Visiting Artist/Writer/Curator/Lecturer

Jenny Xie

Poet & Educator

​Jenny Xie was born in Anhui province, China. She is the author of EYE LEVEL, a finalist for the National Book Award and the recipient of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets and the Holmes National Poetry Prize from Princeton University, and THE RUPTURE TENSE, a finalist for the National Book Award and the CLMP Firecracker Award, and a recipient of the Josephine Miles Award. Her chapbook, NOWHERE TO ARRIVE, received the Drinking Gourd Prize. She has been supported by fellowships and...

Anicka Yi

Conceptual Artist

Informed by scientific research, biology, and perfumers, Anicka Yi has produced a unique body of work over the past decade at the intersection of politics and macrobiotics. Her practice questions the increasingly hazy taxonomic distinctions between what is human, animal, plant and machine, and is the result of an alchemical process of experimentation that explores often incompatible materials. She collaborates with researchers to create media that are often inherently political, and delves into the cultural conditioning of sense and perception in a way she describes as a "...

Slavoj Žižek

Philosopher & Cultural Critic

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic. He is a professor at the European Graduate School, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London, and a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His books include Living in the End Times, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, In Defense of Lost Causes, four volumes of the Essential Žižek, and many more.

Tanya Zimbardo

Contemporary Art Curator

Tanya Zimbardo is a contemporary art curator based in San Francisco. As an assistant curator of media arts at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, she has curated exhibitions of work by contemporary artists Jim Campbell, Runa Islam, Pat O'Neill, and Kerry Tribe, as well as the two-person and group exhibitions Speculative Portraits, Future Histories: Theater Gates and Cauleen Smith, and The Studio Sessions. Ragnar Kjartansson: The Visitors is currently on view at SFMOMA and Bay Area Walls: Jenifer K. Wofford is...

Kathy Zarur

Curator & Educator

​Kathy Zarur is a curator and educator based in San Francisco. She has curated exhibitions for the San Francisco Arts Commission, Center for Asian American Media Film Festival, Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center, Kearny Street Workshop, SOMArts, San Francisco State University Fine Arts Gallery, and Museum of the African Diaspora (all in San Francisco). In 2011, she was assistant curator of the Sharjah Biennial. She co-produced artist Wael Shawky’s live installation Dictums 10:120 for the subsequent Sharjah Biennial in 2013. She has worked...

Rocío Zambrana

Professor of Philosophy at University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras
Rocío Zamabrana teaches and writes about the epistemic and historical-material bases of capitalist modernity and its racial/gender order, specifically from decolonial thought and praxis, particularly in the context of financial capitalism in the Caribbean. She is currently writing a book entitled Metamorphosis of Value: Epistemic Protocols in the Longue Durée, which traces the emergence of figures of speculation (economic/racial) endemic to capitalism through a consideration of the trade-plantation complex in early modern Caribbean. She is also...

Marc Bamuthi Joseph

Spoken Word Artist, Writer, Librettist, and Cultural Strategist

Marc Bamuthi Joseph is a 2017 TED Global Fellow, an inaugural recipient of the Guggenheim Social Practice initiative, and an honoree of the United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship. He is also the winner of the 2011 Herb Alpert Award in Theatre, and an inaugural recipient of the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award. In the Spring of 2022, he was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. An internationally renowned cultural strategist, Bamuthi is the co-creator of the paradigm-shifting allyship training...

Laura Richard

Spring 2010 ARC Fellow and Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Art at UC Santa Cruz

Laura Richard works in modern and contemporary art with a designated emphasis in film. Her recently completed dissertation, “In Situ and On Location: The Early Works of Maria Nordman,” is a political reappraisal of the films, performances and rooms made by the artist between 1967 and 1979. Other current research interests include Judy Chicago’s smoke works, theories of temporality and the everyday, avant-garde women filmmakers, human geographies, performance art, and, in particular, its subset, Endurance Art. Since 2009, she has been the co-coordinator...

Ellen Hargis

Soprano specializing in Early Music

Soprano Ellen Hargis is one of America’s premier early music singers, specializing in repertoire ranging from ballads to opera and oratorio. She has worked with many of the foremost period music conductors of the world, including Andrew Parrott, Gustav Leonhardt, Daniel Harding, Paul Goodwin, John Scott, Monica Huggett, Jane Glover, Nicholas Kraemer, Harry Bickett, Simon Preston, Paul Hillier, Craig Smith, and Jeffery Thomas. She has performed with The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, The Virginia Symphony, Washington Choral Arts Society, Long Beach Opera, CBC Radio Orchestra...

Mark Franko

Professor of Dance at Temple University

Mark Franko received his BA in French literature from the City College of New York and his MA and PhD in French and romance philology from Columbia University. He is currently Laura H. Carnell Professor of Dance at the Boyer College of Music and Dance at Temple University, where he heads the Institute of Dance Scholarship. He was previously Professor of Dance and Director of the interdisciplinary Center for Visual and Performance Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Visiting appointments include: Valeska Gert Visiting Professor of Dance and Performance (...