Graduate courses:
NWMEDIA 201, 3 units
Questioning New Media
A. Kazmi & J. Miller
Recent developments in creative technologies (such as augmented/virtual reality and artificial intelligence programs) have allowed artists to experiment in their studios in novel ways. How do we tell stories, question the status quo, envision alternative futures, or push boundaries using new programs, forms, or spatial understandings? How can new mediums inform the way we understand and produce works of art? How do we critically engage, subvert, and challenge the commercial industry model of new media production?
By utilizing research and experimentation with new tools and software programs, we will consider art making in relation to other more traditional media. This is not a technology class with a dash of art on the side. In this class, developing your artistic voice will be just as important as honing your technical skills. We will have a historical approach and we will look at new media art in an ongoing dialogue with sculpture, installation, film, video, sound art, and performance art. Students will be introduced to contemporary art projects by artists working in socially engaged forms, raising awareness and creating opportunities for conversation about our political and ecological realities.
While it is not necessary to have proficiency in specific software programs before taking this course, having some familiarity with creative tools is beneficial. Merging new and traditional mediums will be encouraged. Assignments include: using artificial intelligence programs to iterate on collaborative drawings, using Adobe Illustrator and a laser cutter to design and install an art intervention, and exploring spatial immersion and critical worldbuilding using virtual reality.
Students interested in enrolling MUST enroll in the waitlist AND fill in the application.
NWMEDIA C262, 4 units (laboratory also required)
Theory and Practice of Tangible User Interfaces
K. Ryokai
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
Cancel Culture: Performances of Public Complaint
A. De Kosnik
"Cancel culture" -- the calling-out of specific individuals for unethical/harmful behavior by numerous people online, (supposedly) followed by those individuals losing positions or privileges they formerly held -- is the subject of much debate in contemporary culture. In this seminar, we will examine pre-social media texts and events -- fiction and non-fiction -- that might be considered important to the history of cancel culture, such as Aeschylus's Oresteia, Martin Heidegger's and Paul De Man's collaborations with the Nazi regime, and Anita Hill's testimony at Clarence Thomas's Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Then we will move on to more recent famous incidents of cancel culture involving serial harassers and predators (including Harvey Weinstein, Louis C.K., and Bill Cosby), racists, and politicians. We will discuss when and how cancel culture has been performed, by whom, in what circumstances, how these performances have been received, whether or to what extent attempted cancellations have been effective, and what criticisms and anxieties circulate around the concept of cancel culture.
NWMEDIA 290-002, 3 units
New Media Cities
E. Fraser
This course focuses on “new media cities” – real and imagined. From the early metaphors of the internet, to the technologically mediated smart city; from the city form as a media technology, to techno-imaginaries of future cities, this course asks students to engage with the significance of new media in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries, and the city as a new-media-oriented space. We will look at cities in video games; architectural design and modeling; spaces of new media art; online worlds and virtual communities; digital archives; urban simulations, and other new media contexts. Students will have the opportunity to research and imagine their own new media cities, as well as developing critical interdisciplinary awareness of new media and media studies, urban studies, cultural and digital geographies, game studies, and associated fields.
ARCH 200A, 5 units
Introduction to Architecture Studio
Staff
Introductory course in architectural design and theories for graduate students. Problems emphasize the major format, spatial, material, tectonic, social, technological, and environmental determinants of building form. Studio work is supplemented by lectures, discussions, readings, and field trips.
ARCH 229, 001 and 002, 1-4 units
Special Topics in Digital Design Theories and Methods
R. Choksombatchai and S. Bainbridge
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.
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 201, 3 units
Debates in Design
Staff
As today’s most pressing challenges cut across disciplinary boundaries, designers need to articulate new methods for connecting conceptual knowledge with technical skills and develop new ways of integrating ideas from various perspectives and world views. Each year students in this colloquium-style course explore a topic in design. Invited lecturers present a relevant project or challenge from their professional careers at a given intersection of critical contemporary issues expressed at a particular scale of design practice. Speakers share background material or readings in advance, allowing students to arrive with thoughtful questions and discussion points. Students compose written reflections throughout and following each speaker.
DESINV 211, 5 units
Designing Emerging Technologies I
Staff
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 serves as the first in a two part sequence of courses (with DES INV 212) 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.
EDUC 222C, 3 units
Design-Based Research Forum
D. Abrahamson
A design- build- implement- analyze- theorize- publicize practicum forum for participants to first learn about design-based educational research work and receive support in their original and on-going projects. Following several orientation weeks, in which we discuss fundamental resources and participate in hands-on activities, subsequent readings are customized to individual students. The course culminates with presentations, and students submit an empirical research paper.
