A New Story for the Humanitites: a communications campaign to increase visibility for the arts and humanities by UC Berkeley's Division of Arts & Humanitites.
At UC Berkeley and many other top universities, students increasingly are choosing to study fields such as art history, modern and ancient languages and literature, philosophy and religion, visual and performing arts, and film and media studies. They believe these academic disciplines are vital to their pursuit of becoming global citizens who can tackle society’s issues from many perspectives and approaches.
Despite decades of negative stereotypes touting arts and humanities fields as undesirable, unrealistic, and unemployable — students today see the value of humanities degrees in their pursuit of becoming part of a globalized world. In the Fall of 2022, the Division reported the following strengths:
- Berkeley's Division of Arts & Humanities has more students than ever, with many majors seeing their highest number of students in years and also with many keeping pace with university growth. We continue to track post-pandemic interrest in the arts and humanities at Berkeley and across the nation.
- Some majors, in particular, have seen exceptional increases in student interest. Our top three highest-growing majors are Art Practice, Film & Media, and Music, which are in the top-10 (out of 100+) highest-growing majors on campus over the past 5 years:
—Art Practice majors have increased, as a proportion of all undergrad majors, on average 12% year over year the last five years.
—Film and Media majors have increased, as a proportion of all undergrad majors, on average 12% year over year the last five years.
—Music majors have increased, as a proportion of all undergrad majors, on average 36% year over year the last five years.
To track this resurgence of interest, Sara Guyer, Dean of the Division of Arts & Humanities initiated a goal to increase visibility around positive trends in the humanitites, rather than the "old" crisis narrative — increased intrest in arts & humanities majors and increased employment reports. The humanities are, in fact, more popular than ever. The reports and articles below provide a sampling of this new and developing story for the humanities at Berkeley and in the world.
The Humanities allow us to live in Complexity
Sara Guyer, Dean of the Division of Arts & Humanities and Stephen Best, Director of the Townsend Center for the Humanities as they discuss the resurgence in popularity of the arts and humanities at UC Berkeley. Guyer and Best will explore the future of the arts and humanities and their impact within and beyond the university.