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 201, 3 units
Questioning New Media
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.
NWMEDIA 290 001, 1-4 units
Resistance Media
A. De Kosnik
Resistance Media explores the aesthetics, strategies, and politics of media that challenge systems of domination—from colonialism and fascism to capitalism and carceral power. This seminar traces how artists, activists, and communities have used film, television, digital art, and popular media to envision insurgency, expose injustice, and spark transformation. We will study works such as Battle of Algiers, Andor, Say Nothing, Escape from Sobibor, Sorry to Bother You, Selma, Watchmen, TimeTraveller™, and others, alongside readings by Frantz Fanon, Audre Lorde, James C. Scott, Saidiya Hartman, Christina Sharpe, José Esteban Muñoz, Mimi Thi Nguyen, Silvia Federici, Grace Dillon, Eve Tuck, and Patrick Radden Keefe. Students will engage with both scholarly and creative projects to investigate how media can operate as tools of resistance, memory work, and radical world-building.
NWMEDIA 290 002, 4 units
Special Topics in New Media: Digital Matters
A. Saum Pascual
This graduate seminar explores the intersections of digital technologies, environmental impact, and human experience, blending poetic encounters and critical frameworks. Challenging the myth of digital immateriality, in this course we’ll situate digital literary works (also known as digital or electronic literature) from Latin America, Spain and their diasporas within broader discussions of ecological crisis, technological infrastructures, and cultural production. More granularly, we’ll examine how computational technologies (algorithms, AI, blockchain, and beyond) reinforce modern dichotomies, abstracting reality while obscuring the material infrastructures and lives that sustain them. Going beyond established concepts of digital materiality, we’ll advance a broader ecological and infrastructural perspective, exposing how capitalism and coloniality persist in and shape digital media today. By reading digital artworks not only under these literary and historical frameworks, but by homing in on the material dimensions of software and hardware as well, we’ll expand the formalist approaches most commonly seen in the study of digital literature, rooting it now firmly within the web of life in ecological and historical terms. We’ll do this by opening conversations with: book materiality, digital temporality, media archaeologies vs. historiography, media infrastructure, cybernetics, Anthropocene criticism, decoloniality, queer of color critique, posthumanism and feminist new materialisms. Class will be conducted in English but some reading knowledge of Spanish might be required. This course satisfies the Theory requirement for HLL tracks 1 and 2 in Spanish and Portuguese, as well as New Media DE elective requirements. Any questions, please email saum-pascual@berkeley.edu.
NWMEDIA C262, 4 units
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.
ARCH 200A 001, 002, and 003, 6 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, 002, and 003, 1-4 units
Special Topics in Digital Design Theories and Methods
R. Choksombatchai, M. Paz Gutierrez, G. Eftaxiopoulos
Selected topics in digital design theories and methods. For current offerings, see departmental website.
ARCH 270 001 and 002, 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.
ART 301, 1 unit
The Teaching of Art: Practice
A. Kazmi
MFA course utilizing aspects of pedagogical and andragogical teaching, the interactive lecture, collaborative learning, simulations, and brainstorming-freewriting, this semester-long seminar will focus on these various integrative teaching approaches, to facilitate communication in the diverse and wide-ranging arena which is fine arts today. Discussion of course aims, instructional methods, grading standards, and special problems in the teaching of art practice.
CIVENG 292B 101, 3 units
Climate Resilient Infrastructure Design Studio
Staff
In this course, students develop real-world engineering and design skills to address the effects of climate change. The semester teaches design solutions based on planned and implemented projects to address sea level rise, extreme flooding and other climate risks. Students will explore applications to real-world sites in a project-based format. Topics include engineering tools, high performance landscapes, sustainable infrastructure, urban design, equity and social justice, and resilience of critically impacted built and natural infrastructure systems.
CYPLAN 238, 5 units
Development—Design Studio
B. Metcalf
Studio experience in analysis, policy advising, and project design or general plan preparation for urban communities undergoing development, with a focus on site development and project planning.
CYPLAN C241, 4 units
Research Methods in Environmental Design
Z. Lamb
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.
DEVENG C200, 3 units
Design, Evaluate, and Scale Development Technologies
Staff
This required course for the Designated Emphasis in Development Engineering will include projects and case studies, many related to projects at UC Berkeley, such as those associated with the Development Impact Labs (DIL). Student teams will work with preliminary data to define the problem. They will then collect and analyze interview and survey data from potential users and begin to design a solution. Students will explore how to use novel monitoring technologies and “big data” for product improvement and evaluation. The student teams will use the case studies (with improvements based on user feedback and data analysis) to develop a plan for scaling and evaluation with a rigorous controlled trial.
