FPF Instructors

Courses: Mathematics 1A—Calculus (4 units) , Mathematics 16A—Analytic Geometry and Calculus (3 units)
Arun Sharma specializes in Combinatorics and has a Math Ph.D. from UC Berkeley.

Courses: GWS10—Introduction to Gender and Women’s Studies (4 units)
Arunima Paul's preferred pronouns are she/her/hers. She teaches Gender Studies, American Film and Ethnicity, Feminist Avant-garde Cinema, and Literature and Composition. Her teaching locates literary and visual representation at the heart of social understanding of histories of empire, race, gender, ethnicity, and indigeneity. Her doctoral research focused on how economic and cultural Liberalization enabled newer and more ambivalent notions of modernity and provinciality in Bombay cinema. In her classroom, she seeks to enable transformative encounters with texts through close reading and discussion.

Courses: English R1A—Reading and Composition (4 units)
Balthazar I. Beckett (he/them) holds a PhD from the City University of New York, Graduate Center. He specializes in 20th and 21st-century American literature with a focus on urbanity and multiculturalism.

Courses: Integrative Biology 33—The Age of Dinosaurs (3 units)
Bonnie Rauscher (she/her) specializes in vertebrate paleontology, especially dinosaurs and mammals. She got her M.A. at UC Berkeley

Courses: English R1B—Reading and Composition (4 units)
Catherine Hollis (she/her) holds a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley’s English department. She writes about mountains, Virginia Woolf, Emma Goldman, and a dog named Buff—but not all at the same time. She likes to talk about dystopian novels and films with her students in order to find the seeds of a better world through friendship, community, and social justice.

Courses: English R1A—Reading and Composition (4 units)
Cathleen Small (she/her) earned a bachelor's degree in English from Arizona State University and a master's degree in English from California State University Sacramento. In her course of study, Cathleen focused on contemporary American literature. She has worked as a writer, editor, and teacher for nearly two decades. Her current interests include disability rights and the works of marginalized groups.

Courses: Mathematics 1B—Calculus (4 units)
Pronouns: Subjective - he, Objective- him, Possessive - his, and Reflexive - himself. Derrick Smith loves math and hopes you will too after taking one of my classes. He looks forward to meeting you.

Courses: Global Studies 10B—Critical Issues in Global Studies (3 units)
Devin Leigh (he/him) is a teacher and researcher who lives and works in the Bay Area. He holds degrees in History from DePaul University Chicago (BA), Loyola University Chicago (MA), and the University of California, Davis (PhD). He currently teaches History and Global Studies at the University of San Francisco and the University of California at Berkeley. His scholarship focuses on connections between Great Britain, West Africa, and the Caribbean in the eighteenth century.

Courses: Mathematics 32—Precalculus (4 units)
Dr. Felicia Darling (she/her) has a PhD in Math Ed from Stanford University and a Fulbright Scholarship for her ethnographic research in the Yucatán. Felicia believes everyone can be a powerful math learner. Also, she is a mental health advocate. She is author of Empathy Unchained: Heal Your Trauma, Uplift the World, the Empathy Unchained DEIA Conversation Deck, Teachin' It!, and the Professor Funnies. She teaches inclusive Yoga and meditation.

Courses: Music 26AC—Music in American Culture (4 units)
Francesca Rivera (she/her/ella) has been part of UC Berkeley’s community since 1995 and with FPF since 2019. Undergraduate studies at Sarah Lawrence College, graduate studies at UC Berkeley in the Music Department. Francesca is an ethnomusicologist, and her research interests include ethno-racial formations and nationalism, multi-sensory engagements with music, and Caribbean and Latin American traditional and popular musics. She received the STAR Award and was nominated for Chancellor's Outstanding Staff and Faculty Award.

