For additional information about CCA's 2011-12 faculty hiring, read the latest Academic Newsletter by Provost Mark Breitenberg.

New Full-Time Faculty

Joining the Printmaking faculty is Michelle Murillo, an educator and artist whose prints and installations explore memory and place in relation to personal history and identity. She comes to CCA from the University of Texas at Arlington, where she taught printmaking and drawing. She received an MFA in Printmaking from the University of Alberta in Edmonton and a BFA in Painting from Boston University.

Anne Shea joins the Writing and Literature faculty as assistant professor. She has extensive expertise in composition, rhetoric, critical theory, and American literature and visual art of the 20th and 21st centuries. Her most recent post was at the University of the Redlands, where she taught English and was the director of Composition and Writing. She holds an MA and PhD from the University of California, San Diego, and a BA from Syracuse University.

New Chair of Animation

Since 1984 Richard Vertolli has been producer and supervisor of Computer Graphics, Digital Media, and Animation at California State University (CSU), Chico. Concurrently he served as an instructor in the university’s Applied Computer Graphics program, where he developed the curriculum and taught upper division and graduate courses in animation. He holds an MS in Computer Graphics from CSU Chico and a BFA from Kent State University.

Visiting Artists & Scholars

Animation Program

Tom Gibbons brings a wealth of experience to the Animation Program. Since 1996 he has worked at Tippett Studio, where his credits include Blade II, Enchanted, Charlotte’s Web, Cloverfield, and, most recently, the hugely successful Twilight series. He has also held positions at ESC Entertainment, Skellington Productions, and Danger Productions.

Architecture Program

Judith Mussel will continue in her second year as a visiting faculty member in Architecture. Founder and principal of XP& Architecture, she is a licensed architect and designer with more than 18 years of professional experience designing at prestigious firms, including Gehry Partners, NBBJ Sports & Entertainment, and Coop Himmelblau.

New to the Architecture Program is visiting architect Joshua G. Stein, principal of the firm Radical Craft. He was the winner of the 2010–11 Rome Prize in Architecture for his proposal Cast Gallery: Inhabiting Ornament, an investigation of ancient and contemporary techniques of documentation, reproduction, and enlargement. Currently an associate professor in the Interior Architecture Department at Woodbury University, he received his MArch from University of California, Los Angeles.

Also teaching in the Architecture Program is visiting architect Cathrine Veikos, who comes to CCA from University of Pennsylvania School of Design, where she has taught in the Architecture program since 1999. She has also held teaching positions at Illinois Institute of Technology, Tulane University, and Harvard University. She holds an MArch from Harvard University Graduate School of Design and an undergraduate degree in Architecture from Barnard College.

Graphic Design Program

Visiting designer Pablo Medina comes to CCA from Parsons The New School for Design. For the past 10 years he has run a multidisciplinary graphic design studio, called Cubanica, in New York. His typeface designs have been included in the Design Triennial exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt Museum, and he recently directed and produced an award-winning documentary film, called El Play. He will teach in the Graphic Design Program in the spring 2012 semester.

Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice

Visiting scholar Kristina Lee Podesva is an artist, writer, curator, and the editor of Fillip, a Vancouver-based publication devoted to contemporary art and cultural production. This fall she will be a teaching in the Curatorial Practice and Fine Arts graduate programs.

Graduate Program in Fine Arts

The Graduate Program in Fine Arts welcomes Chiharu Shiota, who is here as part of a Sister City initiative with San Francisco. Originally from Osaka, she now lives in Berlin, where she creates monumental installations conveying themes of childhood, remembrance, and anxiety. Her work has been exhibited extensively throughout Europe and Japan. Currently on view as part of the Venice Biennale is Memory of Books, a site-specific installation created with countless strands of black wool.

MFA Program in Writing

Ishmael Reed is an internationally renowned novelist, poet, playwright, and essayist, with more than 25 published books and six plays to his credit. Two of Reed's books have been nominated for National Book Awards, and his book Conjure: Selected Poems, 1963–1970 was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He was a lecturer at UC Berkeley for 26 years and has also taught at Harvard, Dartmouth, and Yale. He joins the MFA Program in Writing in the spring 2012 semester.

California Poet Laureate Al Young continues as visiting artist in the MFA Program in Writing. Young's many books include novels, collections of poetry, essays, memoirs, and anthologies. Among his many honors are a Wallace Stegner fellowship, Guggenheim fellowship, Fulbright National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the PEN-Library of Congress Award for Short Fiction, the PEN-USA Award for Non-Fiction, two American Book Awards, two Pushcart Prizes, and he has twice made the New York Times list of 100 Notable Books of the year.

Visual Studies Program

Hossein Khosrowjah joins the Visual Studies Program this year as a visiting scholar. He recently completed his PhD in Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester. His dissertation, titled Unthinking the National Imaginary: The Singular Cinema of Abbas Kiarostami, is an examination of the role of Iranian national cinema in the constitution of national identity. He has taught at the University of Rochester, SUNY Brockport, and St. John Fisher College. He holds an MA in Cinema Studies from San Francisco State University.