Iain Boal is a social historian of science and technics, affiliated with the University of California and Birkbeck College, London. He is one of the founders of the Retort Collective, an association of radical writers, teachers, artists, and activists, which has existed in the Bay Area for the past two decades. Boal coauthored Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War along with T. J. Clark and others. He is coeditor, with James Brook, of Resisting the Virtual Life: The Culture and Politics of Information, and is an expert on the history of the bicycle.

About California Countercultures
Thinking Through the Arts and Design at Berkeley: California Countercultures is a UC Berkeley course cotaught by Natasha Boas, independent curator and critic of contemporary art and theory, and Michael Cohen, associate teaching professor in the African American studies department. The Wednesday public lecture series is organized by Natasha Boas. California Countercultures is sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Big Ideas program and the Arts + Design Initiative, with additional support from Cal Performances and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.