ESPM C252, 3 units
Topics in Science and Technology Studies
M. Mazzotti
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.
FILM 200, 4 units
Graduate Film Theory Seminar
D. Young
In this course, we will read key works of film and media theory from the past 100 years, spanning theories of aesthetics, subjectivity/spectatorship, and mediation. We will situate these works in the context of the larger intellectual movements that they emerged from and contributed to (including phenomenology, Marxism, structural linguistics, psychoanalysis, feminism, postmodernism, queer theory and critical race theory). A primary focus of the course will be on cinema, as a dominant representational form and cultural technology of the 20th century. But we will also examine more recent theories of television, digital media, and media broadly conceived that destabilize some of the key assumptions of classical and post-structuralist film theory. Throughout the course, we will attempt to place theorists in conversation with one another and examine how the theorization of moving-image forms has been central to the analysis of aesthetics and politics in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, to the point that a study of modernity without a theory of film and media is virtually inconceivable.
FILM 240, 4 units
Graduate Topics in Film: Ordinary Media
J. Gaboury
Selected topics in the study of film.
INFO 201, 3 units
Research Design and Applications for Data and Analysis
M. Rivera
Introduces the data sciences landscape, with a particular focus on learning data science techniques to uncover and answer the questions students will encounter in industry. Lectures, readings, discussions, and assignments will teach how to apply disciplined, creative methods to ask better questions, gather data, interpret results, and convey findings to various audiences. The emphasis throughout is on making practical contributions to real decisions that organizations will and should make. Course must be taken for a letter grade to fulfill degree requirements.
INFO 202, 3 units
Information Organization and Retrieval
M. Hearst
This course introduces the intellectual foundations of information organization and retrieval: conceptual modeling, semantic representation, vocabulary and metadata design, classification, and standardization, as well as information retrieval practices, technology, and applications, including computational processes for analyzing information in both textual and non-textual formats.
INFO 213, 4 units
Introduction to User Experience Design
Staff
This course will provide an introduction to the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Students will learn to apply design thinking to User Experience (UX) design, prototyping, and evaluation. The course will also cover special topic areas within HCI.
INFO 253A, 3 units
Front-End Web Architecture
O. Segun Ashaolu
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 enabling 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 use of natural language processing as a set of methods for exploring and reasoning about text as data, focusing especially on the applied side of NLP — using existing NLP methods and libraries in Python in new and creative ways. 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
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, causal 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
L. Ulaby
Theory and practice of naturalistic inquiry. Grounded theory. Ethnographic methods including interviews, focus groups, and naturalistic observation. Case studies. Analysis of qualitative data. Issues of validity and generalizability in qualitative research.
INFO 290-003, 3 units
Cultural Analytics
K. Chang
While often defined as “the computational study of culture”, cultural analytics might be best understood as a radical interdisciplinary experiment, one that seeks to understand cultures—socialties, histories, cognition, the literary—through empirical models and patterns, built on effective computational representations of relevant cultural constructs. This experiment calls for a unique skillset: one needs to be familiar with approaches in the interpretive humanities and computer/information science; one also needs to cultivate an interdisciplinary mindset: recognize and appreciate the affordances and limitations of both qualitative and quantitative traditions. This class is imagined as a possible point of departure for those who are so inclined.
JOURN 209, 1 unit
Multimedia Reporting Bootcamp
Staff
This is a required one-week intensive multimedia training workshop at the beginning of the fall semester to equip all first-year graduate journalism students with basic knowledge of digital storytelling techniques as well as the use of multimedia equipment and editing software to produce multimedia content. The objective is to train all students—regardless of their planned area of specialty—with some foundational digital skills to be applied during their reporting for the school’s local online news sites in the J200 Intro To Reporting class. The concepts and skills taught during the workshop also will be reaffirmed and expanded over the semester in the Multimedia Skills class.
JOURN 215, 3 units
Multimedia Skills
J. Sanchez Rue
This class teaches the fundamentals of using digital video, audio, and photo equipment, as well as editing digital files. The class is designed to expose students to what it is like to report in a multimedia environment. While primarily for students taking new media publishing courses, the class will be valuable to any student who wants to better prepare for the emerging convergence of broadcast, print, and web media.
