News

There’s a new performance hall at UC Berkeley, and its arrival comes at an exciting and critical time for the Department of Music: From fall 2020 to fall 2024, the number of declared undergraduates majoring in music at Berkeley grew 236%.

“Music is, in fact, the fastest growing major on campus, by a large margin,” said Mark Shaw, music department manager.

According to Berkeley’s Office of Equity and Inclusion, the number of declared undergraduate music majors jumped from 55 in fall 2020 to 195 in fall 2024.

Valerie Williams-Sanchez, Ph.D., is a UC Berkeley alum who graduated with an English degree in 1992. Today, Valerie is a consultant, researcher, publisher, and creator of the children’s picture book series, Cocoa Kids Collection®.

UC Berkeley Professor Timothy Tangherlini, of the Department of Scandinavian and the School of Information, has been named one of the co-principal investigators on a groundbreaking $7.5 million grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Defense. The project, led by researchers at Indiana University, will bring together an interdisciplinary team of experts in informatics, psychology, communications, and folklore to examine how artificial intelligence (AI) influences online communication, including the spread of misinformation and radicalizing messages.

A project funded by the University of California’s Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives (MRPI) spotlights UC Berkeley's contribution in addressing critical global challenges through interdisciplinary innovation.

We are delighted to announce that Linda Haverty Rugg, professor in UC Berkeley's Scandinavian Department, has been named co-recipient of this year's prestigious Prize for the Introduction of Swedish Culture Abroad, awarded by the Swedish Academy—the institution responsible for the Nobel Prizes.

Berkeley, CA — UC Berkeley’s Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry (CICI) and the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs (ICCTP) have been awarded $2.6 million to support a groundbreaking multi-year initiative titled “A Counter-Imaginary in Authoritarian Times.” Through collaborative workshops, conferences, performances, publications, and a dynamic, open-ended digital platform, this project brings together academics, artists, activists, and other community members to develop concrete strategies, tools, and proposals to create a counter-imagin

The Division of Arts & Humanities is proud to announce that Associate Professor of Scandinavian Kate Heslop has been named a co-recipient of the sixteenth Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Studies in Germanic Languages and Literatures. The prestigious award, presented biennially by the Modern Language Association (MLA), recognizes her groundbreaking work, Viking Mediologies: A New History of Skaldic Poetics, published by Fordham University Press.

The MLA prize committee praised Viking Mediologies for its transformative impact, stating:

In this interview, Claire Marie Stancek (English, Ph.D.

As a student in 1978, Bettina Duval '82 recalls seeing an "earth mobile" — an old El Camino filled with plants — and Jane Fonda speaking at an environmental rally on Sproul Plaza. Whether she was in the classroom or walking around campus, Duval, chair of the UC Berkeley Foundation, always "had the opportunity to listen to new and different ideas." While that remains a hallmark of the Cal experience, a lot has changed since then.

What changes have you observed in undergraduate education?

Kévin Drif is a third-year PhD student in the Department of French, with a designated emphasis in Film and Media Studies. His research largely focuses on cultural representations of children of immigrants in French media, as he explores the ways in which the idea of a French republican identity is confronted to children of immigrants’ cultural hybridity. Kévin received a BA and MA from the University of Tours in English literature, before receiving an MA in French and Francophone literature from CU Boulder. 

A week before Halloween, University of North Carolina English professor Florence Dore released a new single, “Signs of Life,” on music streaming services.

In 1872, the first endowed chair in the UC system was established for the teaching of Asian languages. What is now the department of East Asian Languages and Cultures was established in 1896, one of the first such departments in the U.S. But for most of Berkeley’s history, instruction in Chinese focused mainly on Mandarin. Now, thanks to a series of gifts, students at Berkeley will have more options to study Cantonese, Taiwanese/Hokkien, and other sinitic languages through the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures.