UC Berkeley professor Keith Feldman’s thoughts on race and space, the post-racial imaginary, and the accessibility of race theory

Keith Feldman, Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley (Photo Credit: Keith Feldman)

Keith Feldman‘s fifth-floor Barrows Hall office is slotted away among countless professorial offices, distinguished only by the stoic “Keith P. Feldman” emblazoned on his door. But a look inside the UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies professor’s office reveals a workspace that seemingly embodies the Japanese design principle of wabi-sabi. The personal space he has carved out amongst the Barrows milieu is orderly, simple, impermanent, and framed by a picture-perfect view of Berkeley’s famous Campanile. It is clear that this man knows how to pick his space.

It became clear over the course of our 30-minute talk that Feldman knows how to analyze space, too. His passion within the vast field of Ethnic Studies is linked to constructions of culture and space – that is, how world-scale culture influences our perception of current geopolitical arrangements.