Faculty

UC Berkeley faculty discuss ‘threshold of war’ between US and Venezuela (The Daily Californian)

November 14, 2025

Amid U.S. military boat strikes in the Caribbean and rising tension between President Donald Trump’s administration and Venezuela, UC Berkeley faculty and TDPS professor Angela Marino and Ramón Grosfoguel hosted an emergency teach-in to discuss the potential threat of war and its implications.

Theater is more than bringing a director’s vision to life—it’s a laboratory for social exchange

October 13, 2025

TDPS Professor Angela Marino discusses how social justice theater practices can break down power structures and foster real dialogue to solve some of our world’s most difficult problems.

“We are all dependent on this incredible living being of Earth. We need to be able to organize and understand how to work together and really deeply listen to each other.”

Learn more about the Democracy + Media Lab and Professor Marino's work!

The Playwright Who Found His Stage (Alta)

September 22, 2025

Philip Kan Gotanda was recently profiled in Alta, reflecting on his path towards retirement and his decades-long partnership with East West Players, the nation’s premier Asian American theater organization. To celebrate their 60th anniversary, EWP is restaging several contemporary classics, including Gotanda’s 1988 play, Yankee Dawg You Die.

#SandraBlandMystery: Aaminah Norris on the transmedia story of police brutality

July 5, 2019

Aaminah Norris is an assistant professor at Sacramento State in the College of Education. She has more than 20 years of experience supporting schools and nonprofit organizations in addressing issues of educational equity for low-income students from historically marginalized communities. She researches, teaches and advocates for the use of digital and social media in formal and informal learning environments to address racial and gender inequities.

Norris, who received her master’s degree and Ph.D. in education from UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education, sat down with Abigail...

Dance lecturer Latanya Tigner: ‘African American dance is ethnic dance’ (Berkeley News)

July 17, 2019

I started really dancing in high school. I went to Kennedy High School in Richmond. Dancing gave me an opportunity to be another person who I wasn’t regularly. I’m very shy, but at the club, at the party — it’s a different thing. It allows me to be my authentic self.

Our principal, Mr. Greenwood, was the best. He would allow us to have DJs, and we would have parties on the quad. Oh, my goodness. Those things were the get down, when I tell you.

One day, I was in the quad dancing, minding my business, when a dancer — he ended up being my first boyfriend — came up on me, and I...