Academics
Fall 2020

Fall 2020

This list is updated regularly. Check back often for the latest updates. Email lara@berkeley.edu with suggestions.

Graduate courses:

NWMEDIA 201, 3 units

Questioning New Media

J. Miller

Questioning New Media is a hybrid studio/lecture course that explores issues and practices in contemporary new media culture. Students will research, present and make creative works that critically examine new media. The course will focus on the issues addressed in select campus lectures, local art exhibitions, and course readings. In class, students will enhance their skills in "questioning" new media: how to think critically about advanced topics, how to look at new media art work with a discerning eye, and how to transform their “questions” into an engaging creative work of art or performance.

Students will attend campus lectures, art shows and events, in addition to doing selected readings. There will be a final presentation/performance night open to the public. This course is open to graduate students from any department and upper- level undergraduates (upon instructor approval). This course fulfills one of the core course requirements for the Designated Emphasis in New Media.

NWMEDIA C263, 3 units

Technologies for Creativity and Learning

K. Ryokai

How does the design of new educational technology change the way people learn and think? How do we design systems that reflect our understanding of how we learn? This course explores issues on designing and evaluating technologies that support creativity and learning. The class will cover theories of creativity and learning, implications for design, as well as a survey of new educational technologies such as works in computer supported collaborative learning, digital manipulatives, and immersive learning environments.

NWMEDIA 290-001, 4 units

Locative Media

C. Wilmott

From postcards and maps to mobile phones, this course considers the history and future of locative media, as technological, situated and navigational ways of expressing and understanding space, place and mobility. Combining theory and praxis, students partake in a series of of lectures and discussion-based seminars as well as research, design and production workshops where they will learn to make a critical locative media project of their own.

ARCH 270-001, 3 units

History of Modern Architecture

G. Castillo

This course examines developments in design, theory, graphic representation, construction technology, and interior programming through case studies of individual buildings. Each lecture will delve deeply into one or sometimes two buildings to examine program, spatial organization, critical building details, and the relationship of the case study building with regard to other parallel works and the architect's overall body of work.

COMPSCI 260A, 4 units

User Interface Design and Development

Staff

The design, implementation, and evaluation of user interfaces. User-centered design and task analysis. Conceptual models and interface metaphors. Usability inspection and evaluation methods. Analysis of user study data. Input methods (keyboard, pointing, touch, tangible) and input models. Visual design principles. Interface prototyping and implementation methodologies and tools. Students will develop a user interface for a specific task and target user group in teams.

COMPSCI 294-137, 3 units

Immersive Computing and Virtual Reality

B. Hartmann

Description forthcoming.

CY PLAN C241, 4 units

Research Methods in Environmental Design

Staff

The components, structure, and meaning of the urban environment. Environmental problems, attitudes, and criteria. Environmental survey, analysis, and interview techniques. Methods of addressing environmental quality. Environmental simulation.

DESINV 290-6, 4 units

Designing Emerging Technologies

E. Paulos, V. Rao, A. Hutz

This course is an intensive, project-based course that focuses on design of interactive artifacts that use emerging technologies. Students are led through a sequence of projects of varying lengths (from one week to three weeks). This course is intended to develop student skills in designing with technology as a material. Projects include both individual and team activities, with teams frequently changing in size and composition.

This course is targeted at graduate students and advanced undergraduates. Enrollment is by application only.

ESPM C252-001, 3 units

Topics in Science and Technology Studies

Staff

This course provides a strong foundation for graduate work in STS, a multidisciplinary field with a signature capacity to rethink the relationship among science, technology, and political and social life. From climate change to population genomics, access to medicines and the impact of new media, the problems of our time are simultaneously scientific and social, technological and political, ethical and economic.

(crosslisted as ANTHRO C254-001, HIST C250-001, STS C200-001)

FILM 240-001, 4 units

Title Forthcoming

J. Gaboury

Selected topics in the study of film.

INFO 202, 2 units

Information Organization and Retrieval

Staff

Organization, representation, and access to information. Categorization, indexing, and content analysis. Data structures. Design and maintenance of databases, indexes, classification schemes, and thesauri. Use of codes, formats, and standards. Analysis and evaluation of search and navigation techniques.

INFO 213-001, 4 units

User Interface Design and Development

Staff

User interface design and human-computer interaction. Examination of alternative design. Tools and methods for design and development. Human computer interaction. Methods for measuring and evaluating interface quality.

