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From May 28-June 1, the Townsend Center for the Humanities and the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes hosted a delegation of 176 scholars, staff, and students from around the world to examine the state of risk for scholars in increasingly hostile environments at home and abroad. This gathering was a unique space where humanities scholars, practitioners, and administrators considered the fundamental questions of humanities research alongside the practical challenges of humanities research and program management.

When you start with language, whose meaning is more often than not taken for granted and then use it to mean differently, multiply, and unconventionally, in literature, you enter a world where resolution won’t be found or even assumed. At best, you will propose a sufficiently acceptable explanation of meaning, something we have to acknowledge is temporary, experimental, and hopeful.

It won’t be the last reading or the only one, but it will reflect your effort, your humility, and your sense. 

How often do undergraduates get a chance — in person — to ask a best-selling writer about their creative process?

Of the four finalists for this year's University Medal, two of them are Arts & Humanities majors. Meet Skylar Li Song (Art Practice), Bryce Wallace (English and Linguistics), and their fellow finalists for Berkeley's highest academic honor for undergradautes.

We talked to graduating senior Wilson Wang about his experiences at Berkeley. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Seven alums of the Division of Arts & Humanities were among the 188 Guggenheim Fellows whose names were announced on April 11, 2024.

Mai Der Vang

(B.A. English ‘03)
English Poet & Assistant Professor, Department of English, California State University, Fresno

For the first three years of Justin Davidson's childhood in Chicago, his mom spoke only Spanish to him. Although he never spoke the language as a young child, when Davidson began to learn Spanish in middle school, it came very quickly to him, and over the years, he became bilingual.

Now an associate professor in UC Berkeley's Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Davidson is part of a research team that has discovered where in the brain bilinguals store language-specific sounds and sound sequences. The research project is ongoing.

When Nathanael Stephen Payne ’23 was developing Wrestle with Jimmy for UC Berkeley’s “Introduction to Playwriting” class, he had no idea where the project would take him. His answer came several years later, when he crossed the stage at graduation as one of two students to receive the Larry Belling Promising Writers’ Award.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE.

There are countless English varieties in the U.S. There's Boston English and California English and Texas English. There's Black English and Chicano English. There's standard academic, or white, English. They're all the same language, but linguistically, they're different.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE.

Spanish speakers in the United States, among linguists and non-linguists, have been denigrated for the way that they speak, says UC Berkeley sociolinguist Justin Davidson. It's part of the country's long history of scrutiny of non-monolingual English speakers, he says, dating back to the early 20th century.

LISTEN TO BERKELEY TALKS

In Berkeley Talks episode 193, science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson discusses climate change, politics and the need for "angry optimism." Robinson is the author of 22 novels, including his most recent, The Ministry for the Future, published in 2020.