News & Events

3 December 2025

Eric Naiman is a Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. He is the author of the books Sex in Public (Princeton University Press, 1997) and Nabokov, Perversely (Cornell University Press, 2010). His teaching mainly focuses on 19th and 20th-century Russian literature, as well as early Soviet culture. Dr. Naiman received his JD from Yale Law School, and his PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of California, Berkeley. 

We are proud to share that Aileen Zerrudo, a distinguished alumna of UC Berkeley’s Comparative Literature program, has been named the campus’s next Associate Vice Chancellor for Communications & Public Affairs and Chief Communications Officer.

Frank Cahill, a doctoral student in comparative literature at UC Berkeley, is the national word list coordinator for the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

Marcus Gabbert/For the S.F. Chronicle

Roni Masel is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature, and holds the Norma and Sam Dabby Professor of Jewish Studies. Professor Masel’s main research interests include Hebrew literature, Yiddish literature, Jewish history, queer theory, and postcolonial theory. Masel is currently completing a book for which the working title is, Bad Readers: Misreading, Mistranslation, and Other Textual Malpractices in Hebrew and Yiddish.Dr. Masel received a PhD from New York University, and a B.A. from Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 

Comparative literature student Frank Cahill competed in the Scripps National Spelling Bee as an eighth grader. This year, on May 28 and 29, he’ll be on the other side of the stage.

Angel's passion for Comparative Literature continues to drive her exploration of literature, history, and philosophy across cultures. For the second year in a row, Angel has been awarded the prestigious Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship. This summer, she will travel to Almaty, Kazakhstan, where she will continue her studies of Russian.

Congratulations to Angel on receiving her second FLAS Fellowship!

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Roxana (Qinhong) Wang, a recent graduate of the UC Berkeley class of 2024, has been awarded a 2025-26 Schwarzman Scholarship. Wang, who studied Comparative Literature and Ancient Greek and Roman Studies in the College of Letters & Science, was selected as one of 150 scholars from a pool of nearly 5,000 candidates. She is Berkeley’s sixteenth recipient of the award since its inception in 2013.