At UC Berkeley, some classes begin not with a requirement, but with a more pressing question.
They start as observations students cannot quite let go of — something that may be noticed in a conversation, in a lecture, in a piece of literature or in the way people move through the world. Over time, these observations sharpen into ideas, and at UC Berkeley, these ideas can become DeCal courses: student-led courses shaped by curiosity, experimentation and a desire to build a classroom around something that feels newly urgent.
That spirit is what makes DeCal culture distinctive. These courses often emerge from intellectual interests that feel both personal and collective, allowing students to share and transform niche fascinations into shared spaces for inquiry.
That kind of curiosity and experimentation is what drew me into UC Berkeley’s DeCal tradition in the first place. One example is my own DeCal that I co-facilitate with Ruhani Chhabra and Jennie Wang. “Main Characters Only: Archetypes, Tropes, and Delusions in Literature and Film” is an English-affiliated DeCal that takes seriously a phrase more often dismissed as internet slang. Across social media and everyday conversation, people increasingly describe their lives through the language of fiction; breakups that become “character arcs,” coffee runs that become “main character moments” and personalities that get flattened into tropes like the villain, the tragic lead or the side character who “deserved better.” What sounds playful on the surface parallels something deeper — a growing habit of understanding identity through narrative, which is an exploration furthered both within literary archival materials and in real-time.
Rather than treating such a language as a mere joke, “Main Characters Only” turns it into a subject of study. The course asks what actually makes someone a protagonist, tracing archetypes and narrative roles across literature, film and online culture. In doing so, it positions a very contemporary mode of self-description within a much longer literary history.
Teaching a DeCal course has genuinely been one of the most fun parts of my experience at UC Berkeley because it has given me the chance to build something of my own and watch other students engage with it in real time. I think it is something incredibly rewarding, especially seeing an idea begin as a casual observation slowly take shape as an academic discipline with its own discussions, structure and energy. What has made the experience so enjoyable is not just meeting and teaching various students, but the opportunity to create a space that feels both personal and collaborative. It has been really exciting to see students respond to the material in ways I did not expect, and to watch the course grow into something larger than the original idea itself. Every semester, I scramble to make edits to the course as it keeps growing with new ideas that students bring up within the context of the material itself. I keep learning and growing within the class itself, and that really has fundamentally changed the DeCal culture at UC Berkeley.
A different version of that same DeCal impulse appears in “Exploring Ecotopia,” wherein the starting point is not social media language, but literary and political imagination.
For Millie Wright, a facilitator for the course, the idea emerged from taking English 177A with professor Amanda Goldstein. What began in the classroom as a way of thinking through ecology and utopian possibility later grew into a student-led course of its own.
“Ecotopia is a movement, and the DeCal is a literary grounding as to how we can imagine a better world,” Wright said. “Ecotopia is about education and community and liberation and really understanding yourself, so the DeCal really opens up creating metafiction opportunity.”
This framing of UC Berkeley’s DeCal culture captures the creative hearts of these courses, as they are not just about studying unusual topics, but often ask what ideas can do once they move beyond the original classroom that inspired them.
In the Ecotopia DeCal, that means pairing literary analysis with lived experimentation. Students are asked not only to engage critically with “Ecotopia,” but to place themselves inside its ideas. In one writing assignment, they must develop a complex insight into the text while grounding their argument in literary analysis and creatively inserting themselves into an ecotopian vision. The course also includes an action project, in which students are expected to create tangible change by building something through which Ecotopia can emerge in real time. This emphasis on action reflects the way some DeCal courses move beyond interpretation and into practice and community-building.
UC Berkeley’s DeCal culture thrives on this very transformation, wherein a fleeting cultural observation becomes a syllabus; a moment in a literature class becomes a new collaborative space. However, this transformation does not happen casually. Behind every DeCal is a formal process that turns an idea into an approved course. Students must submit a completed course proposal form, a syllabus and a letter of support from a faculty member in the department. For first-time facilitators, training through UC Berkeley’s Undergraduate Course Facilitator Training and Resources is also required before submitting a proposal. Additionally, all facilitators must complete UCFTR training, and approved courses must then move on to review by the Academic Senate’s Committee on Courses of Instruction.
At UC Berkeley, DeCal culture is really made possible by the drive students bring to the ideas they cannot let go of. The program exists because there is real demand for spaces that are shaped by student curiosity, initiative and care. It gives students the rare chance to take an idea they genuinely care about and build something that feels fully their own, which, on a campus where many of us are trying to survive deadlines, discussion posts (and maybe a mild identity crisis), is kind of a miracle. A DeCal can turn an interest into a community and sometimes, even a theory into something that actually perpetuates tangible change.