From AI to polar microbiology, here are 10 new UC Berkeley classes this semester

This week, over 45,000 UC Berkeley students returned to campus for the fall semester. Beforehand, they chose from nearly 6,100 possible classes, a mind-boggling array of new and reimagined offerings across the college’s 184 disciplines and 15 schools. 

Some classes allow students to dive deep into modern phenomena like stress and resilience — ever-relevant subjects for students — or AI’s ramifications for elections. Others offer a chance to use real-life case studies on small businesses or create prototypes designed with “morphing materials.” 

Below, find a selection of 10 fascinating classes offered this semester, with short explorations of what students can expect to cover in them.

Quack Cures and Fad Diets: The History of Alternative Medicines in America: We may live in an age of anti-vaccine sentiment, dubious detox teas and distrust of scientific expertise, but Professor Carla Hesse and fifth-year Ph.D. candidate Emily Martin’s history course argues that skepticism of mainstream medicine is nothing new. In this class, which fulfills a critical reading and composition requirement, students will learn about alternative medicine in the 19th and 20th centuries, from the healing practices of Chinese railroad workers to the discourse around therapeutic psychedelics. The syllabus promises an investigation of why alternative medicine has intrigued so many Americans throughout history, as well as a reveal of the “surprising origins of the graham cracker.” (You’ll have to enroll to find out.)

Globalization and Me: This new political science course, taught by lecturer Di (Wendy) Wang, delves into the headline-dominating but sometimes abstract concept of globalization. It’ll explore how interconnected governments and organizations influence students’ day-to-day lives, from the privacy policies regulating their internet cookies to the chocolate chips in their literal cookies. Through lectures and readings about supply chains, policies like tariffs, international political movements and the border-crossing musical borrowing that led to the global popularity of Afrobeats and K-pop, students will “trace [their] own connections across the globe and see how even the smallest choices — what you eat, watch or buy — are part of a much larger story.”

Polar Microbiology: While the topic of this new class in the Department of Environmental science, Policy and Management is niche, the one-unit course is open to students with any — or no — level of prior biology knowledge. Each week, Associate Professor Adrienne Correa’s class will learn about one microbe that’s adapted to survive in the extreme climates of the North or South poles. This exploration of too-small-to-be-seen organisms will serve as a way for students to understand climate change, as the polar regions are warming more quickly than anywhere else on the planet.

Readings in Classical Ethiopic: Few universities offer classes not just on Amharic, the official language of modern Ethiopia, but also Ge’ez, an older version of the language. This Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures class will equip students to study ancient and medieval manuscripts as well as religious documents from the Eritrean and Ethiopian Orthodox churches. Assistant Professor Yonatan Binyam’s course, which is offered as a two-semester series, will also prepare students to compare Ge’ez translations of texts to the original versions in Greek or Arabic, which could lend insight into both cultures and the interactions between them.

Berkeley Changemaker: How to Successfully Scale Family- and Friend-Owned Businesses: This undergraduate class from the Haas School of Business is part of the social-impact-focused Berkeley Changemaker curriculum. After a pilot program this spring, a new version of the course, taught by faculty members Rhonda Shrader and Chris Bush, is fully enrolled this fall. Students will work on case studies from real-life businesses as they explore how enterprises can meet evolving customer needs to grow. Last semester, one student focused on how her Mexican family’s wholesale spice shop might start selling directly to consumers online as well as their prior client base of restaurants. 

Policing in Media, Televised Trials and the True Crime Genre: American audiences are hooked on true crime, from popular podcasts like My Favorite Murder to long-running franchises like Law and Order to the critically acclaimed Only Murders in the Building. Matthew Berry — who is a lecturer and Berkeley alum — takes a closer look at the true-crime craze in a new media studies class. The course starts with the press frenzy surrounding the 1836 murder of New York sex worker Helen Jewett and moves on to analyze televised human rights trials, Truman Capote’s famous book In Cold Blood, dubious forensic science and how feminism fits into the world of true crime. The syllabus promises that the class will “consider the social, cultural and political implications of mediated policing, prosecution and the documentary approach to crime.”

Design with Morphing Materials and Mechanisms:

Lining Yao

This advanced course in mechanical engineering examines matter that changes in response to environmental stimuli. At first, students will learn how this occurs naturally, as in plants that grow toward the sun. Then they’ll turn to other materials and discover their potential applications, such as matter that responds to pressure or heat or flexible, water-absorbing hydrogels that prove useful in medical settings for wound care. Students will become familiar with cutting-edge technology like the use of bacteria-produced films for food packaging, flexible robots and smart textiles. Professor Lining Yao’s class culminates with four-person teams designing and then showcasing their own uses of morphing materials.

Apocalyptic Ireland: Berkeley is the only U.S. university with a Celtic studies program, and this reading and composition course, taught by lecturer Matthew Shelton, taps into that expertise. Students will get a window into 17th- and 18th- century Ireland through poetry and literature. There’s much to study, since the tumultuous 200-year period saw political and cultural upheaval and colonialism, as armed rebellion by Gaels and other European Catholics failed to shake off English rule, which was ultimately codified by the 1801 Act of the Union. 

AI, Democracy and Elections: Larry Norden, a lecturer at UC Berkeley Law who is the Vice President of the Elections and Government Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, is teaching this seven-week UC Berkeley Law course addressing how AI might impact elections and politics, from voter suppression and public comment to advertising and misinformation. The class will dig into both existing laws as well as how they may change in response to these technological developments. One question students will discuss: Does Section 230, the 1996 law that states social media platforms are not liable for the harms caused by users’ speech online, even if that speech is hateful or inaccurate, apply to AI content? The course may prove particularly salient due to Berkeley’s location in the Bay Area, ground zero for generative AI companies. 

The Neurobiology of Stress and Resilience: This course, cross-listed between integrative biology and neuroscience, seeks to help students better understand an experience they’re likely familiar with: stress. In addition to outlining the biological basis of stress in the brain and body — the pathways through which stressors cause, for instance, anxiety, PTSD or depression — the class will also investigate how people respond to such stress. What one person might find motivating, another might find harrowing. Students will learn scientific strategies to boost resilience and then apply them in their own lives. They’ll also study how factors like discrimination, community and socioeconomic status can compound or lessen stress and how stress and its converse — resilience — can be replicated across generations. Professor Daniela Kaufer encourages students “to approach this class not just as a place to absorb information, but as a space to connect science with self-understanding, curiosity and compassion.”