Welcome! This is an archived website of Future Histories Lab, a project of the UC Berkeley Global Urban Humanities Initiative. We hope it will be useful to you.
Future Histories Lab was an interdisciplinary project at UC Berkeley that researched stories of place in order to propose new futures. Future Histories Lab sponsored courses that used art, music, theater, storytelling, environmental design, technology, and installations in public space to illuminate and analyze questions of equity, race, and environment.
On this website you will find
–An archive of the project A Year on Angel Island (2022-2023), focusing on immigration and incarceration
–Community-engaged, place-based, multimedia projects created by students on a variety of topics (2020-2023)
–Descriptions of project-based undergraduate and graduate courses
–Alumni notes
We are preparing an archive of case studies of our courses and projects that will be published on eScholarship. That link will be posted on this website when it is ready. You can read a complete description of our mission further down on this homepage.
In 2022-2023, UC Berkeley’s Arts + Design Initiative and Future Histories Lab will sponsor a series of music and dance performances, exhibitions, public conversations, and courses using Angel Island’s historic immigration station as a jumping-off point for discussion about race in America, global migration, and architectures of incarceration. We’ll use the arts, design, and historical and landscape interpretation to understand current events and envision better futures.
“Within These Walls” Documentary Released
In February, UC Berkeley students performed Lenora Lee’s moving multimedia dance work about the Angel Island Immigration Station, Within These Walls, at Zellerbach Playhouse as part of A Year on Angel Island. You can hear students talk about how they connected this experience to their own lives and to their academic studies in this video. This short documentary traces the evolution of Within These Walls from a site-specific piece performed inside the barracks where immigrants were incarcerated into a performance on the UC Berkeley campus that included movement, music, projections, and language.
Summer 2023 Course
Hidden in Plain Sight: Public History in Public Space
Spring 2023
Angel Island
Courses
Spring 2023
Humanities Studio Courses
Latest News
- New Video: WITHIN THESE WALLS – Conversations with creative collaborators and dancers of the next generationWITHIN THESE WALLSConversations with creative collaborators and dancers of the next generation by Lenora Lee Dance in association with Lenora Lee Productions, Asian Improv aRts, Innocent Eyes and Lenses Films, Asian Improv aRts Midwest, powered by Asian Improv Nation Directed … Read moreNew Video: WITHIN THESE WALLS – Conversations with creative collaborators and dancers of the next generation
- New Video: Undoing Time: Art and Histories of IncarcerationThe recording of the 11/29 talk by Julio Morales has been released! Watch them discuss their current BAMPFA exhibition, Undoing Time: Art and Histories of Incarceration, which considers the cultures and institutions of confinement that have been centuries in the … Read moreNew Video: Undoing Time: Art and Histories of Incarceration
- New Video: Plague at the Golden GateThe recording of the 10/29 talk featuring Li-Shin Yu and James Q. Chan has been released! Watch them discuss their American Experience PBS documentary, Plague at the Golden Gate, about an outbreak of bubonic plague in San Francisco’s Chinatown.
Our Mission
We research stories of place in order to propose new futures. We believe that understanding the history under our feet is necessary to plan for change in our communities. We use art, storytelling, technology, and installations in public space to illuminate and analyze questions of equity, race, and environment.
Faculty, students, and community members work together to conduct collaborative, place-based research and create public-facing websites, performances, memorials, artistic interventions, and design and policy proposals.
Students can earn a Certificate in Urban Humanities by taking our humanities studio courses and electives.
Community organizations can connect with university partners to create projects in the fields of placekeeping, public history, the arts, and urban planning.
We are a project of UC Berkeley, based jointly at the Arts & Humanities Division and the College of Environmental Design, with participation from many other parts of campus.
