THIS CLUSTER HAS BEEN SUSPENDED AND WILL NOT BE OFFERED IN FALL 2026.
This cluster is ideal for intended majors in Arts & Humanities.
Course Information
FRENCH 80 001: The Cultural History of Paris, 4 Units
- This course may satisfy L&S breadth for Arts & Literature and Historical Studies.
- Schedule: MWF 3:00-4:00 PM
HUM 10 001: A.I. and Writing, 4 Units
- This course may satisfy L&S breadth for Arts & Literature and Philosophy & Values.
- Schedule: TR 4:00-5:00 PM; Discussion F 1:00-2:00 PM
THEATER 52AC 001: Dance in American Cultures, 4 Units
- This course may satisfy the requirement for Theater and Performance Studies, and Dance and Performance Studies.
- This course meets the American Cultures requirement and L&S breadth: Arts & Literature.
- Schedule: MWF 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM; Discussion F 10:00-11:00 AM
Course Descriptions
FRENCH 80 001: The Cultural History of Paris, 4 Units
An in-depth “forensic” exploration of the urban artifact that is Paris through the study of a variety of texts, films, paintings, engravings, and maps. The course will explore competing ambitions, economic pressures, and ideologies that have, over centuries, produced one of the most visited cities in the world.
HUM 10 001: A.I. and Writing, 4 Units
In the age of generative AI, writing is both under pressure and precious. If text can be automated at scale by machines, it also finds itself newly valued as a distinctly human craft and as a practice of thought beyond mechanization. This course introduces students to the long debates about writing as a technology of communication and cognition, while engaging directly with the promises and perils of machine co-writing. Through readings across philosophy, literature, media history, and computer science, as well as hands-on writing experiments with and against the machine, students will ask: Is writing process or product? What is lost and what is gained when machines write? What is writing’s relationship to technology—is it one itself? How do digital writing environments influence writing practices and products? And what can remain distinctively human about writing once its basic competence has been automated? Students learn that writing may be more than just making a text: it is a way of thinking, of being in the world, it is a technology with its associated material infrastructure, and a human practice worth re-imagining in the age of language machines. As someone once said about thinking, the same can be said about writing: “A life without writing is not merely meaningless; it is not fully lived.”
THEATER 52AC 001: Dance in American Cultures, 4 Units
This course fulfills the University American Cultures requirement, a breadth requirement that ensures that all UC Berkeley students are introduced to the diverse cultures of the United States through a comparative framework. In this course, we view diversity through the cultural practice of dance. We explore dance as a meaning-making expressive form that helps us to understand formations of race, gender, sexuality, (dis)ability, and class. We will look at a variety of US American dance genres, understanding them through their historical and cultural contexts to explore how issues of identity affect the practice and the reception of different dance forms, and, in turn, how dance might help shape representations of these identities. Ethnic groups we will cover include African Americans, indigenous peoples of the United States, Asian Americans, and Latinx people. This course is designed to be accessible to students with no prior experience in dance. This is not a studio-based dance class.
