Arts & Humanities

The Division of Arts & Humanities at UC Berkeley is pleased to announce Fumi Okiji as the new Director of the Arts Research Center (ARC), starting July 1, 2026.

Okiji is a performer and theorist whose work moves across Black studies, critical theory, and sound and music studies. Her first book, Jazz as Critique: Adorno and Black Expression Revisited (Stanford, 2018), reconsiders the critical potential of art through an encounter between Theodor Adorno and traditions of Black creative music. Her new book, Billie's Bent Elbow: Exorbitance, Intimacy and a...

UC Berkeley Professor Oliver Arnold explores the 16th‑century playwright’s enduring appeal and the way ‘Hamnet’ imagines a small‑town son of a glovemaker becoming a global icon.

For centuries, scholars and artists alike have wondered: What makes Shakespeare Shakespeare? What gives his work its strange durability, its emotional force, its endless capacity for reinvention?

We know some things about William Shakespeare. He was born in 1564 in a small market town in England, the son of a glovemaker. We know he married a woman who became an abiding figure in his life, and...

Technological advancements and ethical debates dominate the media’s coverage of artificial intelligence. AI pioneer and 1966 Cal alum Sarah Douglas asks the sort of big questions — on knowledge, meaning, and consciousness — that are often overlooked by companies and can only be answered in a philosophical context. Unfortunately, the rapid velocity of AI development has outpaced society’s capacity to consider these questions....

Production designer Nina Ruscio and casting director Cathy Sandrich Gelfond dish on designing “triggering” hospital sets, casting for raw authenticity and how their time at Berkeley taught them to watch life closely, turning every detail into material for an immersive narrative.

Ask people what they love most about The Pitt, the HBO Max medical drama that debuted in 2025 and went on to sweep the Emmys, and the answer is almost always the same: It feels so real.

The show’s pace appears just like an emergency room — lively and chaotic, always in motion. Its...