About the Program
The Global Urban Humanities Graduate Certificate provides an academic structure for the study of contemporary and historical cities using methods from the environmental design disciplines, the arts and humanities, and the interpretive social sciences. Global Urban Humanities is an emerging interdisciplinary field in which hybrid methods of investigation including artistic and interpretive as well as analytical approaches are applied to the study of urban form and experience.
Through a three-course series, the Certificate offers PhD and master's degree students the opportunity to supplement their major areas of study with courses that explore cities through a variety of disciplinary approaches. In particular, the Certificate emphasizes the intersection of interpretive approaches from the arts and humanities (including close reading, formal analysis, discourse analysis and the making of artistic work products) with methods from the environmental design disciplines (including spatial analysis, representation, and iterative design interventions as a means of research).
The Certificate Program is led by Faculty Directors Jennifer Wolch, Dean of the College of Environmental Design and Anthony J. Cascardi, Dean of Arts & Humanities
Admissions
Any UC Berkeley graduate student in good standing (GPA of 3.0 or better) may apply. To apply, students should send their Berkeley course transcript and their completed Graduate Certificate Application form to the Global Urban Humanities Initiative. Applications are accepted twice a year during the fall and spring semesters.
Application forms and the student handbook can be found here.
Certificate Requirements
There are three required courses for the Global Urban Humanities Graduate Certificate:
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a Core Seminar
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a Core Interdisciplinary Research Studio
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an Elective
Core Seminar
The Core Seminar will introduce you to theories and methods for investigating urban form and the human experience in cities through readings, discussion, written assignments, and exercises that may include ethnographic interviewing, mapping, and visual representation. You will be helping shape the emerging field of urban humanities through readings that may include authors including Michel de Certeau, Partha Chatterjee, Guy Debord, David Harvey, Henri Lefebvre, Kevin Lynch, Richard Sennett, Abdoumaliq Simone, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. The course will be offered as Populism, Art and the City in Spring 2018 and will be taught by Angela Marino (Performance Studies) and Jason Luger (City and Regional Planning).
| Code | Title | Units |
|---|---|---|
| CY PLAN 291 | Special Projects Studio in Planning | 4-6 |
| THEATER 266 | Special Topics: Theater Arts | 1-4 |
Core Interdisciplinary Research Studio
The Core Interdisciplinary Research Studio will give you an opportunity to conduct a fieldwork-based investigation of a city. In 2018 through 2020, this will be a city overseas. The course is inspired by the tradition of studio pedagogy in architecture and urban planning and results in work products that often take the form of visual products as well as written essays. This research studio is designed to provide a unique experience that allows students without a background in design to fully participate in the studio experience along with students who do have that background. No previous design experience or ability to produce visual products is required. The course will be offered in Spring 2018 as Borderwall Urbanism, ARCH 209, taught by Ronald Rael (Architecture) and Stephanie Syjuco (Art Practice).
Elective Courses
The elective course is an opportunity for further exploration of topics or methods in the study of cities. For the elective requirement, you are required to take a course outside your home discipline and division. (Exceptions will be considered by petition. For the purposes of this requirement, History will be counted as a Humanities discipline even though it is in the Social Sciences Division.) You may petition to count courses not on this list using the program’s Elective Petition form.
Note: Because the content of courses listed here may change from year to year, the courses listed below and other electives must be confirmed with GUH staff. Be sure that courses and sections are confirmed as GUH electives for the semester in question. Please visit the Global Urban Humanities department website for more information on courses.
