hindi, French, Korean, Catalan, German, and Italian, and I can read Latin and Old French. Out of these, the languages I have studied at Berkeley are Latin, Old French, Catalan, German, and Italian. I highly recommend all of these classes.
For our second interview, I wanted to highlight the professor who was one of the main contributors in helping me start this publication: Professor Eric Falci of the English Department. Professor Falci joined UC Berkeley’s faculty in 2006, and currently serves as the English Department's Chair. I first met Professor Falci through a seminar I took, funded by The Bedri Distinguished Writers Series. For any freshman or prospective students reading, this is a wonderful program which I highly recommend looking into.
Ron Stroud, a leading expert in the study of Greek epigraphy, taught in the Department of Ancient Greek and Roman Studies from 1965 until 2007. He helped found the Graduate Group in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology (AHMA) in 1968 and was instrumental in building AHMA into the premier program of its kind in the nation.
For the first interview of this series, I’m actually going to be interviewing a GSI, rather than a professor. It was really important to me that I started here because the first seed of this idea actually started in her class. Lauren Nguyen was my teacher for Latin 1 during my first semester here at Berkeley, and I remember having a really interesting conversation with her about the elitism we’ve dealt with in our respective academic careers.
In partnership with On the Same Page, the Division of Arts & Humanities sponsored a student essay and video contest. We asked students to stream the documentary (available for free here, including a version with audio description and open captions), and invited them to respond to one of the following prompts:
Dear readers,
As with many things in my life, this column was partially inspired by aspects of my personal life, partially inspired by literature. And because this column is designated to highlighting the arts and humanities, I thought it would be fitting to begin by introducing the wonderful short story that partially inspired me in this process: “The Library of Babel” by Jorge Luis Borges.
Haley Baynard is a new student in theater and performance studies, who plans on pursuing a career in stage management. She says strong communication and leadership skills, and the ability to improvise and think quickly, are some of the traits of successful stage managers.
Sofia Liashcheva/UC Berkeley
Laurie Wu McClain (B.A. '64, J.D. '82) and Chuck McClain have been attending music performances on campus for years. They are intimately familiar with 768-seat Hertz Hall — and were aware that no equivalent venue existed on campus for small performances. Cal parents John and Kristi Cumming likewise noticed that the quality of spaces in Morrison Hall did not do justice to the talent of student musicians. Thanks to their generosity, that is about to change.
Walking into my senior capstone course for the English major, I was a third-year student surrounded mostly by seniors headed out the door. Many people take these capstone courses in their final semester, but I took mine for English earlier to make room for a sociology thesis later.
My mind lives to create — so this expediting didn’t surprise me.
"I really like the existential movement, where nothing really has a purpose, apart from what you make of it," says new first-year student Esther Cannesson.
Brittany Hosea-Small for UC Berkeley
The department of East Asian Languages and Cultures (EALC) is excited to announce a new major in East Asian Humanities. "This major will open doors," says Chair Robert Ashmore.
Weihong Bao, associate professor of Film & Media and East Asian Languages & Cultures, has been appointed to the Pamela P. Fong and Family Distinguished Chair in China Studies. Bao's appointment marks the first time the chair has been awarded to a faculty member from a humanities discipline.
The Department of Art Practice within the Division of Arts & Humanities is celebrating its 100th anniversary. The department’s two-year MFA program, which supports on average a dozen graduate students, is also welcoming its 100th MFA class this fall with increased resources for students.
The protagonist of Susanna Hoffs' debut novel, Jane Start, probably listens to Dionne Warwick to hype herself up in the morning. Start is 33 and living with her parents – her days of pop stardom, for one song, are 10 years behind her. But in This Bird Has Flown, a romantic spark reignites a second chance for her creative endeavors, too. Hoffs tells NPR's Andrew Limbong how her own experiences as a rockstar influenced the story, which she's adapting into a feature film.
The Division of Arts & Humanities at UC Berkeley is pleased to welcome professor Marié Abe as of July 1, 2023. She is an associate professor in the Department of Music and focuses on the intersection between improvisation and composition.