Academics
Fall 2019

Academics: Fall 2019

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

Graduate courses:

NWMEDIA 200, 4 units

History and Theory of New Media

(Also TDPS 266)
A. De Kosnik

This graduate seminar is one of the core requirements for the Designated Emphasis in New Media, offered by the Berkeley Center for New Media. This course will provide participants with a foundation in new media studies (major works, authors, historical events, objects, and schools of thought), such that they will be able to compile reading lists for their qualifying exams, bibliographies for their dissertations, and syllabi for their courses on topics related to new media. It will develop participants' skills in analyzing new media texts and artifacts, articulating their insights in speech and writing, and developing individual new media research projects.

NWMEDIA 204, 4 units

Critical Practices: People, Places, Participation

J. Miller

A hands-on, studio design course where students work at the intersection of technological innovation and socially engaged art. Students will integrate a suite of digital fabrication tools with social design methods to create work that engages in cultural critique. Working with innovative technologies and radical, new art practices, this course will explore: hybrid art forms, critical design for community engagement, interventions in public spaces, tactical media and disobedient objects. These new making strategies will reframe our notions of people, places and participation.

This course is by application only. Application available at: https://forms.gle/xtCzkowbco53BkFT8

NWMEDIA C262, 4 units

Theory and Practice of Tangible User Interfaces

Kimiko Ryokai
(laboratory also required)

This course explores the theory and practice of Tangible User Interfaces, a new approach to Human Computer Interaction that focuses on the physical interaction with computational media. The topics covered in the course include theoretical framework, design examples, enabling technologies, and evaluation of Tangible User Interfaces. Students will design and develop experimental Tangible User Interfaces using physical computing prototyping tools and write a final project report.

NWMEDIA 290-001, 4 units

Contemporary Rituals: New Forms in Performance Art & Video

A. Kazmi

This practice and theory course provides perspectives in reading cultural expressions — from religious behavior and rituals, to speech acts and political action. Our investigation will be interdisciplinary in focus, drawing not only on performance and video art, but anthropology, religious studies, sociology, literature and new media.

During the semester, we will produce individual and/or collaborative performances and videos, look at contemporary performance art, films, and do close readings of theoretical texts. We will utilize video's immediacy to expand the "liveness" of performance art by using projections, interactive software, displays, and playback devices. We will also be exploring the boundaries between the virtual and the real world by generating 360 video and building VR platforms to reimagine our perception of the body, space, and time.

The goal of the class is to develop a critical and self-reflexive vocabulary to see the ways in which video and performance art production becomes a laboratory for reimagining notions of community, citizenship, power, and responsibility. Within this context we will examine the role of ritual and performance to articulate post-modern and post-secular tendencies to produce new ontologies and new modes of being in this world.

NWMEDIA 290, 4 units

Technologies of Identification

J. Gaboury

ART 218-1, 4 units

Theory and Criticism

A. Kazmi

Weekly meetings will provide a forum for the discussion of issues related to assigned readings in the fields of esthetics, theory and art criticism.

COMPSCI 260A, 4 units

User Interface Design and Development

E. Paulos

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.

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 290-006, 4 units

Designing Emerging Technologies

E. Paulos

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. Application link: https://forms.gle/wDapPJabqMDbFGg77. Applications are due by May 12th at 11:59pm and enrollment decisions made by May 20th.

ESPM C252-001, 3 units

(also ANTHRO C254-001, HIST C250-001, STS C200-001)

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.

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 290-001, 1-4 units

Cybersecurity in Context

C. Hoofnagle & J. Urban

INFO 290-008, 1-4 units

Research Topics in HCI

N. Salehi

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.

LAW 275.3-001, 4 units

Intellectual Property Law

S. Katyal

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.

RHETORIC 240G-001, 4 units

The Concept of the Political in the Age of Intelligent Machines

D. Bates

Gilles Deleuze predicted many years ago, in "Post-Script on Societies of Control," that we were moving into a situation where the computer would play a central role in defining new relations of surveillance and organization. Now, in the midst of the digital revolution, the strange naturalization of ubiquitous computation alongside shifting displacements of coercion and control (not to mention multiple tracking systems and automated anticipations) have made isolating and conceptualizing the sphere of the political a challenging task.