Courses: Anthropology 1—Introduction to Biological Anthropology (4 units)
Gary Richards has a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and specializes in Paleoanthropology, Primate Craniofacial Anatomy, and Human Anatomy

Courses: Molecular and Cell Biology 32—Introduction to Human Physiology (3 units)
James Smiley (he/him) Doctorate; Idiosyncratic Amalgamation in Improving Medical Diagnosis; Association of American Medical Colleges, academic member.

Courses: English R1A—Reading and Composition (4 units), English R1B—Reading and Composition (4 units)
Jennifer Edwell (she/her) earned a BA in English from The Ohio State University, a Masters in Theological Studies from the Methodist Theological School in Ohio, and a PhD in English Rhetoric and Composition from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She studies the historical convergence of religion and medicine, and she is super interested in how we talk about religion in the United States today. She loves teaching writing to science majors.

Courses: College Writing R1A—Accelerated Reading and Composition (6 units)
Jonathan Rowan has a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley. He wrote his dissertation on lifelikeness in fiction, focussing on novels by Marcel Proust, Jane Austen, Vladimir Nabokov, and James Joyce. He has published a solution to a notorious enigma in Ulysses: the identity of the “man in the macintosh.”

Courses: Political Science 2—Introduction to Comparative Politics (4 units)
Jonathon Whooley (he/him) teaches at UC Berkeley and is a full time lecturer at San Francisco State University. He specializes in gender, extremism, terrorism, and cyber and covert political warfare. He has written a book on US foreign policy and is currently coauthoring a book on internet governance. He has two little black kittens named Leo and Coco.

Courses: English R1A—Reading and Composition (4 units)
Julie Morfee (she/her) holds three degrees in Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley. She reads English French and Spanish and her graduate work specialized in 20th century poetry in those languages. A wheelchair user, she also enjoys 19th century gothic literature and works that champion diversity. She gave a live remote presentation for the Summer Speakers’ Series at Louisa May Alcott‘s Orchard House titled “Celebrations of Wildness, Not Wickedness in Louisa May Alcott’s Writing and Life“

Courses: English R1A—Reading and Composition (4 units)
Juliet Kunkel (she/her) has a PhD from UC Berkeley and studies the complicity of institutions like UC Berkeley in the eugenics movement, settlement, imperialism, and the formation of modern policing.

Courses: Environmental Science Policy and Management 50AC—Introduction to Culture and Natural Resource Management (4 units)
Kenneth Worthy is a Ph.D. Lecturer, Chancellor's Public Scholar, Creative Discovery Fellow, and teaches at the University of California, Berkeley and St. Mary’s College of California. His scholarly interests are in environmental philosophy, culture, ethics, history, and psychology. His research and reviews have been published in books, articles, and an encyclopedia. His book Invisible Nature: Healing the Destructive Divide between People and the Environment explores the underlying causes of global environmental crisis. In early 2023 Dr. Worthy spent two months studying challenges and successes for environmental and social sustainability in Bali, Indonesia.

Courses: Geography 4—World Peoples and Cultural Environments (4 units)
Mahmood Monshipouri has a Ph.D. and is a Professor of International Relations at San Francisco State University and a lecturer at FPF and Global Studies/International and Area Studies at UC Berkeley, where he teaches Middle East Politics as well as a course entitled, “Climate Change, Migration, Refugees, and Human Rights.” He is the author, most recently, of In the Shadow of Mistrust: The Geopolitics and Diplomacy of US-Iran Relations, the editor of Why Human Rights Still Matter in Contemporary Global Affairs, and the author of Middle East Politics: Changing Dynamics. His recent essays have appeared in The Middle East Journal, Middle East Policy, Human Rights Quarterly, Seton Hall Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, and The Maghreb Review, and Insight Turkey. He is currently working on a book tentatively entitled Climate Change, Environmental Rights, and Forced Migration in the Middle East. He is the recipient of the 2022 Distinguished Scholar of the Year at San Francisco State University.