INFO 239, 3 units

Technology and Delegation

D. Mulligan

The introduction of technology increasingly delegates responsibility to technical actors, often reducing traditional forms of transparency and challenging traditional methods for accountability. This course explores the interaction between technical design and values including: privacy, accessibility, fairness, and freedom of expression. We will draw on literature from design, science and technology studies, computer science, law, and ethics, as well as primary sources in policy, standards and source code. We will investigate approaches to identifying the value implications of technical designs and use methods and tools for intentionally building in values at the outset.

INFO 271B, 3 units

Quantitative Research Methods for Information Systems and Management

C. Cheshire

Introduction to many different types of quantitative research methods, with an emphasis on linking quantitative statistical techniques to real-world research methods. Introductory and intermediate topics include: defining research problems, theory testing, casual inference, probability, and univariate statistics. Research design and methodology topics include: primary/secondary survey data analysis, experimental designs, and coding qualitative data for quantitative analysis.

INFO 272, 3 units

Qualitative Research Methods for Information Systems and Management

J. Burrell

Theory and practice of naturalistic inquiry. Grounded theory. Ethnographic methods including interviews, focus groups, naturalistic observation. Case studies. Analysis of qualitative data. Issues of validity and generalizability in qualitative research.

INFO 290-001, 1-4 units

Cybersecurity in Context

C. Hoofnagle & J. Urban

Description forthcoming

INFO 290-03, 3 units

Product Design Studio

J. Reffell

Description forthcoming

INFO 290-004, 3 units

HCI Research

N. Salehi

Description forthcoming

INFO 290-005, 3 units

Field Site as Network: Ethnographies of the Digital

J. Burrell & A. Jonas

Description forthcoming

JOURN 216, 2-3 units

Multimedia Reporting

Staff

For journalists, the World Wide Web opens a powerful way to tell stories by combining text, video, audio, still photos, graphics, and interactivity. Students learn multimedia-reporting basics, how the web is changing journalism, and its relationship to democracy and community. Students use storyboarding techniques to construct nonlinear stories; they research, report, edit, and assemble two story projects.

JOURN 221, 3 units

Introduction to Data Visualization

Staff

This weekly three-hour course will explore the skills needed to find, clean, analyze and visualize data. The class consists of two hours of instruction and one hour of supervised lab time working on directed projects. Students will create a final project suitable for publication. The focus will be on free and open source tools that can immediately be applied to other projects and professional work.

MUSIC 207, 4 units

Advanced Projects in Computer Music

Staff

Designed for graduate students in music composition, but open to graduate students in related disciplines who can demonstrate thorough knowledge of the history of electro-acoustic music as well as significant experience with computer music practice and research. All projects are subject to approval of the instructor.

SPANISH 285-001, 4 units

Digital Literary Art and the Web of Life

A. Saum-Pascual

This graduate seminar will explore how certain works of digital art and literature place digital production within a web of material accountability that rejects the binaries implicit in capitalist logic in pursuit of a new type of materiality. Although it may sound counterintuitive, the destruction of natural resources and human life is directly related to the evolution of digital technologies that project a perverse sense of immaterial existence. Rethinking digital materiality calls for a double framework of interpretation; one that looks both at the place of digital works within the web of life (Moore), as well as a new methodological approach that is based on a multi-directional relational logic. This requires not only a new framework to understand a new historical context (the Capitalocene) or new politics to frame digital objects (Haraway’s ontological politics) but also a different type of methodology and language such as Braidotti’s posthuman theory and politics, where new relationships of knowledge emerge from epistemic accountability and transversal ethics. In this seminar we will think with posthuman, environmental and material feminist critics, as we experience and discuss art and literature that exploits the affordances and limitations of the digital web. Particular emphasis will be given to artists working in the Spanish and Portuguese speaking world.

Undergraduate courses:

NWMEDIA 151AC, 4 units

Transforming Tech: Issues and Interventions in STEM and Silicon Valley

A. De Kosnik

UC Berkeley graduates more Silicon Valley employees than any other university in the world (https://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-hires-uc-berkeley-grads-2017-5). In this course, we will study major tech industry controversies and heavily criticized tech products, policies, and effects, including technologies used at the U.S.-Mexico border, social media platforms’ spread of disinformation and fake news, racial bias in algorithms, and internet trolling and harassment. We will also examine tech companies’ long-running tendency to exclude women and non-Asian minorities, and how tech workers have occasionally come under fire for the industry’s harms. In every unit, we will discuss a range of interventions in tech platforms’ and companies’ processes and policies by artists, authors, activists, gamers, journalists, scholars, social media users, and STEM and tech workers themselves, and students will be required to brainstorm and design their own interventions into the workings of the tech sector to make it more inclusive, equitable, and diverse.

