Arts & Humanities

In this Berkeley Talks episode, Ramzi Fawaz, a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and UC Berkeley alum, explores why the humanities and psychedelics might have more in common than you’d think, and how literature, much like psychedelics, can help open one’s mind to the world.

Fawaz, who spoke at Berkeley in September, argues that the humanities classroom functions as a vital space for shared sense-making, where deep engagement with art and literature can rewire the brain much like a psychedelic experience — helping students heal from the rigid...

A panel of UC Berkeley professors in the College of Letters & Science discuss how they view decision-making from their respective fields, and how we can use these approaches to make more informed choices.

Today we are revisiting a Berkeley Talks episode in which a cross-disciplinary panel of UC Berkeley professors, whose expertise ranges from political science to philosophy, discuss how they view decision-making from their respective fields, and how we can use these approaches to make better, more informed choices.

Panelists include:

UC Berkeley researchers used machine learning to analyze more than 5,000 Billboard Hot 100 hits, finding that storytelling has been on the uptick since the 1990s thanks to the rise in popularity of hip-hop.

Think of the lyrics of your favorite pop song. Are they like Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well,” which narrates the story of a breakup, jumping back and forth in time and building a world through vivid descriptions of past memories? Or are they more like...

The Dutch yacht Bruynvisch delivered the first enslaved Africans to Manhattan (formerly known as New Netherland) in 1627. This research article shines a new light on this forgotten history, challenging old assumptions about where these people came from and who they were.

Abstract: By using a research methodology that is commonly applied to enslaved communities in Latin America, this article provides new insights into the origins and identities of the captives the Dutch yacht Bruynvisch brought in 1627 to New Netherland, the Dutch colony...