Note: This list of Recommended Courses offered at UC Berkeley is based upon available information and is not intended to be comprehensive. To suggest changes or additions, please contact:
BCNM Associate Director
Lara Wolfe
lara@berkeley.edu
Graduate courses
NWMEDIA 200, 4 units
History & Theory of New Media
E. Fraser
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 C203, 4 units
Critical Making
E. Paulos
Critical Making will operationalize and critique the practice of “making” through both foundational literature and hands on studio culture. As hybrid practitioners, students will develop fluency in readily collaging and incorporating a variety of physical materials and protocols into their practice. Students will envision and create future computational experiences that critically explore social and culturally relevant technological themes. No previous technical knowledge is required to take this course. Class projects involve basic programming, electronic circuitry, and digital fabrication design. Tutorials and instruction will be provided, but students will be expected to develop basic skills in these areas to complete course projects.
NWMEDIA C265, 3 units (also INFO C265)
Interface Aesthetics
K. Ryokai
This course will cover new interface metaphors beyond desktops (e.g., for mobile devices, computationally enhanced environments, tangible user interfaces) but will also cover visual design basics (e.g., color, layout, typography, iconography) so that we have systematic and critical understanding of aesthetically engaging interfaces. Students will get a hands-on learning experience on these topics through course projects, design critiques, and discussions, in addition to lectures and readings.
NWMEDIA 290-001, 4 units
The Internet is a Weapon
A. De Kosnik
Understandings of, and attitudes towards, the internet have long oscillated between techno-utopianism and techno-dystopianism. This seminar will dive deeply into the techno-dystopian views of the network, and will review how the internet has been designed and used as a weapon of war. We will begin by examining the historical origins of the internet as a defense system for the U.S. military immediately after World War II, then analyze the development of the ARPANET (predecessor of the internet) during the Cold War, and then move on to contemporary definitions and cases of cyberwarfare and cybersecurity, including misinformation and disinformation on social media platforms.
NWMEDIA 290, 4 units
Digital Storytelling
E. Fraser
Through themes of crisis, catastrophe and speculative futures, this course introduces students to the history and practice of digital storytelling. Using theories like cybertext, procedurality and narratology the content covers established and recent scholarship on new media, video games, non-linear texts and digitality. Students will develop projects featuring interactivity, social media, machinima, podcasting, hypertext, StoryMaps and other natively digital forms and practices. Exploring ideas around crisis, ruin, dystopia and climate catastrophe, students will experiment with digital storytelling techniques to extend their work into fiction, creative non-fiction, and speculation. Introductory training and equipment available as required.
NWMEDIA 290-004, 4 units
Documenting the World: New Media, Documentary Film and the Production and Dissemination of Academic Knowledge
C. Wilmott
This course introduces graduate researchers to the theories and traditions of documentary film-making as a mode of academic research and dissemination. It crosses analogue, digital and new media forms, with a focus on the production and representation of space, place and environment, documentary techniques including expository, fly-on-the-wall, reflective, and participatory modes, storytelling, narrative and rhetorical forms, and the history of radical and academic documentary traditions.
ARCH 205B, 5 units
Studio One
Staff
This course is the second semester of a one-year, post-professional studio intended for those students who have a professional architecture degree and wish to explore current design issues in a stimulating, rigorous, and highly experimental studio setting.
ARCH 229, 1-4 units
Special Topics in Digital Design Theories and Methods
R. Choksombatcha
This seminar will cast light on the notion of flexibility in architecture. As an unquestioned positive concept widely adopted by architects to describe almost every architectural project and respond to today’s ever-changing environment, it will challenge flexibility’s taken-for-granted reading by investigating the term beyond spatiality. The sessions—organized around talks, texts and drawing assignments—will discuss a number of paradigmatic case studies and construct a genealogy of flexibility, ultimately unveiling its hidden complexities, problematics and links to other disciplines.
ARCH 230-001, 3 units
Advanced Architectural Design Theory and Criticism
N. Turan
Seminar in the analysis and discussion of contemporary and historical issues in architectural design theory and criticism.
COMPSCI 260A, 4 units
User Interface Design and Development
B. Hartmann
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 C280, 3 units
Computer Vision
J. Malik, A. Efro
Paradigms for computational vision. Relation to human visual perception. Mathematical techniques for representing and reasoning, with curves, surfaces and volumes. Illumination and reflectance models. Color perception. Image segmentation and aggregation. Methods for bottom-up three dimensional shape recovery: Line drawing analysis, stereo, shading, motion, texture. Use of object models for prediction and recognition.
CYPLAN 255, 3 units
Urban Informatics and Visualization
M.Hossein
A hands-on data visualization course that trains students to analyze urban data, develop indicators, and create visualizations and maps using programming languages, open source tools, and public data.
