UC Berkeley English Department

05/11/2022

"Across the country and throughout the humanities, climate fiction has become a really major critical focus, for obvious reasons."

02/25/2022

Get your tickets for Professor Saha's TEDx talk on Saturday, April 9th!

https://www.tedxberkeley.org/tickets

Join this distinguished Berkeley professor as they shift the lens on how we interact with history! Our next inspiring TEDxBerkeley 2022 speaker is Professor Poulomi Saha, a scholar of postcolonial studies, ethnic American literature, and critical theory.

Professor Saha’s research and teaching interests span eastward and forward from the late 19th century decline of British colonial rule in the Indian Ocean through to the Pacific and the rise of American global power and domestic race relations in the 20th century. Her current book, "Fascination: America’s “Hindu” Cults" considers the allure and scandal of Indian spirituality in America. She writes and teaches about gender, sexuality, race, and empire.

Attend Professor Saha’s talk live at TEDxBerkeley 2022 by purchasing a ticket here: www.tedxberkeley.org/tickets

Learn more about Professor Saha here: www.poulomisaha.com

We understand the uncertainty of these times; hence, we will offer full refunds for any tickets purchased up until the week before the event and ticket transfers will be permitted until the day before the event.

02/23/2022

There are two more opportunities to audition for “The Ones who Leave,” a play written by Nagahara Hideaki and translated by Professor Andrew Leong. Click here for more info: bit.ly/TOWLZoom

02/10/2022

What’s next on your reading list? 📚

ICYMI: Here are 9 books by Black authors you should read for Black History Month — and beyond — exploring everything from modern q***r life to workplace racism.

⏩ ucberk.li/black-history-month-2022

01/27/2022

“Inside every world there is another world trying to get out.”

NEXT WEEK: Join us (on Zoom) for the first Lunch Poems reading of 2022, featuring …

✨ SANDRA LIM ✨

🗓 12:10 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 3
🔗 lunchpoems.berkeley.edu

10/03/2021

The first installment of Berkeley Book Chats is happening this Wednesday, October 6th! Listen to Allan deSouza discuss his latest book, Ark of Martyrs: an Autobiography of V. The book reimagines Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, becoming what deSouza calls a "polyphonic replacement" of the original text.

Check out the FB page and share this event with your friends: https://fb.me/e/1QckKKMkP

Click here to watch the livestream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1FPqQ0Aat0&ab_channel=TownsendCenterfortheHumanities

This event is hosted by the Townsend Center for the Humanities.

08/31/2021

In Glasnevin cemetery for the funeral of Paddy Dignam, Bloom thinks “in the midst of death, we are in life.” We think about different kinds of death and life in “Hades” with a variety of guests: doctors Kim Kwang Taik from Seoul, South Korea, and Alejandro Dagnino Veras from Lima, Peru, Barr...

08/16/2021

https://hawaiireviewofbooks.com/stories/an-office-in-the-ocean

While Thomas Farber has been dividing his time between Hawai‘i, Boston, and the Bay Area for the last 40-plus years, his life can seem more aquatic than terrestrial. I saw him for years in black swim cap and goggles before we ever exchanged a word, gradually merging the man in the Tongg’s swimmi...

06/15/2021

We have an exciting announcement! Professor Flynn and a few of her former students just launched a podcast titled U22 The Centenary Ulysses Podcast. Podcast fan or not, please take a minute to appreciate all the hard work that went into creating a beautiful website and producing episodes that will be released every couple of weeks for the rest of the year.

https://u22pod.com/

Please join us for a launch celebration event happening tomorrow, Wednesday, June 16th at 11:00 am PST. Register here: https://berkeley.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIldOCurTojG9VkrY131GQcSGwi1Ft20Nib

U22 The Centenary Ulysses Podcast is about readers' journeys through Ulysses, James Joyce’s modernist epic about the lives of ordinary people on a day in Dublin in 1904. The podcast anticipates and accompanies a reader-friendly edition Catherine Flynn is bringing out with Cambridge University Press for the book’s centenary in 2022. Here, she and her co-hosts Rafael Aguilar, Emily Moell, and Louie Poore talk with the contributors to the volume and with readers of Ulysses from around the world. Listen to their first impressions, later realizations, and the challenges and the pleasures they met along the way.

The first episode is already on Spotify and will be up on iTunes in a couple days.

Check out the website to learn more about the team behind the production. www.U22pod.com

06/01/2021

Calling all transfer students! The Art of Writing is hosting a summer writing course designed specifically around discipline-specific research and writing at UC Berkeley. Work on gearing up your writing skills for your chosen major in a small inclusive setting.