JOURN 216, 2-3 units
Multimedia Reporting
J. Darren Harden, J. Sanchez Rue
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 219 002, 1-2 units
Mini-Special Topics: MINI Graphics Animation Explainer
D. Taylor
Open only to journalism graduate students. This course is designed to introduce students to basic methods and practices in animation currently used by media organizations in documentary and news video. Each class will consist of a short demonstration, viewing of related works and hands-on experimentation. Students will be provided with an overview of practical techniques ranging from kinetic typography and animated maps to motion tracking and templates, geared toward expanding the skillset of documentary filmmakers and editors. Prior knowledge of animation and motion graphics is not needed.
JOURN 219 003, 1-2 units
Mini-Special Topics
E. McCutcheon
A mini course is a four to ten-week intensive workshop designed to accompany and enhance other courses in the program. Workshop topics vary from semester to semester, but have included: Associate Producer, Sports Reporting, FOIA Reporting, Foreign Reporting, Bias and Journalism, Social Media, Sound Design and the Journalist as Freelancer.
JOURN 221, 3 units
Introduction to Data Visualization
J. Anne LaFleur
This is a course in finding and telling visual stories from data. We will cover fundamental principles of data analysis and visual presentation, chart types and when to use them, and how to acquire, process and “interview” data. We will make interactive and static charts and maps using free software. We will be making graphics by writing code, as well as using point-and-click software. The emphasis is on gaining practical skills that students can apply in a newsroom setting.
JOURN 255, 1.5 units
Media Ethics
J. Anne LaFleur
Media Ethics will concentrate on ethical dilemmas faced by reporters and editors. Using case studies, readings and guest lecturers, the course examines the murkier conflicts that don't necessarily make it to court but nevertheless force difficult newsroom decision-making. What should journalists do? How should they justify their decisions? This course examines key ethical questions facing journalists, many of which took root in a pre-digital era. The central premise of this course is that journalism has the capacity to challenge social injustice, which is one reason to participate in and protect the profession. At the same time, dominant journalism has regularly dehumanized marginalized communities.
JOURN 282, 3-4 units
Introduction to Visual Journalism
Staff
Study of the history and institutions of broadcast journalism (nine weeks), practice, techniques of reporting news for radio and television.
MECENG 292C, 1-4 units
Advanced Special Topics in Design
L. Yao
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 208A, 4 units
Advanced Music Perception and Cognition
J. Wagner
Experimental studies in Music Perception and Cognition. Research projects required.
PBHLTH 204A, 3 units
Mass Communications in Public Health
L. Elizabeth 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.
PUBPOL 290, 3 units
Special Topics in Public Policy
Staff
Want to change the world? Tired of talk of the climate apocalypse and want to work for a sustainable and just clean energy future? This course will provide you with the tools to understand and analyze advocacy campaigns, private sector innovation and public policy to help make the change you want to see in the world a reality. Throughout history, social change campaigns have had a profound impact on the lives of millions - helping to pass child labor laws, protect ancient forests and Indigenous lands, secure marriage equality, accelerate the retirement of coal-fired power plants, win important civil rights victories, and much more. How do these efforts succeed, and why do they sometimes fail? This course will survey the strategies and tactics - from the collaborative to the confrontational - that are used by campaign strategists and grassroots organizers. With a particular focus on environmental sustainability, we’ll explore how campaigns are created, how coalitions are built and negotiations conducted. We’ll examine the role of public interest litigation, civil disobedience, creative communications, mass mobilization and other ways in which organized people build power, and how regulators and elected officials can harness public sentiment to enact durable and dramatic policy changes.
SPANISH 285, 4 units
Seminar in Spanish Literature: Digital Matters
A. Saum Pascual
This graduate seminar explores the intersections of digital technologies, environmental impact, and human experience, blending poetic encounters and critical frameworks. Challenging the myth of digital immateriality, in this course we’ll situate digital literary works (also known as digital or electronic literature) from Latin America, Spain and their diasporas within broader discussions of ecological crisis, technological infrastructures, and cultural production. More granularly, we’ll examine how computational technologies (algorithms, AI, blockchain, and beyond) reinforce modern dichotomies, abstracting reality while obscuring the material infrastructures and lives that sustain them. Going beyond established concepts of digital materiality, we’ll advance a broader ecological and infrastructural perspective, exposing how capitalism and coloniality persist in and shape digital media today. By reading digital artworks not only under these literary and historical frameworks, but by homing in on the material dimensions of software and hardware as well, we’ll expand the formalist approaches most commonly seen in the study of digital literature, rooting it now firmly within the web of life in ecological and historical terms. We’ll do this by opening conversations with: book materiality, digital temporality, media archaeologies vs. historiography, media infrastructure, cybernetics, Anthropocene criticism, decoloniality, queer of color critique, posthumanism and feminist new materialisms. Class will be conducted in English but some reading knowledge of Spanish might be required. This course satisfies the Theory requirement for HLL tracks 1 and 2 in Spanish and Portuguese, as well as New Media DE elective requirements.
