Over the past few years, the Arts Research Center has been lucky to enjoy the partnership and co-sponsorship support of an incredible array of organizations, drawn from across the campus and beyond. We are grateful to the following departments, centers, colleges, museums, and foundations for helping us to build and extend our shared community.
Current and Recent Partners
Engaging the Senses Foundation
Since 2020, Engaging the Senses Foundation has generously partnered with ARC on a multi-year grant to underwrite our Poetry & the Senses initiative, including poetry fellowships, visiting writer events, chapbooks, and festivals. For more on the program, click here.
Engaging the Senses Foundation was created to honor the senses. Their main emphasis is on waking up through the art of poetry, that “universal language that the heart holds with nature and itself” which can fulfill our primal human need for beauty and serve as a portal to mindfulness, inspiration, connection, and transformation.
More info on the Foundation here.
UC Humanities Research Institute
The University of California Humanities Research Institute partnered with ARC in 2018-2019 to support our year’s programming centered around Arts of Critique of the Global South. UCHRI facilitates experimental, interdisciplinary humanities scholarship through partnerships, research initiatives, and competitive grants.
More on the institute here.
Affiliated Co-Sponsors
The Department of African American Studies is an intellectual community committed to producing, refining and advancing knowledge of Black people in the United States, the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe and Africa. A key component of our mission is to interrogate the meanings and dimensions of slavery and colonialism, and their continuing political, social and cultural implications.
The American Studies program takes as its subject the cultures that have developed in what is now the United States, understanding “American culture” as the interplay of material practices and the realm of ideas.
UC Berkeley’s Art Practice Departmentprovides rigorous practical, conceptual, and critical studio art training within a world-renowned public research university located on Huichin Ohlone Land.
Berkeley Arts + Designfeatures, fortifies, and mobilizes existing excellence in the arts and design at Berkeley, while fostering dynamic collaboration, innovation, and public access across all arts and design fields, on campus and in public life.
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) brings the rich artistic resources of the UC Berkeley campus to the broader public. BAMPFA’s mission is to inspire the imagination, ignite critical dialog, and activate community engagement through art, film, and other forms of creative expression. Through its collections, research resources, and programs, BAMPFA aspires to be locally connected and globally relevant.
Berkeley Black Geographies Projectis a collaborative effort housed within the Geography Department at the University of California, Berkeley. Through a series of campus programs and activities, the Project aims to advance a contemporary understanding of Geography and other disciplinary analyses of spatial relations by centering Blackness as an encompassing framework.
Berkeley Center for New Media is an interdisciplinary research center that studies and shapes media transition and emergence from diverse perspectives. Through critical thinking and making, we cultivate technological equity and fairness in our classrooms, in our communities, and on the internet.
The Black Studies Collaboratory is a three year project aimed towards amplifying the interdisciplinary, political and world-building work of Black Studies at UC Berkeley. The Black Studies Collaboratory consists of academic-year think tanks, summer labs for graduate students, research grants for faculty and students, and a university course open to the public.
California College of the Artsis a private nonprofit college that offers a rich curriculum of 22 undergraduate and 11 graduate programs, and is noted for its curricular interdisciplinarity, breadth of programs, and commitment to social responsibility. Spread across two distinct campuses in the Bay Area, students experience immersive, interdisciplinary exposure that emphasizes theory and practice, helping them to gain the creative confidence and entrepreneurial skills needed for contemporary creative practice.
Center for Latin American Studies. Founded in 1956, the Center for Latin American Studies works to foster and support new ideas and research by bringing together academics, artists and community members from Latin America and the Caribbean, the United States, and the world to engage with the Berkeley campus and larger Bay Area community.
Center for Race & Gender(CRG) is an interdisciplinary research center that creates knowledge on critical intersections between race, gender, and social justice.
Center for Science, Technology, Medicine & Society (CSTMS) at UC Berkeley promotes rigorous interdisciplinary research based on the conviction that the pressing problems of our time are simultaneously scientific and social, technological and political, ethical and economic.
Center for the Study of Sexual Culturewas founded in 2001 to support research and critical conversations concerning sexuality, sexual culture, and their mutually determining relationship to institutions, social practices and norms, and modes of representation.
Critical Theory Program. UC Berkeley’s Designated Emphasis (“DE”) in Critical Theory offers courses on foundational nineteenth-century theories and discourses of critique; on the Frankfurt School; and on other modern and contemporary forms of critical theory, including critical race theory, postcolonial theory, feminism, gender studies, queer theory, critical legal theory, and modes of critique arising from structuralism and poststructuralism.
D-Lab helps Berkeley faculty, staff, and students move forward with world-class research in data intensive social science. We think of data as an expansive category, one that is constantly changing as the research frontier moves. We offer a venue for methodological exchange from all corners of campus and across its bounds.
de Young Museum. Founded in 1895 in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, the de Young museum has been an integral part of the cultural fabric of the city and a cherished destination for millions of residents and visitors to the region for over 100 years. The de Young provides San Francisco with a landmark art museum to showcase the museum’s priceless collections of American art from the 17th through the 20th centuries, Textile arts, and art of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.
Digital Humanitiesat Berkeley supports the thoughtful application of digital tools and methodologies to humanistic inquiry by offering project consulting, summer workshops, grants, and other resources.
English. The major in English is designed to introduce students to the history of literature written in English, to acquaint them with a variety of historical periods and geographical and cultural regions of English language and writing, to create an awareness of methods and theories of literary and cultural analysis, and to provide continued training in critical writing.
College of Environmental Design provides leadership to address the world’s most pressing urban challenges. We do this through rigorous research and scholarship, design excellence, innovative pedagogy, open debate, craft and skill-building, critical and theoretical practice, and insights from both the academy and professional practice.
