School of Critical Studies

Claire Phillips is the author of the memoir A Room with a Darker View: Chronicles of My Mother & Schizophrenia and the fantastic novella Black Market Babies. Her writing has appeared in Black Clock, The Brooklyn Rail, Joyland, Largehearted Boy... Continue reading »

Martín Plot (PhD, New School for Social Research, 2004—Alfred Schutz Memorial Award in Philosophy and Sociology) was a full-time faculty in the CalArts' School of Critical Studies from 2003 to 2015. Since then, he has become a Research Fellow in Political Thought in the CalArts' MA... Continue reading »

Niki Rousso-Schindler is a visual anthropologist and happiness researcher who has been writing and teaching a variety of social science and cultural studies courses in the School of Critical Studies at CalArts since 2006.  Courses explore topics such as visual representation in ethnographic... Continue reading »

Chris Santiago is the author of Tula, selected by A. Van Jordan as the winner of the 2016 Lindquist & Vennum Prize, and Small Wars Manual (Milkweed Editions, 2025). The recipient of fellowships from the McKnight Foundation, Kundiman, and the Mellon Foundation/ACLS, he received his PhD from... Continue reading »

Janet Sarbanes is the author of the short story collections Army of One and The Protester Has Been Released, and a book of essays, Letters on the Autonomy Project, which explores autonomy as a political and aesthetic concept and practice. The recipient of a... Continue reading »