It’s hard to pinpoint when synesthesia, the rare neurological condition where a stimulus that affects one sense prompts a response in a different sense, was first documented. Scientific literature marks its beginning in 1812, when it appeared as an aside in a Bavarian medical student’s dissertation. Toward the end, there’s a small section where he detailed how he associated musical tones and letters with colors.
“He enumerates the colors he sees in connection with the letters of the alphabet. A and E: vermilion, I: white, O:orange and so forth,” says UC Berkeley French...
There’s a part in season three of the HBO series The White Lotus that viewers won’t easily forget. Frank, a newly sober American expat living in Thailand, where the show takes place, begins to explain to his old friend Rick why he’s gone sober. In detailing his descent into partying and sex addiction, he describes what he sees as a kind of Buddhist...
The campus's highest honor for teaching excellence, the Distinguished Teaching Award underscores the profound impact instructors have on their students’ learning experiences and future careers.
Five UC Berkeley instructors have received the 2025 Distinguished Teaching Award, the campus’s highest honor for teaching excellence. The Academic Senate’s Committee on Teaching announced the selection on March 10, highlighting that this year’s recipients are “tremendously effective...
New Palestinian and Arab studies program to explore a wide array of topics including poetry, legal studies, ecology, and much more.
In Fall 2024, the Division of Social Sciences announced that it was forming a new program in Palestinian and Arab Studies. The program, led by the holder of the new May Ziadeh Chair Ussama Makdisi, a professor of History, was created to deepen understanding of Palestinian and Arab history, politics, and culture. Makdisi says the program is one of the first of its kind in the United States.
In the early 2000s, UC Berkeley rhetoric professor Winnie Wong visited Dafen village in China, where artists painted replicas of famous pieces like the Mona Lisa and Starry Night. It dramatically changed how she thinks about art and those who make it.
When Winnie Wong first saw Dafen Oil Painting Village in 2006, it was nothing like she’d imagined.
The Chinese village was known for mass producing copies of Western art. She’d read about it in The New York Times, which described a kind of compound where thousands of artists painted replicas of famous artworks...
On Tuesday, March 18, the College of Letters & Science Administrative Advisory Committee (AAC) hosted a conversation between Professors David Nadler and Shannon Steen on the topic “What is Creativity?” at its second L&S Lunch and Learn convening. Moderated by Aileen Liu, Director of Curricular Engagement Initiatives, this discussion afforded L&S staff the opportunity to thoughtfully engage with the scholarship of the College and connect with their colleagues....
It is with profound sadness that we share the passing of our dear colleague and friend, Ben Dillon. Ben, our dedicated marketing and communications manager, passed away the morning of March 4, 2025 after a sudden and intense battle with cancer.
There are no words to fully express the depth of our sorrow. Ben was a bright light in our department—a colleague whose generosity, compassion, and kindness touched...
In the 2024 book, nominated for The Story Prize, English Professor Fiona McFarlane tells 12 short stories that look past a serial killer's crimes and focus on the lives of those still living.
Lucille Lorenz, Arts & Humanities writer-in-residence
Nataliia Goshylyk is a lecturer in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, where she teaches Ukrainian. Dr. Goshylyk received her M.A. in Philology from Lesya Ukrainka Volyn State University, and her PhD in linguistics from Kharkiv National University. She is the recipient of the Berkeley Language Center Summer Fellowship in 2022, as well as a U.S. Fulbright Scholarship from 2021-2022, and she was an Erasmus Mundus Ianus II recipient in 2015, where she did research in Graz, Austria. Some of her main areas of focus include ecolinguistics, language pedagogy, and...
It is with profound sadness that we share the passing of our dear colleague and friend, Ben Dillon. Ben, our dedicated marketing and communications manager, passed away the morning of March 4, 2025 after a sudden and intense battle with cancer.