In the spring semester of 2017, Tessa Rissacher took Prof. Scott Saul’s American Studies H110, “The Bay Area in the Seventies.” It changed her life. Students in the course worked on research projects that became part of an extraordinary website and cultural archive, “The Berkeley Revolution.” The website traces the social and cultural transformations centered in Berkeley during the 1960s...
The University of California Academic Advising Conference is an annual conference aimed at providing professional development to strengthen UC-wide academic advising. Held by a different UC campus every year, this year’s conference, Expecting the Unexpected: Practical Tools for Advising in a Changing World, was sponsored by UC Santa Cruz and was held in Monterey, California. Below, Undergraduate Adviser Katie Schramm...
READ MORE Katie Schramm attends University of California Academic Advising Conference
Mark Danner, a professor in both the English and Journalism departments, is one of five Berkeleyans to become a 2019 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellow. Read more here.
The department’s own Georgina Kleege recently took part in an interdisciplinary blend of lecture and dance, Netta Yerushalmy’s “Paramodernities,” at New York Live Arts on March 14th-17th. The New York Live Arts site summarizes the performance this way: “Paramodernities boasts a radical and undefinable rethinking of the canon, involving virtually no music. Each section was created as an independent unit...
Namwali Serpell has been getting international attention for her recently released novel, The Old Drift. Here is a small sample of reviews: The New York Times Again The New York Times, this review by Salman Rushdie The Times of London Mwebantu The Los Angeles Times The Boston Globe The Guardian You can read an excerpt on Literary Hub. Interest in...
Catherine Gallagher has been interviewed by the University of California Berkeley Emeriti Association (UCBEA) as part of a pilot for a new program, the Legacy Project. The project involves video recording of emeriti faculty for the purpose of preserving the history and accomplishments of its distinguished faculty. More specifically, the Legacy Project has the purpose of producing video interviews with faculty who are entering...
READ MORE Catherine Gallagher Interviewed by UC Berkeley Emeriti Association
The MLA Prize for a First Book has been awarded to Amanda Jo Goldstein for her book Sweet Science: Romantic Materialism and the New Logics of Life. The committee’s citation for Goldstein’s book reads: Ambitious, learned, and extraordinarily precise, Sweet Science: Romantic Materialism and the New Logics of Life magnificently reshapes our understanding of life and the forms through which it is given to...
READ MORE Amanda Jo Goldstein Wins MLA Prize for a First Book
UC Berkeley alumnus Javier Zamora (’12) published his first book of poetry, Unaccompanied, in 2017. Fleeing a civil war and gang violence in El Salvador, Zamora’s parents immigrated to the United States when he was two, leaving him with his grandparents until his own migration, alone, at age nine. The poems of Unaccompanied explore that family history, its larger contexts,...
READ MORE To Tell the Truth … To Be Seen: Poet Javier Zamora (’12) on <em>Unaccompanied</em>
The Truman Capote Award Ceremony will take place at 4 p.m. Oct. 17 in the Old Capitol Senate Chamber. The event will feature remarks by Robert Hass and a reception in the Old Capitol Museum. Both events are open to the public. Former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass won the 2018 Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in Memory of Newton Arvin...
182 feet of LED screen wraps around the circumference of the Grand Hall in San Francisco’s new Transbay Terminal. Continuously running across the screen in letters 16 feet tall are texts from over 40 writers, including Maya Angelou, Harvey Milk, Machine Gun Kelly, and the English department’s John Shoptaw. The display, called “White Light,” was designed by Jenny Holzer, an...
READ MORE John Shoptaw Featured in Transbay Terminal Display
Department alum Daniel Gumbiner has been longlisted for the National Book Award in fiction for his novel, The Boatbuilder. The National Book Foundation, which presents the National Book Awards, writes: “In Daniel Gumbiner’s The Boatbuilder, a twenty-eight-year-old man who has moved easily through the world sustains a concussion with lingering effects, opening a door to opioid addiction and quickly leading to...
The American Philosophical Society has announced that Professor Catherine Gallagher has been selected as the 2018 recipient of the Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History for her book, Telling It Like It Wasn’t: The Counterfactual Imagination in History and Fiction. The American Philosophical Society, the oldest learned society in the United States, was founded in 17 43 by Benjamin Franklin for...
READ MORE Catherine Gallagher wins American Philosophical Society Jacques Barzun Prize
The author, scholar, and MLA member Viet Thanh Nguyen spoke with the MLA’s executive director, Paula Krebs, in October 2017, after he had been awarded a MacArthur Foundation fellowship. His debut novel, The Sympathizer, won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in fiction. PAULA KREBS: Congratulations on winning a MacArthur. Do you have plans? VIET THANH NGUYEN: I run a blog called...
English Professor Alex Zwerdling passed away on May 16, 2017 at the age of 84. Author of five acclaimed books, including the just-published The Rise of the Memoir and recipient of Fulbright, Guggenheim, and National Endowment of the Humanities Fellowships, Professor Zwerdling joined UC Berkeley’s English Department in 1961. He was a key figure in shaping the department over the five decades...
READ MORE “The Luckiest Person in the World”: In Memory of Professor Alex Zwerdling
In 2017, UC Berkeley English alumna Mai Der Vang (’03) published her first book of poetry, Afterland, which recounts the Hmong exodus from Laos after U.S. forces abandoned their Secret War, and subsequent refugee experiences of Hmong exiles and their descendants in the United States. The book was selected by Carolyn Forché as the winner of the 2016 Walt Whitman...
READ MORE A Way of Reaching Back: Mai Der Vang (’03) on the poetry of Afterland
