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
Aaron Fai
afai@berkeley.edu
Graduate courses
NWMEDIA 200 001, 4 units
History and Theory of New Media
A. De Kosnik
This course provides a broad historical and theoretical background for new media production and practice. The class will map out theoretical approaches from different disciplines and allow graduate students to discuss and apply them to their own research projects.
NWMEDIA 290 003, 1-4 units
Special Topics in New Media: Ecologies of Mediation: Literature, Technology, and the Rural
A. Saum-Pascual
This graduate seminar investigates the intersections of literature, ecology, and digital technology through a focus on contemporary Spain’s shifting landscapes and media environments. Rather than treating the rural landscape—the so-called España vaciada—as a site of pastoral nostalgia, the course positions it as a privileged terrain for examining questions of technological mediation, infrastructural exploitation, and environmental damage.
Bringing together environmental humanities, media archaeology, and literary studies, we will examine how contemporary writers, filmmakers, and digital artists negotiate the transition from industrial modernity to the digital age alongside the lingering cultural afterlives of Francoism and the Cultura de la Transición. We will trace how the nonhuman world is archived, obscured, or mobilized across different media forms, while examining how literary and cinematic forms adapt to, resist, or reimagine algorithmic logics.
Primary literary and visual works will include novels by Julio Llamazares, Sara Mesa, Santiago Lorenzo, Irene Solà, and Agustín Fernández Mallo; the eco-poetry of Olvido García Valdés and the linguistic excesses of Leopoldo María Panero; Jaime Chávarri’s landmark film El desencanto; and selected works of digital literature.
Theoretical readings will bridge foundational media theory, environmental humanities, and contemporary cultural and literary criticism, drawing from Raymond Williams, Sergio del Molino, Jacques Derrida, Bernard Stiegler, Jussi Parikka, Jorge Riechmann, Remedios Zafra, Jo Labanyi, Nicole Starosielski, Jane Bennett, and N. Katherine Hayles. Through these pairings, we will interrogate how literature and art illuminate the material entanglements of language, soil, and the screen.
This course will be taught in English, and most texts will be available in translation, but advanced reading comprehension in Spanish is preferred. This course satisfies the Theory requirement for the HLL PhD program, and Elective requirements for the DE in New Media.
ARCH 229 002, 3 units
Special Topics in Digital Design Theories and Methods: Off: On a Tangent
S. Canty
Off: On a Tangent is a visual studies seminar that takes the tangent, mathematically a line touching a curve at a single point, as a formal, rhetorical, and mathematical framework for exploring relationships between part and whole, thick and thin, the precise and the imperfect. Working with developable forms like cones and cylinders, students investigate tangential geometries through rendering, drawing, and model photography across three phases: Techniques, Traditions (translating form into material thickness and construction), and Translations (detailing and imaging). Drawing on Sylvia Lavin's Kissing Architecture, the course asks at what scale the tangential relationship, the charged moment where two things kiss, merge, or diverge, builds excitement.
ARCH 229 003, 3 units
Special Topics in Digital Design Theories and Methods: Design of Immersive Environments
L. Caldas
The course addresses implementations of immersive environments as applied to spatial design. By offering a curated departure from the digital as a model of the physical, immersion has the potential to add novel dimensions to existing modes of conceptualization and representation, rethinking key concepts from a user experience perspective. This seminar will explore design methods in virtual and augmented reality that reflect core dimensions of spatial creation, including the design of structures to enable narrative, storytelling, and advanced user experience; new modes of spatially displaying media and information in virtual space; and shared experiences in multi-user immersive environments.
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.
ARCH 239 001, 3 units
Special Topics in Architecture Design Theory and Criticism: Extracanonical Buildings
A. Manthripragada
This project-based seminar is concerned with the formal analysis of buildings not included in officially sanctioned bodies of work. Through initial reading discussions, the class will define the concept of the extracanonical, theorize its implications for the discipline, and think about its power to reorganize modes of instrumentalizing the past. Using these criteria, students will describe and interpret a single building, looking critically at received methods of formal analysis and rethinking those methods with respect to the newly established extracanonical body.
ARCH 239 002, 3 units
Special Topics in Architecture Design Theory and Criticism: Designing Uncertainty
G. Eftaxiopoulos
Today’s context of uncertainty has rendered the Vitruvian firmitas as a thing of the past. Our ever-changing environment has brought forward the need for architectures that respond to constant flux and an unpredictable future. This seminar discusses the emergence of this condition and problematizes the instrumentalization of the concept of flexibility as the remedy towards open-ended, risk-free, and, allegedly, user empowering spaces. The sessions—organized around talks, readings and a research-by-design assignment—cast light on several paradigmatic case studies and construct an archaeology of flexible architectures, unveiling the term’s hidden complexities and paradoxes.
ARCH 239 003, 4 units
Special Topics in Architecture Design Theory and Criticism: Monstrosities are Us: The political esthetics of the Subline and the Liminal in Posthuman Worldmaking
C. Greig Crysler
This course will investigate theoretical and practical forms nonbinary and locally situated ecological world building. A central concern of the seminar will be to consider how the sublime and the liminal might transform narratives of disastrous end times into starting points for creative practices that cut across the mental and material boundaries between the human and the non-human, disgust and beauty, the finite and infinite, despair and hopeful anti-utopianism. We will seek agency in creative practices that dwell in the toxic murk, bad odors and uncertainty of our times. Through our engagement with the aesthetics of the sublime and the liminal, we will embrace and transform ambiguous, nerve-wracking feelings of disaster immanence. The creative potential of unpredictability and the related emotions of terror and empathy will be part of our working materials.