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
Introduction to User Interface Design
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 253A, 3 units
Front-End Web Architecture
Staff
This course is a survey of technologies that power the user interfaces of web applications on a variety of devices today, including desktop, mobile, and tablet devices. This course will delve into some of the core Front-End languages and frameworks (HTML/CSS/JS/React/Redux), as well as the underlying technologies enable web applications (HTTP, URI, JSON). The goal of this course is to provide an overview of the technical issues surrounding user interfaces powered by the web today, and to provide a solid and comprehensive perspective of the Web's constantly evolving landscape.
INFO 256, 3 units
Applied Natural Language Processing
Staff
This course examines the state-of-the-art in applied Natural Language Processing (also known as content analysis and language engineering), with an emphasis on how well existing algorithms perform and how they can be used (or not) in applications. Topics include part-of-speech tagging, shallow parsing, text classification, information extraction, incorporation of lexicons and ontologies into text analysis, and question answering. Students will apply and extend existing software tools to text-processing problems.
INFO 271B, 3 units
Quantitative Research Methods for Information Systems and Management
Staff
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
Staff
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.
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 233, 3 units
Advanced Coding Interactive Stories
Staff
This course teaches students code literacy. Beyond the specific skills they learn, students will have a more well-rounded understanding of crucial technologies that in influence the news industry in innumerable ways. They become better decision makers when working with technologists, and will help to forge the future of the journalism industry. This class covers prototypical object-oriented programming, an important component in many web coding languages. Topics covered include variables, typecasting, arrays, for-loops, conditional statements, comparison operators, functions, enclosures and cross-domain data requesting. This course will also cover popular data libraries like D3 and Pandas.
MEC 292C, 1-4 units
Advanced Special Topics in Design
Staff
This series covers current topics of research interest in design. The course content may vary semester to semester. Check with the department for current term topics.
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.
MUSIC 208A, 4 units
Advanced Music Perception and Cognition
Staff
Experimental studies in Music Perception and Cognition. Research projects required.
MUSIC 258A, 4 units
Sound and Music Computing with CNMAT Technologies
E. Campion
Explores the intersection of music and computers using a combination of scientific, technological, and artistic methodologies. Musical concerns within a computational frame are addressed through the acquisition of basic programming skills for the creation and control of digital sound. Will learn core concepts and techniques of computer-based music composition using the Cycling74/MaxMSP programming environment in combination with associated software tools and programming approaches created by the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies. Included will be exposure to the essentials of digital audio signal processing, musical acoustics and psychoacoustics, sound analysis and synthesis. The course is hands-on & taught from the computer lab.
PBHLTH 204A, 3 units
Mass Communications in Public Health
L. Dorfman
Examines the role of mass communication in advancing public health goals. Reviews mass media theories in general, and theories of the news media in particular. Provides an in-depth understanding of media advocacy as a strategy for using news media and paid advertising to support policy initiatives at the local, state, and federal levels. Examples are drawn from a wide range of public health issues.
Undergraduate courses:
ART 26-001, 4 units
Moving Image: Foundations
Staff
A practical and critical introduction to moving image media, focusing primarily on independent and experimental film and video art. Students learn video production and post-production and are introduced to key moments and concepts in moving image history and criticism. Course instruction includes basic camera operations, sound recording, and lighting, as well as basic editing, compression, and dissemination formats. Solo and group assignments are completed, and group critiques of class projects train students to recognize and discuss the formal, technical, critical and historical dimensions of their works. Weekly readings in philosophy, critical theory, artist statements and literature are assigned
ART 171-001, 4 units
Video Projects
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.
COMPSCI 10, 4 units
The Beauty and Joy of Computing
Staff
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 188, 4 units
Introduction to Artificial Intelligence
Staff
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
Staff
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.
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 20, 4 units
Film and Media Theory
D. Young
This course is intended to introduce undergraduates to the study of a range of media, including photography, film, television, video, and print and digital media. The course will focus on questions of medium "specificity" or the key technological/material, formal and aesthetic features of different media and modes of address and representation that define them. Also considered is the relationship of individual media to time and space, how individual media construct their audiences or spectators, and the kinds of looking or viewing they enable or encourage. The course will discuss the ideological effects of various media, particularly around questions of racial and sexual difference, national identity, capitalism, and power.
FILM 135, 4 units
Experimental and Alternative Media Art
J. Gaboury
This course is a survey of the history and aesthetics of experimental and alternative media forms and practices situating them in relation to the larger art historical, social and intellectual contexts from which they arise.
FILM 155, 4 units
Media Technologies
J. Gaboury
This course will focus on the history, theory, and experience of old and new media technologies.
FILM 187-001, 4 units
Special Topics in Media Production
N. Starosielski
This course investigates special topics in, and special technologies of, media production: e.g., experimental film, documentary film, digital special effects, etc. This is a hands-on studio course designed for students who have mastered the basics of media production and are ready to pursue more specialized film or video production.
GEOG 10AC, 4 units
Worldings: Regions, Peoples and States
C. Wilmott
Geography is a way of thinking deeply and expansively about our place in the world and this course is designed to transform how you think about America though understanding its place within a global context. Through concepts central to the field of geography such as space, nature, empire and globalization we will explore the issues of race, culture, ethnicity that pepper the pages of newspapers almost every day in stories of immigration, police violence, global warming, ethnic cleansing, and terrorism. We explore these issues in a way that will change how you understand both America and the world.
