Close Mobile Menu

Culture

Margie Cullen

A Writer of Books Housed in Libraries

By Aleta George

Dorothy Lazard’s first library—the one that cracked open her world and made her love libraries—was the Western Addition Branch in San Francisco.

Courtesy of Micki Meng San Francisco

Converting to Feminism

By Emily Wilson

A few years ago, when Heesoo Kwon was visiting South Korea during a summer break from her MFA program at Berkeley, she found old home videos of her family.

(Illustration using Canva)

He Was British, Not Irish! And Other Things You Didn’t Know About Saint Patrick

By Margie Cullen

According to Dan Melia, there are a lot of myths about Saint Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland.

Phil Wong, Jomar Tagatac, and Erin Mei- Ling Stuart in The Headlands(Kevin Berne)

Sunset Noir

By Emily Wilson

Playwright Christopher Chen is a homegrown talent. Hailing from the Sunset District of San Francisco, a neighborhood his family has lived in for generations, he went on to study music composition at UC Berkeley, where he got his start in writing and directing after joining the Asian American arts group Theatre Rice.

Hu Xin writing Nushu (Feng Tiebing)

Hidden Letters: The Co-optation of a Once Secret Language

By Margie Cullen

When filmmaker Violet Du Feng, M.J. ’04, returned to China after earning her master’s degree at Berkeley, she was struck by a kind of gender inequality she hadn’t noticed before.

(Alyssa Case '18)

Saving a Language from Extinction

By Madeline Taub

90-year-old Berkeley alumna Rebecca Contopoulou speaks Greek, Italian, French, English, Spanish, and another language that sounds a lot like Spanish but is actually Ladino, a Sephardic language that traces its origins to Medieval Spain.

Neshat (right) with subject Malala Yousafzai, 2014 Nobel Peace Prize recipient (Jorge Herrerera/NPG/Camera P​ress/Redux)

Berkeley’s Women Artist Trailblazers

By Laura Smith

Berkeley claims one of the first graphic novels, famous communist sculptors, and more

Harmony, 1982; private collection, courtesy 
Matthew Marks Gallery; © Estate of Joan Brown

The Beautiful Life, Tragic Death, and Fascinating Career of Joan Brown

By Laura Smith

Let's start at the end.

11 Things You’ll Never Believe Came Out of Berkeley!

By Pat Joseph

Yeah, okay, you’ll probably believe some of it. Still, we think it’s a fun list.

Clark Kerr [l], former President of the University of California, leaves a meeting of the Board of Regents after they fired him at Governor Ronald Reagan's insistence. (Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

The Winter Issue’s Editor’s Note

By Pat Joseph

“The University is not engaged in making ideas safe for students. It is engaged in making students safe for ideas.”

Dania Matos (Brittany Hosea-Small)

How Berkeley is Improving Equity and Inclusion

By Lizeth De La Luz

Five Questions with Dania Matos, Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion

From the Archive: The Rock ‘N’ Roll Industry

From the June/July 1967 issue of California Monthly, "The Generation Gap." A panel discussion featuring Bob Bonis, Tom Donahue, Ralph J. Gleason (moderator), Bill Graham, and Phil Spector, industrialists in the economy of the young.