BAM/PFA kicks off edgy Friday night series
L@TE nights at Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive aim to bring in fresh energy with outside-the-box programs organized by guest curators. The new Friday evening series begins Nov. 6.
(06 November)

Scholar of native textiles to head anthropology museum
Anthropologist Mari Lyn Salvador, a scholar of Panama’s native Kuna people and the textiles that they create and an experienced museum professional, has been named director of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the UC Berkeley. Salvador is scheduled to take the new post in late November.
(05 November)

Ken Ueno premieres new composition
Composer and assistant professor of music Ken Ueno said the audience at Monday's San Francisco premiere of his new musical composition, "Archaeologies of the Future," heard sounds they likely never heard before.
(04 November)

A zombie invasion
The post-9/11 proliferation of zombie movies tells us a lot about society's fears — and gives us a safe place to experience them. Now zombies are giving way to vampires, and students in the "Monster Movies" media studies class are learning why.
(27 October)

The Wizard of Odd
Making music goes far beyond putting notes together to create pleasing sounds for saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter, who prefers to think of himself as a "decomposer, someone who takes things apart." Shorter and his acoustic quartet will dismantle Zellerbach Hall when they perform there Oct. 17.
(15 October)

Fernando Botero exhibit exploring Abu Ghraib abuses opens at Berkeley Art Museum
An exhibition of 56 powerful paintings and drawings by Colombian artist Fernando Botero about abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq opens Wednesday, Sept. 23, at the University of California, Berkeley's Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA).
(17 September)

Bancroft's Darwin exhibit taps campus's museum, library collections
An exhibit revealing what inspired and challenged the world's best known biologist, Charles Darwin, is now open at the University of California, Berkeley's Bancroft Library in celebration of the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth. The Bancroft joins a worldwide commemoration not only of Darwin's bicentenary, but of the 150th anniversary of the publication of his landmark book, "The Origin of Species."
(17 September)

Simon Karlinsky, scholar of Russian classic and émigré literature, dies at 84
Simon Karlinsky, a University of California, Berkeley, professor of Slavic languages and literature and a pioneering scholar of Russian classic and émigré literature, died in his Berkeley home on July 5 of congestive heart failure. He was 84.
(28 July)

Linguists attending international institute
Hundreds of linguists from around the world are gathering at the University of California, Berkeley, through Aug. 13 to weigh thorny issues such as where grammar comes from, what infants learn before they talk, what DNA says about how related languages spread, and the "linguistically modern man."
(13 July)

Betty Connors, longtime director of Cal Performances' predecessor, dies at 92
Betty Connors, who for 35 years led the UC Berkeley performing arts organization that ultimately became Cal Performances, died on Thursday, June 11, at her home in Richmond. She was 92.
(15 June)

A summer's worth of science writing
The annual Summer Reading List is a Berkeley tradition. Entering freshmen (and the rest of us) stock our beach bags with books recommended by campus staff and faculty — this year, on the theme of science.
(12 June)

Three faculty members elected to American Philosophical Society
Three University of California, Berkeley, faculty members have been elected to the American Philosophical Society, the nation's oldest learned society comprised of nearly 1,000 eminent scholars from a broad range of disciplines.
(01 June)

Matías Tarnopolsky new director of Cal Performances
Robert Birgeneau, chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, today (Wednesday, May 20) announced the appointment of Matías Tarnopolsky as director of Cal Performances. The announcement was made at a press conference in Zellerbach Hall on the UC Berkeley campus.
(20 May)

'Passion and romance and love'
A new Berkeley Art Museum exhibit showcases the work of six artists grappling with the power of their media to effect social change.
(01 May)

Bravo, maestro, bravo!
Longtime Cal Performances director Robert Cole, who will step down this August, announces the arts organization's 2009-10 season.The arts impresario also reflects on some of his favorite events during his 23 years at Cal Performances' helm.
(23 April)

