We are thrilled to welcome 12 outstanding new faculty members to the Division of Arts & Humanities at UC Berkeley for the fall semester, beginning July 1, 2025. These scholars — artists, writers, historians, archaeologists—bring diverse perspectives, innovative research, and deep commitment to teaching that will enrich our departments and communities across campus. We look forward to the many ways their work will contribute to the intellectual and creative life of the division. Please join us in welcoming them to Berkeley.
Farah Bakaari joins the division as an Assistant Professor in the department of English. Bakaari is a scholar of 20th and 21st century African literature. She joins Berkeley English after receiving her Ph.D. from Cornell University. Her teaching and research interests include postcolonial studies, questions of comparison, political theory and the novel as well as the relationship between aesthetics and politics. Bakaari's writing has appeared in Journal for the African Literatures Association, Representations, Diacritics, Global Networks, The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry as well as popular outlets, like Africa is a Country, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Geeska. She serves on the Executive Council of the African Literature Association and is a member of the UC Berkeley Editorial Advisory Board of Critical Times. She has previously served on the editorial board of Diacritics. She is a founding member and an editor-in-chief of the digital little magazine Mid Theory Collective. Bakaari was born and raised in Somaliland.
Shiben Banerji joins the division as an Associate Professor in the Department of the History of Art. He was most recently an Associate Professor of Art History at the School of Art Institute of Chicago. His research interests include the rhetorical and performative dimensions of architecture and the transnational routes of modern urban design. Dr. Banerji is a recipient of the Mellon Junior Fellowship in the Humanities, Urbanism, and Design; and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts Publication Production Grant. His publications include Shadows of Democracy: Possibilities of Rhetoric Beyond Rhetorical Studies (Intermezzo Books, 2025) and Lineages of the Global City: Occult Modernism and the Spiritualization of Democracy (University of Texas Press, 2025). He received his BA from Columbia University, his MCP from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Christopher Batterman Chairez joins the division as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Music. He was most recently a graduate student at the University of Chicago. His research interests include sound studies; affect, intimacy, and embodiment; environmental anthropology; climate change; death and dying, and colonial afterlives. His dissertation was advised by Dr. Philip Bohlman, and sought to trace the material, affective, and cosmological stakes of sound, song, and musical experience of Lake Pátzcuaro in Michoacán, Mexico through focusing on a constellation of Indigenous (P’urhépecha) and non-Indigenous practices of listening and sounding. He received his MA from the University of Chicago, and BA from Emory University. He has additionally worked as a professional musician in Atlanta, Mexico City, and Rio de Janeiro.
Samiha Khalil joins the division as an Assistant Professor in the Rhetoric Department. Dr. Khalil was most recently a President’s Postdoctoral in the Department of English at the University of California, Riverside. Her research interests include racial slavery in the Arab world and Arab subject-formation, using frameworks such as critical race theory, black studies, philosophy, postcolonial studies, and textual analysis applied to historical Arabic texts. She received her PhD from the University of California, Irvine in Culture & Theory; an MSc in Geography, Urban & Environmental Studies from Concordia University, Montreal; and an MSc in Architecture from the University of Roma Tre, Rome. Khalil’s forthcoming book is entitled Palestine, and the Future of Home.
Stella Kim joins the division as an Assistant Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. Kim was most recently a graduate student in Columbia University’s Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, within the field of Korean History. Her main period of focus in the late Chosŏn period, and her interests include mothering and motherhood, family and kinship, conceptions of death and the afterlife, and broader theoretical questions of feminist historiography. Kim received a BA in Political Science from Brown University as well as a dual MA/MSc in International and World History from Columbia and the London School of Economics.
Johan Klingborg joins the division as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Scandinavian. Dr. Klingborg was most recently a research officer at Stockholm University. His research is positioned at the intersection of literary history, media, and history. His dissertation and first book were entitled Verkar film: 1930-talslitteraturen i det svenska filmnätverket. He is also a critic, mainly for the publication Expressen. In 2022, Klingborg gave a lecture at the University of British Columbia entitled, “Swedish Literature in the Film Network 1929–1940”. Dr. Klingborg holds a PhD in Literary Studies from Stockholm University.
