ARC Fellows

Gracia Mwamba

2020 ARC Fellow – Poetry & the Senses

Gracia Mwamba is a visual artist, composer and writer from DRCongo, by way of South Africa. Currently in her final year of a BA in Art Practice, Gracia works interdisciplinarily to communicate through her work. Upon graduation, she hopes to pursue credentials to become a licensed Art Therapist and strong advocate for art as an accessible means of healing and social change.

Gracia was an ARC Fellow in Spring & Fall 2020 with the Poetry & the Senses initiative – they were chosen in the Undergraduate Fellow category.

Ramona Naddaff

2021 ARC Fellow – Poetry & the Senses

Ramona Naddaff is the author of a collection of prose-poems, Paris/Paris (Tête d’Affiche, 1991) and of a permanent installation of a poem-collage, “Ancient Greece and Democracy” in the Lisbon metro station. She has written a scholarly monograph, Exiling the Poets: The Production of Censorship in Plato’s Republic (University of Chicago, 2002) as well as essays on ancient Greek philosophy and literature, and on literary censorship. She is currently completing a manuscript on the writing practices of the novelist Gustave Flaubert, Never Alone: The Making...

Jesse Nathan

2021/22 ARC Fellow – Poetry & the Senses

Jesse Nathan’s poems appear in the Paris Review, Kenyon Review, The Nation, FENCE, The Yale Review, Harvard Review, and American Poetry Review. His translations of Alfonsina Storni and Brenda Solís-Fong in Mantis and Poetry International. Nathan was born in Berkeley, where he lived until he was ten; he spent the second half of his childhood on a wheat farm in rural Kansas. Nathan moved to San Francisco after college, in part to take a position at McSweeney’s. His work has been supported by the...

Jesús Nazario

2023/24 ARC Fellow - Indigenous Poetics Lab

Jesús Nazario/ Nahua, Alto Balsas (he/they) is a Nahua scholar from Northwest Houston, Texas with ancestral roots in a Nahua town in Guerrero, Mexico. Jesús received a Master’s of Arts in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin, and most recently a Master’s of Arts in Ethnic Studies from UC Berkeley. Currently, Jehj is a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellow, Office of Graduate Diversity Community and Diversity Fellow, and Graduate Student Fellow for the Berkeley Food Institute. As someone who learned their Indigenous language, Nahuatl,...

Vincente Perez

2021/22 ARC Fellow – Poetry & the Senses

Vincente Perez (He/They) is a Black Mexican-American performance poet, scholar, and writer working at the intersections of Poetry, Hip-Hop, and Digital Black cultural praxis with an interest in the way that artists use narrative to resist dominant stories that attempt to erase, subjugate, or enact violence on marginalized communities. Their work centers Black and Latinx lived experience with a stylistic approach that samples and (re)mixes Hip-Hop and Performance Poetry into counternarratives. He is a PhD Candidate in the Performance Studies program (Department of Theater,...

Beth Piatote

ARC Director, 2020 ARC Fellow – Poetry and the Senses
Beth Piatote Director, Arts Research Center


Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and English

Beth Piatote is a creative writer, playwright, and scholar. She is the author of two books, including the mixed-genre collection, The Beadworkers: Stories (Counterpoint 2019), which was long-listed for the Aspen Words Literary Prize and the PEN/Bingham Prize, and short-listed for the California Independent Booksellers Association “Golden Poppy” Prize for Fiction. The Beadworkers was named the winner of the 2020 Electa Quinney Award for Published Stories. Her...

Noʻu Revilla

2023 ARC Fellow - Poetry & the Senses

Noʻu Revilla (she / her / ʻo ia) is an ʻŌiwi poet and educator. Her debut book Ask the Brindled (Milkweed Editions 2022) won the 2021 National Poetry Series. She is a lifetime student of Haunani-Kay Trask and prioritizes collaboration, movement, and gratitude in her practice.

Noʻu was an ARC Fellow in Spring 2023 with the Poetry & the Senses initiative, in collaboration with University of Hawaiʻi – she was chosen in the Graduate Fellow category.

Everardo (Ever) Reyes

2023/24 ARC Fellow - Indigenous Poetics Lab

Everardo (Ever) Reyes (he / him & Rarámuri descent and Chicanx) is a Ph.D. candidate in Ethnomusicology. He is a multi-instrumental musician and songwriter who enjoys the possibilities that improvisation provides. His research focuses on the intersections between music, social movements, and Indigenous self-determination. Ever is also a co-creator of the Indigenous Sound Studies working group, which is supported by the Center of Race and Gender and the University of California Berkeley.

Jared Robinson

2020 ARC Fellow – Poetry & the Senses

Jared Robinson is from Indianapolis, IN. He is a poet and scholar in the UC Berkeley English department. In his scholarship, he interrogates the relationship between the transatlantic slave trade and Enlightenment philosophy through careful attention to early African-American literature and its reception. In his poetry, he attempts an understanding of everything else. He does not care for this California weather. He is glad to greet you.

Jared was an ARC Fellow in Fall & Spring 2020 with the Poetry & the Senses initiative – he was chosen in the Graduate...

Måsi Santos

2023/24 ARC Fellow - Indigenous Poetics Lab

Måsi Santos (she/her) is an Indigenous Pacific Islander (Chamoru) from the Mariana Islands in Micronesia, specifically Luta and Guåhan. She received a bachelor’s degree in English Literature and a master’s degree in English (Linguistics emphasis) from the Unibetsedåt Guåhan, and is a PhD student in the Berkeley Linguistics Department. As a speaker of her Indigenous language (Chamoru), she is a staunch advocate for reclamation and revitalization of Indigenous languages in her homelands and worldwide.