College of Environmental Design
| Code | Title | Units |
|---|---|---|
| ARCH 211 | Theory and Methods in the Social and Cultural Basis of Design | 3-4 |
| ARCH 219 | Special Topics in the Social and Cultural Basis of Design | 1-4 |
| ARCH 239 | Special Topics in Architecture Design Theory and Criticism | 1-4 |
| ARCH 279 | Special Topics in the History of Architecture | 1-4 |
| CY PLAN 284 | Urban Theory | 3 |
| LD ARCH C242 | Citizen Involvement in the City Planning Process | 3 |
Arts & Humanities Division, College of Letters & Science
| Code | Title | Units |
|---|---|---|
| ANTHRO 250A | Seminars in Social and Cultural Anthropology: Psychological Anthropology (Any letter may be accepted if the course is urban-focused and approved via an elective petition.) | 4 |
| FILM 240 | Graduate Topics in Film | 4 |
| FRENCH 265A | Modern Studies | 4 |
| FRENCH 265B | Modern Studies | 4 |
| HISTORY 290 | Historical Colloquium | 1 |
| ITALIAN 248 | Special Topics in Interdisciplinary Italian Studies | 2,4 |
| PORTUG 275 | Critical and Stylistic Studies of a Single Author or Period | 4 |
| SPANISH 280 | Seminar in Spanish American Literature | 4 |
| THEATER 201A | Foundations in Performance Theory | 4 |
| THEATER 201B | Current Topics in Performance Study | 4 |
Other Divisions and Schools
| Code | Title | Units |
|---|---|---|
| ETH STD 240 | Series in Comparative Transnational Theories and Methods | 4 |
| NWMEDIA 290 | Special Topics in New Media | 1-4 |
| POL SCI C203 | Urban and Subnational Politics in Developing Countries | 4 |
| S,SEASN 250 | Course Not Available | 1-4 |
Research Resources
Global Urban Humanities-Townsend Fellowships
The Global Urban Humanities-Townsend Fellowships for PhD students at UC Berkeley support research on contemporary and historical cities that engages approaches from the arts and humanities and the humanistic social sciences and from the disciplines of of architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, and urban planning. GUH-Townsend Fellowships are awarded to PhD students who will have advanced to candidacy by Spring 2018. GUH-Townsend Graduate Student Fellows receive up to $18,000 in a stipend, which may be used to cover fees and other expenses.
Global Urban Humanities Initiative Student Publication Grants
Global Urban Humanities Initiative Student Publication Grants support the development of innovative student publications with stipends of $5,000 per student for interdisciplinary editorial teams, plus $4,000 for production costs. Each team must include one graduate student from the College of Environmental Design and one from the Arts & Humanities Division. In the past, we have supported publications that present their material in both written and web-based formats.
Teaching Opportunities
Global Urban Humanities courses regularly hire graduate student instructors (GSIs). Please visit our GUH website Opportunities page for more information.
The Global Urban Humanities Initiative will offer travel and/or course support grants and summer salary to interdisciplinary faculty teams teaching our graduate and undergraduate studios. Applications for the 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 academic years are available on the GUH website.
Global Urban Humanities will also offer course enhancement grants to faculty to expand and improve Arts & Humanities, interpretive Social Sciences, and College of Environmental Design undergraduate and graduate courses. We accept applications in the spring of each year. Details are available on the GUH website.
Program Benefits
Intellectual Community
The Global Urban Humanities Graduate Certificate provides a unique opportunity for making connections with students from across the campus with a shared interest in global cities, including urban areas in the United States. Participation in the Certificate program makes you part of an active community of scholars and urban practitioners and artists engaged in developing new methods of research and teaching.
Global Perspective
The Certificate is based on the notion that learning occurs in many directions and that cities in the Global South are important sources of knowledge and not just objects of study. The same is true of diverse neighborhoods within global cities in North America.
Interdisciplinary Approach
The certificate offers a framework for incorporating theories and methods for interrogating urban places from disciplines both within and outside students’ home departments. For students planning to enter the design and planning professions, the Certificate will provide an opportunity to incorporate critical approaches from the humanities in their work. For students in the humanities and social sciences, the Certificate will facilitate their participation in coursework that addresses both urban form and urban experience, and provide a chance to experience the research studio method, a pedagogy central to environmental design education.
Enhancement of Employability
For PhD students, the Certificate will demonstrate not only your knowledge of cities but your exposure to methods of experiential, project-based learning that may be valued by academic employers. GSI opportunities may give you a chance to build your pedagogy portfolio. For students in professional programs, the Certificate shows your interest in the human dimension of cities and your ability to interpret urban culture and experience through ethnography, storytelling, mapping, visual representation and other methods.
Faculty and Instructors
Faculty
Charisma Acey, Assistant Professor. Water, sanitation, basic services delivery, poverty alleviation, environmental sustainability, environmental justice, urban governance, participatory planning, community-based development, international development, development planning, sustainable development, African studies.
Research Profile
Weihong Bao, Assistant Professor. Film theory and history, media archaeology, critical theory, visual and performance culture, Chinese language cinema, transnational genre cinema, comparative media history and theory.
Teresa Caldeira, Professor. Comparative urban studies, urbanization in the global south, social theory, ethnography. qualitative methodology.
Anthony J. Cascardi, Dean of Humanities, Co-Principal Investigator. English, comparative literature, literature, Spanish, Portuguese, philosophy, aesthetics, early modern literature, French, Spanish Baroque.
Research Profile
Danika Cooper, Assistant Professor. Practice, theory, and representation of landscape architecture; water management and weather patterns in the world's deserts.
Margaret Crawford, Professor. Everyday urbanism, evolution, uses and meanings of urban space and therapid physical and social changes on villages in China’s Pearl River Delta.