The semester will puruse two exploratory sections, each underpinned by investigations that draw upon the sublime and the liminal. We will work together to reorient their lapses and potential towards ecological world-making in uncertain times. We will gather inspiration by tracing historical examples of the sublime and the liminal into forms of contemporary environmental engagement that turn genres of horror, the grotesque, and the terror of uncertainty into practices experimentation, comedy, shapeshifting humor, drag, queer ecologies and cross species alliances that empower and uplift without submitting to the cult of infinity, endless growth and techno-remediations.
In second part of the seminar we will investigate new models of youth education in Oakland and the Bay Area that directly confront and transform perceptions of toxicity, mutation, and spiraling climate intensification by turning their material conditions into starting points for humor and collaboration. Further details of possible collaborators and contexts of inquiry will be announced at the first class. Course evaluation will be based on two creative projects, the first an intervention in the history of the sublime and/or the liminal, and the second a collaborative creative project developed between human and non-human participants from Oakland and the Bay Area.
COMPSCI 260A, 4 units
User Interface Design and Development
A. Pavel, 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 284A, 4 units
Foundations of Computer Graphics
R. Ng
Techniques of modeling objects for the purpose of computer rendering: boundary representations, constructive solids geometry, hierarchical scene descriptions. Mathematical techniques for curve and surface representation. Basic elements of a computer graphics rendering pipeline; architecture of modern graphics display devices. Geometrical transformations such as rotation, scaling, translation, and their matrix representations. Homogeneous coordinates, projective and perspective transformations.
CYPLAN 255, 4 units
Urban Informatics and Visualization
M. Hosseini
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 211 001, 5 units
Designing Emerging Technologies I
B. Hinch
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.
DESINV 211 002, 5 units
Designing Emerging Technologies I
S. Rosenbach
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.
EECS C206A, 4 units
Introduction to Robotics
TBA
This course is an introduction to the field of robotics. It covers the fundamentals of kinematics, dynamics, control of robot manipulators, robotic vision, sensing, forward & inverse kinematics of serial chain manipulators, the manipulator Jacobian, force relations, dynamics, & control. We will present techniques for geometric motion planning & obstacle avoidance. Open problems in trajectory generation with dynamic constraints will also be discussed. The course also presents the use of the same analytical techniques as manipulation for the analysis of images & computer vision. Low level vision, structure from motion, & an introduction to vision & learning will be covered. The course concludes with current applications of robotics.
EECS C206B, 4 units
Introduction to Robotics, Part II
G. Loianno
This course is a sequel to EECS C106A/206A, which covers kinematics,dynamics and control of a single robot. This course will cover dynamics and control of groups of roboticmanipulators coordinating with each other and interacting with the environment. Concepts will includean introduction to grasping and the constrained manipulation, contacts and force control for interactionwith the environment. We will also cover active perception guided manipulation, as well as themanipulation of non-rigid objects. Throughout, we will emphasize design and human-robotinteractions, and applications to applications in manufacturing, service robotics, tele-surgery, and locomotion.
EDUC 203, 3 units
Cultivating Cognitive Development: From Sensorimotor Intelligence to Embodied STEM Concepts
D. Alexandra Miller-Cotto
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 260, 3 units
Machine Learning in Education
Z. A Pardos
This course covers AI and computer adaptive learning approaches in education. We will cover theories and methodologies underpinning current approaches to knowledge discovery and data mining in education and survey the latest developments in the broad field of human learning research. The course is project-based; teams will be introduced to online learning platforms and their datasets with the objective of pairing data analysis with theory or implementation. Literature review will add context and grounding to projects.
FILM 240 003, 4 units
Graduate Topics in Film: Theories and Archaeologies of Media
N. Baer
This graduate seminar offers an in-depth exploration of theories and archaeologies of media, with particular attention to the German intellectual context. We begin by examining the enduring influence of Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, and Michel Foucault, whose work continues to shape the field's conceptual and methodological horizons. The course then turns to core texts in media theory and archaeology, engaging concepts such as cultural techniques, deep time, time axis manipulation, and topoi. Throughout the semester, we consider recent scholarly interventions that bring German media theory and archaeology into sustained conversation with traditions including Black studies, decoloniality, environmental humanities, feminism, and the philosophy of history, expanding and reorienting its critical frameworks.
FILM 240 004, 4 units
Graduate Topics in Film: Perversion, Neurosis, Psychosis
D. R Young
Playing on the title of Raymond Bellour’s famous analysis of Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), this seminar examines psychoanalytic theories of desire’s forms and errancies alongside literary, philosophical, and cinematic works that test their categories. Perversion, neurosis, and psychosis name—above all in the Lacanian tradition—different structures of relation to objects, law, fantasy, and the Other. They also put pressure on the very idea of the “sexual,” raising the question of where sexuality begins and ends in psychic life.
In the seminar, we will read Freud and Lacan alongside other psychoanalytic traditions, including object relations, in order to compare different accounts of the unconscious, fantasy, relationality, and psychic structure. At the same time, we will trace a literary and philosophical genealogy of extreme or transgressive desire beginning with the Marquis de Sade and extending through twentieth-century writers and thinkers including Georges Bataille, Pierre Klossowski, Simone de Beauvoir, and Gilles Deleuze. We will ask how literature and philosophy theorize desire, cruelty, pleasure, law, and relation, in ways that overlap with and challenge psychoanalytic frameworks.
