Bear's-Eye View

Bear's-Eye View is a chronicle of students' engagement with the vibrant humanities culture at the Townsend Center and across the Berkeley campus. Each semester our undergraduate humanities writers soak up the wealth of humanities programs and events, and write about what they've learned.

Discussing his newest book Cheerfulness: A Literary and Cultural History, Townsend Center Director Timothy Hampton suggests cheerfulness is connected to a sense of community which has been disrupted by social media and the Covid-19 pandemic.

For some indigenous communities in the US, the question of artistic ownership has been a fraught one, especially when it comes to ancestral works. Artist Wendy Red Star engaged with the idea of archives, historical narratives, and creative expression of Native Americans in a postcolonial world during her talk at the Arts Research Center.

Dan-el Padilla Peralta (Princeton), and Joel Sati (PhD candidate, Jurisprudence & Social Policy) explore the world of rigidly inflicted borders, papers, and documentation during their conversation on “Citizenship, Illegalization, and Insularity” at the Center for Race and Gender. 

As the twelfth Matsui lecturer, former Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen was invited to discuss her dedication to bipartisanship and fostering engagement and dialogue in her political practice throughout her career as a Republican US Representative from Florida.

“Can we think without time?” On February 24, 2022, Denise Ferreira da Silva, professor and director of the Social Justice Institute at the University of British Columbia, posed this question in conversation with Chicano/a and Latin American Studies (CLAS) Chair Natalia Brizuela and Nejat Kedir, a PhD student in Afr

When it comes to the medium of photography, to what extent is seeing believing? Liat Berdugo (USF) critically examines the role of technology and video capture in Israel-Palestine from an aesthetic perspective.