ARC Fellows

Cody Achin

2023 ARC Fellow - Poetry & the Senses

Cody Achin is half Native American. Half Anglo and half O’odham. Currently residing within his ancestral and childhood home within the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community Reservation in Arizona. Achin recently graduated from Arizona State University in Spring 2023 with a Bachelor’s in English with a focus on Poetry. Achin’s poetry is tied heavily to his cultural background and his native language. By infusing words/phrases within his native language in his poetry, Achin is looking to create an introspective look into how he walks in two worlds. One in traditionalism...

Charles Altieri

2011 ARC Fellow

Charles Altieri has been primarily interested in the varieties of Twentieth Century American poetry, especially in relation to philosophy and to the visual arts. He also recently wrote a book on the affects and that shapes his thinking on most topics. But he is in transition. Altieri has been teaching Shakespeare and Hegel and will teach the epic because he wants a grand stage on which to figure out what he can say about affect in literature. He is also working on book introducing ways of thinking about modern American poetry.

Charles was an ARC Fellow in Spring...

Julian Ankney

2023 ARC Fellow - Poetry & the Senses

Julian Ankney is Niimíipuu ‘Nez Perce’ and lives on both the Nez Perce Reservation in Lapwai, Idaho and Portland, Oregon. Ankney is the Director for Native American Programs, co-director of the Visiting Writers Series, and co-fiction editor for Blood Orange Review at Washington State University Vancouver/Pullman. She teaches Native American and multicultural literature, creative writing, and has co-taught a language revitalization class that focuses on reclamation, revitalization, and the importance of Nez Perce language and culture. Ankney is a...

Iván Arenas

2010 ARC Fellow

Iván Arenas is an Associate Director at the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy where he works to support engaged research that aims to increase society’s understanding of the root causes of racial and ethnic inequality and create research-based policy solutions and collective action. Trained as an anthropologist and architect, his research focuses on how social movements use creative art practices to establish solidarities beyond the state. Dr. Arenas is a practicing artist and has curated three yearlong exhibits at UIC that have mobilized and extended his...

Menat Allah El Attma

2020 ARC Fellow - Poetry & the Senses

Menat Allah El Attma is an Egyptian Muslim woman, educator, writer, and visual artist. Menat graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in English literature and is pursuing her teaching credential. She is a logophile and linguaphile, working to affect a similar love for words/languages in her students through the practice and art of storytelling. She believes art is in the telling of the story as much as the story itself.

Menat was an ARC Fellow in 2023 with the Poetry & the Senses initiative – she was chosen in the Undergraduate Student Fellow category.

Bonnie Begusch

2009 ARC Fellow

Bonnie Begusch (b. 1981 in Oakland, USA) works primarily with time-based media and text. After studying Media Art and Literature at UCLA, she received her MFA in Fine Art from the University of California, Berkeley. Her work has been screened and exhibited at numerous venues including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Berkeley Art Museum; Sterling Music Room, New York; SF Film Society, San Francisco; KARST, Plymouth; RUA RED, Dublin; Exile, Berlin; Institute for Contemporary Art, Zagreb; Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne;...

Sima Belmar

2012 ARC Fellow

Sima Belmar earned her Ph.D. in Performance Studies from TDPS in 2015, and holds an M.F.A. in Dance from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Her scholarly writing has been published in The Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices, Performance Matters, L'avventura, and the Oxford Handbook of Screendance Studies (2016). Sima was a dance critic for the San Francisco Bay Guardian from 1997-2003. Currently, she is the creator and host of the ODC podcast Dance Cast. She has taught dance on film and television, dance history, performance theory,...

Jasper Bernes

2009 ARC Fellow

Jasper Bernes is author of a scholarly book, The Work of Art in the Age of Deindustrialization (Stanford, 2017), and two books of poetry, Starsdown (2007) and We Are Nothing and So Can You (2015). Essays, poems and other writings can be found in Critical Inquiry, Modern Language Quarterly, Radical Philosophy, Endnotes, Lana Turner, The American Reader, and elsewhere. Together with Juliana Spahr and Joshua Clover, he edits Commune Editions. He lives in Berkeley with his family.

Jasper was an ARC...

Evan Bissell

2015 ARC Fellow

Evan Bissell (he/him, white) facilitates participatory art and research projects that support equitable systems and liberatory processes. With groups around the country, he has supported the development of curriculum, public art, laws, books, and convenings that build imagination, power and capacity around the just transition, anti-prison and police efforts, housing justice, and health equity, among others. Most recently Evan created the Arts & Cultural Strategy program at the Othering & Belonging Institute and helped found Richmond LAND, the first community land...

Peter Bittner

2017 ARC Fellow

Peter Bittner is the founder of The Upgrade and is passionate about making a difference through emerging media & technology.

His photography and videography have been published on the front page of The New York Times and in CNN, Bloomberg, NBC, Reuters, Vox, Business Insider, Hearst Digital, Al Jazeera, Popular Mechanics, VICE News, and other major outlets. Peter is a Fulbright Scholar and has covered science, sports, travel, politics, and culture — and has a special knack for projects that get him outdoors and off the grid.

Peter produces content for...