Undergraduate courses
NWMEDIA C183, 4 units
Cartographic Representation
C. Wilmott
This course introduces the art, science and politics of making maps in a mediated world. Much of the course focuses on key theories, concepts, principles in map design, visualization and communication, while building deeper theoretical, critical and experimental skills needed for the challenges of the future. This includes theories of new media, the history of cartography, the impact of the internet on critical, Indigenous and counter- approaches to mapping, contemporary media and cartographic arts including the experimental, expressive and artistic, and the technicalities of visualizing quantitative data through (carto)graphic design.
NWMEDIA 198, 1 unit
Directed Group Study
Staff
Course may be student-initiated or initiated by a faculty affiliate of the Center for New Media. The subject matter will vary from semester to semester. Student initiated courses will be taught by a student facilitator under the supervision of the faculty sponsor, who must be a faculty affiliate of the Berkeley Center for New Media.
ASAMST 171, 4 units
Asian Americans in Film and Video
Staff
Introduces students to films and videos by and about Asian Americans; presents an overview of the development of the Asian American media arts field in relation to current cultural theories and American film history and theory.
COMPSCI 10, 4 units
The Beauty and Joy of Computing
D. Garcia
An introductory course for students with minimal prior exposure to computer science. Prepares students for future computer science courses and empowers them to utilize programming to solve problems in their field of study. Presents an overview of the history, great principles, and transformative applications of computer science, as well as a comprehensive introduction to programming. Topics include abstraction, recursion, algorithmic complexity, higher-order functions, concurrency, social implications of computing (privacy, education, algorithmic bias), and engaging research areas (data science, AI, HCI). Students will program in Snap! (a friendly graphical language) and Python, and will design and implement two projects of their choice.
COMPSCI 188, 4 units
Introduction to Artificial Intelligence
Staff
Ideas and techniques underlying the design of intelligent computer systems. Topics include search, game playing, knowledge representation, inference, planning, reasoning under uncertainty, machine learning, robotics, perception, and language understanding.
COMPSCI 195, 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.
DATA C8, 4 units
Foundations of Data Science
J. Sanchez
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? The course 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.
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.
ENGIN 183 004, 3 units
Special Topics in Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship—Future of Technology: How Innovators Critically Examine Game Changing and Time Wasting Technologies
L. Kowalski
Why did Altavista fail, and Google succeed? Same for Myspace and Facebook? Was it technology, marketing, people, luck, execution, or something else? It is trivial to discern good ideas and profound technological shifts after the fact. But how could you become your own futurist and learn to analyze emerging trends and foretell the outcome? We will study and analyze both failures and successes in virtual reality, blockchain, artificial intelligence, healthtech, and other technologies. Students will conduct literature reviews, netnographic analysis, and case studies in order to identify patterns that they could later apply to their own research, career decisions, or entrepreneurial ventures. The format of the class will include lectures, guest speakers from distinguished entrepreneurs and innovators, peer-reviewed presentations, quantitative and qualitative data gathering, and group exercises. Students will produce a technical report highlighting the barriers for adoption of emerging technologies. The report has the potential to be published and added to your professional portfolio. Critical thinking and the ability to question everything are the only prerequisites for this analytical survey course.
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
W. Bao
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
M. Sas
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 145 001, 4 units
Global Media: Soviet Film Style, from Silence to Sound
A. Nesbet
This semester we will focus on a number of great Soviet silent filmmakers – Eisenstein, Kozintsev and Trauberg, Kuleshov, Room, and Vertov – and follow the evolution of their film style as they made the transition into sound. Readings will examine the stylistic influences of the filmmakers in question, their own approaches to filmmaking, and responses to their films. Taught in English.