Plugging away at the riddle of consciousness
Over the course of his 50 years on campus, John Searle — among Berkeley's most distinguished and engaged public intellectuals — has explored the philosophy of language, to worldwide renown. He's also gotten in some skiing.
(23 April)

New Mark Twain book hits store shelves
As a collection of 24 previously unpublished works by Samuel Clemens – aka Mark Twain – hits bookstore shelves, the general editor of the Bancroft Library's Mark Twain Papers & Project says Clemens is very much still worth reading.
(21 April)

Four professors become arts and sciences academy fellows
Four UC Berkeley professors are among the latest leaders in the arts, humanities and sciences named fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences today (Monday, April 20).
(20 April)

JUDITH BUTLER: Thinking critically about war
A leading voice in the developing intellectual field of critical theory has received a $1.5 million Mellon Foundation award that she’ll use to create a “Thinking Critically About War” program at Berkeley.
(02 April)

Japanese architect Toyo Ito to visit campus
Acclaimed Japanese architect Toyo Ito will visit the UC Berkeley campus this month to discuss contemporary Japanese architecture and to attend an open house about the new Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, which he designed.
(02 April)

Judith Butler wins Mellon Award
Judith Butler, a UC Berkeley professor of comparative literature and rhetoric, is a winner of the 2008 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award.
(19 March)

Never the Twain shall print?
Though held back from publication by Twain himself, these varied pieces, his anthologizer says, are “well crafted, clear, and wickedly funny.”
(19 March)

New Mark Twain book offers fresh insights into author
Fans of another famous author, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, best known by his pen name, Mark Twain, will likely be lining up for "Who is Mark Twain?" – an intriguing collection of two dozen previously unpublished sketches and essays by Twain that will be in bookstores on April 21. The materials come from The Mark Twain Papers and Project at UC Berkeley.
(17 March)

Paint, video, Etch A Sketch — this artist's media are varied and many
Grad-student artist Miguel Arzabe explores his complicated appreciation of nature using a wide assortment of media — paint, video, laser etchings, online social-networking tools, public enactments and installations, and the Etch A Sketch.
(03 March)

Student photos of foreclosed home win Lange Fellowship
Photographs of possessions left in a Vallejo, Calif., home following foreclosure, an all-too-familiar contemporary event across the nation, have earned journalism student Rhyen Coombs the University of California, Berkeley's 2009 Dorothea Lange Fellowship.
(25 February)

What's cooking at the Library?
A tour through the most appetizing stacks on campus — the culinary collection in Berkeley's Koshland bioscience library.
(12 February)

A 'hot new journal' turns 25
Growing out of, and informing, the New Historicist movement, the journal Representations celebrates a quarter century of interdisciplinary work.
(05 February)

Japanese Studies Center honors Eastwood for "Letters from Iwo Jima"
Actor and director Clint Eastwood will receive the first-ever Berkeley Japan New Vision Award from the University of California, Berkeley's Center for Japanese Studies on Friday, Jan. 23, for his role in creating a new vision of Japan - particularly during World War II - through his award-winning film, "Letters from Iwo Jima."
(21 January)

A Bay Region master
The architecture of Joseph Esherick finally gets its due .
(05 November)

He who steals my artwork steals . . . what, exactly?
One side in this debate claims that appropriating visual imagery in the digital age is a legitimate artistic enterprise; the other insists it’s the illegal use of another’s intellectual property. It’s one question among many to be considered at a campus conference next week.
(29 October)

Homeland insecurity
Storyteller and musician Laurie Anderson on art and technology.
(29 October)

What Haruki Murakami talks about when he talks about writing
Popular Japanese author is awarded the first Berkeley Japan Prize during campus visit..
(15 October)

Smashing the Berkeley myth
Participatory democracy, individualism, the good life — what could be more all-American?
(09 October)

Smashing the Berkeley myth
Participatory democracy, individualism, the good life — what could be more all-American?
(09 October)

Karl Kasten keeps his hand in
The emeritus professor of art practice — a member of the famed Berkeley School — remains active and energetic. So does his art, now on display in a campus retrospective.
(01 October)