Throughout, we will examine the concepts in relation to films such as Psycho, The Piano Teacher, Poison, O Fantasma, Salò, Saint Omer, and others that variously inhabit, displace, or undo the distinctions among perversion, neurosis, and psychosis, often raising questions about relations whose determinations exceed the frame of the individual psyche. We will ask what becomes visible when categories developed to describe psychic life take form and find expression in works of art—and what literature and cinema can in turn reveal about the limits of those categories.
GEOG 200B 001, 5 units
Contemporary Theory and Inquiry in Geography
G. Barrera de la Torre
'Geographical Difference/Differentiation' is a 5 unit course with Seminar and Workshop components. The Seminar reads canonical work in social theory against contemporary Geography, including metropolitan traditions of critique of capitalism, urbanization, space and time, discipline-biopower-sovereignty, and the now; Southern traditions of agrarian, subaltern and materialist postcolonial studies; Black radical and oceanic traditions that stretch Geography in new ways; and finally, geo-graphy as a form of Earth-writing concerned with the unraveling subject, ruined landscapes mixtures of form. The Workshop runs in parallel on particular weeks, focusing on geographic problematization and the research process.
GERMAN 184 001, 4 units
Documentary Cinema
D. Gokturk
This course surveys the history, theory and practice of the genre called documentary cinema in a transnational horizon. We will explore what this amorphous and vague term means and examine the ways its forms and ethics have changed from the beginning of cinema to recent digital production and online exhibition. Major modes of documentary filmmaking will be covered, including cinema verité, direct cinema, investigative documentary, ethnographic and travel film, agit-prop and activist media, autobiography and the personal essay as well as recent post-modern forms that question relationships between fact and fiction such as docudrama, archival film, and "mockumentary."
GERMAN 215 001, 4 units
What, if anything, is the Human? Posthumans, Antihumanism, AI, and the Anthropocene: What, if anything, is the Human?
H. Bajohr
Since the mid-twentieth century, the notion “the human” has become highly contested: Do we have an essential nature, or are all such definitions historically contingent and exclusionary, shaped by power relations, colonial histories, and the legacies of Western humanism? Can we still speak meaningfully of “humanity” in an age of ecological crisis and artificial intelligence, or is the very category of the human dissolving in the face of these challenges? This class approaches these questions through several frameworks: German philosophical anthropology, French antihumanism, and contemporary posthumanism. We will ask: What is “man” after European colonialism, after the “Anthropocene” that bears his name, and after the prospect of a technology that is more-than-human? Drawing from thinkers such as Helmuth Plessner and Arnold Gehlen, Michel Foucault and Louis Althusser, Sylvia Wynter and Donna Haraway, we will explore how notions of the human have been framed, contested, and redefined across the 20th and 21st centuries.
INFO 203, 3 units
Social Issues of Information
K. Metcalf
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, 3 units
Information Law and Policy
D. Kathleen Mulligan
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
N. Salehi
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. The class will focus on the following areas of HCI research: ubiquitous computing, social computing, critical theory, and human-AI interaction. In addition to these research topics the class will introduce common qualitative and quantitative methodologies in HCI research.
INFO 230, 3 units
Cultural Analytics: Theories and Methods
T. Tangherlini
This course introduces Cultural Analytics, an interdisciplinary field at the intersection of Humanities, Social Sciences, and Data Science. Students explore how computational methods and digital archives are used to study culture across time and scale. Emphasis is placed on multiscale analysis—from close reading to distant reading—and on ethical, responsible engagement with large-scale cultural data. The course addresses challenges of data validity, the role of collaboration across disciplines, and the societal impact of cultural analytics, including its use in heritage preservation and disaster response. Students gain both technical tools and critical frameworks for studying culture in the digital age.
INFO 290T, 3 units
Special Topics in Technology:Fundamentals of Generative AI
C. Paulik
This course provides a foundation in the principles, architectures, and applications of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). It explores how large language models (LLMs) work by guiding students through the complete model lifecycle: from core building blocks like embedding representations, attention mechanisms, and transformer architectures to adaptation techniques including in-context learning, instruction tuning, parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT), and reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF). The course also explores advanced topics such as retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), agentic reasoning systems, and multimodal learning that extends beyond text to incorporate vision and other data modalities. Programming assignments, research paper readings, and a team-based final project will help students develop the technical proficiency to design, implement, and evaluate GenAI pipelines using Hugging Face, LangChain, and other open-source LLM APIs, while critically assessing their capabilities, limitations, and responsible use in real-world applications.
LDARCH 200B, 6 units
Case Studies in Landscape Design
A. L DuSolier
This studio stresses the shaping and coordination of ideas from initial concept to complete design product. A product(s) of intermediate scale and complexity (such as a garden, small park, plaza, or campus courtyard) will be developed in detail including the selection of planting, selection of construction materials, and topographic design. Lecture modules on selected professional topics are integrated into this course.
LDARCH 202, 6 units
Design of Landscape Sites
D. Zoe Rivera
A site design studio stressing the shaping and coordination of ideas from initial concept to complete design of open space in various contexts. Typical projects will be of an intermediate scale and might include a park, plaza, museum sculpture garden, playground, office park, or housing project. Modules on social factors and planting design are included.
PUBPOL 247, 4 units
Progress? An Intro to Tech and Public Policy
A. W Reddie
This course explores the intersection of technology and public policy. You will examine the impact of technology on society and how public policy can shape the development and use of technology. You will also delve into the ethical considerations surrounding technology, including privacy, security, and accessibility. By the end of the course, you will have a deeper understanding of how technology and public policy intersect and how you can use this knowledge to make a positive impact in the world. Technologies discussed include AI, cybersecurity, renewable energy, geoengineering, biotechnology, robotics, spatial computing, distributed ledger technology, 5G networks, wireless communication, and quantum computing.