This seminar will approach this challenge by first reading key twentieth-century texts on the political, keeping an eye on their specific emphasis on technology, and raising the question of the state in that context. Main readings will include Carl Schmitt's books Concept of the Political, Political Theology, Leviathan in the State Theory of Hobbes, and other selected texts; Hannah Arendt's Human Condition and selected essays; Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment; and some of Heidegger's writing on technology. The second part of the course will look at the concepts of cybernetics and in particular applications of Artificial Intelligence and cybernetic ideas to social and political problems. Readings will include major AI and cybernetic theoretical texts. The last part of the course will be an intensive examination of contemporary thought concerning technology and the human where we will draw out political implications of intelligent computation, algorithmic governance, and other issues. Authors will include Gilles Deleuze, Deleuze and Guattari, Donna Haraway, Bernard Stiegler, Benjamin Bratton, Luciana Parisi, and others

SPANISH 280-001, 4 units

SPANISH 280: LATIN AMERICAN MEDIA THEORY

T. McEnaney

Does it matter that the history of photography begins in the tropical light of Brazil rather than the overcast skies of France? What changes when we think of testimonial writing in Argentina, Chile, or Guatemala through the tape recorders central to its production? Do new theories of print culture emerge through attention to the colonial encounter with Mixtec codices or the production of indigenous grammar books in 19th century Colombia? How have political movements turned technology into apparatuses of revolution or control, from Cuba’s Radio Rebelde to indigenous film activism in the Andes to social media campaigns in Ecuador? This course will take up these issues to synthesize, develop, or perhaps reject the need for a specifically Latin American Media Theory alongside German Media Theory (Kittler, Siegert, Zielinski), US Media Theory (Chun, Doane, Gitelman, Hayles, Liu), or others. In doing so, we will both learn from and provincialize keywords and methods in the history of media studies: media archaeology, cultural techniques, critical infrastructure studies, eco-media, cybernetics, protocol, biomedia, disability studies. Texts, including poetry and novels, from C. Aira, A. Carpentier, E. Costa, J. García-Espinosa, M. Kohan, D. Link, M. Maples Arce, E. Medina, E. Mota, O. Masotta, M. Moreno, A. Ochoa Gautier, A. Rama, B. Sarlo.

SPANISH 285-001, 4 units

Seminar in Spanish Literature

A. Saum-Pascual

Undergraduate courses:

NWMEDIA C166, 4 units

Critical Practices: People, Places, Participation

J. Miller

A hands-on, studio design course where students work at the intersection of technological innovation and socially engaged art. Students will integrate a suite of digital fabrication tools with social design methods to create work that engages in cultural critique. Working with innovative technologies and radical, new art practices, this course will explore: hybrid art forms, critical design for community engagement, interventions in public spaces, tactical media and disobedient objects. These new making strategies will reframe our notions of people, places and participation.

This course is by application only. Application available at: https://forms.gle/xtCzkowbco53BkFT8

NWMEDIA 190, 4 units

Contemporary Rituals: New Forms in Performance Art & Video

A. Kazmi

This practice and theory course provides perspectives in reading cultural expressions — from religious behavior and rituals, to speech acts and political action. Our investigation will be interdisciplinary in focus, drawing not only on performance and video art, but anthropology, religious studies, sociology, literature and new media.

During the semester, we will produce individual and/or collaborative performances and videos, look at contemporary performance art, films, and do close readings of theoretical texts. We will utilize video's immediacy to expand the "liveness" of performance art by using projections, interactive software, displays, and playback devices. We will also be exploring the boundaries between the virtual and the real world by generating 360 video and building VR platforms to reimagine our perception of the body, space, and time.

The goal of the class is to develop a critical and self-reflexive vocabulary to see the ways in which video and performance art production becomes a laboratory for reimagining notions of community, citizenship, power, and responsibility. Within this context we will examine the role of ritual and performance to articulate post-modern and post-secular tendencies to produce new ontologies and new modes of being in this world.

ART 21-001, 4 units

Digital Photography: The Image and the Hive Mind

Staff

This class provides a basic foundation for digital photography with hands-on instruction in the use of digital cameras and online image dissemination. Topics include image capture, composition, image syntax, image analysis, image manipulation, metatext production, and image sequencing for visual narratives. We also study image dissemination through online networks including social networks, blogs, news, storage, search, and print services. Rather than limiting the discussion of photography to the production of the photographic image itself, we explore in written assignments how the reception of images can change based on context, usage, and network dynamics. While we rely on required DSLR digital cameras to produce images for weekly photographic assignments, we also experiment with alternate digital image generation techniques from telescopes to microscopes. All coursework will be posted and discussed online as well as in weekly lectures, workshops, and critiques. Course readings cover the history of photography, the theory of photographic reproduction and the theory of networked and memetic dissemination.

ART 171-001, 4 units

Digital Video: The Architecture of Time

Staff

This hands-on studio course is designed to present students with a foundation-level introduction to the skills, theories and concepts used in digital video production. Non-linear and non-destructive editing methods used in digital video are defining new "architectures of time" for cinematic creation and experience, and offer new and innovative possibilities for authoring new forms of the moving image. This course will expose students to a broad range of industry standard equipment, film and video history, theory, terminology, field and post-production skills. Students will be required to technically master the digital media tools introduced in the course. Each week will include relevant readings, class discussions, guest speakers, demonstration of examples, and studio time for training and working on student assignments.