Ethnic Studies is the critical and interdisciplinary study of race, ethnicity, and indigeneity with a focus on the experiences and perspectives of people of color within and beyond the United States. The Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley was one of the first in the nation and has produced some of the most dynamic and influential scholarship in the field.
Fannie Lou Hamer Black Resource Center (FLHBRC) opened in February 2017. The center provides a needed locale for student communities, particularly marginalized and underrepresented groups. The Center addresses a critical call by students for a safe convening environment that will create space and opportunity for African and African American students and organizations to organize and engage in academic, social-emotional, social-cultural, leadership and networking activities and can also enhance exchanges with faculty, staff, alumni and community stakeholders.
Film & Media Studiesoffers innovative, interdisciplinary programs leading to a B.A. in Film and a Ph.D. in Film & Media. It also provides curricular support for the Designated Emphasis in Film Studies for doctoral students in other departments. The Department teaches students to think historically, theoretically, and analytically about film and media within the broad context of humanistic studies. Students and faculty engage with all forms of moving-image culture, including film, still photography, television, and digital media. The Department also offers courses in screenwriting, curating, and digital video production.
Future Histories Lab. We research stories of place in order to propose new futures. We believe that understanding the history under our feet is necessary to plan for change in our communities. We use art, storytelling, technology, and installations in public space to illuminate and analyze questions of equity, race, and environment. We are a project of UC Berkeley, based jointly at the Arts & Humanities Division and the College of Environmental Design, with participation from many other parts of campus.
Global Urban Humanities Initiative is a joint venture between the UC Berkeley Arts & Humanities Division of the College of Letters & Science and the College of Environmental Design. It brings together scholars and practitioners from the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, city and regional planning, and multiple humanities disciplines – ranging from foreign languages & culture, comparative literature, and history of art to theater, dance and performance studies. Together, faculty and graduate students are developing new theoretical paradigms, research methods, and pedagogical approaches in order to help address the complex problems facing today’s global cities and regions.
The Department of History of Art is designed to give students solid grounding in the artistic traditions, practices, and contexts that comprise historical and contemporary visuality. Equally, it introduces the discipline’s history, methods, and debates. It prepares students to do independent research, to evaluate evidence, to create coherent and sustained arguments, and to develop skills in academic writing.
International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs. Established in 2016 through a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs (ICCTP) seeks to document, connect, and support the new and various programs and projects that now represent critical theory across the globe. Housed in the Program in Critical Theory at UC Berkeley, it has established an active network of over 500 programs, projects, centers, and institutes from almost all regions of the globe and 47 countries, which now constitutes the largest international network in the humanities located in the UC system.
The LGBTQ Citizenship Cluster at the Othering & Belonging Institute focuses on the various ways lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people in our society experience harm, ranging from legal and extralegal discrimination to structural violence and sexual regulation, paying particular attention to how sexuality and gender intersect with class, race, nationality, age, and disability.
UC Berkeley Lunch Poems hosts poets for lunchtime readings in the Morrison Library on the UC Berkeley Campus, and has partnered with ARC on numerous readings and craft talks.
Multicultural Community CenterA student-won, student-led space, the Multicultural Community Center strives to integrate student-driven and community-oriented management, decision-making and visioning in everything that we do. In conjunction with our close partners, the MCC facilitates students’ greater involvement in multicultural-related education, collaborations and cross/inter-cultural community building.
The Department of Music at Berkeley has been ranked among the top music departments in the United States through its successful integration of academic studies with performance.
Native American Student Development provides support and resources for Native American Students at UC Berkeley. The center engages a diverse intertribal community and is a valued part of the campus community.
Native American Studies. Our Native American Studies program considers broadly the relationship of indigeneity and settler colonialism, foregrounding the historical contexts and constraints through which indigenous individuals and polities have expressed and continue to express themselves. Indigenous epistemologies, histories, languages, cultural texts and social practices are key arenas of analysis as we examine the unique experiences of Native Americans. Grounded in the study of history, culture, language, law and policy, the frameworks that enrich our research include comparative global indigenous studies, women and gender studies, queer studies, subaltern studies, immigrant and refugee histories, and transnational and diasporic studies.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary art in the United States and a thriving cultural center for the Bay Area. Our remarkable collection of painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, design, and media arts, is housed in an LEED Gold-certified building designed by the global architects Snøhetta and Mario Botta. In addition to our seven gallery floors, SFMOMA offers 45,000 square feet of free, art-filled public space open to all.
Department of Spanish and Portuguese offers an abundance of opportunities to learn and achieve mastery of the languages and cultures we study, which include Catalan, Nahuatl, Portuguese, Romance Studies and Spanish. Their programs are specially designed for highly motivated students with a passion for other languages, literatures and cultures, for imaginative approaches to these and for careful crossing of traditionally defined geographic, linguistic and disciplinary borders.
Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies (TDPS) teaches performance as a mode of critical inquiry, creative expression, and public engagement. Through performance training and research, we create liberal arts graduates with expanded analytical, technical, and imaginative capacities. As a public institution, we make diversity and inclusion a key part of our teaching, art making, and public programming.
Townsend Center for the Humanities. Since its establishment in 1987, the Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities has encouraged an interdisciplinary approach to scholarship, fostered innovative research, and promoted intellectual conversation across academic fields. The Townsend Center is committed to enriching the existing wealth of intellectual resources at Berkeley through an array of fellowship and grant programs designed to support research and scholarship at all levels of the university community.
Visual AIDS utilizes art to fight AIDS by provoking dialogue, supporting HIV+ artists and preserving a legacy, because AIDS is not over.