News & Events

The last Big Give took place ... on March 12, 2020 - just moments before our world changed. Since then your UC Berkeley community has kept the blue and gold spirit strong: repurposing labs for COVID research and PPE fabrication; making sure students have what they need to thrive in challenging times; innovating ways to keep connections strong for classes, clubs, and cohorts; and shining light on expert perspectives that illuminate pathways through some of the most complicated times in modern history.

We are pleased to share our new ... web page, celebrating our part of one hundred and fifty years of women at the University of California. We hope you enjoy these remembrances from our faculty, staff, and alumni! This page can also be accessed in the top left of our site, by the link labeled '150W.'

Selby Wynn Schwartz (Ph.D., 2005)...  was recently awarded the 2021 Reflex Press Novella Award for her first novella, A Life in Chameleons (forthcoming 2022), and her debut novel After Sappho

Bella Chavez is a recent graduate ... from the University of California, Berkeley where she double majored in Comparative Literature and Latin American Languages & Cultures. She is a recipient of the competitive Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship. During her undergraduate career, she studied abroad in Brazil, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. She also volunteered in Medellin, Colombia where she completed her education minor practicum. She is currently interning with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence through a Virtual Student Federal Service program.

Third year Comparative Literature ... student at Cal Kayla Cohen is studying English, Hebrew, Arabic literatures. Drawing from her travels and the interviews that she conducted with Jewish Diaspora leaders in 2017 and 2018, her new book (titled "The Full Severity of Our Connection") carefully examines the Jewish people’s links to the non-Jewish world and how these links have impacted different conceptions of Jewishness.

Juneteenth marks the end of slavery... and we are asked to look back upon that horrific institution that debased, exploited, and dispensed with black life. Some will say that slavery came to an end and take this chance to congratulate the United States for its emergence from slavery. But what of slavery still remains? We can point to contemporary slave labor in the US and elsewhere which, though illegal, still continues to afflict the lives of many migrants.

Dear students, staff, ... lecturers, and faculty colleagues,

It has been a strange summer. I hope that everyone has made the most of their extended time at home, and that it was at least a little productive and also somewhat restful in spite of all the challenges.

I would like to offer a remote, but very warm, welcome to our new graduate students, Cole Carvour, Landon Kramer, Madeleine Kresin, Tom Maude-Griffin, and Madeline Zimring.