Shannon Jackson launches the Public (Re)Assembly series with a lecture on the Arts + Design Initiative as a vehicle for elevating, fortifying, and “reassembling” the resources of Cal’s tremendous creative culture. In thinking about the artistic, social, and technological future of public higher education, Jackson is joined by five Berkeley faculty members who reflect on the concept of assembly in their respective disciplines: Stephen Best (English), Julia Bryan-Wilson (History of Art), Deirdre English (Journalism), Ken Goldberg (Engineering), and Nicholas de Monchaux (Architecture).

Shannon Jackson is associate vice chancellor for the arts and design, Cyrus and Michelle Hadidi Chair in the humanities, and professor in the Departments of Rhetoric, and Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies at UC Berkeley. She has received numerous awards and fellowships, including a 2015 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and the Arts and Humanities Outstanding Service Award. In addition, she serves on the advisory boards of several journals and arts organizations and has been a plenary speaker at a variety of distinguished venues, including, most recently, the Venice Biennale.

Stephen Best is an associate professor of English at UC Berkeley. He is the author of The Fugitive’s Properties: Law and the Poetics of Possession, a study of property, poetics, and legal hermeneutics in nineteenth-century American literary and legal culture. He co-convened a research group at the University of California’s Humanities Research Institute on “Redress in Law, Literature, and Social Thought.” His work has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, the Hellman Foundation, the Humanities Research Institute, and the Ford Foundation.

Julia Bryan-Wilson is director of the UC Berkeley Arts Research Center and a professor in the Department of History of Art at UC Berkeley, where she teaches modern and contemporary art. A scholar and a critic, Bryan-Wilson has written various articles that have appeared in journals, and her article "Invisible Products" received the 2013 Art Journal Award from the College Art Association. She has also held multiple fellowships from the Clark Art Institute, the Henry Moore Institute, and more, as well as won several awards for her teaching.

Deirdre English is a visiting lecturer at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley. She has contributed articles and reviews to Mother Jones, The Nation, and the New York Times Book Review, among other publications, and to public radio and television. She has directed the Felker magazine course for several years, during which time Brink Magazine, which she edits and produces with her students, has twice been named best student magazine in the nation in the Mark of Excellence competition judged by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Ken Goldberg is an artist, inventor, and chair of the Industrial Engineering and Operations Research Department at UC Berkeley, with secondary appointments in electrical engineering and computer science, art practice, and the School of Information. He has published over 250 peer-reviewed technical papers and his inventions have been awarded eight US patents. His artwork has appeared in seventy exhibitions, including the Whitney Biennial, and films he has cowritten have been selected for Sundance and nominated for an Emmy Award.

Nicholas de Monchaux is director of the Berkeley Center for New Media and associate professor of architecture and urban design at UC Berkeley. He is the author of Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo, winner of the Eugene Emme award from the American Astronautical Society and shortlisted for the Art Book Prize. His work has been exhibited at the 2010 Biennial of the Americas, the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, and has received additional design awards and fellowships.

Participating units at UC Berkeley: Arts + Design Initiative; Arts Research Center; Department of English; Berkeley Center for New Media; Arts, Technology and Culture Colloquia; and Graduate School of Journalism.