As I wrap up my final semester at UC Berkeley, I find myself reminiscing on the fond memories I had here. Though my time here was shorter than most students’ (only three semesters and a summer), I feel that I took advantage of it to the best of my ability and packed it with enriching experiences. What I am particularly grateful for is the fact that I was able to take so many amazing classes. As I prepare to graduate next month, my final parting gift to my fellow students still continuing their Berkeley education is a list of my favorite classes. These are classes I found particularly transformative, and I want to share the wealth in the hopes that they will be just as beneficial to others.
As a general disclaimer, I am a Political Science and Anthropology double major, so most of these classes align either with those fields or my personal interests. And this list is also in no particular order.
1. SCANDIN 123: Viking and Medieval Scandinavia
This class covers the history of the Viking Age and Medieval Scandinavia. I took it to fulfill a history requirement for the Political Science major but also to learn more about a topic that genuinely interests me. Before I transferred to UC Berkeley, I had studied abroad in Denmark through my community college, where I took an archaeology class. This study abroad class taught me so much about the archaeology and history of Denmark and the rest of Scandinavia, and I realized I had a deep interest in that region. So when I was browsing through the list of approved history classes that satisfy Berkeley’s Political Science history requirement, the class on Viking and Medieval Scandinavia immediately caught my eye.
And when I actually took the class, it was everything I hoped it would be. I wanted to take a class that would expand my knowledge on a topic I was extremely interested in, and this class did exactly that. The professor, Kate Heslop, was not only well-informed in the subject matter but also very kind and willing to help whenever her students were confused. It was fun, relatively stress-free, and a great first class to take as someone who just transferred to Berkeley and had never taken an upper division course before.
But perhaps my biggest takeaway from this class was that it helped me see the intersection between all the different fields I am studying. It was exciting to see parallels between this history class and the archaeology class I had taken in Denmark. Many of the locations we discussed in SCANDIN 123 were places I got to visit myself in Denmark. And Professor Heslop also wove archaeological evidence into her lectures, bringing up concepts and facts about Scandinavian archaeology that I already saw in my study abroad class. It was enlightening to see that a history class I was taking for my Political Science major and an archaeology class I took for my Anthropology major were alike in so many ways. Seeing those similarities made me confident that the two majors I chose complemented each other and would make sense together in the long run (e.g., in the career world).
2. POLSCI 123M: Conflict Management
The Political Science major here at Cal includes several subfields, one of which is International Relations (IR). As someone who aspires to work in IR someday, I was more than excited to take IR courses on campus. POLSCI 123M focuses on international conflict management, and it was easily one of the most interesting classes I have taken in my life. I am primarily interested in IR because I am passionate about humanitarian crises and how to address them, and got to learn about precisely that in this class. I learned about the Bosnian War, the Sudanese Civil Wars, and other important conflicts in the international community. Taught by Professor Michaela Mattes, who was a great lecturer, the class not only taught me facts about these events but also showed me what went wrong and what could be done better in the future. I got to learn about United Nations peacekeeping, the International Court of Justice, and other means of international conflict management. This class deepened my passion for international affairs and reinforced my desire to dedicate my life to this line of work. It opened my eyes to the crises and human rights violations around the world and showed me how important it is to work in IR and bring positive change.
3. ANTHRO 111: Evolution of Human Behavior
This is a good class for anyone who is biology-oriented or psychology-oriented. It covers the evolutionary history of the human species, human brain anatomy, animal behavior and its link to human behavior, and more. It is taught by Professor Gustav Steinhardt, who specializes in biological anthropology and primatology. I found him to be one of the best lecturers I have ever taken classes from. He made the content very digestible and was very warm and encouraging whenever someone needed help. I am personally very fascinated by biology, psychology, and human history, so I found the class especially interesting. It dipped into STEM territory without getting too complex, which was what I was looking for. As someone who specializes in the social sciences, I really wanted to expand my horizons and get more exposure to biology and other STEM fields, and this class allowed me to do so in a way that was not overwhelming at all.
4. POLSCI 149E: Politics of Southeast Asia
This class is taught by Darren Zook, another one of my favorite professors on campus. I found him to be very engaging, and he made the lectures incredibly interesting and entertaining. He was very funny and energetic while also being extremely knowledgeable on his subject matter. As someone of Southeast Asian descent, I was excited to learn more about Southeast Asia and gain a deeper understanding of the politics in the region. The class delved into specific countries of Southeast Asia and allowed us to do in-depth case studies of them. Professor Zook wove history into his lectures and helped us understand why the politics of those countries are the way they are. The historical context he provided was always highly fascinating, and along with his personal stories of his experiences in Southeast Asia, it always made me excited to come to class. He would tell the stories of Malaysia’s corrupt prime ministers or Thailand’s comical royal family like a soap opera, and he had a way of captivating his audience whenever he spoke. I genuinely found the class to be so much fun, and I always recommend it for my peers interested in comparative politics or history.
5. ANTHRO 196: Undergraduate Seminar: The Unmaking of Communist Future
Seminars are typically smaller and more interactive than lecture classes. And this class was no different. Rather than lecturing to us for hours, Professor Alexei Yurchak provided opportunities for his students to talk about the course content and lead the discussion. Though Professor Yurchak certainly inserted his own expertise, it often felt like us students were guiding the conversation and could take it in any direction we wanted. The class was about the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union and the legacies left behind, from collective memories of living under socialism to now-defaced statues of Soviet leaders. I was interested in these topics but knew little about them, and I felt like I learned so much about them from Professor Yurchak, who grew up in the Soviet Union himself. He made the content very digestible for those who knew nothing about the Soviet Union and its aftermath. The readings and other media he assigned to us also seemed very carefully curated, and they added a lot of value to the class. But perhaps my favorite part was the anthropological lens through which Professor Yurchak had us analyze the post-Soviet period. We talked about temporality, collective memory in tangible and non-tangible forms, death and the afterlife, and more. I remember being amazed when we discussed cryonics and the desire to use technology to pause life and resume it in a more stable period. I felt like he opened my eyes to a new world and taught me how to think about things more critically and deeply.
My goal in creating this blog post was to provide a comprehensive list of classes I found valuable or life-changing. It is in no way a list of the only great classes on campus. I only hope that it can help someone who may be unsure of what classes to take and may want to hear about certain classes through an insider’s view. I want others to be able to feel the same magic I did and to receive the same phenomenal experiences I did in those classes here at Cal.