Katharine Bixby Hotchkis Professor of English, University of California, Berkeley
Biography
Elisa Tamarkin is the Katharine Bixby Hotchkis Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. Her work explores the history and politics of ideas, with particular attention to relevance, attention, war, and the forms through which we understand contemporary life. Her most recent books are Done in a Day: Telex from the Fall of Saigon and Apropos of Something: A History of Irrelevance and Relevance, both published by the University of Chicago Press. Done in a Day was named one of Lit Hub’s most anticipated books of 2026 and combines history, criticism, and memoir to revisit the fall of Saigon and the decline of the American newspaper correspondent.