Courses: Psychology 1—General Psychology (3 units)
Rachel Schmale (she/her) specializes in Developmental psychology and Language acquisition Education and Training. She has a B.A. in Psychology and Spanish and Portuguese, UC Berkeley M.S. & Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology, Purdue University Professional Work. Dr. Schmale worked as a Professor of Psychology at a small liberal arts university in Chicago, Illinois for 10 years where she taught a variety of psychology courses and conducted research on the mechanisms underlying how infants accommodate variability in foreign accent and dialect. She relocated to California and has been teaching at Cal since 2021. She is passionate about pedagogy and is incredibly proud to return to her alma mater as an educator.

Courses: Philosophy 2—Individual Morality and Social Justice (4 units), Philosophy 3—The Nature of Mind (4 units)
Richie Kim (he/him/his) has taught philosophy at Stanford, UC Berkeley, and the University of San Francisco. In 2020, he received Stanford’s Centennial Teaching Assistant Award in philosophy and UC Berkeley’s Inspirational Instructors Award. He received a PhD in philosophy from Stanford.

Courses: History 30—Science and Society (4 units)
Rodolfo J. Alaniz (he/him) History and Philosophy of Science; BS Genetics (UW-Madison), MA/PhD Science Studies (UC-San Diego). Dr. Alaniz studies the creation and consumption of biological evidence in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Courses: History 7B (AC)—The United States From Civil War to Present (4 units)
Samantha Gervase. (she/her) did her undergrad at UC Berkeley (Go Bears!) and Grad at UCLA. Her research interests include the diversity of the 19th century American South and West. She is also interested the Gilded Age and the rise of the American experience.

Courses: English R1A—Reading and Composition (4 units)
Sharon Coleman (she/they) B.A. Comparative Literature, U.C.B., M.A./M.F.A. Poetics, New College of California. She specializes in contemporary poetry, creative process, French and Yiddish literature, translation, and Surrealism. She is the co-director of the Berkeley Poetry Festival. You can learn more about her writing at sharoncolemanpoetry.com. In September 2022, they received the Maverick Award from the Ruth Weiss Foundation for their poetry.

Courses: XTDPS 52AC
Sima Belmar (she/her) holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from UC Berkeley and an M.F.A. in Dance from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Her research foci include the relationship between dance, talk, and gesture in North American concert dance, Dance in Popular Film and Television, Somatic Theory/Practice/Pedagogy, Performance and Phenomenology, and embodied research methods. Sima is also a dance writer and podcaster.

Courses: Ethnic Studies 21AC—A Comparative Survey of Racial and Ethnic Groups in the United States (4 units)
Dr. Siri Brown holds an M.A. in African American Studies and Ph.D. in U.S. History with an emphasis in Early American, African American and U.S. Women’s history from The Ohio State University. Her research centers on the racialized legal and social resistance to violence against women. She is a two-time Fulbright recipient of a research project on the African cultural heritage of Salvador Bahia, Brazil (2012) where she focused on the role of African spirituality in the history of resistance to slavery in that region, and South Africa (2019) where the focus of the project was on post-apartheid resistance and justice movements.

Courses: English R1B—Reading and Composition (4 units)
Srijani Ghosh (she/her) holds a Ph.D. in English from Michigan State University. Her research primarily focuses on popular women’s fiction. Her work has appeared in The Journal of Popular Culture, Popular Culture Review, Women’s Studies, English Studies, and South Asian Popular Culture. She loves teaching at FPF and looks forward to it every year!

Courses: Political Science 1—Introduction to American Politics (4 units), Political Science 2—Introduction to Comparative Politics (4 units)
Dr. Wendy Muse Sinek (she/her) • Ph.D., Political Science, UC-Berkeley; M.A. International Policy Studies, Middlebury Institute; B.A. Sociology, Mercer University • American Politics, Comparative Politics, Social Movements in Comparative Perspective, Latin American Politics, U.S. Policy in Latin America • She is fascinated by the potential and limitations of collective action, and her academic research in this area has taken her to Ecuador, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Brazil. • FPF students are the best! I look forward to teaching in the program every year.