Departments in the Division of Arts & Humanities offer an array of undergraduate gateway courses that fulfill L&S Breadth requirements as well as the American Cultures requirement. Please find a selection of Fall 2025 classes below.
Learn more at https://classes.berkeley.edu/, check out freshman/sophomore seminars and Berkeley Connect classes to round out your schedule, and view the full array of language instruction across A&H on our Languages and Global Engagement page.
Study of the major developments, achievements, and contradictions in Greek culture from the Bronze Age to the 4th century BCE. Key works of literature, history, and philosophy (read in English translation) will be examined in their political and social context, and in relation both to other ancient Mediterranean cultures and to subsequent developments in Western civilization. Satisfies Arts & Literature, Historical Studies, or Philosophy & Values L&S Breadth. Course catalog link.
This course introduces the archaeology of the Greek world from the Neolithic to the Hellenistic period (approximately 7000 to 150 BCE) and includes both art historical and anthropological approaches. We will explore the artifacts that ancient people used in their daily lives, as well as the buildings, landscapes, and tombs where they lived, worked, worshipped, and died. We will also examine famous artworks, monuments, and sites, from the gold-filled Shaft Graves of Mycenae to the Parthenon in Athens, tracking key technical and stylistic developments. Above all, we will learn how to situate archaeological sites and artifacts within their larger social, economic, and political contexts, using new methods and theories to interpret the past. Discussions of cultural heritage, repatriation, the antiquities trade, and archaeological ethics will illuminate the many ways in which Greek archaeology is relevant to the concerns of today. Satisfies Arts & Literature or Historical Studies L&S Breadth. Course catalog link.
A first course in the language, processes, and media of visual art. Course work will be organized around weekly lectures and studio problems that will introduce students to the nature of art making and visual thinking. This course is a prerequisite for applying to the Art Practice major. Satisfies Arts & Literatures L&S Breadth. Course catalog link.
Today, the word “Celtic” may bring to mind shamrocks, red hair, or a knot-based style of artwork common to jewelry and tattoos. The Celtics (soft c) are a sports team. But who are the Celtic (hard c) peoples, and what are the origins of these associations? Celtic Studies 70 will provide an introduction to the history of the Celtic-speaking peoples from the time of the Indo-Europeans through to the present day. We will consider a variety of types of evidence for understanding who the earliest Celts were, and discuss the question of whether or not they should in fact be considered as a unified group. Meets Historical Studies or Social & Behavioral Sciences L&S Breadth. Course Catalog link.
A queen who is turned into a fly, swallowed, and reborn. Giants whose eyelids need to be raised with forks. Silver-handed warriors. Otherworldly quests, epic battles, and the “winning” of women. What, if anything, can tales of these figures and events tell us of Celtic mythology? Answering this question may not be as straightforward as some would hope, but it will be an aim of this class not only to introduce students to Celtic mythology as we understand it today, but also to demonstrate how recognizing what we do not know may be just as important as what we do. Meets Arts & Literature or Philosophy & Values L&S Breadth. Course catalog link.
Study of the ethnic diversity of American literature. Topics will vary from semester to semester, but may include such themes as Cultures of the City, Gender, Race, Ethnicity in U.S. Literature, Race and Identity. Students should consult the department's course bulletin well before the beginning of the semester for details. Meets Arts & Literature, L&S Breadth, American Cultures Requirement. Course catalog link.
What would it mean to begin modern American history on the island of Manhattan instead of New England? We intend to question the Anglo-American perspective on the representation of cultural identity, national identity, ethnicity, and race by contrasting the traditional foundation story of the United States with that of the 17th-century Dutch colony on Manhattan. Readings will include historical and ethnographic writings, self-representations of the different ethnic groups, and fictional accounts. Meets Historical Studies L&S Breadth and the American Cultures Requirement. Course catalog link.
