CT faculty will be teaching twelve spring 2020 courses that count towards the Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory. These courses reflect the interdisciplinary breadth of the Program, with core and elective options in Anthropology, Education, English, Ethnic Studies, Film, French, Rhetoric, and Spanish.

For more information on spring courses, full course descriptions, and the curricular requirements of the Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory, please visit our Courses page.

Spring 2020 Critical Theory Courses: CORE

• Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit | Philosophy 290 005 (Critical Theory 200) | Andreja Novakovic
• Critique of Capitalism, or Reading Marx Now | English 250 003 (Critical Theory 240) | Colleen Lye

Spring 2020 Critical Theory Courses: ELECTIVE (Critical Theory 290)

• Wittgenstein and Anthropology | Anthropology 250X 005 | Charles Hirschkind
• Technological Selves and Sociotechnical Systems | Anthropology 250X 004 | Sarah E. Vaughn
• Proseminar: Sociocultural Critique of Education | Education 280B 001 | Zeus Leonardo
• Comedy and Violence | English 203 003 | Catherine Flynn
• History and Narrativity: Contemporary Theories and Methods | Ethnic Studies 201 001 | Raul Coronado, Jr.
• Theorizing Film and Media | Film 200 001 | Damon Young
• Traditions of Critical Thought—Literature and Anthropology | French 274 001 | Soraya Tlatli *Discussion in English, texts in French
• Crisis and Entanglement in Science and Culture | Philosophy 290 004 | Alva Noë
• Classical Rhetorical Theory and Practice | Rhetoric 200 001 | James Porter
• Feminisms/Potentia/Life | Spanish 280 002 | Natalia Brizuela

The Program in Critical Theory’s Designated Emphasis has grown considerably since its inception in 2010. Now in the tenth year, the program’s current enrollment stands at 96 active students with over 60 affiliated faculty. To date, 54 UC Berkeley PhD’s have earned a Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory.

Congratulations to the following twelve graduates since 2019:

Molly Borowitz (August 2019)
PhD in Hispanic Languages and Literatures
DE in Critical Theory
DE in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies

William Callison (August 2019)
PhD in Political Science
DE in Critical Theory

Philip Gerard (August 2019)
PhD in Comparative Literature
DE in Critical Theory

Jordan Greenwald (August 2019)
PhD in Comparative Literature
DE in Critical Theory

Megan Hoetger (May 2019)
PhD in Performance Studies
DE in Critical Theory
DE in Film Studies

Matt Horton (August 2019)
PhD in Education
DE in Critical Theory

Basit Iqbal (December 2019)
PhD in Anthropology
DE in Critical Theory

Taylor Johnston (May 2019)
PhD in Comparative Literature
DE in Critical Theory

Tae Hyun Kim (August 2019)
PhD in Chinese Language
DE in Critical Theory

Stephen McIsaac (May 2019)
PhD in Medical Anthropology
DE in Critical Theory 

Katharine Wallerstein (December 2019)
PhD in Rhetoric
DE in Critical Theory

Zi-Qiao (Lawrence) Yang (August 2019)
PhD in Chinese Language
DE in Critical Theory
DE in Film Studies

The Program in Critical Theory will support three Designated Emphasis students’ dissertation projects in 2019-2020. Veronica Jacome and Ryan Rhadigan will receive semester-long Critical Theory Dissertation Fellowships, while Taylor Johnston has won a Critical Theory Research Grant.

Support for this year’s awardees is generously provided by the Magistretti Graduate Fellowship Fund, through the UC Berkeley College of Letters and Sciences, the Dean of Arts and Humanities, and the Class of 1936 First Professor of Political Science.

Veronica Jacome, Energy and Resources Group

Veronica Jacome

Veronica Jacome is a human geographer and Ph.D. Candidate with the Energy and Resources Group (ERG). She studies energy development and environmental justice through the lens of resource geography and political economy. Her dissertation investigates the presumptions and precarity imbedded in electricity systems today by applying critical theory, social science research methods, and electric power systems monitoring. Prior to joining ERG, Veronica served as the Director of Development for Imagine Science and Films, and taught A-level physics in Tanzania.

Chateaubriand Fellow, Art Rosenfeld Award, NSF Graduate Fellow, Foreign Language Academic Scholarship

Ryan Rhadigan, Rhetoric

Ryan Rhadigan

Ryan is a PhD candidate in the Department of Rhetoric with a designated emphasis in Critical Theory. He received an MA in American Indian Studies from UCLA. In 2017-2019 he was a graduate fellow at the UC Berkeley Institute for the Study of Societal Issues. Ryan’s research combines methods from Native American and Indigenous studies, science and technology studies, and critical theory, in order to explore how archival technics shape Indigenous communities’ collective efforts to transform and democratize scientific practices. His dissertation project, “Salvage Constellations: The Archival Logics of Dispossession and Indigenous Recollection” investigates how Indigenous people in northern California are represented in ethnological archives, and how such archival entanglements work to consolidate, displace, and transduce present acts of cultural knowledge production and political exchange. 

