Executive Director & Senior Fellow

A teacher and scholar of American literature and culture, with particular interest in contemporary and diasporic literatures, Fehrenbacher’s research has appeared in ASAP/Journal and Post45. She received her PhD in English from Harvard University, and her BA in English and Economics from UC Berkeley. Between her undergraduate and graduate work, she taught English on a Fulbright grant in Bulgaria. She was a John and Daria Barry Postdoctoral Fellow in English at UC Berkeley 2019-2021. She has taught courses in Berkeley’s English department fulfilling the university’s American Cultures requirement. She can be reached at dena@binst.org.

Director of Academic Programs & Senior Fellow

An educator and cultural anthropologist, Mikhail’s research interests include: changing religious landscapes in Latin America; the social production of place and of memory; and material and visual cultures of religion. She received her PhD in Anthropology at UC Santa Cruz, and her BA in English and Integrative Biology at UC Berkeley. She can be reached at monica@binst.org.

Professor of Nuclear Engineering at UC Berkeley. Van Bibber is also Executive Associate Dean for the College of Engineering. He received his MS and PhD in Physics from MIT; he has been a postdoctoral fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Assistant Professor of Physics at Stanford, scientist and senior manager at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Vice President and Dean of Research at the Naval Postgraduate School. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a recipient of the Navy Superior Civilian Service Award.

Professor of philosophy at Princeton University, Buchak’s areas of research include decision theory, epistemology and philosophy of religion; she has written on topics including the rationality of faith and when one should stop one’s search for additional evidence. Buchak received her PhD from Princeton University in 2009. At UC Berkeley, she taught undergraduate courses in the philosophy of religion and in game theory, and she has taught graduate seminars on decision theory, the relationship between science and religion, and how social welfare depends on individual preference satisfaction. She is the author of Risk and Rationality (Oxford University Press, 2013), which addresses the question of how we should take risk into account in decision making, and her research following the book has focused on the application of her view to ethics.

Associate Professor of African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, her scholarly work focuses on poetry and African American intellectual history from the 1920s to the present. A former Stegner Fellow, Chiyuma’s poems have appeared in the African American Review, Callaloo, the Notre Dame Review, the PN Review, and other journals. She has received fellowships from the American Philosophical Society, Cave Canem, and the Vermont Studio Center. She is the author of four books of poetry: Blue in Green (2021), At Most (2020), Vigil (2017), and California Winter League (2015). She is currently at work on a book of poems called Hemland, and a scholarly monograph about rural life in the Harlem Renaissance. She received a B.A. in English from Stanford, an MFA in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College, and a PhD in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.

Professor emeritus of English at UC Berkeley, where he taught topics in medieval literary history and literary criticism. Justice has been a fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center and Council of the Humanities Fellow at Princeton University, and has also held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Huntington Library, and the University of California. He is the author of Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381 (University of California Press, 1994), Adam Usk’s Secret (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), and numerous essays; he is currently at work on vol. 3 of The Penn Commentary on Piers Plowman.

Professor of English at UC Davis, where she is also Director of the Graduate Creative Writing Program and a Chancellor’s Fellow. She is the author of seven books of poetry, including This One Tree, Permission, The Accounts, and her most recent collection, Fog and Smoke. She is the editor of New Selected Poems of Robert Lowell. Her essays and reviews have appeared widely. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of Deep Springs College in rural Inyo County, California. She received a B.A. in English from Stanford and a PhD in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard. Katie and her husband live in Berkeley.

Professor of Philosophy and Philosophy Department Chair at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, friar of the Order of Preachers, and a member of the Core Doctoral Faculty at the Graduate Theological Union. Father Ramelow received his doctorate in Munich under the direction of Robert Spaemann. His areas of research and teaching include free will and the history of philosophy and aesthetics. Most recently he has worked on a philosophical approach to miracles, and is currently working on a book on philosophical aesthetics. He is the author of Gott, Freiheit, Weltenwahl. Die Metaphysik der Willensfreiheit zwischen Antonio Perez und G.W. Leibniz (Brill, 1997), Beyond Modernism? George Lindbeck and the Linguistic Turn in Theology (Ars Una, 2005), and Thomas Aquinas: De veritate Q. 21-24; Translation and Commentary (Meiner, 2013). His articles have appeared in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte, Nova et Vetera, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly and Angelicum.

Digital Content Editor

Chad is a scholar of twentieth-century and contemporary American literature with specific interests in war literature, literary journalism, and narrative theory. He received his PhD in English from New York University in 2020 and his BA in English and Linguistics from UC Berkeley. He was a postdoctoral fellow in English at NYU from 2020 to 2022 where he taught courses on critical theory, the American short story, and the philosophy and history of life writing. He can be reached at chad@binst.org.

Semester Staff Assistant

A recent UC Berkeley graduate, Helen received her BA in English in December 2022. She was awarded the Department Citation for the English Department 2022 graduating class. Her undergraduate honors thesis on belonging, attention, and the poetry of John Clare was awarded the Kirk-Underhill prize for Best Undergraduate Paper in British Studies. She has an abiding interest in the theory and practices of attention, recollection, and habit. She currently also works as a Reader in the UC Berkeley English Department. She can be reached at staffassistant@binst.org.