This introduction to the study of Buddhism will consider materials drawn from various Buddhist traditions of Asia, from ancient times down to the present day. However, the course is not intended to be a comprehensive or systematic survey; rather than aiming at breadth, the course is designed around key themes such as ritual, image veneration, mysticism, meditation, and death. The overarching emphasis throughout the course will be on the hermeneutic difficulties attendant upon the study of religion in general, and Buddhism in particular. Meets Philosophy & Values L&S Breadth. Course catalog link. Also offered as SSEASN C52 and BUDDSTD C50.
The first in a two-semester sequence, introducing students to Chinese literature in translation. In addition to literary sources, a wide range of philosophical and historical texts will be covered, as well as aspects of visual and material culture. Meets Arts & Literature or Historical Studies L&S Breadth. Course catalog link.
This course is an overview of Japanese literature and culture, 7th- through 18th-centuries. No previous course work in Japanese literature, history, or language is expected. Meets Arts & Literature or Historical Studies L&S Breadth. Course catalog link.
A survey of pre-modern Korean literature and culture from the seventh century to the 19th century, focusing on the relation between literary texts and various aspects of performance tradition. All readings are in English. Meets Arts & Literature or Historical Studies L&S Breadth. Course catalog link.
What is the English literary tradition? Where did it come from? What are its distinctive habits, questions, styles, obsessions? This course will answer these and other questions by focusing on five key writers from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: the anonymous Beowulf poet; Geoffrey Chaucer; Christopher Marlowe; John Donne; and John Milton. We will start with the idea that the English literary tradition is a set of interrelated texts and problems that recur over the course of several centuries. Meets Arts & Literature L&S Breadth. Course catalog link.
This course is an introduction to and a survey of literature in English from the beginning of the eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth. We will discuss in lecture and in smaller sections different examples of British and American poetry, fiction, and non-fiction prose to understand the ways in which literary form could sometimes make available, sometimes obscure, and sometimes transform social and political contents in the period under consideration. We will especially consider reciprocal relations between literary and social authority in a time marked by its reforms and revolutions. Meets Arts & Literature L&S Breadth. Course catalog link
This course will survey a range of modern English-language literature (novels, poetry, and drama), paying particular attention to the ways in which literary form has responded to the rapid social and cultural changes of modernity. These include urbanization and globalization, rapid technological growth, the unprecedented violence of two world wars, imperialism and decolonization, and shifting definitions of racial, gender, sexual, and national identities. Meets Arts & Literature Breadth. Course catalog link
This course is intended to introduce undergraduates to the study of a range of media, including photography, film, television, video, and print and digital media. The course will focus on questions of medium "specificity" or the key technological/material, formal and aesthetic features of different media and modes of address and representation that define them. Also considered is the relationship of individual media to time and space, how individual media construct their audiences or spectators, and the kinds of looking or viewing they enable or encourage. The course will discuss the ideological effects of various media, particularly around questions of racial and sexual difference, national identity, capitalism, and power. Satisfies Arts & Literature L&S Breadth. Course catalog link
This class will offer students a historical exploration of the urban artifact that is Paris. Proceeding “forensically,” the class aims to peel back what is visible to today’s observer in order to uncover the historical, economic, and ideological forces that have produced one of the most visited cities in the world. Students can expect, first, to gain knowledge of the city’s infrastructure, from its historical center to its marginalized outer suburbs. More generally, we will attend to the overlapping layers in Paris’s built environment, which is also to say the way that the Instagrammable urban present is haunted by the displacements and traumas of the past. And beyond Paris itself, we’ll be thinking a lot about how all human-made environments inscribe the needs, values, and technologies that have made them possible. Meets Arts & Literature or Historical Studies L&S Breadth. Course catalog link.
This course will focus on the theory and practice of propaganda during the 12 years of the Third Reich. It takes a close look at the ideology the Nazis tried to transmit, the techniques, organization, and effectiveness of their propaganda. Challenging the idea of the total power of propaganda, it looks for the limits of persuasion and possible other reasons for which Germans might have decided to follow Hitler. Sources will include the press, radio, film, photography, political posters, and a few literary works of the time. Meets Historical Studies and Social & Behavioral Sciences L&S Breadth. Course catalog link.