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
ARCH 11B, 5 units
Introduction to Design
D. Jacob Orkand
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.
ARCH 129 002, 3 units
Special Topics in Digital Design Theories and Methods: Off: On a Tangent
S. Canty
Off: On a Tangent is a visual studies seminar that takes the tangent, mathematically a line touching a curve at a single point, as a formal, rhetorical, and mathematical framework for exploring relationships between part and whole, thick and thin, the precise and the imperfect. Working with developable forms like cones and cylinders, students investigate tangential geometries through rendering, drawing, and model photography across three phases: Techniques, Traditions (translating form into material thickness and construction), and Translations (detailing and imaging). Drawing on Sylvia Lavin's Kissing Architecture, the course asks at what scale the tangential relationship, the charged moment where two things kiss, merge, or diverge, builds excitement.
ARCH 129 004, 3 units
Special Topics in Digital Design Theories and Methods: New Tools for Architecture: 2D, 3D, 4D and Vibe Coding
R. Rael
New Tools for Architecture introduces students to contemporary modes of architectural production across 2D, 3D, 4D, and code, with a focus on web design, rendering, animation, and vibe coding. Through hands-on exercises, students will learn to move fluidly between models, images, motion, interfaces, and AI-assisted computational tools, treating each as part of an interconnected design process. The course asks how architecture might be imagined when making is no longer confined to a single medium or method, and when experimentation, translation, and the unexpected become productive tools for design.
ARCH 139 001, 3 units
Special Topics in Architectural Design Theory and Criticism: Extracanonical Buildings
A. Manthripragada
This project-based seminar is concerned with the formal analysis of buildings not included in officially sanctioned bodies of work. Through initial reading discussions, the class will define the concept of the extracanonical, theorize its implications for the discipline, and think about its power to reorganize modes of instrumentalizing the past. Using these criteria, students will describe and interpret a single building, looking critically at received methods of formal analysis and rethinking those methods with respect to the newly established extracanonical body.
ARCH 139 002, 3 units
Special Topics in Architectural Design Theory and Criticism: Designing Uncertainty
G. Eftaxiopoulos
Today’s context of uncertainty has rendered the Vitruvian firmitas as a thing of the past. Our ever-changing environment has brought forward the need for architectures that respond to constant flux and an unpredictable future. This seminar discusses the emergence of this condition and problematizes the instrumentalization of the concept of flexibility as the remedy towards open-ended, risk-free, and, allegedly, user empowering spaces. The sessions—organized around talks, readings and a research-by-design assignment—cast light on several paradigmatic case studies and construct an archaeology of flexible architectures, unveiling the term’s hidden complexities and paradoxes.
ARCH 139 003, 4 units
Special Topics in Architectural Design Theory and Criticism: Monstrosities are Us: The political esthetics of the Subline and the Liminal in Posthuman Worldmaking
C. Greig Crysler
This course will investigate theoretical and practical forms nonbinary and locally situated ecological world building. A central concern of the seminar will be to consider how the sublime and the liminal might transform narratives of disastrous end times into starting points for creative practices that cut across the mental and material boundaries between the human and the non-human, disgust and beauty, the finite and infinite, despair and hopeful anti-utopianism. We will seek agency in creative practices that dwell in the toxic murk, bad odors and uncertainty of our times. Through our engagement with the aesthetics of the sublime and the liminal, we will embrace and transform ambiguous, nerve-wracking feelings of disaster immanence. The creative potential of unpredictability and the related emotions of terror and empathy will be part of our working materials.
The semester will puruse two exploratory sections, each underpinned by investigations that draw upon the sublime and the liminal. We will work together to reorient their lapses and potential towards ecological world-making in uncertain times. We will gather inspiration by tracing historical examples of the sublime and the liminal into forms of contemporary environmental engagement that turn genres of horror, the grotesque, and the terror of uncertainty into practices experimentation, comedy, shapeshifting humor, drag, queer ecologies and cross species alliances that empower and uplift without submitting to the cult of infinity, endless growth and techno-remediations.
In second part of the seminar we will investigate new models of youth education in Oakland and the Bay Area that directly confront and transform perceptions of toxicity, mutation, and spiraling climate intensification by turning their material conditions into starting points for humor and collaboration. Further details of possible collaborators and contexts of inquiry will be announced at the first class. Course evaluation will be based on two creative projects, the first an intervention in the history of the sublime and/or the liminal, and the second a collaborative creative project developed between human and non-human participants from Oakland and the Bay Area.
ART 160 003, 4 units
Special Topics in Visual Studies: Artificial Art
J. S Miller
This studio course investigates artificial intelligence as both a medium and a subject of artistic inquiry. Working with generative systems for text, image, and video, students will produce projects across writing, moving image, photography, and installation. No prior coding experience is required.
The course situates generative AI within the history of conceptual art, using that lineage as a critical framework for examining how and why artists might engage AI in a discipline where authorship remains foundational to the development of an art practice. Students will consider the distribution of authorship among artist, machine, and collaborator, adopting a methodology that is both exploratory and critical.
The course further addresses the material, ecological, and ethical conditions that underpin generative technologies. Topics include the physical infrastructures of computation, the environmental costs of data centers and large-scale model training, the global labor networks that sustain these systems, and unresolved questions of intellectual property surrounding artists' work in training data. Through studio practice and critical discussion, students will develop an informed position on these tools, one that shapes both their methods and the content of their work.
