Article
Interview
Published July 22, 2024
K-Beauty in War: A Visual Interview with Claire Chun
Read our interview with Claire Chun, a Ph.D. candidate in the UC Berkeley Department of Ethnic Studies with a Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, whose research explores how modern conceptualizations of “Korean” and “Asian” beauty, wellness, and aesthetics are shaped by overlapping forces of U.S. militarism, tourism, and humanitarianism.
Learn More >Alumni
Interview
Published June 25, 2024
Anti-Mining Politics in Colombia: A Visual Interview with Ángela Castillo
What can the battle around a new mine in Colombia tell us about the past and future of environmentalist organizing in Latin America? Matrix Postdoc Julia Sizek interviewed Ángela Castillo, who is a recent PhD graduate from UC Berkeley’s Anthropology Department and is now Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Pitzer College.
Learn More >Panel
Recap
Published April 14, 2024
Storytelling and the Climate Crisis
Contemporary writers and activists have described the climate crisis as, in part, a crisis of the imagination, of culture, and of storytelling. Recorded on March 11, 2024, this panel featured a group of authors and scholars of different genres — science fiction, journalism, history, literary fiction, and comedy — discussing how the climate crisis has impacted their craft and what practices of storytelling have to offer us at this pivotal moment in human history. This panel was co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Department of English, the Department of History, and the Berkeley School of Journalism.
Learn More >Culture
Interview
Published March 29, 2024
Confiscated Objects of the Cultural Revolution: A Visual Interview with Puck Engman
Read an interview with Puck Engman, Assistant Professor in History at UC Berkeley and a historian of China in the postwar era, whose research concerns the reorganization of state and society in the first 30 years of the People's Republic of China, and the transition from command economy to market economy at the end of the 20th century.
Learn More >Lecture
Recap
Published March 3, 2024
Understanding Land-based Psychological Trauma in Light of Epistemic Justice
Recorded on February 8, 2024, this video features a lecture by Dr. Garret Barnwell, South African clinical psychologist and community psychology practitioner. The talk was moderated and coordinated by Andrew Wooyoung Kim, Assistant Professor of Biological Anthropology at UC Berkeley. Listen to the talk as a podcast through the player below, or on Google […]
Learn More >Matrix On Point
Recap
Published March 1, 2024
Surveillance and Privacy in a Biometric World
Watch the video (or read the transcript) of our Matrix on Point panel on how biometric identification might change our understanding of the relationship between people, private industry, and their government. Featuring John Chuang, School of Information; Lawrence Cohen, Anthropology and South and Southeast Asian Studies, and Jennifer Urban, Berkeley Law. Moderated by Berkeley Law's Rebecca Wexler.
Learn More >Authors Meet Critics
Recap
Published February 5, 2024
Authors Meet Critics: “The Unnaming of Kroeber Hall,” Andrew Garrett
Recorded on January 19, 2024, this "Authors Meet Critics" panel centered on the book, "The Unnaming of Kroeber Hall: Language, Memory, and Indigenous California," by Andrew Garrett, Professor of Linguistics and the Nadine M. Tang and Bruce L. Smith Professor of Cross-Cultural Social Sciences in the Department of Linguistics at UC Berkeley. Professor Garrett was joined in conversation by James Clifford, Professor Emeritus at UC Santa Cruz; William Hanks, Berkeley Distinguished Chair Professor in Linguistic Anthropology; and Julian Lang (Karuk/Wiyot), a storyteller, poet, artist, graphic designer, and writer, and author of "Ararapikva: Karuk Indian Literature from Northwest California." Leanne Hinton, Professor Emerita of Linguistics at UC Berkeley, moderated.
Learn More >Podcast
Interview
Published January 13, 2024
Authoritarian Absorption: An Interview with Yan Long
This episode of the Matrix Podcast features an interview with Yan Long, Assistant Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley, whose research focuses on the politics of public health in China. Matrix Communications Scholar Jennie Barker spoke with Long about her forthcoming book, "Authoritarian Absorption: The Transnational Remaking of Infectious Disease Politics in China."
Learn More >Authors Meet Critics
Recap
Published December 19, 2023
Trevor Jackson, “Impunity and Capitalism: the Afterlives of European Financial Crises, 1690-1830”
Recorded on December 5, 2023, this Authors Meet Critics panel focused on Impunity and Capitalism: the Afterlives of European Financial Crises, 1690-1830 (Cambridge University Press, 2022), by Trevor Jackson, Assistant Professor of History at UC Berkeley. Professor Jackson was joined by Anat Admati, the George G.C. Parker Professor of Finance and Economics at Stanford University Graduate School of Business, and William H. Janeway, Affiliated Member of the Economics Faculty at Cambridge University. The panel was moderated by David Singh Grewal, Professor of Law at UC Berkeley School of Law.
Learn More >Matrix On Point
Recap
Published December 15, 2023
Matrix on Point: New Directions in Gender and Sexuality
While the last 20 years have marked a significant change in increased acceptance of varied gender expressions and sexual orientations, these changes haven’t made the importance of gender and sexuality as concepts disappear. If anything, they’ve become more relevant for understanding the world today. Recorded on November 30, 2023, this panel brought together a group of UC Berkeley graduate students from the fields of sociology, ethnic studies, and political science for a discussion of gender and sexuality through the lens of such topics as medicine, transnational migration, and marriage.
Learn More >Podcast
Interview
Published December 13, 2023
Racial and Ethnic Difference in South Africa and the USSR: An Interview with Hilary Lynd
In this episode of the Matrix podcast, Hilary Lynd, a PhD Candidate in the UC Berkeley Department of History, discusses the changing relationship between South Africa and the USSR from the 1960s through the 1980s. Hilary's dissertation project compares and connects the histories of difference in both places, centering the perspectives of Soviet and South African citizens who engaged each other as they moved back and forth.
Learn More >Authors Meet Critics
Recap
Published November 10, 2023
Massimo Mazzotti, “Reactionary Mathematics: A Genealogy of Purity”
Watch the video (or listen to a podcast) of our "Authors Meet Critics" panel on the book "Reactionary Mathematics: A Genealogy of Purity," by Massimo Mazzotti, Professor in the UC Berkeley Department of History and the Thomas M. Siebel Presidential Chair in the History of Science, with by Matthew L. Jones, the Smith Family Professor of History at Princeton University, and David Bates, Professor of Rhetoric at UC Berkeley. Thomas Laqueur, the Helen Fawcett Distinguished Professor Emeritus at UC Berkeley, moderated.
Learn More >