Charting China’s post-Mao history through its art
Berkeley Art Museum’s “Mahjong” takes visitors on a 40-year tour of Chinese creativity.
(18 September)

Bancroft exhibit focuses on SF Examiner Archive
"Twenty-five Years in Black & White," a slice of San Francisco Bay Area history from 1935 to 1960, just opened at UC Berkeley, with more than 100 photos from The Bancroft Library's Fang Family San Francisco Examiner Archive.
(15 September)

Michael Baxandall, noted art historian, dies at 74
Michael Baxandall, an acclaimed art historian, author and professor emeritus of art history at the University of California, Berkeley, died in London on Aug. 12. He was 74.
(09 September)

Morrison Library revives Graphic Arts Loan program
UC Berkeley's Morrison Library is reviving a Graphic Arts Loan Collection program that 50 years ago began placing Picassos, Miros and the works of other renowned and emerging artists into the hands of students, faculty and staff.
(28 August)

A residential scholar is in the house
In last spring’s freshman seminar Geographies of the American Home, Paul Groth asked students just out of the family nest to ponder the nation’s domiciles. Groth, a professor of architecture, geography, and American studies who examines the history of built environments, aims to expand his students’ notions of home and class by exposing them to a variety of domestic dwellings.
(20 August)

Poet Alfred Arteaga, professor of Chicano and ethnic studies, dies at 58
Alfred Arteaga, a UC Berkeley professor of Chicano and ethnic studies, a pioneer in post-colonial and ethnic minority literature studies and an important early Chicano movement poet, has died at age 58.
(11 July)

For a beloved maestro, a very grand finale
Cal Performances’ 2008-09 season will be an extended sendoff for its longtime director, Robert Cole, featuring a wealth of celebrated performers, promising emerging artists, and newly created works in 10 series: Classical and Modern Dance, Theater, Recital, Opera, Chamber Music and Orchestra, Music Before 1850, World Stage, Jazz, 20th-Century Music and Beyond, and Strictly Speaking.
(30 April)

A snapshot of student reading habits over two decades
What do UC Berkeley students read? From Why do Men Have Nipples? to the novels of J.K. Rowling and Jane Austen, three large surveys of freshman reading habits, each conducted a decade apart, identify ephemeral — and enduring — undergraduate reading choices.
(21 April)

Sights, sounds, and stories from around the world
Springtime signals the arrival of the San Francisco International Film Festival, which has served up a banquet of global film for 51 years. Among the festival’s venues is the campus’s Pacific Film Archive, whose senior film curator, Susan Oxtoby, personally chooses the works that will screen there — 36 of the festival’s 100-plus invited films this year.
(16 April)

Shades of gray . . . with a touch of black-and-blue
In her first novel, English lecturer Melanie Abrams takes a literary yet erotic approach to dominant/submissive sex.
(09 April)

English Professor Robert Hass wins Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Robert Hass, an award-winning University of California, Berkeley, professor of English and former U.S. poet laureate, has won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his latest book, “Time and Materials.”
(09 April)

Six professors win prestigious Guggenheim fellowships
Six UC Berkeley faculty members, all from the College of Letters & Science, have won prestigious Guggenheim fellowships. They are among 190 artists, scientists and scholars across the nation who were awarded the 2008 fellowships this week.
(08 April)

Robert Hass wins Pulitzer Prize for poetry
Robert Hass, an award-winning UC Berkeley professor of English and former U.S. poet laureate, has won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for his latest book, "Time and Materials."
(07 April)

Scandinavian language smorgasbord
Want to learn how to say "I love Cal Day" in Swedish? How about in Norwegian, Danish or Finnish? On Cal Day in Room 33 of Dwinelle Hall, the Scandinavian Department will offer free, 30-minute lessons starting at 11 a.m. that essentially offer highlights of the first day of UC Berkeley classes in beginning Finnish, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian.
(03 April)

