In College Writing (CW) R4B: “Images of History”, Dr. Patricia Steenland brought awareness and visibility to the Japanese American internment, an event that is often brushed over in history classes or lost in the context of World War II. Students in this course engaged in projects that sought to make it clear that there were over 500 UC Berkeley students who were forcibly removed from campus and displaced at Japanese Internment camps, which prevented them from finishing their...
Kenneth Worthy is a researching lecturer with interests in human-environment relationships over history and across cultures that help to better understand the origins of modernity's global environmental crisis, with the goal of a healthier, more sustainable, and livable world. He uses interdisciplinary elements in his course ESPM 50AC: “Introduction to Culture and Natural Resource Management” to explore how the health of the...
Susan Schweik is a researching professor who brings in her interest in Twentieth-Century Poetry, late Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Women's Studies and Gender Theory, Urban Studies, war literature and children's literature into her Creative Discovery Fellows course, English 135AC, Race, Class,...
Dr. Karina Palau is a Continuing Lecturer in the Department of Comparative Literature. Her recent course offerings include a freshman writing seminar on travel literature, "Boroughs & Barrios: Moving in and through NYC and LA," an American Cultures course on (re)making American history in the post-Civil-Rights-Era U.S., and a course that examines depictions of four distinctive cities on the American continent: New York, Buenos Aires, Los Angeles, and Mexico City.
Since Spring 2019, Dr. Palau has taught and continues to teach...
Harvey Dong teaches Ethnic Studies courses as a lecturer in Ethnic Studies and Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies at UC Berkeley. Initially, Dr. Dong took part in the 1969 Third World Liberation Front, a student movement to establish Ethnic Studies. Once Ethnic Studies was established, Dr. Dong taught some of the department’s first communities issues courses based on extensive fieldwork carried out in San Francisco Manilatown and Chinatown, while also active in struggles to save the International Hotel in Manilatown and to protect Asian immigrant labor rights. Dr. Dong...
This course considers America as contested territory, where multiple Americas are not just written but also performed. By studying performance we look at how different meanings of America have been constructed over time. This class especially focuses on race intersecting with class and gender in the United States towards stronger anti-racist and anti-imperialist collective strategies for artists, scholars, and other cultural producers. Course materials include plays, live performances, popular media, music,...
Seth Lunine is extensively involved with the American Cultures Engaged Scholarship (ACES) Program and explores issues of power, race, and class in the contemporary city in his course: Geography X50AC: “California.” This course explores the complex history of California and dives into the darker histories of racism and oppression. Originally developed as part of the American Cultures...
Over the course of the semester, students in History 131C, In the Shadow of War: A Social History of the U.S. Military, investigate together how the military shaped and was shaped by the experiences of African American, indigenous American, Mexican American, Asian American, and white American soldiers, officers, and their families. Alongside race, ethnicity, and national origin, the course considers how personnel policies and exigent circumstances of war rendered gender, sexuality, class, religion, and disability visible and invisible, acceptable and...
English 135AC: “Race, Class, & Disability: An American Foundling Museum” analyzed race, ethnicity, and disability in American cultures, focusing particularly on histories of family separation. A final project for the course asked students to curate an artifact for an “American Foundling Museum," with an opportunity to work in a variety of different mediums: conventional papers, podcasts, video, graphic art, and more. Across the semester, students applied writing and arts-based practices to generate a major...