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August 2, 2023

The Division of Arts & Humanities at UC Berkeley is pleased to welcome professor Liesl Yamaguchi as of July 1, 2023. Yamaguchi is an assistant professor in the Department of French with a specialization in linguistics and translation.

UC Berkeley’s Division of Arts & Humanities is pleased to welcome professor Iggy Cortez as of July 1, 2023. Cortez is an assistant professor in the Department of Film & Media and specializes in world art cinema; digital media ecologies; queer theory; comparative critical race studies; and American independent film.

The Division of Arts & Humanities at UC Berkeley is pleased to announce Professor Ethan Katz as the new Director for the Center for Jewish Studies, effective July 1, 2023. 

The Division of Arts & Humanities at UC Berkeley is pleased to welcome professor Timmia Hearn DeRoy as of July 1, 2023. DeRoy is an assistant professor in the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, where she focuses on Caribbean theater practice and how to use this practice more broadly in community-oriented and social change focused theater. 

The Division of the Arts & Humanities announces that Eric Falci will chair the Celtic Studies Program, as of July 1, 2023. Falci is professor and chair for the English department and specializes in Irish and 20th and 21st century British poetry. 

On July 1, 2023, the Division of the Arts & Humanities welcomed 16 new faculty: 

Marié Abe, Department of Music: Marié Abe joins the division as an associate professor in the Department of Music and focuses on the intersection between improvisation and composition.

The Division of Arts & Humanities at UC Berkeley is pleased to announce Professor Justin Davidson as Director for the Program in Romance Languages and Literatures, effective July 1, 2023. 

UC Berkeley’s Division of Arts & Humanities welcomes Verónica Gómez Sánchez as of July 1, 2023. Gómez Sánchez is an assistant professor in the campus Department of Philosophy, where she focuses on metaphysics of science and philosophy of cognitive science.

The Division of Arts & Humanities at UC Berkeley is pleased to announce Professor Duncan MacRae as co-Director of the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion, effective July 1, 2023. 

April 18, 2023

The Division of Arts & Humanities at UC Berkeley is pleased to welcome professor Zamansele Nsele as of Jan. 1, 2023. Nsele is an assistant professor in the History of Art Department, where she specializes in modern and contemporary African & African diasporic art, and holds a faculty position at the Center for African Studies. 

March 3, 2023

UC Berkeley’s Division of Arts & Humanities welcomes Roni Masel as of Jan. 1, 2023. Masel, an assistant professor in the campus’s Department of Comparative Literature, concentrates on Hebrew and Yiddish literatures. 

March 2, 2023

UC Berkeley’s Division of Arts and Humanities welcomes Akash Kumar, as of July 1, 2022. Kumar is an assistant professor in the Department of Italian Studies and specializes in medieval Italian literature. He is currently teaching an undergraduate course on Dante’s Inferno and a special topics graduate course, Reading Beneath the Veil: A History of Theory Through Dante. 

UC Berkeley’s Division of Arts & Humanities welcomes Luther Obrock as of July 1, 2022. Obrock joins the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, where he is an assistant professor of Sanskrit and specializes in the study of kāvya, which is elite ornate poetry in Sanskrit, and its continued relevance in medieval India. 

UC Berkeley’s Division of Arts & Humanities welcomes Robyn Jensen as of July 1, 2022. Jensen, an assistant teaching professor in the campus’s Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures, specializes in Russian literature and culture of the 19th and 20th centuries. 

October 20, 2022

October 6, 2022

The Division of Arts & Humanities has a number of esteemed faculty who have participated in the LMU-UCB program for humanities research. In this series, we interview faculty who have had enriching experiences as part of a visiting professorship or fellow. In 2007, the University of California, Berkeley Division of Arts & Humanities and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU Munich) established a joint program to pursue innovative, collaborative research in the Humanities.

September 12, 2022

Berkeley News

It’s no surprise that seats in Poulomi Saha’s course, Cults in Popular Culture, fill up fast. Cults have long fascinated Americans, who had no shortage of docu-series about them to binge-watch while isolated during the pandemic. Popular ones include “Wild Wild Country,” on the Rajneeshpuram community in Wasco County, Oregon; “The Vow,” about the Nxivm “self-improvement” group, and “Heaven’s Gate: The Cult of Cults.”

August 18, 2022

On July 1, 2022, the Division of the Arts & Humanities welcomed new chairs and directors for 10 departments and centers: