Jeff Patrick Manassero Humanities and Social Science
Sustaining Academic Innovation: The Introduction & Institutionalization of American Cultures at UC Berkeley
The American Cultures requirement was ushered into UC Berkeley’s general curriculum during the late 1980’s, as universities across the nation followed suite. This project will study the development of multicultural requirements in the college curriculum, and specifically explore the origins of American Cultures on the Berkeley campus. In an attempt to portray American Cultures as an evolving curricular commitment, this project will focus on the historical narrative of the institutionalization and shifting of the AC requirement through changes in campus policy, administrative structuring of the program, and student, faculty, campus perceptions. Eighteen years after its enactment, has the AC requirement retained its purpose as a means to transform mainstream/traditional curriculum? Can a revealing of the historical narrative of the institutionalization of AC explain its shift toward irrelevancy?