San Francisco Bay Area

The San Francisco Bay Area, home to a large and diverse Asian-American and Asian Pacific community, provides many amenities of special interest to students in the department. Chinese and Japanese films are frequently shown off campus, and the campus Pacific Film Archive maintains one of the largest collections of Japanese and other Asian films in the world. There is regular programming in Chinese, Japanese and Korean on local television channels. There are many Chinese, Japanese, and Korean bookstores and innumerable Asian restaurants and markets. There are also excellent permanent collections of Asian art, as well as frequent special exhibitions at the Berkeley Art Museum on campus, the Asian Art Museum and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, and the Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University.

Affordable housing within easy commuting distance of the campus is in short supply. We advise that students begin their search for housing early, and that they take full advantage of assistance offered by the Housing Office.