C. Greig Crysler, Associate Professor. Architecture, geopolitics of architectural discourse, globalization and social production of the built environment, architecture and identity.
Research Profile
Nicholas de Monchaux, Associate Professor. Architecture, urban design and organization, natural and manmade systems.
Research Profile
Nadia Ellis, Assistant Professor. African diasporic, Caribbean, and postcolonial literatures and cultures.
Julia Fawcett, Assistant Professor. Performance Studies and Theater History .
Daniel Fisher, Assistant Professor. Social Cultural Anthropology; Anthropology of Media; Aboriginal Australia; Music and Sound; Art and Expressive Practice; Photography; Ethnographic Film and Video; Citizenship and the State; Bureaucracy.
Catherine Flynn, Assistant Professor. Modernism, Irish, British, comparative literature, critical theory, Avant-Gardes, James Joyce, Flann O'Brien.
Research Profile
Mia Fuller, Associate Professor. Anthropology, Italy, fascism, urban design, architecture, Italian colonialism.
Research Profile
David Henkin, Professor. History, US History, urban history, cultural history, History of Time.
Research Profile
Walter J. Hood, Professor. Urban design, community development, landscape architecture, environmental planning, landscape design, citizen participation, design of architecture and landscape.
Research Profile
Shannon Jackson, Professor. Rhetoric, performance studies, American studies, 20th century art movements and critical theory, local culture and intercultural citizenship in turn-of-the-century United States, history and theory of theatre and performance art.
Research Profile
Lauren Kroiz, Assistant Professor. History and theory of photography and new media, race and ethnic studies, the relationships between regionalism, nationalism and globalism.
Angela Marino, Assistant Professor. Theatre and performance studies, Latin American and US Chicana/Latino performance, festivals and carnival, political cultures.
Research Profile
Nicholas Mathew, Associate Professor. Beethoven, Haydn, music in Vienna, music and politics, music and urban culture, aesthetics, piano performance, historical performance practices.
Research Profile
Susan Moffat, Project Director. Cities, mapping, storytelling, cartography, public space.
Research Profile
Louise A. Mozingo, Professor.
Greg Niemeyer, Associate Professor. Art, film studies, digital media installations, photography.
Research Profile
Ronald L. Rael, Associate Professor. 3D printed buildings, additive manufacturing, earth architecture, mud, dirt, dust, U.S.-Mexico border wall, arid landscapes, ranching, acequias, alipne deserts, ceramics, rural architecture, ruralism, animation, digital modeling, furry buildings, unnatural materials, rasquachetecture.
Research Profile
Harsha Ram, Associate Professor. Russian and European romanticism and modernism, Russian and European avant-gardes, Russian, European, Near Eastern and South Asian poetic traditions, Indian literature, Italian literature, Georgian history and literature, theories of world literature, literary theory, comparative poetics, genre theory, literary history, comparative modernisms and modernities, vernacular and high culture, cultural and political history of Russia-Eurasia and the Caucasus, postcolonial studies, theories of nationalism, imperialism and cosmopolitanism, the city and literature.
Research Profile
Scott Andrew Saul, Professor. English, African American studies, 20th century American literature and culture, performance studies, jazz studies, histories of the avante-garde.
Research Profile
Andrew Shanken, Professor. Memory, visionary architecture, the unbuilt, paper architecture, heritage conservation, architectural representation, urban representation, diagrams, history of professions, historiography, world's fairs, expositions, California architecture, themed environments.
Research Profile
Alan Tansman, Professor. Modern Japanese Literature, literary and cultural theory, aesthetics and politics, Comparative Responses to Violence, literary history.
Research Profile
Anne Walsh, Associate Professor. Video, performance, audio, photography, text.
Laurie Wilkie, Professor. Anthropology, historical archaeology, oral history, material culture and ethnic identity, family and gender relations; North America, Northern California, Caribbean. Bahamas, African consumerism, creolization, multi-ethnic community.
Research Profile
Jennifer Wolch, Dean of the College of Environmental Design, Co-Principal Investigator. Sustainable urbanism, urban design and public health, poverty and homelessness, human-animal studies.
Research Profile
Winnie Won Yin Wong, Assistant Professor. Labor and creativity, modern and contemporary art, intellectual property, China studies, consumer cultures.
Lecturers
Ghigo Di Tommaso, Lecturer. Landscape architecture, urban design, cities.
Jason Luger, Lecturer. Cities, art activism, urban planning, public space.
Susan Moffat, Lecturer. Cities, mapping, storytelling, cartography, public space.
Research Profile
Emeritus Faculty
Michael James Dear, Professor Emeritus. Social theory, disability studies, urban theory, comparative urbanism.
Research Profile