Supporting the Humanities at UC Berkeley

Iggy Cortez Photo

Iggy Cortez is a new faculty member in Film & Media who studies world cinema and contemporary art.

His book project, entitled "Wondrous Nights: Global Cinema and the Nocturnal Sensorium," explores nighttime as a conceptual and sensory threshold in recent film. He has previously taught at Vanderbilt University and Swarthmore College, and has curated art exhibitions and film series.

AI Head Thinking Illustration

The Languages and AI working group fosters interdisciplinary dialogue on the implications of artificial intelligence for language and language education.

The group examines the relationship between AI and language pedagogy, literature, translation, and the broad ethical and legal questions that arise out of AI use in the humanities.

Stephens Hall September 2023 by E. Kotila

Since its establishment in 1987, the Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities at UC Berkeley has encouraged an interdisciplinary approach to scholarship, fostered innovative research, and promoted intellectual conversation across academic fields.

The Center offers an array of fellowship and grant opportunities for Berkeley’s academic community, develops new academic initiatives, and offers numerous public events, including the Avenali and Una’s endowed lectures in the humanities.

Sonali Deraniyagla, photo by Colin Bell

Sonali Deraniyagala, the 2023-24 Art of Writing Lecturer, visited Berkeley to discuss Wave, her prizewinning memoir recounting the catastrophic loss of her entire family, including two sons, in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

In a conversation with Art of Writing director Ramona Naddaff, Deraniyagala discussed her writing process — including how it involved a descent into grief in order to "stand up again."