FILM 145 002, 4 units
Global Media: The House and Home in Classical Hollywood Cinema
K. Whissel
This course will focus on one of classical Hollywood’s obsessions: the house and the home in American culture. We will approach this topic through a range of genres (film noir, documentary, the family melodrama, the musical, horror, the gothic film, the western, documentary, etc.) in which the house, the home, property, and themes of family life, shelterlessness, and displacement loom large. We will investigate architectural, conceptual, and ideological manifestations of the house and home in conjunction with new technologies that emerged during the classical era, including widescreen, Technicolor, and 3D cinema. Several screenings will be projected in 3D, so attendance at screening labs is required. Films may include: Gaslight, Dial M for Murder 3D, All That Heaven Allows, Sunset Boulevard, House of Wax 3D, Pinky, Meet Me in St. Louis, Psycho, The Apartment, This Is Cinerama, among others.
FILM 145 003, 4 units
Global Media: Israeli Cinema and Media Cultures
Staff
The course will examine the evolution of Israeli cinema in the context of international cinema history and Israeli culture. In the international context, Israeli cinema will be discussed as part of the development of film language in the medium's history, examining the nature of the interaction between the cinematic utterances of Israeli cinema and those developed worldwide. In the national culture and local context, Israeli cinema will be examined as a mirror to the society's development as well as its influence on Israeli society and culture.
FILM 155 001, 4 units
Media Technologies: Digital Game Cultures
J. Gaboury
This class offers a broad introduction to the phenomenon of video games, focusing primarily on Western U.S. histories and cultural practices. We will investigate the relationship between play and games, learn how to analyze and practice basic game design principles, examine current events around issues of race, gender and inclusivity in the contemporary game scene, study cultural practices such as speed running and art games, and come to better understand the stakes of growing practices in e-sports and global game economies. In short, this course will transform the simple everyday pleasures of games into something new, complex, and unfamiliar.
FILM 155 002, 4 units
Media Technologies
Staff
This course will focus on the history, theory, and experience of old and new media technologies.
FILM 170 002, 4 units
Special Topics in Film—Culture on Trial: Race, Media, and Intellectual Property
J. Coppola
This course explores the US intellectual property regime’s impact on the production, distribution and consumption of media and art. We will consider intellectual property’s seminal role in the formation of emerging media landscapes including cinema, television, social media, and new streaming platforms. We will also develop an understanding of how the structural commitments of the law — copyright, trademark, and patents — contribute to racial hierarchy, economic inequality, and environmental injustice. Topics include intellectual property’s ability to manage Civil Rights discourse on film, television, and the web; examining how copyright has historically deprived Black artists of control over their works; the role of the “author” in the age of artificial intelligence; and the racial disparities of intellectual property on global ecological crises. By the end of the class, students will come away with historical, theoretical, and practical understandings of how media technology changes the law and how the law has subsequently responded to changes in media technology.
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, 4 units
An Introduction to Geospatial Technologies: Mapping, Space and Power
G. Barrera de la Torre
This course offers an introduction to the increasingly diverse range of geospatial technologies and tools including but not limited to geographical information systems (GIS). Merging theoretical concepts with technical instruction, students will develop critical knowledge and skills in web-mapping, geographic information science and cartography, including how these tools take on and reinforce fundamental geographical concepts and shape our lives, our environments and, increasingly, our futures.
GEOG 127, 4 units
Geographic Film Production
J. Wanek
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. This course is geared towards first time filmmakers. All film projects must fit the theme designated by the instructor, per term.
INDENG 115, 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.
MEDIAST 10, 4 units
Introduction to Media Studies
J. Jackson
The objective of this class is to enhance students' knowledge of media's industrial and cultural functions by introducing them to key perspectives and methods of study that stress a) how media systems have and continue to develop in the United States and across the globe as well as b) how we use and make meaning with media as part of our everyday lived experiences. To consider media's social, economic, political, and cultural impact, the course will investigate a number of ways of understanding its production, form, reception, and influence, being careful to recognize how these approaches relate to each other and to a wide array of diverse case studies in television, film, recorded music, print, video games, and online.
MEDIAST 104E, 4 units
History and Development of Online News
R. Jaroslovsky
This course will examine the history of online news beginning with the earliest experiments with news delivered via dedicated terminals. From there, we’ll look at the impact of the personal computer’s growth and the rise of proprietary dial-up online services. The open, Wild West nature of the early Web brought new possibilities but also the beginning of debates about credibility, free vs. paid content and competitive challenges that continue to this day. We’ll focus on key figures in technology and journalism who shaped the new medium, and trace how its growth undermined traditional economic models even as it enabled the rise of new ones, continuing through today’s world of mobile apps, aggregators and social media.
