Global Engagement Faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences

The College of Arts and Sciences faculty are committed to ...

Below are the research interests of the globally engaged faculty members in our College.

Humanities

Dr. Heather Addison

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Teaching expertise

  • Film history and culture

Research interests

  • The relationship between Hollywood and American culture, with emphasis on representations of the body, international cinema and crafting screenplays

Dr. Julie Apker

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Teaching expertise

  • Organizational communication and health communication

Research interests

  • Physician communication patterns and strategies that affect patient safety
  • Development and negotiation of caregiver roles

Dr. Sandra Borden

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Teaching expertise

  • Communication ethics
  • Media theory

Research interests

  • Journalism ethics with a focus on the application of virtue theory and communitarian theory to the practice of journalism

Dr. Sue Ellen Christian

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Teaching expertise

  • Newspaper reporting and writing

Research interests

  • Newspaper reporting and writing with an emphasis on health and minority issues

Dr. Autumn Edwards

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Teaching expertise

  • Interpersonal communication and communication theory

Research interests

  • Interpersonal communication and communication theory with a focus on the influence of individuals' personally-held theories of communication on aspects of community life, relational health and personal well-being

Dr. Chad Edwards

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Teaching expertise and research interests

  • Communication in the teacher-student relationship, educational philosophies and transformative communication practices

Dr. Richard Gershon

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Teaching expertise

  • Telecommunications and business strategy, communication theory and innovation

Dr. Richard Junger

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Dr. Joseph Kayany

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Teaching expertise

  • Mass communication
  • New communication technologies

Dr. Marilyn Kritzman

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Teaching expertise

  • Argumentation and debate
  • Public speaking
  • Event planning
  • Customer service
  • Volunteer recruitment and retention
  • Mediation

Dr. Steve Lipkin

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Teaching expertise

  • Film theory and mass communication theory

Dr. Jennifer Machiorlatti

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Teaching expertise

  • Media production

Research interests

  • Documentary
  • Aboriginal/first nation and native media
  • Environment and communication
  • Feminist influenced media

Dr. Leah Omilion-Hodges

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Dr. Mark Orbe

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Teaching expertise

  • Interpersonal communication
  • Communication and diversity
  • Intercultural communication

Research interests

  • Co-cultural communication
  • Intergroup relations
  • African American communication
  • Mass media representations of underrepresented group members
  • Negotiation/intersection of multiple cultural identities

Dr. Kathleen Propp

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Teaching expertise

  • Small group decision making
  • Organizational communication
  • Conflict management

Research interests

  • Decision making in team settings; communicative factors impacting the quality of decisions, in particular, the ways in which groups process information and how gender and status differences bias this process
  • Specific forms of communication which enhance the quality of decisions in organizational teams
  • Organizational socialization and understanding perceptions of conflict revealed by metaphor use

Dr. Patric Spence

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Dr. Jocelyn Steinke

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Teaching expertise

  • Science communication
  • Images of women scientists in the mass media

Research interests

  • The influence of media images of women scientists and engineers on adolescent girls' conceptions of gender roles and their occupational aspirations

Dr. Stacey Wieland

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Dr. Kathleen Wong

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Dr. Blain Auer

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Teaching expertise

  • Islamic studies

Research interests

  • Religious, cultural and historical dimensions of Islamicate societies
  • Islam in pre-modern South Asia
  • Representations of Islamic authority exhibited in the Qur'an, Hadith, exegesis, and history writing produced during the Delhi Sultanate.
  • Modern ritual, pilgrimage and relics connected with the burial places of the special dead in Islam

Dr. Stephen Covell

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Teaching expertise

  • Japanese religions

Dr. Jue Guo

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Teaching expertise

  • Chinese religions

Dr. Rudolf J. Siebert

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Teaching expertise

  • Critical theory of religions

Research interests

  • Critical theory of subject, society, culture and history of the Institute for Social Research at the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Universität
  • Critical theory of religion as an integral part of the critical theory of modern society
  • Critical theory of different paradigms of Judiasm and Christianity, as well as Greek to Roman religions, in particular, political-theological tendencies in Greek religion, Roman religion, Judiasm and Christianity

Dr. Kevin Wanner

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Teaching expertise

  • Medieval Christianity

Research interests

  • Medieval Christianity, with particular focus on the pre- and post-conversion religion and culture of Scandinavia

Dr. Brian Wilson

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Teaching expertise

  • American religious history

Research interests

  • Religion in America, with emphasis on religion in the Midwest, religion in the Yankee Diaspora, and 19th century New Religious Movements
  • Theory and method in the academic study of religion

Dr. Jon Adams

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Teaching expertise

  • 20th century American literature
  • Gender and sexuality studies
  • Cultural studies

Research interests

  • Studies in American representation of war, gender and masculinity
  • American culture, specifically the cultural meanings of manhood and heroism as they inform American national identity

Dr. Elizabeth Amidon

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Teaching expertise

  • Children's literature
  • English education

Research interests

  • Children's literature and English education, in particular, international children's literature

Dr. Thomas Bailey

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Teaching expertise

  • 19th century British fiction
  • American autobiography

Research interests

  • Development of the English novel, Romantic and nature poetry
  • American autobiography
  • Contemporary American nature poetry and nature writing

