What Explains Our Cultish Fascination with Cults?

Dozens of movies and documentaries about cults are currently streaming on services like Netflix and Hulu, while the number of podcasts and short videos devoted to the subject may number in the hundreds. What explains this explosion of interest?

Join California magazine’s Editor-in-Chief Pat Joseph in conversation with Poulomi Saha, who teaches the highly popular course “Cults in Popular Culture” and is currently working on a book titled Enthralled, about America’s long obsession with “communities and philosophies that offer total belief and total enthrallment—even and especially as we might claim that we would never ourselves join.”

The California Live! series presents some of Berkeley’s most distinguished faculty and alumni discussing today’s most pressing issues. In partnership with BAMPFA, the Cal Alumni Association and its award-winning California magazine invite you to join us for our next episode. Tickets to this event include free access to the galleries at BAMPFA and a wine reception.

Enjoy free access to the galleries at BAMPFA. Check-in begins at 5:45 p.m.

A wine reception with Professor Poulomi Saha will follow the program.

Dr. Poulomi Saha is Associate Professor of English and co-Director of the Program in Critical Theory at UC Berkeley. A scholar of Asian American literature, postcolonial studies, and queer and feminist theory, they are the author of An Empire of Touch, Women's Political Labor and the Fabrication of East Bengal, winner of the Harry Levin Prize for Outstanding First Book in the Field, American Comparative Literature Association.

If you require an accommodation for effective communication or information about campus mobility access features in order to fully participate in this event, please contact Katrina Rodriguez at [email protected] or 510.900.8225 with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7–10 days in advance of the event.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, 2155 Center Street, Berkeley, United States