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American Studies

Category: Announcement

American Studies Senior Thesis Showcase – May 8, 2025

Please join us for the American Studies Senior Thesis Showcase Thursday May 8, 2025, 11:30 am – 3:30 pm 370 Dwinelle Hall Join the American Studies community for our annual celebration of the fantastic research and writing conducted by UC Berkeley’s American Studies majors this year! The 3rd Annual American Studies Senior Thesis Showcase will feature short presentations from 12 senior thesis students and an afternoon Q&A roundtable with presenters, who will share more about their senior thesis experience and their advice for future thesis students. The day will end with a reception for all attendees in Ishi Court from 2:30–3:30 pm. The schedule of presentations are listed on […]

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 […]

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 Major Brittany Postle Wins 2024 Haas Scholarship

Brittany is a junior with a concentration in Disability and Human Rights in America. Her Haas project is called “William O. Douglas and Fight for Pristine Wilderness in a Damaged World: How Ableism in the Supreme Court Shaped Our Ideas of Nature,” and her research questions are (to quote her application materials) “how the advocacy of Supreme Court Justice, William O. Douglas used his powers in office to create pristine wilderness spaces. Using the methodologies of Professor Sunaura Taylor’s disturbed ecologies, I seek to answer how the idea of the […]

Emma Gerson, American Studies graduate (class of 2023), has won the 2023 American Cultures Student Prize!

Image of Emma Gerson

American Studies is proud to announce that Emma Gerson, a graduate of our program (class of 2023), has won the 2023 American Cultures Student Prize! This prize recognizes exemplary student projects developed in American Cultures courses “that promotes understanding of U.S. race, ethnicity, and culture and exemplifies a standard of excellence in scholarship.” Emma’s award-winning submission, “Alcatraz: A Carceral-Colonial Space,” was the capstone project she created in my class, American Studies 102AC (Beaches in Mind: The Beach in American Culture), in Fall 2021. The prize committee praised the impressive nature of Emma’s research […]

We are proud to announce that Sarah Gold McBride has won the 2023 American Cultures Excellence in Teaching Award!

Image of Sarah Gold McBride

This coveted prize recognizes “inspiring and sustained commitment” to address the “multivocality of America’s diverse social fabric; the scales of geographic assemblage that support political and economic ways of being; the often contested nature of the political nation; the intersectional vectors that operate through everyday life.” It rewards “great creativity, ingenuity, and courage” in the classroom. For those of us who have been lucky enough to learn from and/or teach alongside Prof. Gold McBride, this is a much-deserved acknowledgement of her profound contributions to teaching in American Studies and in […]