This course is an examination of ancient art from the Prehistoric through the Medieval periods (with a focus on and questioning of the Western perspective). You will be introduced to major (and minor) artifacts and works of art and architecture from various time periods and regions and asked to reflect on their artistic significance, visual rhetoric and cultural context. As you are acquainted with different ways of looking at and interpreting art, you will develop your own critical sense of art history. Through exploring an assortment of paintings, sculptures and buildings from various perspectives, you will learn to develop and refine your ideas about art through writing and class assignments. In this way you will deepen your understanding and appreciation of some of the most iconic works of art from the ancient (Western) world. Satisfies Arts & Literature or Historical Studies L&S Breadth. Course catalog link.
This lower-division undergraduate course examines selected examples of Indigenous art from South and Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean between 5000 BCE and the 16th century. Each week the course will explore a different medium: stone, clay, textiles, gold, jade, shells, feathers, pigments, resins, soil, and bodily tissues, and highlight the connections between materials, making, and meaning. Engaging with theories of craftsmanship and technology, Indigenous worldviews, and human-environment relationships, the course will also examine how Indigenous forms of making challenge and expand the traditional methodologies of Art History that developed from the Greco-Roman tradition. Meets Arts & Literature or Philosophy & Values L&S Breadth. Course catalog link.
Introduction to Italian studies through selected topics and themes integral to the history, literature, and arts of Italy from Dante to Fellini. Satisfies Arts & Literature, Historical Studies, or Social & Behavioral Sciences L&S Breadth. Course catalog link.
This course explores how a film style known as Italian neorealism traveled across the Atlantic and became a powerful means of narrating the lives and experiences of diverse individuals and communities that are often left out of Hollywood’s more glamorous–though narrow–depictions of everyday life in the US. We begin with an introduction to major works of the Italian neorealist canon by De Sica, Rossellini, and Visconti. We move on to explore how neorealist style was taken up by independent filmmakers in the US to bring to the center the vibrant contours, sounds, and textures of lives lived at the margins, revealing larger structural and historical violences. Includes influential and lesser-known works by filmmakers like John Cassavetes, Shirley Clarke, Barbara Loden, Wayne Wang, Charles Burnett, Billy Woodbury, Kelly Reichardt, Ramin Bahrani, Efraín Gutiérrez, So Yong Kim, and Sean Baker. Satisfies American Cultures Requirement. Course catalog link.
This course introduces students to the diversity of Jewish communities across time and geographies through a survey of literatures, histories, and cultures. Jewish cultures have always been co-produced in interaction with their non-Jewish neighbors. Through this study of Jewish cultural pluralism throughout history, we will investigate complex issues of identity and layers of belonging. Students from all majors and backgrounds are welcome. No previous knowledge of Judaism or Jewish Studies is necessary. – Meets Philosophy & Values, Historical Studies, or Arts & Literature L&S Breadth – Counts towards the Jewish Studies Minor. Course catalog link.
This course introduces students to the Ancient Middle Eastern world through its languages, texts, art, and material culture. Emphasis is placed on Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia as well as their neighbors in Iran, Turkey, Arabia, and Africa. Students are introduced to techniques scholars use to study this evidence, including philology, archaeology, visual analysis, and digital humanities. Topics include urbanism, kingship, science, religion, and death. Students interact with original materials in campus and Bay Area museums. No prior coursework is required. Meets Arts & Literature or Historical Studies L&S Breadth. Course catalog link.
The course focuses on the impacts of migration and displacement of people from postcolonial Middle East region and the U.S. legal, political, social, and religious discourse on cross-cultural and ethical issues which arise in immigration practice while placing the phenomena within a global and transnational context. Three separate groups in the US will be examined; Middle Eastern immigrants, El Salvadoran diaspora, and rightwing white communities. The course seeks to draw connections between Middle Eastern migration and diaspora in the colonial and postcolonial periods leading to the modern period of restrictive immigration policies, building of walls, targeting Arab and Muslim immigrants as well as all immigrants from the Global South. Meets American Cultures Requirement. Course catalog link.