DESINV 211, 5 units
Designing Emerging Technologies I
TBA
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.
EDUC 203, 3 units
Cultivating Cognitive Development: From Sensorimotor Intelligence to Embodied STEM Concepts
D. Abrahamson
This Learning Sciences and Human Development graduate program required course provides a foundation for one strand of LS/HD scholarship: the sensorimotor grounding of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) concepts. We will cover seminal work from cognitive developmental psychology as well as a variety of theories of human learning, both of movement and of STEM concepts, that ultimately inform the design of artifacts and activities for equitable STEM learning.
EDUC 295B, 3 units
Technology, Computing, and Data in the Classroom
T. Sengupta-Irving & T. Philip
To explore the cognitive consequences of technology in instruction and learning, the promise of technology in education will be examined, and exemplary instructional software will be explored. A model of knowledge acquisition and knowledge change incorporating technological delivery of instruction will be developed.
FILM 240-001, 4 units
Poetics of Media
M. Sas
This seminar thinks through the complex landscape of media forms in order to press on (beyond) existing impasses of media and cultural theory. Traversing the regimes of slow and surface reading, we question modes of writing with media objects and projects, with attention to questions of affect, gender, queer diasporas, race and ethnicity, ecology, infrastructure and technologies of vision. If realism, or definitions of the real, form a constitutive element in the dialectics of media theory and the avant-gardes, how have artists used material and corporeal practices to reimagine that real politically, communally, or poetically? Planned readings include Beckett (and translation), S. Hartman, Nancy, Nakai, Rothberg, Uno, Chen, French and Japanese media theorists, and photographers/dancers/filmmakers/anime artists from Akerman to Ohno to Nishimura and beyond.
FILM 240-023, 4 units
The Elements of Media Studies
N. Starosielski
This is a seminar on media and its elemental constituents, contexts, and interfaces. These include air and atmospheres, oceans and water, particulate matter and dust, microbes and viruses, ice and heat, surfaces and lubrication, minerals and supply chains.
GERMAN 179 001, 4 units
Language after Language Models
H. Bajohr
Taught in English.
This course explores the profound impact of large language models (LLMs) on our understanding of language, meaning, and literary works. As AI systems like ChatGPT increasingly influence writing, translation, and communication, we will ask what becomes of language when it is computed by intelligent machines. Does it matter if an LLM can’t mean what it says if what it says is right? Is a sonnet by a machine less valuable than one by a human? And what is the politics of global English in the age of AI? Students will engage with philosophical theories of meaning, the intersection of AI with poetry and literature, and the ethical and technical challenges in the field of machine translation. By blending readings from philosophy, literary theory, and technical discussions of AI, this course bridges the gap between the humanities and computer science, offering a unique perspective on language after language models.
INFO 203, 2 units
Social Issues of Information
Staff
This course is designed to be an introduction to the topics and issues associated with information and information technology and its role in society. Throughout the semester we will consider both the consequence and impact of technologies on social groups and on social interaction and how society defines and shapes the technologies that are produced. Students will be exposed to a broad range of applied and practical problems, theoretical issues, as well as methods used in social scientific analysis. The four sections of the course are: 1) theories of technology in society, 2) information technology in workplaces 3) automation vs. humans, and 4) networked sociability.
INFO 205-001, 2 units
Information Law and Policy
Staff
This course uses examples from various commercial domains—retail, health, credit, entertainment, social media, and biosensing/quantified self—to explore legal and ethical issues including freedom of expression, privacy, research ethics, consumer protection, information and cybersecurity, and copyright. The class emphasizes how existing legal and policy frameworks constrain, inform, and enable the architecture, interfaces, data practices, and consumer facing policies and documentation of such offerings; and, fosters reflection on the ethical impact of information and communication technologies and the role of information professionals in legal and ethical work.
INFO 217A, 3 units
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Research
TBA
This course is a graduate-level introduction to HCI research. Students will learn to conduct original HCI research by reading and discussing research papers while collaborating on a semester-long research project. Each week the class will focus on a theme of HCI research and review foundational and cutting-edge research relevant to that theme.
INFO 233, 3 units
Social Psychology and Information Technology
TBA
Discusses application of social psychological theory and research to information technologies and systems; we focus on sociological social psychology, which largely focuses on group processes, networks, and interpersonal relationships. Information technologies considered include software systems used on the internet such as social networks, email, and social games, as well as specific hardware technologies such as mobile devices, computers, wearables, and virtual/augmented reality devices. We examine human communication practices, through the lens of different social psychology theories, including: symbolic interaction, identity theories, social exchange theory, status construction theory, and social networks and social structure theory.
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 220, 2 units
Coding for Journalists
TBA
This course is an introduction to programming concepts as they relate to the journalism industry. The goal of this course is to equip students with a foundational technical literacy to construct interactive online stories such as data visualizations, infographics, maps, multimedia packages, games or innumerable other types of projects students may conceive.