Chiayi (Sherry) Lee joins the division as an Assistant Professor in Ancient Greek and Roman Studies. She was most recently a graduate student at Princeton University’s Department of Classics. She received a Procter Honorific Fellowship for the 2023–2024 academic year. Her dissertation, “Naming the Poet: Authorship in Hellenistic Epigram and Scholarship” was advised by Professor Barbara Graziosi, and focuses on disparate models of authorship that emerged in scholarship of the Hellenistic period. Her research largely focuses on models of readership and reception, the representation of female voices, and applications of modern pedagogy for classical studies. She has taught ancient Greek at Fu Jen University in Taiwan. Lee earned her BA and her MA from Yale University.
Cathy Lu joins the division of Arts and Humanities as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art Practice. Lu was most recently a Professor of Ceramics at Tufts University, and has also taught at California College of the Arts, Mills College, Sonoma State University, and San Francisco Art Institute. Her work focuses on the manipulation of Chinese art objects and symbols as a way of deconstructing assumptions about Asian American identity. In February 2025, she lectured at UC Berkeley through the Visiting Artist Lecture Series. Lu has showcased works at exhibitions in Tbilisi, Georgia; New Orleans; Berkeley; Oakland; and San Francisco. In 2023–2024, she was a Harvard Ceramics Artist-in-Residence. Lu received a BA in Chinese Language, Culture and History and a BFA in ceramics from Tufts University, and received a MFA in sculpture and ceramics from San Francisco Art Institute.
Paulina León joins the division of Arts and Humanities as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. She was most recently a Visiting Assistant Professor at New York University, researching and teaching on cultural and literary histories of early modern Spain and colonial Latin America. Her research has been supported by the Franke Institute for the Humanities at the University of Chicago, the Renaissance Society of America, the Newberry Library, the Bibliotheca the Biblioteca Historicomèdica “Vicent Peset Llorca” at the Universitat de València, and the Society for Renaissance and Baroque Hispanic Poetry. She holds a BA in History from Universidad Iberoamericana, Ciudad de México, and a PhD in Romance Languages and Literatures from the University of Chicago.
Mu-Xuan Lin joins the division as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Music. She received her Bachelor of Music in Composition from the New England Conservatory, her MFA and Ph.D. in Music Composition and Theory from Brandeis University, and a Certificate of Advanced Studies Curating (CAS) at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste. Her 2023 article “The Erotic and the Melancholy of a Sincere Postmodern Identity – the cinematic spaces and a vulnerable time” will be published by Cambridge Scholars in the volume "Crossing into Distance: Contemporary Composers on the Present and Future of Art Music". Mu-Xuan Lin is a curator, writer, researcher, and video artist. She is a guest-composer/faculty at the Novalis music+art Festival in Croatia. She is the winner of the Protonwerk No.3 award, and an artist-in-residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, as well as an awardee of New Music USA, Max Kade, Mellon, Center for German and European Studies (DAAD program), FACE Croatia, Gardner Read, ASCAP grants, and multiple NCAF grants.
Alexandra Lossanda joins the division as a Professor in the English Department. She was most recently an Assistant Professor of Ethnic American Literatures in the Department of English Rhetoric and Writing at Berry College. Her research interests include contemporary American fiction, critical theory, ethnic studies, and translation studies. Her work largely focuses on intersectional histories in order to show the local and transnational implications of criminalizing immigration. She works with literary representations of legal and social immigration trends, focusing specifically on immigration detention centers, bilingualism, and ad hoc interpreters. She received her PhD in English from Johns Hopkins University, and her BA in English from the University of California, Irvine.
Juliana Ramirez Herrera joins the division as an Assistant Professor in the History of Art Department. She was most recently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto and the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art. Her research focuses on so-called small-scale societies from pre-Conquest and early colonial Panama, Columbia, and the Caribbean. In 2024, she lectured the UC Berkeley History of Art Public Lecture, with a lecture entitled, “Cannibal Gold in the Wilderness of Greater Darién”. She received her PhD from Harvard University in the history of art and architecture, with a secondary field in archaeology.