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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.

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Living Pictures, written by author and scholar Polina Barskova, combines memoir, history, and fiction in a poignant collection of short pieces about her hometown, St. Petersburg, Russia.

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. 

Alan Templeton wants Berkeley students today to have the same opportunities his parents did.

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.

Rael San Fratello Explores the Border Through Design

Before she was a chef and an internationally-known cookbook author, Samin Nosrat (B.A. '01) was an English major at Berkeley. She talks about the writing process—and why a day of writing is so hard—in this Freakonomics Radio interview.