In early April 2024, Ocean Vuong — poet, novelist, professor of creative writing at New York University, and the 2023–24 Avenali Chair in the Humanities — came to UC Berkeley.
For feminist historian, critic, poet, and UC Berkeley lecturer Angela Hume (College Writing Programs), researching radical abortion activism in the Bay Area began unusually — with poetry.
I cannot remember precisely when I first encountered James Baldwin’s writing — sometime in early high school, perhaps — but I remember that it was not a quote, or even one of his novels, that ushered him into my life.
It was actually a brief poem:
Of all things, images of couches flash behind poet, playwright, and New York University Professor Claudia Rankine as she opens the morning program of “Imagining Beyond Authoritarianism: Race and Gender in Our Times” with a reading from a recent poem.
In March 2023, the Department of Theater, Dance & Performance Studies presented Sarah Ruhl’s play Eurydice, which retells the classic myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, set in a world which feels distinctly, nostalgically, 20th century.
Alter Theater presented Dillon Chitto’s two-man play Pueblo Revolt at Hearst Annex, which explores the Pueblo Uprising through the eyes of a gay Pueblo teen, Feem, and his older brother, Ba’homa.