ART 160 004, 4 units
Special Topics in Visual Studies: Data Arts
G. Niemeyer
Data Arts treats data as creative source material, evidence, and a set of choices. Students will study one Bay Area site through original data collection, visualization, three-dimensional form, and the creation of a proposal for a time-based public artwork. Each project asks students to keep the path from primary observation to representation traceable, to distinguish evidence from speculation, and to explain what their creative choices make visible or leave out.
ART 171 001, 4 units
Video Projects
J. Mores McWreath
This course develops more advanced technical and conceptual skills in video art, 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. Priority enrollment for Art Practice majors and intended Art Practice majors.
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 160, 4 units
User Interface Design and Development
A. Pavel, 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 184, 4 units
Foundations of Computer Graphics
R. Ng
Techniques of modeling objects for the purpose of computer rendering: boundary representations, constructive solids geometry, hierarchical scene descriptions. Mathematical techniques for curve and surface representation. Basic elements of a computer graphics rendering pipeline; architecture of modern graphics display devices. Geometrical transformations such as rotation, scaling, translation, and their matrix representations. Homogeneous coordinates, projective and perspective transformations. Algorithms for clipping, hidden surface removal, rasterization, and anti-aliasing. Scan-line based and ray-based rendering algorithms. Lighting models for reflection, refraction, transparency.
COMPSCI 188, 4 units
Introduction to Artificial Intelligence
P. Kao, P. Abbeel
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 189, 4 units
Introduction to Machine Learning
J. Shewchuk
Theoretical foundations, algorithms, methodologies, and applications for machine learning. Topics may include supervised methods for regression and classication (linear models, trees, neural networks, ensemble methods, instance-based methods); generative and discriminative probabilistic models; Bayesian parametric learning; density estimation and clustering; Bayesian networks; time series models; dimensionality reduction; programming projects covering a variety of real-world applications.
COMPSCI 195, 1 unit
Social Implications of Computer Technology
J. A Hug
Topics include electronic community; the changing nature of work; technological risks; the information economy; intellectual property; privacy; artificial intelligence and the sense of self; pornography and censorship; professional ethics. Students will lead discussions on additional topics.
CDSS 60, 4 units
Anthropology of Science, Data, and Technology
A. Roy
We are now in a world where science, technology, and data-rich computing practices are fundamental to our sense of selves and the spaces we inhabit. This course introduces the methodological and analytical issues in knowledge-making in the physical sciences. We explore social and political arrangements mobilized through specific technological objects – from smartwatches to sex robots – that are becoming distinctive features of advanced societies. We investigate data-rich practices like self-tracking or cloud computing and how they shape circuits of knowledge, power, and truth. Using interdisciplinary approaches from Anthropology and Science, Technology and Society Studies we grapple with what it means to be human in the contemporary world.
DATA C104, 4 units
Human Contexts and Ethics of Data - DATA/History/STS
C. Carson, A. S Edmundson
This course teaches you to use the tools of applied historical thinking and Science, Technology, and Society (STS) to recognize, analyze, and shape the human contexts and ethics of data. It addresses key topics such as doing ethical data science amid shifting definitions of human subjects, consent, and privacy; the changing relationship between data, democracy, and law; the role of data analytics in how corporations and governments provide public goods such as health and security to citizens; sensors, machine learning and artificial intelligence and changing landscapes of labor, industry, and city life. It prepares you to engage as a knowledgeable and responsible citizen and professional in the varied arenas of our datafied world.
DESINV 23, 3 units
Creative Programming and Electronics
S. Tewari
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.
DESINV 190 20, 3 units
Special Topics in Design Innovation: Human-AI Design Methods
K. Kendall Goucher-Lambert
This course provides hands-on experience in developing innovative, customer-driven products, services, and systems through the integration of human-centered and AI-augmented design methods. Organized around four design phases (1) Identify, (2) Understand, (3) Conceptualize, and (4) Realize, students work in teams on a semester-long project that blends design research, creativity, prototyping, and communication. Each phase includes AI Expeditions, where students conduct experiments and investigations that explore the capabilities, limits, and implications of generative and analytical AI in design, and shorter AI Treks, which build focused technical and creative skills. The course emphasizes collaborative, real-world practice and critical reflection on the technical, ethical, and social implications of AI in design. Industry mentors and researchers join as coaches and guest speakers.
DISSTD 110, 3 units
Introduction to Disability Studies
E. A Nusbaum
This course focuses on the social and personal meaning of disability and chronic illness. We will explore definitions and conceptual models for the study of disability, the history of disabled people, bio-ethical perspectives, the depiction of disability in literature and the arts, public attitudes, and legal and social policies. The course will investigate the interaction of disability with social factors such as gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, and class. The course is for students with and without disabilities, and may be of special interest to students preparing for careers in the health professions, education, law, architecture, social work, or gerontology.
DISSTD 112, 3 units
Women and Disability
A. S Finger
This course will explore the intersection of women's experience and disability issues, emphasizing the social and personal impact of disability and chronic illness on relationships, identity, employment, health, body image, sexuality, reproduction, motherhood, and aging. Through real stories of women's lives which reached the media in the last decade and before, students will move toward a dynamic understanding of the impact of a range of physical, emotional, and mental disabilities in the context of current social forces and public policy. We will explore historic perspectives as well as current trends in medicine, independent living, care-giving, insurance, public benefits, law, and community activism as they affect and are affected by disabled women and girls and their families. We will discuss controversial ethical issues such as prenatal screening, wrongful birth law suits, and physician-assisted suicide. Course readings will draw on the rich literature of disabled women's anthologies, biography and autobiograhpy, scholarly and popular literature of disability, feminist analyses, creative writing, women's art, film, and theatre.