This course counts for the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Ethics and Humanities/Social Sciences requirement, the Data Science Human Context and Ethics requirement, the Media Studies Requirement Group B: Specialization in a Medium, and the Masters in Design electives.

NWMEDIA 190-002, 4 units

Advanced Digital Animation

D. Garcia

This year-long course is targeted at students with backgrounds in art, film, or computer science who intend to work in the visual effects, animation, and entertainment industries. It will build upon students’ knowledge from related courses to guide them through the digital animation production process in an environment similar to industry production houses. We will survey many advanced topics and allow students to focus on a subset they find interesting while collaborating with their team to develop a 30-second animation piece. The course will be enhanced with industry guest lectures.

ART 21-001, 4 units

Digital Photography: The Image and the Hive Mind

Staff

This course introduces students to technical skills including manual functions of digital cameras, image creation and capture, file management and workflow, image adjustment and digital printing. Assignments will use primary Adobe software tools to test creative possibilities of both the camera and the computer. The course will introduce students to photography history and theory, and a range of contemporary practices. Group critiques and individual tutorials will help develop ideas and technical skills. By the end of the course, students should feel comfortable shooting digitally, editing and producing final images for print or the web. This course is a recommended prerequisite for upper division Photography classes.

ART 171-001, 4 units

Digital Video: The Architecture of Time

Staff

This course develops more advanced technical and conceptual skills, with focused attention on the pre- and post-production practices of writing and production design as well as image and sound editing. Class meetings include technical workshops, studio work, individual and class critique, and discussion of readings and screened course materials. Course projects vary in focus depending upon instructor; areas of emphasis may include: video in performance practices; video for sculptural installation; and social activist video.

COMPLIT 170-001, 3 units

Computational Humanities

D. Bamman & T. McEnaney

Description forthcoming
(crosslisted as INFO 190-002)

COMPSCI 10, 4 units

The Beauty and Joy of Computing

D. Garcia

An introduction to the beauty and joy of computing. The history, social implications, great principles, and future of computing. Beautiful applications that have changed the world. How computing empowers discovery and progress in other fields. Relevance of computing to the student and society will be emphasized. Students will learn the joy of programming a computer using a friendly, graphical language, and will complete a substantial team programming project related to their interests.

COMPSCI 160, 4 units

User Interface Design and Development

Staff

The design, implementation, and evaluation of user interfaces. User-centered design and task analysis. Conceptual models and interface metaphors. Usability inspection and evaluation methods. Analysis of user study data. Input methods (keyboard, pointing, touch, tangible) and input models. Visual design principles. Interface prototyping and implementation methodologies and tools. Students will develop a user interface for a specific task and target user group in teams.

COMPSCI 188, 4 units

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

A. Dragan

Basic ideas and techniques underlying the design of intelligent computer systems. Topics include heuristic search, problem solving, game playing, knowledge representation, logical inference, planning, reasoning under uncertainty, expert systems, learning, perception, language understanding.

COMPSCI 195-001, 1 unit

Social Implications of Computer Technology

J. Hug

Topics include electronic community; the changing nature of work; technological risks; the information economy; intellectual property; privacy; artificial intelligence and the sense of self; pornography and censorship; professional ethics. Students will lead discussions on additional topics.

DESINV 22, 3 units

Prototyping & Fabrication

Staff

This course teaches concepts, skills and methods required to design, prototype, and fabricate physical objects. Each week relevant techniques in 2D and 3D modeling and fabrication are presented, along with basic electronics. Topics include a range of prototyping and fabrication techniques including laser-cutting, 3D modeling and 3D printing, soldering, and basic circuits. This course may be used to fulfill undergraduate technical elective requirements for some College of Engineering majors; students should refer to their Engineering Student Services advisors for more details.

DESINV 95, 1 unit

Design Innovation Lecture Series

Staff

In this one semester, P/NP course, students will attend the weekly Design Field Notes speaker series, which features local design practitioners who share real-world stories about their projects, practices, and perspectives. Talks are scheduled most weeks during the semester; during any off weeks, students will engage in facilitated discussions.

