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March 2, 2023

Assistant Professor Luther Obrock Joins Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies

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. 

Assistant Teaching Professor Robyn Jensen Joins Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures

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. 

March 1, 2023

"The door to a larger world": Alan Templeton on supporting the arts, the humanities, and public universities

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

February 27, 2023

California Magazine
Sunset Noir: Christopher Chen’s Play Explores the Landscape of the Mind in a San Francisco Setting (California Magazine)

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.

Berkeley News
How is The Magnes rethinking its engagement with museum visitors?

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. 

February 14, 2023

University Development and Alumni Relations
Viet Thanh Nguyen (English B.A. '92, Ph.D. '97) on finding himself at Berkeley

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.

February 13, 2023

Metropolis Magazine
Metropolis: Rael San Fratello 3D Prints Architecture with a Political Edge

Rael San Fratello Explores the Border Through Design

February 8, 2023

Freakonomics Radio
Author and alum Samin Nosrat (English '01) on writing and finding a career path

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. 

February 7, 2023

ArtForum
T.J. Clark and Tausif Noor win 2023 Grace Dudley Prize for Art Writing

The Robert B. Silvers Foundation today announced art historian T. J. Clark and critic Tausif Noor as the winners of its second annual Grace Dudley Prize for Arts Writers.

Berkeley News
UC Berkeley’s Moses Hall is unnamed and will temporarily be named Philosophy Hall

What the Philosophy chairs, faculty, students, and staff have done in recommending this unnaming is to move our campus community towards a greater sense of inclusion and justice. This act reflects a powerful sense of awareness in the way that remnants from the past can continue to provoke harm in the present. It reminds us that we have a choice when selecting the ways that we approach and honor our histories. We commend what the Philosophy department has done in pointing towards a more inclusive and antiracist future.

February 6, 2023

La Repubblica
La Repubblica: Stati Uniti, la rivincita degli studi umanistici (Italian)

New York - Quando molti anni fa il padre del giovane Ted seppe che il figlio aveva scelto un corso di studio di letteratura all’università, gli scrisse poche e cordiali righe, che cominciavano così: “Mio caro figliolo, sono sconvolto, direi inorridito, nel sapere che hai scelto i classici come materia principale, al punto che oggi ho quasi vomitato tornando a casa”.

February 4, 2023

SF Chronicle Datebook
Datebook: Native American voices, actors come to the stage in 2 new Bay Area plays

Before the development of film and television, no art form but theater was more closely suited to bring stories to life. Yet rarely are stories told by and for an entire people as neglected in theater as those of Native Americans.

Through the month, Bay Area audiences will have a unique opportunity to experience new stories in two alternately candid and comic small-cast plays written, directed by and featuring Indigenous people.

February 2, 2023

ARC Press Release
Arts Research Center partners with AlterTheater to premiere award-winning play by Native American writer and Artist-in-Residence

The Arts Research Center—a think tank for the arts at UC Berkeley—is partnering with AlterTheater to present a rolling world premiere of an award-winning new comedy, Pueblo Revolt by Dillon Chitto. Pueblo Revolt will run February 2-12, 2023 at the Arts Research Center (ARC) and February 13-26 at Art Works Downtown in San Rafael.

Axios
Axios: STEM who? The humanities mount a comeback

The pro-STEM movement has gutted high school and college humanities programs — but there's some evidence of a post-pandemic revival afoot.

February 1, 2023

Professor Hilton Als brings UC Berkeley alumna’s written consciousness to life with exhibition Joan Didion: What She Means

UC Berkeley professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Hilton Als has worked with UC Berkeley alumna and pioneer of New Journalism Joan Didion (Sacramento, California, 1934 - Manhattan, New York, 2021) throughout his career, even writing the foreword to her final book of essays, Let Me Tell You What I Mean. Now, he has curated Joan Didion: What She Means, which opened less than a year after Didion’s death at age 87 and will remain on view at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles through Feb. 19, 2023. 

Berkeley News
Townsend AIR William Kentridge on staying open to the ‘less good’ ideas

In Berkeley Talks episode 160, world-renowned South African artist William Kentridge discusses the process of making the 2019 chamber opera Waiting for the Sibyl. He also touches on why artists should stay open to new ideas, the complex relationship between humans and algorithms — “one has to make space for that which does not compute,” he says — and the “unavoidable optimism” in the activity of making.

January 31, 2023

Translation writ large: Meg Parker (Rhetoric and French '10)

Meg Parker graduated from UC Berkeley in 2010 with a double major in French and Rhetoric, then went on to earn her JD from Georgetown University Law Center.

January 26, 2023

PEN Literary Awards
Hilton Als and Solmaz Sharif make the 2023 PEN America Literary Awards Longlists

UC Berkeley English professors Hilton Als (for My Pinup) and Solmaz Sharif (for Customs) have both been longlisted for the 2023 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, which is awarded to a book-length work of any genre for its originality, merit, and impact, which has broken new ground by reshaping the boundaries of its form and signaling strong potential for lasting

January 23, 2023

A Q&A with Current Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellows
The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) program at UC Berkeley fosters the academic development of undergraduate students with exceptional promise in the humanities or social sciences and potential for careers that will contribute to diversity and equal opportunity in the academy. MMUF supports Fellows by providing mentorship and the environment and resources to pursue their research and prepare for graduate school and faculty careers. Since the program’s inception in 2008, Berkeley MMUF Fellows have been accepted into graduate programs at Cambridge University (UK), University of Chicago, New York University, Purdue University, Stanford University, UC Berkeley, UC Los Angeles, University of Michigan, and the University of Southern California. As the application cycle for the 2023-24 cohort opens, we spoke with two current Fellows and A&H majors about their experiences in MMUF.

January 18, 2023

Francesca Rochberg will present the 110th Martin Meyerson Faculty Research Lecture, the highest honor bestowed on Berkeley faculty

Francesca Rochberg, Catherine and William L. Magistretti Distinguished Professor Emerita of Near Eastern Studies in the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, has been named as one of the 2023 Martin Meyerson Faculty Research Lecturers at UC Berkeley. For more than a century, UC Berkeley’s academic senate has selected distinguished faculty members whose research has changed the trajectory of their disciplines and expanded the global understanding of a subject.