EALANG 181, 4 units
East Asian Film: Special Topics in Genre: Global Horror Cinema
D. Cuong O'Neill
The study of East Asian films as categorized either by industry-identified genres (westerns, horror films, musicals, film noir, etc.) or broader interpretive modes (melodrama, realism, fantasy, etc).
EDUC 140AC, 4 units
The Art of Making Meaning: Educational Perspectives on Literacy and Learning in a Global World
K. Keane
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 computer-based after-school programs. In addition, the course will contribute to understanding of race, culture, and ethnicity in the United States. We will develop a view of literacy, not as a neutral skill, but as embedded within culture and as depending for its meaning and its practice upon social institutions and conditions.
ELENG 121, 4 units
Introduction to Digital Communications
M. Lustig
Introduction to the fundamental principles underlying the analysis, design and optimization of analog and digital communication systems. Topics include Analog and Digital baseband and passband modulation techniques, receiver design, source coding, error-correcting codes. Examples will be taken from existing communication systems such as : broadcast Radio, cell-phones, RFID, Wifi etc. The course will heavily use linear systems and Fourier techniques. Emphasis will be on capturing and decoding real signals using software defined radios (SDR).
ENERES 102, 4 units
Quantitative Aspects of Global Environmental Problems
L. Marie Kueppers, A. D Jones
Human disruption of biogeochemical and hydrological cycles; causes and consequences of climate change and acid deposition; transport and health impacts of pollutants; loss of species; radioactivity in the environment; and quantitative models to understand these environmental problems.Human disruption of biogeochemical and hydrological cycles; causes and consequences of climate change and acid deposition; transport and health impacts of pollutants; loss of species; radioactivity in the environment; and quantitative models to understand these environmental problems.
ENGLISH 90 004, 4 units
Practices of Literary Study: Fictions of Artificial Intelligence
K. V Snyder
All of sudden, it seems, generative AI is everywhere: in our smartphones and social media, transportation and shopping, healthcare and politics, and pretty much everywhere else. But AI has a long history, both a literal history and a literary history, in which creators have investigated the definition of intelligence and the difference between what it means to be an artificial being and a real human being. Can only humans be conscious or develop self-awareness, feel love or suffer, want to live or die? If machines can learn, does that mean they can think? As AI increasingly processes our world for us, how do we process the meaning of AI?
In this course, we will consider these questions and others with respect to contemporary utopian and dystopian visions of generative AI; virtual reality and material embodiment; imaginary robots, androids, and cyborgs; the possibility of AI-generated art; and the ethics of generative AI in the classroom.
We will begin by reading nonfictions of artificial intelligence by foundational figures in the field; contemporary theorists and historians; and scientists and CEOs in the AI industry. And we will conclude by reading some short fiction written by or in collaboration with AI, along with reflections by human authors and critics upon the role of AI in art. But our main textual focus will be the portrayal of AI in 20th- and 21st-century science fiction, including short stories, novels, movies, and TV.
In addition to the assigned reading and viewing, assignments for the course will include frequent bCourses discussion posts, writing exercises, and essays scaffolded for revision and attention to the writing process. The course is designed to help students develop their skills as readers of literature and as writers of critical argument.
ENGLISH 190 001, 4 units
Research Seminar: Novel Intelligence
J. Alba Cutler
As we navigate the age of artificial intelligence, this course investigates the nature of human intelligence by considering a series of novels about geniuses, from Mary Shelley’s Romantic classic Frankenstein through Benjamín Labatut’s fictional portrait of polymath Johnny Van Neumann in The MANIAC. In each of these novels, extreme intelligence produces human alienation, but why should that be so? What forms of intelligence qualify people as geniuses? Why does such intelligence sometimes produce anxiety, fear, loathing, and anger? We will also consider the novel as an aesthetic form with its own peculiar intelligence. How do these novels, each of which experiments with generic expectations, place specific cognitive demands on readers? How do those cognitive demands amplify or inflect the portraits of human intelligence contained in the novels?
FILM 135, 4 units
Experimental and Alternative Media Art
I. Cortez
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: Mexico: Cinema and Politics
L. Madrigal
This course traces Mexico's post-Revolutionary history through its cinema, from the so-called Golden Age (1930s) to the present. Rather than treating film as mere reflection, we will examine cinema as an alternative arena for political struggle, a parallel track to the country's most pressing debates: modernization, inequality, state violence, indigeneity, queerness, and class. Through historical dramas, documentaries, political thrillers, and comedies, we will investigate how filmmakers have both celebrated and contested their moment: from odes to the free market and the revolutionary state, to scathing denunciations of authoritarianism and poverty. We will trace continuities and ruptures across decades, taking cinema as an object of historical study that translates into images and sound a set of values and ideas that change over time.
FILM 145 002, 4 units
Global Media: Indigenous and Radical Global Media
M. Allen Minch-de Leon
In this class, we will examine images of and around the globe developed through media practices, focusing primarily on media created in the context of Indigenous resistance. This ranges across: early 80s aboriginal pirate television in Australia; antiglobalization movements and tactical media production in the 90s by the EZLN and during the “battle of Seattle” (against the World Trade Organization); planetary consciousness and experimental media in Oceania; third and fourth world cinema in post- and decolonial contexts; worker, anticolonial, and Indigenous inter-, trans-, and anti-nationalisms; and Black and Indigenous coalitional art and media. Through close attention to this work, we will examine concepts such as worlding and (not) being a part of the world, pluriversal politics, antinationalisms and nationalist revolutionary struggles, (anti)globalization, and images of global destruction and destruction done in the name of worlding. Methodologically we will discuss the values and limits of comparison, relation, and coalition as well as the position from which analysis takes place. Importantly, we will begin with Indigenous media production in California and work through what Kenyan author and scholar, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, describes as concentric and radiating rings of relation from an anticolonial “center.”