A writing course based on traditional harmony. Beginning linear and vertical analysis. For general students. Emphasis on written exercises. Satisfies Arts & Literature L&S Breadth. Course catalog link.
Two perspectives are developed: 1) diverse music of groups in America, and 2) American music as a unique phenomenon. Groups considered are African, Asian, European, Hispanic/Latino, and Native American. Lectures and musical examples are organized by topics such as music of socio-economic subgroups within large groups, survival of culture, pan-ethnicity, religious and concert music, and the folk-popular music continuum. Meets the American Cultures Requirement. Satisfies Arts & Literature or Social & Behavioral Sciences, L&S Breadth. Course catalog link.
Introduction to ethical and political philosophy. Satisfies Philosophy & Values or Social & Behavioral Sciences Breadth. Course catalog link
Introduction to the philosophy of mind. Topics to be considered may include the relation between mind and body; the structure of action; the nature of desires and beliefs; the role of the unconscious. Satisfies Philosophy & Values L&S Breadth. Course catalog link
Introduction to the study of rhetorical interpretation, examining how language and performance generate and communicate meaning, from literature, art, film and politics to visual and material culture. Satisfies Arts & Literature or Philosophy & Values L&S Breadth. Course catalog link.
This course explores the most important cultural contributions of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. It focuses on an interdisciplinary historical examination of the emergence of three central contemporary Nordic value systems: environmentalism, gender equality, and social solidarity/trust. The readings range in approach from social-science-inflected readings in political science, history of science, ethnography, and public policy, to those examining more humanistic forms of expression (literature, theater, film). Taught in English with readings in English. Meets Historical Studies or Social & Behavioral Sciences L&S Breadth. Course catalog link.
Nineteenth-century Russian literature, including Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov. The class is taught in English, on the basis of English translations; students with knowledge of Russian are encouraged to do at least some of the reading in the original. Meets Arts & Literature L&S Breadth. Course catalog link.
This course is a survey of ancient South Asia, from around 2500 BCE to the 10th century CE. Close attention will be paid to the geography and ethnography of the region, its political and economic history, the religious, philosophical, literary, and artistic movements that have shaped it and contributed to its development as a unique, diverse, and fascinating civilization. We will cover broad patterns of historical change in ancient South Asia from the 10th century to the present, major cultural shifts and religious formations that have shaped South Asia over the past thousand-plus years, cultural texts that reflect the history of South Asia, and South Asia’s shifting relations with the world over the longue duree. Meets Historical Studies or Philosophy & Values, L&S Breadth. Course Catalog link.
An introduction to the mythologies of Southeast Asia, providing a comparative overview of key myths. We will focus on indigenous narrative traditions encompassing myths of creation and origin, agricultural and maritime myths and practices, the founding of kingdoms, and indigenous geographies. We will further explore the role of myth in the contemporary world. Meets Arts & Literature, L&S Breadth. Course Catalog link.
Dance as a meaning-making expressive form. Develop the tools necessary for looking at dance, analyzing it, writing about it, and understanding its place in larger social, cultural, political structures. We will look at a variety of U.S. American dance genres, understanding them through their historical and cultural contexts, to explore how issues of race, gender, sexuality and class affect the practice and the reception of different dance forms, and how dance might help shape representations of these identities. Ethnic groups that the course studies include African, Asian, and European Americans, indigenous peoples of the U.S., and Chicanos/Latinos. Accessible to students with no dance experience. Not a studio-based class. Satisfies Arts & Literature Breadth and American Cultures requirement. Course catalog link.
This course introduces the critical terms and practices of the contemporary study of performance. Several key terms and important genres of artistic and social performance will be engaged; the course will draw critical and disciplinary methods from anthropology and ethnography, from the theory of dance and theater, from literary and cultural theory. Critical and theoretical concepts will be used to analyze a wide range of live and recorded performances, as well as performance texts. Satisfies Arts & Literature Breadth. Course catalog link.