DESIGN 181-001, 3 units

Reimagining Mobility

Staff

In Reimagining Mobility, offered in a project-based learning format, students will envision meaningful interactions between people and different transportation modalities. Looking 10-15 years into the future, they will address elements such as car sharing, public transportation, autonomous driving, and more. The core objectives of this course are to 1) equip students with tools, techniques, and practice to master the design thinking process and 2) facilitate the creation of portfolio-grade design solutions, to be pitched to real-world customers and investors.

DESINV 190-6, 4 units

Designing Emerging Technologies

E. Paulos, V. Rao, A. Hutz

This course is an intensive, project-based course that focuses on design of interactive artifacts that use emerging technologies. Students are led through a sequence of projects of varying lengths (from one week to three weeks). This course is intended to develop student skills in designing with technology as a material. Projects include both individual and team activities, with teams frequently changing in size and composition.

This course is targeted at graduate students and advanced undergraduates. Enrollment is by application only.

EDUC W140A, 4 units

The Art of Making Meaning: Educational Perspectives on Literacy and Learning in a Global World

G. Hull

This course combines theory and practice in the study of literacy and development. It will introduce sociocultural educational theory and research focused especially on literacy teaching and learning, and this literature will be examined in practice through participation in after-school programs. In addition, the course will contribute to an understanding of how literacy is reflected in race, culture, and ethnicity in the United States and how these symbolic systems shift in a digital world.

(crosslisted as EDUC 140AC)

ENVDES 1, 3 units

Introduction to Environmental Design

Staff

This course will teach anyone how to start to be a designer, not just of drawings and objects, but also buildings, landscapes, and urban spaces. And not just in isolation, but in the complex web of ecological and man-made systems which makes up our shifting environment. You will take from the course first-hand experience of drawing, measuring, and design which form the basis of the professions of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning and which culminate in a final design project in the course. The course is open to all undergraduate students.

GEOG 80-001, 4 units

Digital Worlds: An Introduction to Geospatial Technologies

C. Wilmott

An introduction to the increasingly diverse range of geospatial technologies and tools including but not limited to geographical information systems (GIS). Via a mix of lecture and lab-based instruction, students will develop knowledge and skills in web-mapping and GIS. How these tools are used to represent fundamental geographic concepts, and the wider socioeconomic context of these technologies will also be explored.

GWS 102-001, 4 units

Transnational Feminism

M. Moallem

An overview of transnational feminist theories and practices, which address the workings of power that shape our world, and women's practices of resistance within and beyond the U.S. The course engages with genealogies of transnational feminist theories, including analyses of women, gender, sexuality, "race," racism, ethnicity, class, nation; postcoloniality; international relations; post-"development"; globalization; area studies; and cultural studies.

HUM 20

Explorations in Arts + Design at Berkeley

S. Jackson

A+D Mondays @ BAMPFA is a weekly public lecture series organized by the Arts + Design Initiative and co-curated by departments throughout the campus and local and national arts organizations. Through lectures by leading scholars, artists, and public figures, students are introduced to vocabularies, forms, and histories from the many arts, design, humanities, and media disciplines represented at UC Berkeley. Explore cutting-edge thinking and making on topics of current interest to UC Berkeley's creative faculty and national leaders in the cultural and creative arts. Students engage with the lecture series through weekly response papers and a final reflection paper.

INDENG 115-001, 3 units

Industrial and Commercial Data Systems

Staff

Design and implementation of databases, with an emphasis on industrial and commercial applications. Relational algebra, SQL, normalization. Students work in teams with local companies on a database design project. WWW design and queries.

INFO C8, 4 units

Foundations of Data science

Staff

Foundations of data science from three perspectives: inferential thinking, computational thinking, and real-world relevance. Given data arising from some real-world phenomenon, how does one analyze that data so as to understand that phenomenon? It teaches critical concepts and skills in computer programming and statistical inference, in conjunction with hands-on analysis of real-world datasets, including economic data, document collections, geographical data and social networks. It delves into social and legal issues surrounding data analysis, including issues of privacy and data ownership.

LS 25, 3 units

Thinking Through Art and Design @Berkeley

Staff

This course introduces students to key vocabularies, forms, and histories from the many arts and design disciplines represented at UC Berkeley. It is conceived each year around a central theme that responds to significant works and events on the campus, providing an introduction to the many art and design resources available to students on campus. Students will compare practices from across the fields of visual art, film, dance, theater, music, architecture, graphic design, new media, and creative writing, and explore how different artists respond formally to the central themes of the course, considering how similar questions and arguments are differently addressed in visual, material, embodied, sonic, spatial, and linguistic forms.