FILM 145 003, 4 units
Global Media: Danish Film & Television in a Global Context
Tim Tangherlini
The goal of the course is to understand recent Danish production in the context of global cultural flows, and understand how production from the edges—the challenging positionality of a small national cinema/television—has certain affordances that allow for an exploration of issues such as identity (racial, ethnic, national, gender, individual/group) and transgression that might otherwise be constrained. Rather than focus on the films of a particular director, which one often does in “auteur centered” classes or on films clustered around a particular topic, such as childhood, in this class we take a deliberately broad approach to the development of recent film and television in Denmark, using the concept of “transgression” as a unifying trope for our discussions. The course focuses on several important developments in newer Danish film and television, with an emphasis on Danish cinema starting with the Dogme movement of the early 1990s.
FILM 155 001, 4 units
Media Technologies: Media Infrastructures
N. Starosielski
Media has usually been imagined in ways that hide its underlying infrastructures. Early radio seemed to arrive from the ether and airwaves rather than from towers. Broadcasting borrowed its name from the scattering of seed. Then came the information superhighway, the web, and now the cloud. Underneath each figure there are physical infrastructures and a material world: cables laid across the ocean floor, transmission towers, Hollywood studios, and now AI factories.
This course dives into the history of media’s infrastructures — and especially the alternatives to traditional systems, from pirate radio to community cable access to activist video collectives and now mesh networks. Students will learn to navigate the history of media’s infrastructures as a design archive for a more sustainable global media system. Looking from the perspective of media’s materials, they will also learn the role visual media can have in revealing and re-shaping its own physical foundations.
FRENCH 140D 002, 3 units
French Literature in English Translation: A History of Non-Fiction Films in French
D. R Young, M. J Sidhu
In this course, we will explore the rich history of documentary and nonfiction film from the late 19th century to the present, through a focus on influential filmmakers working in French such as the Lumière brothers (among the inventors of cinema), Jean Painlevé ( the early science film), Jean Rouch (and ethnographic film), Mati Diop (Afro-diasporic cinema), Chris Marker (political documentary and the essay film), Les Insoumuses (feminist documentary), as well as nonfiction works by filmmakers famous for their fiction films, including Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda, Chantal Akerman, and Alice Diop. We will take an expansive view of documentary form, inquiring into the aesthetic and social functions of nonfiction not only in the history of cinema, but in the history of the twentieth century. Indeed, the documentation of historical events and real people and places played a key role in producing new understandings of politics, history, gender, colonialism, and the nature of everyday life through the special affordances of cinema as a medium for documenting reality. Through a series of written and production-based exercises, students will develop a thorough knowledge of documentary cinema, as well as putting techniques from the history of this cinema to work in their own projects.
All works are subtitled; no knowledge of French is required.
GEOG 119 001, 3 units
Audio Narratives of the Bay Area
L. Sarah Eassey
This hands-on course trains students in the art and craft of journalistic podcasting, covering research, interviewing, scriptwriting, scoring, and audio editing. Students will examine podcasts from the Bay Area and then create their own stories. Students will conceptualize, pitch, and produce audio stories, explore different podcast formats, prepare pre-production materials, and develop technical skills in recording and mixing. The semester culminates in the public release of a pilot episode focused on the Bay Area.
GEOG 126 001, 4 units
Sonic Geographies
J. Wanek
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 127 001, 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.
GEOG 161 001, 4 units
Rethinking Latin American Geographies Through Social Mapping
G. Barrera de la Torre
Maps are important tools for our daily activities and spatial imaginaries; however, the ways in which official and dominant Western maps organized the information about the world occludes other ways of knowing territories. How are these “other” geographies represented? How are maps re-designed and appropriated to visualize different spatialities? In this course, students will be introduced to key themes and design practices in social cartography in Latin America. These reflect on collective or individual mapping practices to represent and increase the visibility of social issues and ways of knowing and being in this region. Previous knowledge of maps not required.
GLOBAL 170 001, 4 units
Cybersecurity, AI, and Global Politics
D. C Zook
This is a course that will focus on the fluid and dynamic relationship between cybersecurity, artificial intelligence (AI), and global politics. Drawing from a wide range of perspectives—international, regional, national, and even interpersonal—and using a wide variety of different case studies and examples, this course will explore the many ways in which the evolution of information technology has affected, altered, or influenced the security and stability of global politics.
GWS 126 001, 4 units
Film, Feminism, and the Avant-Garde
A. Paul
Focusing on the creative process while engaging in critical debates on politics, ethics, and aesthetics, the course explores the site where feminist film-making practice meets with and challenges the avant-garde tradition. It emphasizes works that question conventional notions of subjectivity, audience, and interpretation in relation to film making, film viewing, and the cinematic apparatus.
ISF 100D, 4 units
Introduction to Technology, Society, and Culture
R. Bhandari
This course surveys the technological revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries, it then focuses on the development of the computer and the Internet. The final part examines the impact of the Internet on social movements.
ISF 100J, 4 units
The Social Life of Computing
S. Kelkar
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.