GEOG 80-001, 4 units
Digital Worlds: An Introduction to Geospatial Technologies
Staff
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.
GEOG 126, 4 units
Sonic Geographies
Staff
This is a practice-based course in which students will record, edit, and produce audio works that document and interpret the built environment and people in public places throughout Oakland and Berkeley. Through the process of making location recordings, analyzing those recordings, composing them into autonomous works, and critiquing them along the way, this course will engage with questions of how sound can help us understand the people we encounter and the spaces we move through everyday.
GEOG 127, 4 units
Geographic Film Production
Staff
What makes a film geographical? How can we explore humans’ relationships to their environment through sound and image? How might we make nonfiction films which foreground place and give it actual agency and voice? How can we use documentary film practices to depict place, culture, society, gesture, movement, rhythm and flow in new and exciting ways? This is a production workshop where each student will conceptualize, shoot, and edit one short documentary film project that centralizes some aspect/s of geographic thought.
GWS 131, 4 units
Gender and Science
B. Barnes
Examines historical and contemporary scientific studies of gender, sexuality, class, nation, and race from late 18th century racial and gender classifications through the heyday of eugenics to today's genomics. Explores the embedding of the scientific study of gender and sexuality and race in different political, economic, and social contexts. Considers different theories for the historical underrepresentation of women and minorities in science, as well as potential solutions. Introduces students to feminist science studies, and discusses technologies of production, reproduction, and destruction that draw on as well as remake gender locally and globally.
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.
MEDIAST 111B, 4 units
Text and Data Media History
M. Berry
This course covers the modern global history of textual and digital media forms, with a focus on interactions between emerging media technologies and emerging modern power structures. We will examine how and why historical agents responded to, made use of, and tried to regulate new information technologies such as the printing press, documents and forms, newspapers, the postal service, the telegraph and teletype, filing and punch-card systems, electro-mechanical and electronic computers, networked databases, and the internet. Lectures will consider the impact of specific media technologies on the historical development of state administrations, colonial empires, ideological movements, and modern global business.
MUSIC 30, 4 units
Computational Creativity for Music and the Arts
Staff
Music 30 (Computational creativity for music and the arts) aims at exploring the potential that computers have to support, enhance and challenge music creation. The course is divided into three modules. The first module introduces the essential mathematical and machine learning tools and gives a general introduction to sound. The second module shows real applications of creative computing for music. The third module focuses on the connection between the society and computational creativity at large.
MUSIC 107, 4 units
Independent Projects in Computer Music
Staff
Students will develop, in consultation with the instructor, a semester length project that focuses on creating a piece of music, and/or researching and building new software tools for music.
MUSIC 158A, 4 units
Sound and Music Computing with CNMAT Technologies
Staff
Explores the intersection of music and computers using a combination of scientific, technological, and artistic methodologies. Musical concerns within a computational frame are addressed through the acquisition of basic programming skills for the creation and control of digital sound. Will learn core concepts and techniques of computer based music composition using the Cycling74/MaxMSP programming environment in combination with associated software tools and programming approaches created by the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies. Included will be exposure to the essentials of digital audio signal processing, musical acoustics and psychoacoustics, sound analysis and synthesis. The course is hands-on and taught from the computer lab.
RHETORIC 107, 4 units
Rhetoric of Scientific Discourse
D. Bates
Examination of the characteristic functions of discourse in and about the natural sciences; with particular examination of the ways in which scientific language both guarantees, and at the same time, obscures the expression of social norms in scientific facts.
SOCIOL 166, 4 units
Society & Technology
J. Klett
This course studies the interaction between society and technologies in a comparative and multicultural perspective. Some topics covered include the relationship between technology and human society; technology, culture and values; technology in the new global economy; development and inequality; electronic democracy; how technology has transformed work and employment; and the challenges of technological progress and the role that society plays in addressing these challenges.
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.
SOCIOL 167, 4 units
Virtual Communities/ Social Media
E. Lin
With the advent of virtual communities and online social networks, old questions about the meaning of human social behavior have taken on renewed significance. Using a variety of online social media simultaneously, and drawing upon theoretical literature in a variety of disciplines, this course delves into discourse about community across disciplines. This course will enable students to establish both theoretical and experiential foundations for making decisions and judgments regarding the relations between mediated communication and human community.
THEATER 177, 4 units
Sound Design for Performance
Staff
In this course, undergraduate students will learn to construct sound cues and soundtracks for theater performances and videos using industry standard software, and will learn fundamental principles of incorporating video and sound into stage productions. Students will be exposed to the writings and works of prominent sound theorists, designers, and engineers and multimedia performance artists. The most successful students may be invited to participate in UC Berkeley theater productions as sound designers.