Basic Department Commencement FAQs for students*
How long is the ceremony?
The ceremony starts promptly at 2pm and lasts approximately 2 hours.
Is regalia required?
No, regalia is not required. We do suggest wearing business casual attire for the event. Regalia will be available for purchase or rent at the Cal Student Store.
Is there a reception?
Yes!
David Bates appeared on a podcast episode of Entitled Opinions with Robert Harrison.
In this philosophy-heavy episode, Professor Robert Harrison and David Bates, Professor of Rhetoric at UC Berkeley, discuss the “unnatural” origins of human technology and the difficulty of drawing sharp distinctions between artificial and natural intelligence.
Trinh Minh-ha, Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School, has two new books released this year (Traveling in the Dark, Milan, Italy: Mousse Publishing, 2023 and The Twofold Commitment, New York: Primary Inform
PhD candidate Yael Hacohen has been awarded first place in the Adult Category of the 2023 Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Awards, an annual celebration of poetic excellence, for "Amos 3:5".
See the 2023 Poetry Contest Winners announcement on the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation website for more information about the award and to read the winning poems.
Congratulations, Yael!
Doctoral student William Morgan co-authored Secrets and Machines: A Conversation with GPT-3 with with Ethan Plaue and GPT-3. The piece is featured in e-flux Journal #123
Rhetoric Graduate Student Aliosha Pittaka Bielenberg was recently featured in an article on the Graduate Division website about his summer fieldwork in Cyprus: Meet Aliosha: Rhetoric Ph.D connects with Cyprus’ cultural heritage through his research.
Kyra Sutton received a 2023 Teaching Effectiveness Award for “That Which Moves: Affect and Analysis”. The TEA award is sponsored by the Graduate Council’s Advisory Committee for GSI Affairs and the GSI Teaching and Resource Center.
The Department of Rhetoric was honored to have Julia Jarcho (Rhetoric PhD 2013) return to UC Berkeley to deliver the keynote address for our 2023 Rhetoric and Film & Media Commencement (watch the 2023 Commencement livestream recording).
Congratulations to our newest cohort of Rhetoric Ph.D. students starting this fall! We are delighted to welcome you to our active and vibrant intellectual community at Cal!
Chiara Bercugot her BA in Sociology from Wesleyan University. She will be pursuing a project about the carceral uptake of machine learning tech and the colonial imperatives that structure epistemological networks, with a special interest in psychoanalytic and cybernetic conceptions of the subject.
UC Berkeley is committed to recognizing and rewarding graduate student’s contributions to diversifying the academy during their graduate careers and beyond.
Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor (OGSI) Awards
Summer Session A (May 22-June 30)
Rhetoric R1A | Class #14989
Tue Wed Thurs 10am-12:30pm
Instructor: Osarugue Otebele
In(ter)vention and the Rhetorical Tradition
Rhetoric 103A explores what is called rhetorical tradition from its Western historical origins in Greece and Rome. The rhetorical tradition refers to the multiple and divergent ways that people throughout time have thought about the effects of language, both in theory and practice. Rhetorical study and practice today continues the tradition’s interest in varied, artful acts of invention and intervention that shape our worlds—for better and worse.
Carol D. Soc Distinguished Graduate Student Mentoring Awards, established in 2007, recognize UC Berkeley faculty for their vital role in mentoring graduate students and training future faculty. The awards are funded by the Graduate Division and seek to foster the qualities of excellence in mentorship that are so important to the Berkeley community. The winners are honored annually at an awards ceremony jointly sponsored by the Graduate Assembly and the Graduate Division.
The Fresno State Master of Fine Arts Program in creative writing announced Georgia author Éric Morales-Franceschini (Ph.D. Rhetoric and Critical Theory) won the 2022 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry book contest, which includes a $2,000 award and publication of his debut full-length poetry collection, “Syndrome.”
The Department of Gender & Women’s Studies at UC Berkeley presents:
Force-Feeding and the Suspended Animation of Torture
Wednesday, March 8 | 12:10-2 p.m. | 602 Social Sciences Building
Speaker: Michelle C. Velasquez-Potts, Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz
Rhetoric graduate student, Kuan Hwa, co-edited the new publication, Embodying Peripheries.
Rhetoric graduate student, Kuan Hwa, co-edited the new publication, Embodying Peripheries.
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