MECENG 100, 4 units
Electronics for the Internet of Things
K. Poolla
Electronics and Electrical Engineering has become pervasive in our lives as a powerful technology with applications in a wide range of fields including healthcare, environmental monitoring, robotics, or entertainment. This course offers a broad survey of Electrical Engineering ideas to non-majors. In the laboratory students will learn in-depth how to design and build systems that exchange information with or are controlled from the cloud. Examples include solar harvesters, robots, and smart home devices. In the course project, the students will integrate what they have learned and build an Internet-of-Things application of their choice. The course has a mandatory lab fee.
MEDIAST 111C, 4 units
Audio-Visual Media History
M. Berry
This course covers the modern global history of audiovisual media forms, with a focus on interactions between new media technologies and emerging modern power structures. We will examine how and why historical agents responded to, made use of, and tried to regulate emerging representational technologies such as painting, printed images and etchings, maps, the theater, panoramas, photography, the telephone, phonography, radio, television, MP3s, JPGs, and digital video. Lectures will consider the impact of specific media technologies on the historical representation and mobilization of religion, race, class, and nationality, as well as the branding and advertisement of consumer commodities.
MEDIAST 112, 4 units
Media Theories and Processes
M. Berry
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
K. Williams
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, nonwestern 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 165, 4 units
Internet and Culture
J. Jackson
This class uses the approaches of media studies and cultural studies to critically consider how historical and emerging new media technologies—as well as the behaviors and forms of cultural production associated with them—influence and are themselves influenced by our everyday practices and lived experiences. It focuses particularly on concerns of identity, community, access, citizenship, industry, and regulation as these relate to social networking, collective endeavor, and public speech.
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? In this interdisciplinary course, we will attempt to answers these questions together by reading, discussing, and writing about histories and theories of cybernetics and cybercultures. We will consider competing cybernetic models of the mind, human behavior, ecological environments, and complex immersive virtual worlds. We will also survey the vast range of visionary, skeptical, and delightfully eccentric responses to the promises and perils of a cybernetic future.
MUSIC 57, 3 units
Introduction to Electronic Music Composition
C. Hu
This course provides a gateway to the more advanced music and technology curriculum including the Music 158 series and is open to non-majors and majors alike. Basic concepts and techniques of electronic music composition and sonic art are presented. Compositional etudes are accomplished using models and techniques drawn from the history of electronic music including present day digital music practices. Formal problems and aesthetics related to sound design and the shaping of electronic sound are studied. Core topics in audio and digital signal processing are covered with a focus on hands-on experience using delays, echos, filters and equalization, samples, noise, and related sound materials.
PSYCH C123, 4 units
Computational Models of Cognition
S. T Piantadosi
This course will provide advanced students in cognitive science and computer science with the skills to develop computational models of human cognition, giving insight into how people solve challenging computational problems, as well as how to bring computers closer to human performance. The course will explore three ways in which researchers have attempted to formalize cognition -- symbolic approaches, neural networks, and probability and statistics -- considering the strengths and weaknesses of each.
RHETOR R1B 002, 4 units
The Craft of Writing: The End of Writing?
D. Reem Karout
Anxiety about writing is not new. Whether writing helps or harms thought has been debated since at least Plato, who worried that it breeds forgetfulness and only the appearance of wisdom. Despite this perennial doubt about writing’s significance, the written word continues to be taught and privileged as an indispensable technology for representing thought at its highest level. But a polished essay may satisfy an assignment without any change in the writer's (or reader’s) thinking, just as significant learning may leave no written trace.
The arrival of large language models reactivates these older debates. If an LLM can produce a competent essay in seconds, then what, exactly, was the essay doing for us in the first place? What had it been taken to prove? Why were you writing them? A relationship that had come to seem obvious – that between writing well and having learned something – begins, for the first time in generations, to look contingent rather than natural. What do we mean by learning at all? How do we know when it has happened? And where, within all of that, does writing belong?
This course is highly experiential. We will take up these questions not only by reading about them but by testing them in our own experience of reading, writing, and talking together, through experimental and sometimes theatrical exercises, with and without AI. The course begins from no settled position on AI or writing; the point is to make the relationship among writing, thinking, and learning available for investigation. We will also be joined by a local writer, whose presence will allow us to investigate, among other things, whether she should begin planning a career change. No prior experience with theory or AI required.
RHETOR 133T, 4 units
Theories of Film: Arts and the Real?
N. S Atkinson
This course explores the question of how nonfiction film shapes and frames our perceptions of what was, is, and could be real. Drawing on scholarship in Rhetoric, Media Studies, and Critical Theory, we will approach film not as a medium, but as a mediator—something that takes a middle position, connecting people and coordinating their activities. In so doing, we will develop an account of what is at stake when we designate certain films as nonfiction, e.g., educational films and documentaries, and trace the influence of these films on our collective understandings of reality.
SOCIOL 166, 4 units
Society and Technology
L. B 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.
SOCIOL 167, 4 units
Virtual Communities/Social Media
M. Romani
With the advent of virtual communities and online social networks, old questions about the meaning of social behavior, connection, and belonging have taken on renewed significance. Social media platforms have transformed the ways we interact, share information, and build relationships, blurring the boundaries between the virtual and the physical. This course explores how virtual communities and social media challenge traditional notions of community, redefine social norms and values, and influence the construction of personal identity and collective action.
Drawing upon a variety of literature from sociology, media studies, anthropology, psychology, cultural studies and more, this course delves into interdisciplinary discourse on the evolving nature of social media and virtual communities. Through hands-on engagement, case studies, and classroom discussions, students will question assumptions about online behaviors and values, and develop tools to critically assess the impact of virtual communities on diverse dimensions — from work and surveillance to politics and personal relationships.
For more information or to suggest changes or additions, please contact
BCNM Associate Director
Aaron Fai:
afai@berkeley.edu