Arts and Humanities (HUM)

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
This reading and writing intensive course is organized around key texts that focus on ever-widening parameters of scale: the local, the national-regional, and the global. Each level, - California, America and the Americas, and the world - is designated by representative literary texts, from those focused on the Bay Area to those reaching out to the planetary. The course fulfills the first half of the reading and composition requirement (R1A). Success in this course depends upon deep reading, ongoing participation, substantive interaction with a peer review group, and steady commitment to the composition and revision of several essays.
Global Humanities I: From California to the Global: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2023
This reading and writing intensive course is organized around three modules: “Old World,” dealing with the Eurasian landmass over the classical and early modern eras; “New World,” dealing with the Americas, and “Our World,” dealing with the globalized world we live in today. We will thus be exploring a series of texts organized both historically and geographically, from antiquity to the present, and from the transcontinental to the global. The course fulfills the goals of the second half of the reading and composition requirement (R1B). Success in this course depends upon deep reading, ongoing participation, and steady commitment to the composition and revision of two progressively longer research essays.

Global Humanities: Old World, New World, Our World: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2022, Spring 2022, Spring 2021
The Compass Courses offer you an opportunity to explore the division of Arts and Humanities. They are offered on different themes each year, but they share a unique structure. The class is taught by three professors in three modules of study. You will have a chance to study with each professor, experience a range of approaches to the theme, and learn the methods and structures of different disciplines. Compass Courses are designed to guide you through various options for study in Arts and Humanities and to serve as a gateway to the rich offerings at Berkeley. They are part of the freshman experience, advancing a common journey of discovery and building an intellectual cohort among students new to Berkeley's expansive possibilities.
Compass Course: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022
In this course, you will learn the value and application of the arts and humanities to a wide variety of careers. In addition to exploring transferable skills, career readiness, and public projects, the course features weekly visits by high-profile Berkeley Arts and Humanities alumni. They are leaders and changemakers in their fields, who will reflect on the value of a humanities education in forging their success. HUM 12 is a connector course to L&S 12 “The Berkeley Changemaker,” and can be taken for 2 credits or for 4 credits in conjunction with an internship or public service project.

Berkeley Changemaker: Humanists at Work: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2022, Spring 2022
Explorations in Arts and Humanities at Berkeley is a weekly colloquium series organized by the Division of Arts and Humanities and co-curated by departments and centers across the campus. Through lectures by leading scholars, artists, and alumni, students are introduced to vocabularies, forms, histories, and possibilities from the many arts and humanities fields represented at Berkeley. Students engage with the lecture series through weekly response papers and a final reflection paper.
Explorations in Arts and Humanities at Berkeley: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
This is a student-initiated course to be offered for academic credit. The subject matter will vary from semester to semester and will be taught by the student facilitator under the supervision of the faculty sponsor.

Directed Group Study: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
This course is designed for new transfer students, and will provide the tools and supports necessary to succeed in upper-division coursework in the Arts and Humanities at Berkeley. Working together in collaborative hands-on workshops in the Active Learning Classroom, students will master the major skills of humanistic study: critical reading, active listening, literary and cultural analysis, examination, participation, research, writing, and revision. Learning from panels of senior transfer students and visiting professors, this class will build a large and supportive cohort of new students, a community that is astoundingly diverse in its make up but united in its aim to make Berkeley an intellectual home.
Transfer Foundations: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
“Beyond Google: How to Research in the Humanities” will take you, step by step, through a process that will give you the knowledge and skills necessary to do the research your advanced classes require. With Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as our shared text, we will explore the research process, learn to move beyond generalities, discover new approaches to reading, and achieve the ability to join a scholarly conversation. We will pay close attention to mastering the tools that will open up a world of scholarship, and that will allow you to engage it with confidence. This course will teach you about the purposes, objects, and methods of humanistic research, and will prepare you to undertake original research projects of your own.
Beyond Google: How to Research in the Humanities: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021
This course provides students interested in the arts and/or business with an opportunity to develop an idea for an arts organization and turn it into a functioning, sustainable enterprise. Building on each student's own connection to the arts, the course teaches how to invent an arts organization, define its mission, locate the organization within a community, develop its offerings via products, services, and public programs, and manage the organization's numerous operational features.
Arts Entrepreneurship: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
This class is designed to teach the art and science of entrepreneurship to humanists, artists, scientists, and social scientists, imparting real-world skills that can be directly put into practice. Lectures will cover key topics in the entrepreneurial process: user-centric design; ethics and culture-setting; rhetoric and fundraising; lean startup path to product-market fit; customer acquisition and business models. Weekly guest lectures by thought leaders will offer direct guidance and models of success. Group projects will let students craft and pitch startup ideas. This course will instruct and inspire students to have an entrepreneurial mindset in their work in social ventures, non-profit organizations, and innovative startups.

