News

Sharad Chari, co-director of the Program in Critical Theory and associate professor of geography, has published Apartheid Remains (Duke University Press, 2024). In Apartheid Remains, Chari explores how people handle the remains of segregation and apartheid in South Africa as witnessed through portals in an industrial-residential landscape in the Indian Ocean city of Durban.

We are proud to announce that Zeus Leonardo, professor of education and an affiliated faculty member in the Critical Theory Designated Emphasis, received the senior scholar award from the Critical Examination of Race, Ethnicity, Class, and Gender special interest group (SIG) within the American Educational Research Association (AREA).

We are honored to announce that Poulomi Saha, co-director of the Program in Critical Theory and associate professor of English, has received the 2023 American Cultures Excellence in Teaching Award. The American Cultures Excellence in Teaching Award is intended to recognize individual faculty members ’ exemplary teaching in the American Cultures curriculum at the University of California, Berkeley.

We are proud to announce that Jonathan Pérez, graduate student in the Program in Critical Theory, has been invited to attend Ternary Positionality: Relationality, Decoloniality, and Interpretation, the spring 2024 Seminar in Experimental Critical Theory (SECT), hosted by the Program in Experimental Critical Theory at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Pérez has received the competitive 

Please join us as Peter Gordon presents "Two Ideas of Dialectic: Hegel and Adorno," a lecture.

Thursday, March 14, 2024 | 5 - 7 PM
3335 Dwinelle Hall, Berkeley, CA

Join The Program in Critical Theory's faculty and students for a panel discussion about the Designated Emphasis (DE) in Critical Theory. All UC Berkeley PhD students interested in applying to the DE are invited to attend.

Thursday, February 15, 2024 | 5:30 - 7 PM

330 Wheeler Hall

Please join us as Adom Getachew presents the second seminar in the Series in Black / Africana Critical Theory, "'The Present as History': Walter Rodney and the Search for Usable African Pasts."

Monday, February 12, 2024 | 4 - 6 PM
3401 Dwinelle Hall, Berkeley, CA

Please join us for "Fascism: An Eternal Recurrence?", an evening panel discussion on modern fascism.

Thursday, February 1, 2024 | 5 - 7 PM
370 Dwinelle Hall, Berkeley, CA

Poulomi Saha, Associate Professor of English and Co-Director of the Program in Critical Theory will join KQED Forum host Alexis Madrigal tomorrow, 11/30 at 9am PST, to discuss our current cultural obsession with cults and what it says about American society.

Pedro Rolon is a PhD student in Comparative Literature and a Critical Theory DE Student who focused on a set of readings in the fields of Caribbean Studies, Black Studies, and Eco Poetics as well as engaging in the practice of experimental modes of critical writing.

Rolon received a Summer Research Grant from the Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry within the Division of Arts & Humanities as part of the Mellon Foundation New Strategies for the Humanities grant.

The Division of Arts & Humanities at UC Berkeley is pleased to announce Professor Stephen Best as the new director of the Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities at UC Berkeley, effective July 1, 2022. 

Stephen is professor in the department of English, holds a courtesy appointment in the department of Film and Media, and is a member of the Critical Theory designated emphasis.

POSTPONED | RED SQUARE IMPOSSIBLE PINK: NEOLIBERALISM AND PERCEPTION IN THE ART OF MELANIE SMITH

15 November 2022 -

Please note that the scheduled November 15 event with Robin Greeley, “Red Square Impossible Pink: Neoliberalism and Perception in the Art of Melanie Smith,” has been postponed until the spring 2023 semester.