All keyed up: 25 students vie for an 80-year-old Steinway
Generosity and serendipity both play a part in the first Berkeley Piano Competition.
(02 April)

Anniversary of a rebellion
An exhibit of photos by Serge Hambourg at the Berkeley Art Museum captures the spirit of the 1968 Paris student revolt that nearly brought down the government of Charles De Gaulle. It's complemented at the Pacific Film Archive by "The Clash of '68," a series of films based on the theme of rebellion that infused the '60s generally.
(19 March)

UC Regents review preliminary conceptual design for new BAM/PFA
The University of California Regents Committee on Grounds and Buildings today (Tuesday, March 18) got its first peek at Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects' preliminary conceptual design for a new Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) near the main western entrance to the UC Berkeley campus.
(18 March)

A century of Cal student fashion to be displayed
Battered hats and dirt-encrusted brown corduroy pants might scream 1990s grunge. But these shabby fashion statements were all the rage at UC Berkeley in the late 1890s and early 1900s. "The more disgusting they were, the higher status they held," said William Benemann, curator of a new campus exhibit "From Plugs to Bling: A Century of Cal Student Fashion."
(03 March)

Bancroft Library archiving works of pioneering artist Gus Arriola
The "Gordo" comic strips, which beginning in 1941 introduced millions of people in the United States to life south of the border, is part of the rich archive of cartoonist Gus Arriola's work now residing at the University of California, Berkeley's Bancroft Library.
(29 February)

Faculty Nightstand
For this edition of Faculty Nightstand, Vicky Kahn, of the department of English and comparative literature, describes a novel by a modern writer whose works are likely to become part of the literary canon: South African novelist J.M. Coetzee, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003.
(27 February)

Music student adds kudos to his CV — a Grammy
As a musician and a scholar, "I'm very much about saying 'we're here,' " says American Indian singer and composer John-Carlos Perea. Over the weekend that message of Native survival got a worldwide stage, when the Paul Winter Consort CD Crestone — featuring contributions from the UC Berkeley doctoral student — won a Grammy for Best New Age Album.
(15 February)

State Ballet of Georgia launches first-ever U.S. tour at UC Berkeley
The State Ballet of Georgia launches its first-ever U.S. tour at UC Berkeley Feb. 14, presented by Cal Performances at Zellerbach Hall in shows that run through Sunday. The ballet's American visit highlights the once-struggling troupe’s resurgence after an era of political repression and economic deprivation
(14 February)

National Academy of Sciences hosting Katherine Sherwood's 'Golgi's Door' show
Some 11 paintings and prints by UC Berkeley art professor Katherine D. Sherwood on display through Feb. 22 in the National Academy of Sciences' Rotunda Gallery in Washington, D.C. contrast historic and contemporary medical imaging with ancient symbols of magic, mystery and healing from around the globe.
(08 February)

Rewriting history and poking fun at the powers that be
“Enrique Chagoya: Borderlandia,” a 25-year survey of the artist’s work that showcases his wide-ranging palette, will open at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive on February 13.
(06 February)

Jorge Liderman, award-winning composer and music professor, dies at age 50
Jorge Mario Liderman, a distinguished composer and a University of California, Berkeley, music professor, died suddenly Sunday (Feb. 3). He was 50.
(06 February)

New fund to help recruit top graduate students in the humanities
A $6 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that will help the University of California, Berkeley, recruit top graduate students in the humanities was announced today (Monday, Jan. 28) by Janet Broughton, UC Berkeley's dean of arts and humanities.
(28 January)

Fiction readers get their moment in the campus spotlight
The campus’s popular Lunch Poems series will gain a prose companion when Story Hour in the Library debuts next Thursday, Jan. 24, at 5 p.m. in Doe Library’s Morrison Library.
(16 January)

Professor wins Mellon prize for influential unconventional research
University of California, Berkeley, professor Thomas W. Laqueur has been selected as a Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award recipient for his influential study of such unconventional topics as the history of sexuality, death and dying, and the body and gender. He and the campus will receive approximately $1.5 million.
(03 January)