Entrepreneurship for All: An Insiders' Guide to Startups: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2021 8 Week Session, Summer 2021 First 6 Week Session
This project-based, community-engaged course teaches students how to study and represent the past and potential future of a specific place in collaboration with its residents, with an emphasis on centering marginalized stories and influencing positive change. This is a humanities studio course, rooted in history, literature and film; using creative arts tools; incorporating spatially oriented methods from architecture, landscape architecture, and city planning; and social sciences approaches from geography, anthropology and sociology. At a location chosen by the instructor, students will work with a community organization to create exhibitions, oral histories, installations, public archives, performances, plans, websites, or publications.
Future Histories Studio: Revealing the Past, Imagining the Future: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2023
This project-based, community-engaged course teaches students how to study and represent the past and potential future of a specific place in collaboration with its residents, with an emphasis on centering marginalized stories and influencing positive change. This is a humanities studio course, rooted in history, literature and film; using creative arts tools; incorporating spatially oriented methods from architecture, landscape architecture, and city planning; and social sciences approaches from geography, anthropology and sociology. At a location chosen by the instructor, students will work with a community organization to create exhibitions, oral histories, installations, public archives, performances, plans, websites, or publications.
Future Histories Studio: Revealing the Past, Imagining the Future: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2023 8 Week Session, Summer 2022 8 Week Session
This course explores the ways history and memory are represented or erased in public space and how this affects policies and futures. We will examine monuments, public art, streets, parks, museums, archives, performative traditions and virtual space. Students will propose ways of representing history in public space as a way to shape future histories. We will explore the concept of “public history” and study artistic and literary representations of the past. We will consider the ways that city planning and urban design have used or ignored memory and meaning. Highlighting landscapes shaped by economic inequality, migration, incarceration, and racism, we will analyze what is hidden, forgotten, missing, or in need of representation.
Hidden in Plain Sight: Public History in Public Space: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2022, Spring 2022, Fall 2021
Mentored Research courses are designed to introduce you to the research culture on campus in a small group format. Students will work closely with faculty members and graduate-student mentors in both seminar-style cohorts and more focused groups. The courses provide mentorship, support, and feedback as students work on individual research projects. The Mentored Research course is designed for upper-division students who are getting to know research resources and methods at Berkeley. Courses will provide topical instruction and responsive workshops as well as expert, individualized mentoring.

Mentored Research: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Spring 2023, Fall 2022
Supervised internship program. Regular individual meetings with faculty sponsor and written reports required.
Internship: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
This is a student-initiated course to be offered for academic credit. The subject matter will vary from semester to semester and will be taught by the student facilitator under the supervision of the faculty sponsor.
Directed Group Study: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Independent study in topics not covered by regularly scheduled courses.
Independent Study: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020
This interdisciplinary seminar will work to bridge the gap between the two cultures of technology and the humanities. The colloquium will bring together students from both domains in discussions anchored around weekly readings. During the semester, small teams of students will present research focusing on the intersections between technology and culture. At the end of the semester, each student will write a publishable essay or research paper based on these presentations. In addition to ongoing discussions, the seminar will also engage active practitioners of various types such as programmers, game designers, venture capitalists, and cultural critics.
Humanities-Tech Colloquium: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022, Fall 2021, Spring 2021
The course will focus on the connections between the disciplines of the humanities and the world outside academia. It aims to introduce Ph.D. students to a range of work and career choices beyond the tenure track. Those presenting will include faculty, alumni, and leaders in the technology and non-profit sectors (including higher education), among others. Readings will be assigned on a weekly basis. In rotation, members of the class will be appointed as discussion leaders and commentators.
Colloquium: Practicing the Humanities: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022
This seminar introduces students to theory, history and practice of composition pedagogy at the university. Students examine and explore approaches to the teaching of writing to form critical perspectives on the theory and practice of writing instruction, place those perspectives in historical and scholarly context, and develop syllabi, assignments, and research programs that reflect their perspectives on the place of writing in the university. This course is designed for students in the humanities wishing to pursue the employment and publication opportunities available to scholars with expertise in composition.

Teaching Writing: Theory, History and Practice: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2022, Fall 2021
Ranging across disciplines, these courses bring collaborative approaches and team-teaching to graduate studies in the humanities. Teams include faculty members from both the Division of Arts & Humanities and other disciplines. In the first half of the semester, explorations and readings are organized by the team of faculty members. In the second half, the graduate students form small cohorts, each tasked with collaborating on a research paper, white paper, or conference panel related to a case study. Where possible, case studies engage outside experts such as editors, curators, and policy analysts.
Collaborative Research Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Supervised individual study for graduate students.
Special Study: Read More [+]