Every year, a cohort of faculty fellows are drawn from multiple disciplines who design and implement an assignment in their course with support from the program. This page includes case studies of courses that have been a part of the fellowship.
How can the real conditions of the classroom inform the implementation and design of campus curriculum initiatives? How do we design supports for faculty and students in ways that are adaptive, equity oriented, and foster anti-racism?
The Creative Discovery Fellows (CDF) Program helps instructors incorporate creative assignments into UC Berkeley’s undergraduate social justice graduation requirement. The CDF Program supports faculty and students in utilizing digital design tools to deepen and enhance the academic experience and to explore new avenues for public dissemination of...
ESPM 50AC: “Introduction to Culture and Natural Resource Management” explores how the health of the environments we depend on is connected to natural resource management, which in turn arises out of historically and culturally specific relationships between humans and nature. The creative project utilizes a form of media to present the student’s research on a topic addressing a course-related theme in the United States or in an area of U.S. imperial influence and how natural resources intersect with race,...
Chicano Studies 174AC: “Chicanos, the Law, and the Criminal Justice System” situates itself within an abolitionist paradigm to understand the connections between Chicano, Latino, and migrant urbanization, race, poverty, state violence, and the criminal justice system. The project for this course asked students, as groups, to select a topic or theme that they wanted to engage and to create a Spark presentation introducing the topic, as well as produce a podcast on the chosen topic or theme.
This course covers the entire history of the Chinese in the U.S., from the Gold Rush period in the mid-l9th century to the present. Since Chinese immigration and exclusion are two continuous processes throughout this history, both will be the focus of the course. The two processes and their interaction with each other also generated considerable political, economic, and cultural dynamism in the settlement and development of the Chinese American community throughout the U.S. Adding to the complexity of the two processes and the community dynamics has been the continuous impact of the...
This course provides a broad, interdisciplinary overview of the U.S. labor movement in the fight for social and economic justice. It will introduce students to critiques of racial capitalism and the power dynamics inherent in paid work while considering why and how workers form unions in response. One of the primary objectives of this course is to develop a theoretical and analytical understanding of contemporary workers’ experiences of work in the U.S. shaped by race, class, gender, sexuality, immigration status, language, religion, and other social constructs. There will be a special...
Each year, approximately 10 faculty from a wide variety of disciplines are selected to participate in the Creative Discovery Fellows program. Faculty participate in a year-long developmental program that includes a 3-day Institute, monthly cohort meetings, and various workshops, as well as individual consultations with media and pedagogy experts. During implementation, their students also receive support in the form of workshops, in-class demonstrations, individual consultations, group feedback, online resources, and tutorials.
[The CDF program] is very valuable. We tend to do the same old stuff in our classes—exam, paper, exam, paper, repeat. This only taps into certain sets of skills. While these assignments develop valuable academic skills, students often have much more they can bring to their class experience. For a certain type of student (and teacher!) who feel constrained by the limits of traditional assignments and classroom protocols, the [Creative Discovery Fellows] program is quite freeing in providing institutional support for trying something new.
Ethnic Studies 176 approaches coursework from various critical/theoretical perspectives, often constructing them as we analyze, and through the lens of Ethnic Studies. It assumes that few, if any of you, are entering the course with an extensive background in the art and cultural production or the attendant scholarly criticism of American ethnic art. It does, however, assume the ability and willingness to read and analyze works closely. Over the course of the semester, the course has various Ethnic American artists from the Bay Area who will share and discuss...
Message from Dr. Pablo Gonzalez, Lead Editor of