American Studies
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
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American Studies

Author: Laura Spautz

Sarah Gold McBride’s new book, Whiskerology, reviewed in the New Yorker

A review of American Studies lecturer Sarah Gold McBride’s new book, Whiskerology: The Culture of Hair in Nineteenth-Century America (Harvard University Press, 2025) appeared in the New Yorker on July 21, 2025. The book is a surprising history of human hair in nineteenth-century America, where length, texture, color, and coiffure became powerful indicators of race, gender, and national belonging. You can read the review here.

American Studies Alumni in the News: Nseke Ngilbus, Class of 2023

Chancellor Richard Lyons wrote in his August 13, 2025 Berkeley Brief: Dear Cal alums, parents, and friends, Nseke Ngilbus faced several complex challenges when he started at Cal. He was an older student, a transfer student, and interested in product design — a field he knew little about. “For me, the academics were not the most difficult part,” he wrote in a blog. “Instead, it was understanding the things that are outside of academics … the hidden curriculum.” An Oakland native, Nseke found his footing through two programs that, he […]

American Studies Spring Symposium – “Twice-Told Tales”: May 9, 2025

You are cordially invited to this Spring’s American Studies symposium, “Twice-Told Tales 2025” on Friday, May 9, 2025, at the Women’s Faculty Club on the UC Berkeley campus. Since 1995, the Interdisciplinary Program in American Studies has hosted this small gathering. During this informal, half-day symposium, we will hear from four of our colleagues on campus, and celebrate together the end of another academic year. Attendance is free, no RSVP is required. This event is open to faculty, staff, and alumni, and we also welcome graduate students and especially American […]

American Studies in the News — Berkeley Voices Podcast: From Victorian-era letters to Swiftie bracelets, an evolution of American friendship

Excerpted from UC Berkeley News, by Anne Brice, Feb. 24, 2025 An American studies class at UC Berkeley explores how the depiction of friendship in popular culture and media has shifted throughout history, and what it looks like today. Have you ever seen letters from the 1800s? Aside from the pristine penmanship and grammar, the way friends expressed their fondness for each other is remarkable. “Letters sent between friends are often full of the kinds of loving and affectionate language that today we would only associate with romantic or sexual […]

Talk by Oz Frankel on his book Coca-Cola, Black Panthers, and Phantom Jets: Israel in the American Orbit, 1967–1973 – March 10

With the support of American Studies, History, the Center for Jewish Studies, and the Magnes, the Helen Diller Institute is sponsoring a book talk by Oz Frankel on his book Coca-Cola, Black Panthers, and Phantom Jets: Israel in the American Orbit, 1967–1973. The lecture is scheduled for Monday, March 10, at 4pm in the Law School (4-5:30pm), followed by a reception across the street in the patio of Freehouse (5:45-7pm).

2025 UGIS Commencement Ceremony: Monday, May 19, 9:00-11:00 AM, Zellerbach Auditorium

The ceremony will be live streamed with captioning, and recorded. This ceremony is for students in the American Studies, Media Studies, and ISF majors who are graduating in Fall 2024, Spring 2025, Summer 2025 and Fall 2025. For more information, please visit https://sites.google.com/berkeley.edu/ugis-commencement/home Guest tickets will be available in March and the link for purchasing tickets will be posted at https://sites.google.com/berkeley.edu/ugis-commencement/home. We will notify students and post an announcement here when tickets are available We look forward to seeing you there!

American Studies in the News: 9/11 shaped the U.S. in unimaginable ways. This class helps Gen Z students grasp how

This news story originally appeared in UC Berkeley News, September 11, 2024 Twenty-three years after the 9/11 terrorist attack, UC Berkeley Professor Michael Mark Cohen is teaching a course that examines how disastrous its consequences have been for the U.S. “I think students finally understand why the country lost its mind after this disaster,” said Professor Michael Mark Cohen. By Anne Brice Unless you lived through the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, it’s hard to know what it was like, said UC Berkeley Professor Michael Mark Cohen. Especially because […]

American Studies Majors in the News: Brandon Fellows and the Re-Emerging Scholars Program for formerly incarcerated individuals

Students in the Re-Emerging Scholars Program

American Studies major Brandon Fellows (’24) was recently featured in “Community college program helps formerly incarcerated students find opportunity,” in the Sacramento Bee. Here is an excerpt from the article: If you ask Brandon Fellows where he learned the most in his life, he’ll point to his time spent on the streets or when he was incarcerated. After he was released, he enrolled at Sacramento City College when he was 35. There, he found and helped build a community of acceptance — the Re-Emerging Scholars program, a cohort-based learning program for […]