Visiting Artist/Writer/Curator/Lecturer

Michael Rakowitz

Conceptual Artist
Michael Rakowitz gave a Visiting Artist Lecture at the Arts Research Center on October 20, 2020.

Michael Rakowitz is an Iraqi-American artist working at the intersection of problem-solving and troublemaking. His work has appeared in venues worldwide including dOCUMENTA (13), P.S.1, MoMA, MassMOCA, Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Palais de Tokyo, the 16th Biennale of Sydney, the 10th and 14th Istanbul Biennials, Sharjah Biennial 8, Tirana Biennale, National Design Triennial at the Cooper-Hewitt, Transmediale 05, FRONT Triennial in Cleveland, and CURRENT...

Leigh Raiford

Professor of African American Studies at UC Berkeley
Leigh Raiford was a Visiting Lecturer Panel Participant at the Art as Critique Conference at the Arts Research Center on March 1, 2019.

Leigh Raiford is a Professor of African American Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, where she teaches, researches, writes and curates about race, gender, justice and visuality. She is the inaugural director of the Black Studies Collaboratory, a three year project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She also serves as affiliate faculty in the Program in American Studies, and the Department of Gender and...

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.

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-residence at The Djerassi Colony and the Drawing Residency Program. He taught at the...

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.

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 was a finalist for the National Poetry Series, and Cocktails...

Cecilia Palmeiro

Writer, Activist, and Adjunct Professor of Contemporary Latin American Studies and Gender Theory at NYU in Buenos Aires
Cecilia Palmeiro was a Visiting Scholar Panel Participant at the Amateurism Across the Arts Conference at the Arts Research Center on March 9, 2018.

Cecilia Palmeiro is one of the founders of the transformative Latin American feminist movement Ni Una Menos, or “Not One Woman Less,” which organizes to end femicide and gender-based violence. The Ni Una Menos collective has been supported by Global Fund for Women since 2017. She is also a writer, literary critic, performer, feminist activist, and queer feminist theorist.

Palmeiro received her MA and PhD from...

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.

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 Columbia University. His first monograph,...

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.

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 photographer Young Suh. She is the author of other books of poetry: This One Tree...

Brittany Perham

Author and Professor of Creative Writing at Stanford University
Brittany Perham gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in April 2021, part of the Spring 2021 Flash Reading Series.

Brittany Perham's most recent book, Double Portrait (W.W. Norton, 2017), was selected by Claudia Rankine for the Barnard Women Poets Prize and was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. She is also the author of The Curiosities (Free Verse Editions, 2012); and, with Kim Addonizio, the collaborative word/art project The Night Could Go in Either Direction (SHP, 2016). Her...

Lucie Pereira

Writer and Educator
Lucie Pereira gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in April 2022, part of the Spring 2022 Flash Reading Series.

Lucie Pereira is a multiracial writer and educator. She is a programs coordinator at the nonprofit 826 Valencia and was a 2020 Interdisciplinary Writers’ Lab fellow with Kearny Street Workshop. Her work can be found in sPARKLE + bLINK and Sidereal Magazine. She lives in San Francisco with her partner and their animal, Kristofferson the cat.

Dave Pell

Writer and Managing Editor of NextDraft
Dave Pell gave a Visiting Writer Lecture at the Arts Research Center on May 1, 2017.

Dave Pell has been writing online for almost as long as the internet has existed. His popular newsletter NextDraft has over 140,000 subscribers. NextDraft covers the day’s ten most fascinating news stories, delivered with a fast and pithy wit.

Dave has been a syndicated writer on NPR, Gizmodo, Forbes, and Huffington Post. He earned his bachelor’s degree in English from U.C. Berkeley, and his master’s in education from Harvard.

Besides being a prolific writer,...