Composer Ken Ueno, a UC Berkeley assistant professor of music, says the audience at the San Francisco premiere of his new musical composition heard sounds they likely never heard before. The piece performed on Nov. 2 by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players was performed by Ueno himself. Listen to a sample of a 2004 performance.
 

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Five new post-doctoral scholars will spend the next two years at Berkeley as the 2009-2011 Mellon Postdoctoral Fellows. The fellows bring international talent to Berkeley, with research areas spanning the arts, humanities and humanistic social sciences.

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Until as recently as the 1970s, many American cities had so-called “ugly laws” on the books, making it illegal for a person with "unsightly" disabilities to “expose himself to public view.” English Professor Susan Schweik explores these laws in "The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public."

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Many departments at Berkeley encourage or expect students to work outside the classroom — whether teaching archaeological methodologies to sixth graders or working with refugees fleeing persecution — as part of a tradition with deep roots at Cal: service learning.  

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In her latest book, Alison Gopnik debunks the notion that babies are blank slates. Instead, she write, babies are “learning machines” with the capacity to experiment and analyze their own observations at rates that would “put the most productive scientists to shame.”

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Less than a year after graduating summa cum laude in Peace and Conflict Studies, Sasha Pippenger found herself working behind barbed wire in one of the world's most dangerous cities. Yet she calls this a dream job.

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