Matt Jacobson’s loyalty to UC Berkeley began at a young age.
His father, Norman, was a beloved professor who taught political theory at Berkeley for 56 years. Professors and students would drop by their house constantly. Matt recalls his father practicing his lectures on the family at the dinner table. Though there were times when Matt did not appreciate the in-house lessons, he now feels fortunate to have received a college-level experience at that age.
The Division of Arts and Humanities and the College of Letters & Science are delighted to announce that Les Gorske has accepted our offer to become the next Assistant Dean for Finance and Administration for the Division of Arts & Humanities (A&H). Les has been a crucial and valued member of the Dean’s office staff for the last four years.
Ed Roberts (B.A. '64, M.A. '66) is known as the father of the disability rights movement. “But if he’s the father, Zona is the grandmother. She’s the wheel behind his wheelchair,” says Donna Mitroff, founder of the Kidvocate Group media consultancy, who is filming a documentary about Zona’s life.
Read more about Zona Roberts (B.A. English '69) and her tireless advocacy for Ed Roberts and his legacy.
Rhetoric Department PhD candidate Linda Kinstler has been announced as one of 10 Whitting Award winners on March 29. The prizes are designed to recognize excellence and promise in a spectrum of emerging talent, giving most winners their first chance to devote themselves full time to their own writing, or to take bold new risks in their work.
You don’t hurriedly approach an Apichatpong Weerasethakul film, or watch one thinking you’ll catch up on text messages and voicemails.
To truly appreciate what’s unfolding, you need to slow down and surrender to the sensory, dream-like experience that the unique, award-winning filmmaker forms with such care. Tune out the mad dash of everydayness and commit yourself to Weerasethakul’s static scenes and long, telling takes in which the sights and sounds of nature and even city life sometimes provide more context than the dialogue.
Valeria Luiselli, the Spring 2023 Bedri Distinguished Writer, will deliver a public lecture, “Migration Stories,” on Thursday, April 20th at 5 pm in the Maude Fife Room (315 Wheeler).
On 31 March 1817 the New York legislature decided that enslavement within its borders had to come to an end. Final emancipation would occur on 4 July 1827. Coincidentally, the date of choice was almost exactly two centuries after the Dutch West India Company’s yacht Bruynvisch arrived at Manhattan on 29 August 1627. The ship transported the first group of enslaved Africans to New Amsterdam and thus introduced the institution of enslavement into what is now New York State.
UC Berkeley's Distinguished Teaching Award recognizes individual faculty for sustained excellence in teaching. Beyond an individual exemplary class, such sustained excellence in teaching incites intellectual curiosity in students, inspires colleagues, and makes students aware of significant relationships between the academy and the world at large. Recipients receive a cash award from campus and recognition by the Academic Senate. They are honored at a public ceremony, and are permanently indicated as Distinguished Teachers in the UC Berkeley catalog.
Art history students at UC Berkeley are putting their semester-long learning on display this week with Letters | الحروف: How Artists Reimagined Language in the Age of Decolonization — a thought-provoking exhibit opening March 13 in Doe Library’s Brown Gallery.
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.
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.
Alan Templeton wants Berkeley students today to have the same opportunities his parents did.
Last December, Hannah Weisman became the first executive director hired by UC Berkeley for The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, one of the preeminent Jewish collections in the world.
Playwright Christopher Chen is a homegrown talent. Hailing from the Sunset District of San Francisco, a neighborhood his family has lived in for generations, he went on to study music composition at UC Berkeley, where he got his start in writing and directing after joining the Asian American arts group Theatre Rice. In 2022, when his play The Late Wedding was performed at the Zellerbach Playhouse, it was, as he puts it, coming full circle.
Pulitzer-winning writer Viet Thanh Nguyen '92, Ph.D. '97 found at UC Berkeley the intellectual home, identity, and political passion that ultimately led to his creative success.
