Arts & Humanities

Berkeley Talks: How art allows us to see everyday things anew

September 22, 2025

"Life and art are entangled," says UC Berkeley philosopher Alva Noë. "An engagement with an artwork is an engagement with oneself."

a woman looks at enlarged mounted photos of sparse rooms in a house on a gallery wall

In his 2023 book The...

Announcing the 2025 L&S First-Year Pathways Course Enrichment Grant Recipients

September 19, 2025

The UC Berkeley College of Letters & Science is pleased to announce the 2025 recipients of the inaugural L&S First-Year Pathways Course Enrichment Grants.

Now entering its third year, the L&S First-Year Pathways program has significantly expanded for 2025-26, growing from 6 clusters serving 125 students to nearly 20 clusters serving more than 230 students. L&S Pathways provides a small cohort experience for groups of 17-30 incoming freshmen who take "clusters" of three or four courses together...

Francesca Rochberg awarded The American Philosophical Society’s 2025 Jacques Barzun Prize

September 18, 2025

Francesca Rochberg headshot and book cover side by side

The American Philosophical Society has awarded the 2025 Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History to Dr. Francesca Rochberg for her book, Worldmaking and Cuneiform Antiquity, An Anthropology of Science. The award will be presented during the Society’s Autumn General Meeting on November 14, 2025.

Francesca Rochberg is Professor Emerita of Assyriology and Catherine...

New Korean studies major begins accepting students

September 10, 2025

Starting this semester, UC Berkeley students can declare their intent to major in Korean studies. The program, sponsored by the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, reflects surging demand across campus for a comprehensive and interdisciplinary evaluation of the Korean peninsula’s language, history, and culture.

Music professors Campion and Cella steer CNMAT through the AI era

September 8, 2025

A changing of the guard is coming to UC Berkeley’s venerable Center for New Music and Audio Technologies. For almost four decades, the institution known as CNMAT has served musicians and producers with groundbreaking research and tools. Now, longtime leader Edmund Campion is preparing to retire and hand over the reins to co-director and fellow music professor Carmine-Emanuele Cella.

‘Always in motion’: New professor studies the flow of music across borders and cultures

August 27, 2025

This fall, incoming assistant professor of ethnomusicology Chris Batterman Cháirez is teaching the course Music, Movement and Migration in Latin America.

Chris performs pirekua in Michoacán with a music group of five members

As a young kid growing up in Mexico City, UC Berkeley Professor Chris Batterman Cháirez would always hear music — it seemed to be playing everywhere he went, a kind of soundtrack...

With a 63-by-30 foot art installation, Stephanie Syjuco explores education and activism at BAMPFA

August 15, 2025

"Present Tense (Roll Call)" covers BAMPFA's Art Wall in a collage of text unearthed from UC Berkeley's long history of radical education and protest.

In the Bay Area’s vibrant contemporary art scene, few artists are more accomplished than Stephanie Syjuco, who has been widely celebrated for her multidisciplinary practice for more than two decades. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, among other prestigious awards, Syjuco has exhibited her work to great acclaim at some of the world’s leading art museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York’s Museum of...

It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s a … Conlang?

August 12, 2025

This month, theatergoers watched the new Superman movie in 76 countries. Though the film played in many different languages, every showing included a new language created by David J. Peterson ’03 and his wife, Jessie Peterson.

The duo created Suh Ankripton, the latest version of the Kryptonian language used on Superman’s home planet. A pivotal scene that changes the world’s opinion of Superman involves characters...

These College Professors Will Not Bow Down to A.I.

August 8, 2025

A female figure emerges from a computer by locking hands with a group of individuals.All year I have been reading articles that paint an apocalyptic picture of humanities instruction in the age of artificial intelligence. They basically...