Summer 2021 Course Enrollment Open for Transfer Students in All Fields Summer Session D (six weeks) July 6 – Aug 13, 2021 Rhetoric 189 / English 165 Tues, Wed, Thurs 2 – 4:30 pm Having successfully completed their composition courses in community college, transfer students possess the writing sk...

04/28/2021

Event tomorrow 4/29 at 2pm PDT!

Interested to see what the UC Berkeley English Department is all about? Join us for a Cal Week event tomorrow! Whether you are an incoming student, current student, family member, or community member, we'd like to welcome everyone to come listen in on a lecture with Professor Eric Falci. Following the lecture, we will have an English Department Information session where you'll be able to ask questions and chat with our undergraduate advisors and professors.

2pm-3pm PDT
Poetry and Vicarious Life with Professor Eric Falci

3pm-4pm PDT
English Department Information Session

https://events.berkeley.edu/index.php/calendar/sn/english.html?event_ID=139544&date=2021-04-29&filter=Secondary%20Event%20Type&filtersel=

Welcome to Cal Week! The English Department will be hosting two events back to back on Thursday, April 29th starting at 2pm PDT. Come join us to see what the UCB English Department is all about.

03/19/2021

The Simpson Literary Project and House of SpeakEasy invite you to meet the Finalists for the 2021 Joyce Carol Oates Prize.

03/19/2021

The Simpson Literary Project announced the 2021 Joyce Carol Oates Prize finalists! Learn more about he JCO Prize here: https://www.simpsonliteraryproject.org/literary-prize

We are thrilled to announce our 2021 Finalists. and . The work of these authors supports our vision for a truly democratic and literate society. We can't wait to share their stories, and celebrate their words with you. Congratulations, finalists! https://www.simpsonliteraryproject.org/joycecaroloates-prize-finalists-2021

03/12/2021

THANK YOU to everyone who participated in yesterday. Your ongoing support will allow us to sustain exceptional programs and opportunities for our students. We are so grateful to our English Department community 📖 ❤

03/12/2021

Today is the day! Our community makes UCB English the best of the best! If you believe in our mission, we hope you will participate in today's Big Give, Berkeley’s annual 24-hour on-line giving marathon. Please help us extend our offerings to students who, like some of you, have made the English Department their home. ❤️📚📖

https://give.berkeley.edu/fund/FN7202000

03/04/2021

Tomorrow at 5pm PST! Come support our faculty and grad students!

New Novel Studies at Berkeley
Friday, March 5th at 5:00 pm PST

Please join us for a panel centered on new faculty work on the novel.

The panelists include:
Ian Duncan, Professor of English and author of Human Forms: The Novel in the Age of Evolution

Dorothy Hale, Professor of English and author of The Novel and the New Ethics

Nicholas Paige, Professor of French and author of Technologies of the Novel: Quantitative Data and the Evolution of Literary Systems

Dora Zhang, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and English and author of Strange Likeness: Description and the Modernist Novel

The faculty members will be joined by four graduate students—Gabrielle Elias (English), Jesse Nyiri (English), Lukas Ovrom (French), and Pamela Weidman (English)—who will introduce each book and offer an initial round of questions before a general Q&A.

Please visit this link to register: https://berkeley.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_scJlsJI9TS-3rod5olzL9Q

Here's the calendar invite for more info: https://events.berkeley.edu/index.php/calendar/sn/english.html?event_ID=138452&date=2021-03-05&filter=Secondary%20Event%20Type&filtersel=

03/03/2021

TOMORROW (3/4) at 12:10pm PST - Lunch Poems with Mary Jo Bang. Don't miss it!

“What is desire
But the hardwire argument given
To the mind’s unstoppable mouth.”

NEXT WEEK: Join us (on Zoom) for the next Lunch Poems reading, featuring …

✨ MARY JO BANG ✨

🗓 12:10 p.m., Thursday, March 4
🔗 lunchpoems.berkeley.edu

📸: Matt Valentine

(s/o UC Berkeley, UC Berkeley English Department, Department of English - Washington University in St. Louis, Boston Review)

03/03/2021

“I think that the job of poetry … is to refresh the idea of justice, which is going dead in us all the time.”

Happy 80th birthday, Robert Hass! 🙌✍️📚

Hass:

✅ Is a UC Berkeley professor
✅ Served as U.S. poet laureate
✅ Won a Pulitzer for “Time and Materials”

Read about (and watch) his 2020 Lunch Poems reading!

⏩ ucberk.li/hass-lunch-poems

(s/o UC Berkeley English Department, Pulitzer Prizes, Poetry Foundation & Poetry Magazine)