Fall 2025 - Spring 2026 Humanities Institute Visiting Artists
Current Award Recipients
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is a poet, essayist, and translator. She is author of three books of poetry: Something
About Living (UAkron, 2024), winner of the 2024 National Book Award and winner of
the 2022 Akron Prize for Poetry, Kaan & Her Sisters (Trio House Press), finalist for
the 2024 Firecracker Award and honorable mention for the 2024 Arab American Book Award,
Water & Salt (Red Hen), winner of the 2018 Washington State Book Award and honorable
mention for the 2018 Arab American Award. She is also the author of two chapbooks,
Arab in Newsland, winner of the 2016 Two Sylvias Prize, and Letters from the Interior
(Diode, 2019), finalist for the 2020 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize.eaches classes in
“British Cinema,” “The New Hollywood,” “Irish Modernism,” “Empire and Global English,”
and “Energy Humanities.
Gad Yola is a drag artist/migrant living in Madrid, who articulates her creation from a queer anti-racist perspective. Her debut was with the collective Dont Hit La Negra (2019-2020). She is part of La Casa Drag Latina, a collective of migrant drags that, since 2019, claim their place in the artistic
scenes of the Spanish context. She has been an instructor of the Drag queen / Drag king workshop together with the Ayllu Collective in Matadero (2019); she was part of the
public program Pensar con las entrañas, held at the Matadero Madrid Art Residency Center (2019). She has been a speaker
at digital festivals coordinated from Lima, such as Cabritas resistiendo and Pussy pussy orgullo. In Madrid, she has also participated in the Usergender microfestival, GALAXXIA project (2020).
Artists Dean Arlen and Adele Todd —both based in Trinidad and Tobago—for a two-week residency from September 29 - October
10, 2025. Their residency, titled "The Room," invited students, faculty, and community members
to participate in a series of interactive workshops that explored how collaborative
art practices and social justice aesthetics can reshape communal space, specifically
article Stony Brook's Staller Steps. Participants engaged with the artists through drawing, modeling, and dialogue, culminating
in a artists' presentation and publication showcasing the ideas and designs generated during the residency. Learn more from
SBU News coverage for The Room.
Submit a proposal for the 2026-27 Visiting Artists Series.
Study with our Visiting Artists this spring '26.
This residency is supported by the AHLSS Committee as part of its commitment to amplifying socially engaged art and fostering inclusive spaces across campus.