JOURN 222, 3 units
Interactive Narratives
TBA
This class teaches students how to develop interactive online news packages using best practices in design and web development. The course focuses on story structure and production of content and will cover the following topics: Best practices in developing interactive multimedia stories online; Design fundamentals and typography for online content; HTML and CSS for designing and constructing web projects; jQuery coding for adding interactivity to online content.
STS C250, 3 units
Science and Technology Studies Research Seminar
TBA
This course will cover methods and approaches for students considering professionalizing in the field of STS, including a chance for students to workshop written work.
Undergraduate courses
NWMEDIA 190-002, 4 units
Language after Language Models
H. Bajohr
This course explores the profound impact of large language models (LLMs) on our understanding of language, meaning, and literary works. As AI systems like ChatGPT increasingly influence writing, translation, and communication, we will ask what becomes of language when it is computed by intelligent machines. Does it matter if an LLM can’t mean what it says if what it says is right? Is a sonnet by a machine less valuable than one by a human? And what is the politics of global English in the age of AI? Students will engage with philosophical theories of meaning, the intersection of AI with poetry and literature, and the ethical and technical challenges in the field of machine translation. By blending readings from philosophy, literary theory, and technical discussions of AI, this course bridges the gap between the humanities and computer science, offering a unique perspective on language after language models.
ARCH 11B, 5 units
Introduction to Design
R. Pakravan
This Introduction to design concepts and conventions of graphic representation and model building as related to the study of architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, and city planning. Students draw in plan, section, elevation, axonometric, and perspective and are introduced to digital media. Design projects address concepts of order, site analysis, scale, structure, rhythm, detail, culture, and landscape.
ART 171-001, 4 units
Video Projects
TBA
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.
ART 172, 4 units
Advanced Digital Media: Computer Graphics
TBA
Computer Graphics constitute a default method of image synthesis, from fine art to game design, cinema, and advertising. This production-intensive studio course introduces students to professional CG tools (Blender, Python) as well as an overview of CG aesthetics. Weekly project assignments based on tutorials cover modeling, texturing, lighting, animation, rendering, physics simulations and data-driven image synthesis. Final projects focus on portfolio work with scenes and characters to be exported into VR, AR, and game design.
COMPSCI 10-001, 4 units
The Beauty and Joy of Computing
D. Garcia
This course is an introduction to the beauty and joy of computing, including the history, social implications, great principles, and future of computing. Beautiful applications that have changed the way we look at the world, how computing empowers discovery and progress in other fields, and the 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
B. Hartmann
This course looks at the design, implementation, and evaluation of user interfaces. It focuses on user-centered design and task analytics, conceptual models and interface metaphors, usability inspection and evaluation methods. We will also perform analysis of user study data, input methods (keyboard, pointing, touch, tangible) and input models. The course will investigate 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 184-001, 4 units
Foundations of Computer Graphics
TBA
This course is an introduction to the foundations of 3-dimensional computer graphics. Topics covered include 2D and 3D transformations, interactive 3D graphics programming with OpenGL, shading and lighting models, geometric modeling using Bézier and B-Spline curves, computer graphics rendering including ray tracing and global illumination, signal processing for anti-aliasing and texture mapping, and animation and inverse kinematics. There will be an emphasis on both the mathematical and geometric aspects of graphics, as well as the ability to write complete 3D graphics programs.
COMPSCI 188-001, 4 units
Introduction to Artificial Intelligence
TBA
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.
DESINV 23, 3 unit
Creative Programming and Electronics
TBA
This course teaches techniques to conceptualize, design and prototype interactive objects. Students will learn core interaction design principles and learn how to program devices with and without screens, basic circuit design and construction for sensing and actuation, and debugging. Students work individually on fundamental concepts and skills, then form teams to work on an open-ended design project that requires a synthesis of the different techniques covered. 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.
EDUC W140A, 4 units (also EDUC 140AC)
The Art of Making Meaning: Educational Perspectives on Literacy and Learning in a Global World
TBA
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.
FILM 35, 4 units
Digital Media Studies
J. Gaboury
This course is about digital media: how it came to be, where it is going, and how we can engage with it critically and creatively. Over the course of five units we will trace both the history and theory of digital media technologies, examining how they have come to shape our engagement with contemporary culture with a particular focus on aesthetics, form, and politics.
FILM 155-001, 4 units
Media Technologies
N. Starosielski
This course will focus on the history, theory, and experience of old and new media technologies.