Taylor Johnston, Comparative Literature

Taylor Johnston

Taylor Johnston is a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature and an M.A. in English at UC Berkeley, where she works on postmodern and contemporary American fiction, the African-American novel, literary realism, and critical whiteness studies. Her recent work appears in Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction (2017) and is forthcoming in Arizona Quarterly (2019). Her dissertation project, “Postmodern Realism and That Class Which is Not One”, explores the social and epistemological significance of realist description in white lower-middle-class fiction of the American seventies and eighties.

In the Department of Comparative Literature, she has taught nine courses on American and European literature and film, including two interdisciplinary Mellon-funded courses on the intersections of literature and live performance, a collaboration with Cal Performances.

Originally from San Diego, she received a B.A. in English and American Literature (2007) and an M.A. in Italian Studies (2010) from Middlebury College. Before beginning her graduate studies at Berkeley, she taught English at the Luca Pacioli Technical Institute in Lombardy (2007-8) and Italian at “La Scuola” International School, San Francisco (2008-12), as part of their early childhood education program.

The Program in Critical Theory is delighted to welcome twenty-one new students to the Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory. The new cohort includes graduate students from ten departments in the social sciences, humanities, and professional schools. These new admits bring the total number of Critical Theory DE students to approximately 125 (the largest such program at Berkeley).

CT faculty will be teaching seven Fall 2019 courses that count towards the Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory. These courses reflect the interdisciplinary breadth of the Program, with core and elective options in Comparative Literature, Ethnic Studies, Film, French, German, Education, and Spanish & Portuguese.

For more information on fall courses and the curricular requirements of the Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory, please visit our Courses page.

Fall 2019 Critical Theory Courses: CORE

• Frankfurt School, New York School: Critical Aesthetics & Modern Poetry | Comparative Literature | Robert Kaufman
• Freud and Lacan | Film | Mary Ann Doane
• Critical Ethnic Studies without Guarantees: Thinking with Stuart Hall | Ethnic Studies | Keith Feldman

Fall 2019 Critical Theory Courses: ELECTIVE

• Post-War Materialisms and the Concrete | Spanish & Portuguese | Nathaniel Wolfson
• Image and Power | German | Tony Kaes
• Nineteenth-Century Literature – The Nineteenth Century and ways of reading: Literature, social history, hermenueutics | French | Michael Lucey
• Proseminar: Sociocultural Critique of Education | Education | Zeus Leonardo
• Arts of the Self | French | Damon Young
• Law and History Foundation Seminar | Law | Christopher Tomlins
• Ruins of History | Rhetoric | Samera Esmeir, Stefan-Ludwig Hoffman

The Critical Theory Dissertation Fellowship is awarded to Critical Theory Designated Emphasis (DE) graduate students with records of achievement and promising dissertation projects. The fellowships support students writing their dissertations, providing full fee remission (where required) and a full stipend, usually for a semester.

Applications for the 2019-2020 Critical Theory Dissertation Fellowship are due Friday, April 12, 2019, by 4 pm. Eligible students must be enrolled in the Critical Theory DE and not receive significant (non-teaching) financial support from their home departments during the period of the award. Applicants must have completed their Qualifying Exams and have an approved dissertation prospectus.

Application Guidelines

Applicants must submit a cover letter, a 2-3 page abstract of the dissertation, an academic CV, and a letter from the dissertation adviser evaluating the project’s promise. Applicants planning on having the prospectus approved by the end of May 2017 should explain this in the application cover letter and should have the dissertation director, in his or her letter, evaluate the draft or proposed prospectus and the likelihood of its approval.

The committee will have the option of splitting the award in order to support more students.  In view of this possibility, applicants should specify in the cover letter whether they would prefer to have the award in the fall or spring semester.

Completed applications, including all supporting materials, must be received by Friday, April 12, 2019, at 4 pm.

Please submit applications to critical_theory@berkeley.edu.

Deadline for applications: April 12, 2019, by 4 pm
Award Announced: May 2019
Award Period: July 1, 2019 – June 30, 2020
Award Amount: Varies according to applicant pool and funds available.

The Dissertation Fellowship is open to Critical Theory students in UC Berkeley Departments including Anthropology, Boalt Law School, Comparative Literature, East Asian Languages and Cultures, English, Ethnic Studies, Film & Media, French, Gender & Women’s Studies, German, Geography, History, History of Art, Italian, Music, Philosophy, Political Science, Rhetoric, School of Education, School of Public Health, Sociology, South & Southeast Asian Studies, Spanish & Portuguese, and Theater, Dance and Performance Studies.