ART 178, 4 units

Game Design Methods

Staff

This course offers an introduction to game design and game studies. Game studies has five core elements: the study of games as transmitters of culture, the study of play and interactivity, the study of games as symbolic systems; the study of games as artifacts; and methods for creating games. We will study these core elements through play, play tests, play analysis, and comparative studies. Our reading list includes classic game studies theory and texts which support game design methods. After weekly writing and design exercises, our coursework will culminate in the design and evaluation of an original code-based game with a tangible interface.

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

E. Paulos

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

P. Abeel & S. Levine

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 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.

DESINV 190-006, 4 units

Designing Emerging Technologies

E. Paulos

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. Application link: https://forms.gle/wDapPJabqMDbFGg77. Applications are due by May 12th at 11:59pm and enrollment decisions made by May 20th.

EDUC W140A, 4 units(also EDUC 140AC)

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.

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.

FILM 26, 4 units

Introduction to Digital Video Production

Staff

The objective of this class is to provide a basic technical foundation for digital video film production while emphasizing the techniques and languages of creative moving image media from traditional story genres to more contemporary experimental forms. Training will move from pre-production-scripting and storyboarding, through production, including image capture, lighting and sound recording, to post-production with non-linear digital editing programs such as Final Cut Pro and editing strategies and aesthetics. The course will consist of lectures/screenings, discussion/critique, visiting artists, and production workshops in which students produce a series of exercises and a final project.

FILM 140-004, 4 units

J. Gaboury

GLOBAL 110K, 3 units

Africa in Global Context

Staff

This course will provide students majoring in Global Studies with an introduction to Africa and its significance to the globe. We will address issues related to Africa that span all three concentrations of the major (Society and Culture, Development, Peace and Conflict). In particular, we will focus on the following four themes:conflict, identity, development and technology.

INDENG 115-001, 3 units

Industrial and Commercial Data Systems

K. Goldberg

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 C167, 4 Units

Virtual Communities/Social Media

E. Lin

This course covers the practical and theoretical issues associated with computer-mediated communication (CMC) systems (e.g., email, newsgroups, wikis, online games, etc.). We will focus on the analysis of CMC practices, the relationship between technology and behavior, and the design and implementation issues associated with constructing CMC systems. This course primarily takes a social scientific approach (including research from social psychology, economics, sociology, and communication).

JAPAN 181: 4 units

Reframing Disasters: Fukushima, Before and After

D.C. O’Neill

The course considers the different literary, social and ethical formations that arise or are destroyed in disaster. It explores how Japanese literature and media, before and after 3:11, attempt to translate the un-representable, and in so doing, to create a new type of literacy about 1) trauma and the temporality of disaster, 2) precarity, community and the public sphere and 3) sustainability and ecological scale. The course will pay particular attention to a range of works that explicitly or obliquely reframe iconic or popular representations of disasters in cinema, literature, photography and social media, taking into account of the readiness with which certain cultural forms lend themselves to vistas of disaster. Prerequisites: None.

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

Staff

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.

NESTUD 190A, 4 units

Digital Humanities and Egyptology

R. Lucarelli

This course will introduce the students to the main projects of Egyptology in the field of archaeology, philology and material studies, which apply techniques of Digital Humanities, from 3D modeling of objects and architectural spaces to digital epigraphy and the creation of searchable databases. The crucial importance of digital reconstructions in order to identify and track looted objects and protect endangered heritage will be particularly discussed in this course, by analyzing the use of virtual reality environments and visualizations employed in museums and Egyptological excavations and projects. Students will also have the chance to experiment with the digital reconstruction of objects kept in the ancient Egyptian collection of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology

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.

RHETORIC 158, 4 units

Advanced Problems in the Rhetoric of Political Theory

D. Bates

Close study of selected works of modern political theory, including debates over the nature and interpretation of political theory and the role of the political theorist. Specific themes and readings vary from year to year.

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 135-004, 4 units

Cultura de la Transición española hacia la democracia

A. Saum-Pascual

Este curso analizará respuestas culturales al proceso de democratización política que comenzó en España tras la muerte del dictador Francisco Franco en 1975. Recorreremos los últimos 40 años de historia española gracias a la lectura de novelas y poemas a la par que veremos películas y escucharemos canciones que surgieron como respuesta al fin de la censura franquista y a la nueva situación de apertura social y política. Exploraremos cuestiones relacionadas a la autobiografía, la historia, y la recuperación de la memoria (años 70-80) para observar cómo estos temas son tratados o abandonados en la novela y cine postmodernos (80-90) y la cultura de la actualidad (2000-2010).

THEATER 119, 4 units

Performance Theory: Modernism

B. Catanese

An examination of a theoretical topic or perspective on performance, with specific attention to the interface between theoretical endeavor and dramatic, nondramatic, and nontheatrical modes of performance; may involve visiting artists. Topics vary from semester to semester.