Visiting Artist/Writer/Curator/Lecturer

Christina Rivera: MY OCEANS | Book Talk & Reading

October 29, 2025

Read more about Christina Rivera's work here.

Isabel Allende, in Conversation

November 5, 2025
Read more about Isabel Allende's work on her website, here.

Poetry & the Mythic Imagination: Jennifer Reimer and Aimee Suzara

October 16, 2025
Poetry & the Mythic Imagination:
Jennifer Reimer & Aimee Suzara
Poetry Reading and Conversation Moderated by Erika Higbee Thursday, October 16, 2025 6:00pm Location: Arts Research Center, Hearst Field Annex D23 Free & open to the public Presented by the Arts Research Center with support from the Dean's Office of the Division of Arts & Humanities and co-sponsored by the Dept of English, Asian American Research Center, and the Center for Race & Gender

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Julia Keefe Indigenous Jazz Masterclass

March 5, 2026
Julia Keefe Indigenous Jazz Masterclass Thursday, March 5, 2026 (tba) 4pm – 6pm (tba) Morrison Hall

Masterclass limited to 20 attendees

Indigenous singer & band leader Julia Keefe will be an artist-in-residence during her Cal Performances' Illuminations concert visit with the Julie Keefe Indigenous Big Band from March 4 - 6, 2026, and is offering:

Indigenous Jazz Masterclass for students, in partnership with Myra Melford (Music Department) - application required

Artist Class Visits...

Sam Aros-Mitchell, IPAR Artist-in-Residence

April 20, 2026
Indigenous Performing Arts Residency Program ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE Sam Aros-Mitchell Choregrapher/Performer April 20 – 25, 2026

white space

Co-presented by the Arts Research Center and the Department of Theater, Dance, & Performance Studies, with support from the Dean's Office of the Division of...

D.A. Powell

Poet and Professor at the University of San Francisco
D. A. Powell gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in April 2021, part of the Spring 2021 Flash Reading Series. If you are interested in contacting this artist, please find them on their website.

Born in Albany, Georgia, D. A. Powell earned an MA at Sonoma State University and an MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His first three collections of poetry, Tea, (1998), Lunch (2000), and Cocktails (2004), are considered by some to be a trilogy on the AIDS epidemic. Lunch...

Ted Purves

Artist, Writer, and Founder of the Social Practice Program at CCA
Ted Purves was a Visiting Artist Panel Participant at the Questioning Aesthetics Symposium at the Arts Research Center on March 13, 2015. If you are interested in contacting this artist, please find them on their website.

Ted Purves was an independent artist, editor, and curator. His work has been exhibited and published in many venues and journals throughout California, as well as in New York, Boston, Albany and several cities in Germany. Purves has won funding from the Creative Work Fund in San Francisco and the Headlands Center for the Arts and been an artist-in-...

Michael Pollan

Journalist and Professor of Non-Fiction at Harvard University
Michael Pollan gave a Visiting Writer Lecture at the Arts Research Center on April 24, 2009. If you are interested in contacting this artist, please find them on their website.

For more than thirty years, Michael Pollan has been writing books and articles about the places where the human and natural worlds intersect: on our plates, in our farms and gardens, and in our minds. Pollan is the author of eight books, six of which have been New York Times bestsellers; three of them (including his latest, How to Change Your Mind) were immediate #1 New York Times bestsellers....

Benjamin Piekut

Associate Professor of Music at Cornell University
Benjamin Piekut was a Visiting Scholar Panel Participant at the Amateurism Across the Arts Conference at the Arts Research Center on March 9, 2018. If you are interested in contacting this artist, please find them on their website.

Benjamin Piekut studied music and philosophy at Hampshire College before pursuing his M.A. in composition at Mills College, where he studied with Alvin Curran and Pauline Oliveros. After a stint in the critical studies/experimental practices program at the University of California, San Diego, he completed his Ph.D. in historical musicology at...

Katie Peterson

Poet and Director of the Graduate Creative Writing Program at UC Davis
Katie Peterson gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in April 2022, part of the Spring 2022 Flash Reading Series. If you are interested in contacting this artist, please find them on their website.

Katie Peterson is the author of Fog and Smoke, published by FSG in early 2024. Poems from the collection have appeared in the Atlantic, the New Republic, the New York Review of Books, and the Yale Review, among other publications. Her previous book, Life in a Field (2021) is a collaboration with the...