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.
MEDIAST 112, 4 units
Media Theories and Processes
I. Kivelin Davis
This course will familiarize you with the often-contentious history of media theory. At issue among scholars working within different theoretical and research traditions are core disagreements about what should be studied (institutions, texts, audiences, and/or technologies) and how media should be studied (for applied, “practical” purposes or with an eye that is critical of power and institutional structures). Course readings and lectures stress an understanding of these various research traditions by focusing on the cultural, historical, political, and social contexts surrounding them, the research models and methods used, and the findings and conclusions reached.
MEDIAST 113, 4 units
Media and Democracy
M. Rani Jha
An interdisciplinary examination of the role and power of media for civic engagement and state-public interactions.
MEDIAST 114, 4 units
Media and Globalization
I. Kivelin Davis
This course offers an introduction to media and globalization. We will examine global media industries (film, television, music, news, advertising, diplomacy, new media, etc.), and explore content produced within these industries through specific case studies. Topics include Bollywood, Hallyu, television format sales, non western news, media imperialism, the globalization of popular cultures, diasporic communities, and global representation. The class reviews theories and histories of media globalization before turning to case studies to learn about the political and cultural roles of media in globalization processes.
MEDIAST 131, 4 units
Cultural Studies Research Methodology
M. Rani Jha
This course introduces students to Cultural Studies research methodologies (concepts, theories, and methods) to critically examine the global circulation of media that contribute to the production of transnational identities and cultures. It offers an opportunity to research culture to gain a deeper understanding of contemporary structural crises of democracy, health, and economy.
MEDIAST 180, 4 units
Television Studies
J. Jackson
This course examines contemporary approaches to the study of television, investigating television's social, political, commercial, and cultural dimensions. Readings and assignments require students to apply critical perspectives to television programming and to the analysis of individual television texts.
MEDIAST 190 002, 4 units
Special Topics in Media Studies
M. Berry
Reserved seats will be released during Phase 2 of enrollment. Enrollment Permission seats are saved for emergencies and will be released closer to the start of class instruction. Freshmen are not permitted to enroll in this course. For more information on the enrollment process for this course, please visit https://mediastudies.ugis.berkeley.edu/course-enrollment-information/
POLSCI 106A, 4 units
American Politics: Campaign Strategy - Media
D. Schnur
An inside look at how political campaigns operate from the viewpoint of the media, taught by the people who run them. Class material will be directed towards students who are interested in direct involvement in campaign politics or who are looking for a greater understanding of the political process. Students will be required to develop a complete written campaign strategy document in order to fulfill class requirements. Students will be expected to follow political and campaign news via the media and be prepared to discuss those developments in class.
SOCIOL 160, 4 units
Sociology of Culture
J. Bakehorn
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 166, 4 units
Society and 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 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.
UGBA 176, 2 units
Innovations in Communications and Public Relations
D. Dwyer
This course introduces students to public relations and how it is used by companies, non-profits and individuals to build and support their brands through innovative communication techniques. Students will hear from and have direct access to entrepreneurs and established executives who share insights on how they've used creative public relations campaigns and communications skills to create attention and value for their brand or avoid it in a crisis. They also learn to work in teams crafting effective media responses for an existing company needing real help now (not a case study). The semester ends with each student applying this technique to create their own personal brand that they can refine as they prepare to move into the workforce.
UGBA 190D, 2 units
Innovation and Design Thinking in Business
M. Somma
The goal of this course is to equip students with innovation skills and practices. This is a learn-by-doing lab. Students learn research methods, ethnography, analysis and synthesis, reflective thinking, scenario creation, ideation processes, rapid prototyping cycles and designing experiments, iterative design and how to tell the story of “Never Before Seen” ideas. Class time is spent using hands-on innovation and human-centered design practices. Teams present work for critique and iterative development. The course features short lectures, guest talks, campus-based fieldwork, site visits, research and readings. Projects will be launched in the sessions and each team will be coached and mentored.
UGBA 190T 001, 004, 006, and 007, 2 units
Special Topics in Innovation and Design
E. Kovats, S. Beckman, C. Gregory, W. Collins, J. Metzler, M. Somma
Advanced study in the fields of innovation and design that will address current and emerging issues. Topics will vary with each offering and will be announced at the beginning of each term.
For more information or to suggest changes or additions, please contact
BCNM Associate Director
Lara Wolfe:
lara@berkeley.edu