Iggy Cortez is a new faculty member in Film & Media who studies world cinema and contemporary art.
His book project, entitled "Wondrous Nights: Global Cinema and the Nocturnal Sensorium," explores nighttime as a conceptual and sensory threshold in recent film. He has previously taught at Vanderbilt University and Swarthmore College, and has curated art exhibitions and film series.
The Languages and AI working group fosters interdisciplinary dialogue on the implications of artificial intelligence for language and language education.
The group examines the relationship between AI and language pedagogy, literature, translation, and the broad ethical and legal questions that arise out of AI use in the humanities.
Since its establishment in 1987, the Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities at UC Berkeley has encouraged an interdisciplinary approach to scholarship, fostered innovative research, and promoted intellectual conversation across academic fields.
The Center offers an array of fellowship and grant opportunities for Berkeley’s academic community, develops new academic initiatives, and offers numerous public events, including the Avenali and Una’s endowed lectures in the humanities.
New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik spoke at the Townsend Center in April 2024.
He said that liberal democracy depends on two pillars: free and fair elections, and the existence of open institutions where people can meet and debate without overt supervision. Such spaces of “commonplace civilization,” including cafes and parks, enable democratic elections to “reform, accelerate, and improve.”
Listen to Gopnik's lecture on the Berkeley Talks podcast series.