Teaching Resources

Resources to help faculty, particularly within the American Cultures curriculum, develop course assignments, lesson plans, and syllabi, among other things.

Teaching in Summer Workshop Series

Every year we host workshops that focus on some of the best approaches to teaching an intensive six- or ten-week summer course at UC Berkeley. Among the topics discussed include strategies for managing extended summer class time, what to expect from summer student enrollment, the specifics of the American Cultures curriculum requirement, and teaching to issues of racial and economic justice in diverse classrooms.

AC Course and Assignment Support (Summer 2020)

We hope that everyone is safe and well! The waves of change keep breaking across our teaching plans, and as the largest curriculum at UC Berkeley (16,000 students enrolled across 49 departments each year) we know that the 'lift' in an AC course is heavy. The innovation of the AC community, centered on equity and social justice, has supported the challenges and opportunities of this unique curriculum, and we wanted to reflect some of that back at you. Here are a few ideas that might be useful this semester as you consider how to face the online...

Language Guide for Communicating About Those Involved In The Carceral System

About

Language is not merely descriptive, it is creative. For too long we have borne the burden of having to recreate our humanity in the eyes of those who would have us permanently defined by a system that grew directly out of the institution of American slavery, an institution that depended on the dehumanization of the people it enslaved. It is in this spirit that we, the formerly incarcerated and system-impacted academics who identify as the Underground Scholars Initiative (USI) at the University of California, Berkeley, call on the media, students, and public to...

Race - The Power of an Illusion Website

Race—The Power of an Illusion, one of the most widely-used documentary series ever in formal and non-formal education in the US, can now take advantage of a new companion website at www.racepowerofanillusion.org

The companion website was created by the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, the American Cultures Center, and the Media Resource Center at the University of California, Berkeley in partnership with the series...

Advice and Support from the AC Community 

About

These past two weeks have seen a massive volume of advice shared within the AC community, including how to consider 'Zoom' in the specificities of the AC classroom; advice on how to continue community-based partnerships specific to ACES faculty and in general support of our community partners; testing the waters in using the 'Creative Discovery Fellows' toolkits for new storytelling and creative design projects; to the many powerful exchanges on how to build the intimacies and student agency so often at the heart of the AC classroom. We have been...

Crowd-sourcing from the AC Community

Ideas and Resources to Support Each Other and Give Our Students the Best Possible Learning Experience

As a faculty body, you are in a unique position - teaching students from across campus disciplines, often freshmen-seniors in one class focused within a social justice curriculum in the time of a pandemic, lockdown, and international re-engagement with systemic racism. Your advice on how to engage students, especially at this time, is invaluable. Below, we have compiled advice from all instructors to help you best meet your learning objectives. If you would like to contribute...

Creative Projects as Political Possibility

As we engage with the work of anti-racism and equity-based learning, what concrete examples are available and what strategies are necessary to create anti-racism and equity-based pedagogy in the classroom?

Creative Projects as Political Possibility, offered by the American Cultures Center, will present an overview of the ...

Introducing: "Digna Rabia, A Digital Journal in Chicana/o/x Studies"

professor pablo gonzalez, ethnic studiesMessage from Dr. Pablo Gonzalez, Lead Editor of Digna Rabia and Instructor for Ethnic Studies 10AC:

"The inaugural undergraduate journal, Digna Rabia: A Digital Journal...

Student Guide for Community Organizing

Written Itzel Calvo Medina Author's Statement:

"I wrote this guide as a collection of anecdotes and lessons I have learned from being an undocumented, working-class woman of color who is also an organizer and a student. I want this guide to inspire people to organize in their communities and develop the tools they need in the ongoing fight for liberation and freedom.

This guide is not a step by step manual for you to join a movement and be successful, but rather a testimony to the many things you can and will face when you’re starting to organize." -...