MEDIAST 104D, 3 units

Privacy in the Digital Age

G. King

This course examines issues of privacy in contemporary society, with an emphasis on how privacy is affected by technological change. After an introduction to features of the American legal system and the theoretical underpinnings of privacy law, we will consider privacy in the context of law enforcement and national security investigations; government records and databases; commercial enterprises; and the freedoms of speech and press.

MEDIAST 160, 4 units

International Media

Staff

Case studies of the foreign mass media. Focus may be on the press and publishing, broadcasting, documentaries, or new media. Possible topics: Pacific Rim press; mass media in China; Israeli and Palestinian media.

MEDIAST 165-001, 4 units

Internet and Culture

Staff

This class uses the approaches of media studies and cultural studies to critically consider how historical and emerging new media technologies as well as the behaviors and forms of cultural production associated with them influence and are themselves influenced by our everyday practices and lived experiences. It focuses particularly on concerns of identity, community, access, citizenship, industry, and regulation as these relate to social networking, collective endeavor, and public speech.

MUSIC 109-001, 3 units

Music Cognition: Mind Behind the Musical Ear

Staff

The goal of this class is to interrogate and make explicit the powerful musical intuitions that are at work as you make sense of the music all around you. What is the nature of the knowledge that is guiding these intuitions? How does this knowledge develop in ordinary and extraordinary ways? To approach these questions, small composition-like projects aided by a specially designed computer music environment will function as a workplace. You will explore, experiment, question, and reflect on how and what you know how to do as you generate the musical coherence that you seem simply to find.

RHETORIC 114-001, 4 units

Rhetoric of New Media

Staff

This course examines a range of digital media practices including hypertext, interactive drama, videogames, literary interactive fiction, and socially constructed narratives in multi-user spaces. Through a mixture of readings, discussion, and project work, we will explore the theoretical positions, debates, and design issues arising from these different practices. Topics will include the rhetorical, ludic, theatrical, narrative political, and legal dimensions of digital media.

RHETOR 136, 4 units

Art and Authorship

Staff

Study of narratives and visual cultures of art and its authors, including questions of what is art, who authors it, the boundaries of works and artistic personae, and how aesthetic, economic, and legal regimes of artistic authorship are historicized.

SOCIOL 160, 4 units

Sociology of Culture

J. Blakehorn

This survey course studies human meaning systems, particularly as manifested in art, literature, music, and other media. It includes study of the production, reception, and aesthetic experience of cultural forms.

SPANISH 135-002, 4 units

Studies in Hispanic Literature

T. McEnaney

¿Qué puede pasar cuando ocupes edificios públicos, rascacielos abandonados, o parques urbanos e insistes en quedarte? ¿Cómo puede un objeto físico, como un muro, hacerse un símbolo retórico de poder? ¿Hay alguna diferencia entre los elementos de una novela—el lenguaje; las palabras—y los materiales que se usan para construir un puente? La respuesta no es tan obvia que pensamos. Desde los espacios claustrofóbicos en las casas burgueses de Julio Cortázar o las fábricas de Matías Celedón, hasta las ruinas y mundos subterráneos de Antonio José Ponte, los laberintos y las mansiones simétricas de Jorge Luis Borges, los monumentos brutalistas de Manuel Maples Arce, las fronteras espantosas de Yuri Herrera, las calles urbanas de Samanta Schweblin, o los apartamentos prefabricados de Fabián Casas, los autores de América Latina muchas veces han tomado inspiración de la arquitectura en sus novelas, poemas, o cuentos para re-imaginar el mundo material y transformar el aspecto, sonido, y forma de la literatura. En este curso analizaremos escritores y edificios en Argentina, Chile, Cuba, y México durante períodos de revolución artística y política, y discutir como sus obras literarias se involucran en la arquitectura para responder a cuestiones del poder popular, la igualdad en la vivienda, el diseño artístico, la acústica, y el urbanismo. También, estudiaremos películas, fotos, y cuadros para explorar los límites de la literatura y preguntar como otras tecnologías de representación y producción—incluye la impresora 3D—podrían ayudarnos rehacer nuestro mundo fabricado.