FILM 170-003, 4 units
The Proto-Cinematic: On the Pre-History of Film
A. Felix
This class traces the series of developments in early modern image-making cultures, and their corresponding scientific experimentations in vision and optical technologies. It takes the emergence of cinema (around the year 1900) as one development among many within the visual experimentations of the long 19th century (the period spanning between 1789 and 1914). In thinking with this pre-history of the cinema, what I am calling the ‘proto-cinematic,’ this class will look towards the divergent, parallel, and intersecting histories and theories of vision as represented by such 19th century optical devices as the Claude Glass, the camera obscura, the panorama, the phantasmagoria, and the stereoscope, among others. We will explore how these devices, along with early photography and projection techniques, were central to the development of the modern motion picture. There will be particular emphasis on the cultural and technological context of the 19th century, including the role of public entertainment, scientific curiosity, and the growing fascination with visual illusion, all of which played a part in the pre-history of cinema. In this inquiry, we will be guided by the writings of such theorists as Noel Burch, Jonathan Crary, Walter Benjamin, Tom Gunning, André Gaudreault, and Noam Elcott, among others.
GLOBAL 110K, 3 units
Africa in Global Context
N. Schimmel
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.
INFO 103, 4 Units
History of Information
Staff
This course explores the history of information and associated technologies, uncovering why we think of ours as "the information age." We will select moments in the evolution of production, recording, and storage from the earliest writing systems to the world of Short Message Service (SMS) and blogs. In every instance, we'll be concerned with both what and when and how and why, and we will keep returning to the question of technological determinism: how do technological developments affect society and vice versa?
LEGALST 149, 4 units
Law, Technology and Entrepreneurship
S. Katyal
Entrepreneurship plays an increasingly essential role in today’s global economy. New companies and startups play valuable roles in the formation of new industry, also spurring established incumbent companies towards further growth. This course is designed to explore the role of law in facilitating the development of entrepreneurial enterprises, paying special attention to the complex interaction between innovation and regulation. The purpose of this course is to provide students with a thorough foundation for understanding the role that law plays in the construction and growth of entrepreneurial enterprises.
MEDIAST 132, 4 units
Researching Digital Media: Methods & Methodologies
E. Fraser
The question of how to study digital content, or use digital methodologies, is extremely complex. Should we simply adapt existing methods for media, culture and social analysis and apply these to digital and networked technologies? Are web-native or digital-native processes the only appropriate methodologies available for the study of the digital? What theoretical frameworks or technical skills are best positioned to capture ever-evolving online communications, communities and practices? What are the pitfalls of digital research, and can they be avoided? How do you use digitally-focused methods in context? Finally, how has academic research and practice changed in response to digitally mediated cultures and societies? These key questions wi
MEDIAST 168, 4 units
Cybernetics and Cybercultures: The Psychosocial Impact of Digital Media
M. Berry
How have the realities and representations of digital media affected how we think, feel, and interact? What impulses, events, and personalities gave rise to the relentless digitization of information, choice, and even life itself?
MUSIC 29, 4 units
Music Now
TBA
This course explores the basic materials and models that set the boundaries for various present-day musical experiences. Students are exposed to terminology and modes of engagement with the aim of inspiring new paradigms of listening (e.g., listening to silence, noise, space, and timbre). Composers and musicians of today continue to explore new ways of defining and organizing sounds into music. The course focuses on the most adventurous music of our time, but the concepts learned can be applied to any style of music. The course is designed to enrich and deepen the students' musical abilities through direct involvement with musical materials. Direct engagement through listening and participatory learning is accomplished in part with software created at the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies. The course does not require students to be able to read music nor to own a personal computer.
MUSIC 158A, 4 units
Sound and Music Computing with CNMAT Technologies
TBA
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.
MUSIC 158B, 4 units
Situated Instrument Design for Musical Expression
TBA
The practice and theory of contextual instrument design for use in musical expression is explored. Students create new instruments and performance environments using a variety of physical interaction paradigms, programming practices, and musical processes emerging from the UC Berkeley Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT). Building on the methodologies established in Music 158A, the course develops aesthetic, analytic and technical skills through discussion, empirical study, and collaborative engagement. With a balance of artistic and technical concerns, participants deepen understanding of the creative process, demonstrating the results through class installation and public performance.
SOCIOL 166, 4 units
Society and Technology
L. Huang
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.
TDPS 100-001, 3 units
From Imagination to Innovation: Activating creativity for transformational change
L. Wymore
This is a project-based class in collaborative innovation where students experience group creativity and team-based design by using techniques from across the disciplines of business, theatre, design, and art practice. They will leverage problem framing and solving techniques derived from critical thinking, systems thinking, and creative problem solving (popularly known today as design thinking). The course is grounded in a brief weekly lecture that sets out the theoretical, historical, and cultural contexts for particular innovation practices, but the majority of the class involves hands-on studio-based learning guided by an interdisciplinary team of teachers leading small group collaborative projects.
FOR MORE INFORMATION or to suggest changes or additions, please contact
BCNM Associate Director
Lara Wolfe:
lara@berkeley.edu