Videos - Clips and Films

About Videos

A collection of video clips, and films produced by the American Cultures Center staff, students, faculty, and key partners is available for your streaming convenience!

AC Podcast Series

About the AC Podcast

The AC Podcast was developed so that students, faculty, and community partners could share their experiences in American Cultures courses. If you are interested in participating in a podcast, please contact the American Cultures Center.

The Problem(s) with Grading: Making a Case for Contract Grading

Event Description

Building on the groundwork of the Antiracism Winter Institute, the CDF Program co-sponsored and co-facilitated a follow-up seminar in late April centered on contract grading. The two-day workshop, The Problem(s) with Grading: Making a Case for Contract Grading, invited participants to explore two models of contract grading, Specifications Grading and Labor-based Contract Grading. On the first day, participants engaged in current research that explores how traditional grading methods structure...

HSESI Scholar Series: Hope, Healing and the Warrior Women Project - A discussion with Dr. Elizabeth Castle

Event Description

On January 30th, 2023 the High School Ethnic Studies Initiative (HSESI), held "Hope, Healing and the Warrior Women Project - A discussion with Dr. Elizabeth Castle”. This event took place at the Multicultural Community Center at UC Berkeley and was a part of the HSESI Scholars Series. The series hosts panel discussions year-round aimed at supporting California high school Ethnic Studies educators.

Filmmaker and scholar Dr. Castle shared her experiences with...

Summer 2021 SSSJ Final Projects

About the Program

The 'Staff as Students of Social Justice' (SSSJ) Program is an opportunity for up to 25 staff per semester (from the Division of Undergraduate Education and beyond) to audit an American Cultures course and participate in discussions about timely and important topics. Piloted in Fall 2020, the SSSJ Program is a unique opportunity to learn first-hand from leading scholars and American Cultures instructors about the intersections of race, ethnicity, and gender; dig into subjects of personal interests;...

Social Movements, Urban Histories, and the Politics of Memory

This spotlight feature includes American Cultures Engaged Scholarship faculty member Dr. Sean Burns's course "Social Movements, Urban History, and the Politics of Memory" (IAS 158AC / PACS 148 AC). This course examines the extensive multi-racial social movement history of the San Francisco Bay Area. The primary assignment of the course is a student-defined research project where students, in collaboration with local activists and community partner Shaping San Francisco, carry out original research and writing...

American Cultures Engaged Scholarship

"ACES is critical in bridging classroom and community."

"This is the most supportive teaching environment I've ever been in"

"This past year [ACES] courses...worked with community organizations building student and faculty research into the developing fights for Environmental Justice, Prison Abolition, Indigenous movements, the fight for K-12 Education, and the Arts and Social Justice."

The ACES Program Today, ACES courses continue to be...

ACES Community Partnerships

Since, January 2011, the American Cultures Engaged Scholars (ACES) Program has collaborated with over 50 community partners to offer students opportunities to learn about histories of oppression, racism and social justice in the U.S., by engaging with community organizations and experts on these very issues as part of their AC class and the university's public mission.

The ACES program appreciates the varied experience made possible by the participation of Community Partners, as differences among our Community Partners is what makes possible such diverse opportunities...

2019 Teaching in the Summer Workshop

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.

In 2019, the American Cultures Center partnered with Summer Sessions, the Center for Teaching and Learning, Among the topics discussed included 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

Event Video Index

We have created links for you to easily...

The University, Abolition, and Decolonial Theory and Praxis

Event Description

On March 13, 2023, the American Cultures Center and the Multicultural Community Center at UC Berkeley hosted this discussion focusing on the University as a site of contestation and contradiction. Starting from its settler colonial origins and logics, the speakers engage what it means to participate in decolonial and abolitionist work at the site of the university. What are its repressive logics and histories? How might we find cracks in its structure to organize?

The event was part of the Staff as Students of Social...

Long Arc of Freedom Struggles

Event Description

On March 8, 2023 the American Cultures Center and the Multicultural Community Center at UC Berkeley hosted the first event in the Staff as Students of Social Justice (SSSJ) public discussion series, “Aspirations of Material Anti-Racism: What’s Next?”

The Long Arc of Freedom Struggles is a discussion of Dan Berger’s latest publication,...