Dr. Beth Bradburn

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Teaching expertise

  • Milton
  • 17th century British literature
  • Cognitive theory
  • Poetry

Research interests

  • Cognitive approaches to English literature studies
  • Representations of consciousness in 17th century narrative

Dr. Ellen Brinkley

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Teaching expertise

  • Composition and reading theory
  • English education

Dr. Jonathan Bush

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Teaching expertise

  • English education
  • Rhetoric and writing studies

Dr. Margaret Dupuis

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Teaching expertise

  • Renaissance drama and poetry
  • Shakespeare
  • Pedagogy
  • Women's studies

Dr. Philip Egan

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Teaching expertise

  • Children's literature
  • English education

Research interests

  • American fiction
  • Pedagogy
  • Advising

Dr. Nancy Eimers

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Teaching expertise

  • Creative writing
  • Contemporary poetry

Dr. Anthony Ellis

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Teaching expertise

  • Renaissance literature

Research interests

  • Anglo-Italian relations in the 16th and 17th century
  • Representations of old age and the aging process in early modern drama

Dr. Eileen Evans

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Teaching expertise

  • American literature

Dr. Brian Gogan

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Teaching expertise

  • Rhetoric and writing studies

Research interests

  • Areas of writing: public, professional, letter, grant
  • Critical theory
  • Baudrillardian rhetoric

Dr. Jaimy Gordon

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Teaching expertise

  • Fiction and poetry writing

Dr. Paul Johnston, Jr.

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Teaching expertise

  • Sociolinguistics
  • Dialectology
  • Historical linguistics

Research interests

  • How language variation interplays with social groupings (class, gender, age, ethnicity) in different periods of the history of English and Germanic as a whole
  • Internationally-recognized authority on Scots and Northern English dialects

Dr. Katherine Joslin

Teaching expertise

  • American literature

Research interests

  • American fiction and non-fiction at the turn into the 20th century with cross-disciplinary interests in material culture and social and political history
  • Teaches courses on women writers as well as surveys of American literature and culture

Dr. Richard Katrovas

Teaching expertise

Creative writing (poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction)

Dr. Thomas Kent

Dr. Cynthia Klekar

Teaching expertise

  • 18th century British literature
  • Cultural studies
  • Cultural anthropology

Research interests

  • Intersections between gift exchange and capitalism
  • Theories of benevolence
  • Systems of obligation in the literature and culture of 18th century England

Dr. Todd Kuchta

Teaching expertise

  • Modern British literature
  • Victorian studies
  • Ethics and literature
  • Narrative theory

Research interests

  • Imperialism, race, class and the relationship between narrative and place since the 19th century
  • Terrorism in modern British, postcolonial and contemporary fiction

Dr. Jil C. Larson

Teaching expertise

  • Modern British literature
  • Victorian studies
  • Ethics and literature
  • Narrative theory

Dr. Casey McKittrick

Teaching expertise

  • Film interpretation
  • African American literature
  • Queer studies

Research interests

  • Developing queer theory of child spectatorship in contemporary film, in the context of ongoing discussions of pedophilia and child endangerment in America

Dr. Lisa Minnick

Teaching expertise

  • Language variation ans change
  • History of the English language
  • Critical linguistics
  • Language attitudes and standardization
  • Linguistic applications to literature
  • Discourse theory and analysis
  • African American language and literature
  • American literature after 1865

Dr. Mustafa Mirzeler

Teaching expertise

  • African oral tradition

Research interests

  • African historical tradition and folktales
  • African historiography
  • Colonial encounters
  • Turkish folklore and literature
  • African travel writing

Dr. Christopher C. Nagle

Teaching expertise

  • 18th and 19th century British and Irish literature
  • Critical theory
  • Gender and women's studies

Thisbe Nissen

Teaching expertise

  • Fiction
  • Non-fiction

Dr. William C. Olsen

Teaching expertise

  • Creative writing
  • Poetics
  • Contemporary poetry

Dr. Staci Perryman-Clark

Teaching expertise

  • English and rhetoric and writing studies
  • African American language and pedagogy

Research interests

  • Culturally-relevant pedagogies
  • Teacher-research
  • Rhetoric and composition
  • First-year writing

Dr. Judith Rypma

Teaching expertise

  • Children's literature
  • Creative writing

Research interests

  • Teaching courses in mythology, folklore, world literature, and literature for children and adolescents
  • Folklore of mineralogy
  • Slavic myths and tales
  • Russian literature and culture
  • Poetry for young people

Dr. John Saillant

Teaching expertise

  • Early American and African American studies
  • American religion

Dr. Eve Salisbury

Teaching expertise

  • Medieval literature and language with emphasis on Middle English and Latin

Dr. Jana Schulman

Teaching expertise

  • Old English and Old Norse languages and literatures
  • Medieval women
  • Epic

Research interests

  • Teaches Old English (introduction and seminar), Old Norse (introduction and seminar), Medieval literature, British literature I, and Western World literature
  • Law and literature in Medieval Iceland and Anglo-Saxon England
  • Women and epic

Dr. Scott Slawinski

Teaching expertise

  • Early American literature
  • African-American literature
  • History of the book
  • Gender studies

Research interests

  • Colonial and early Federal periods
  • Teaching interests range through the 19th and early 20th century

Dr. Gwen Tarbox, associate professor of English
Dr. Charlotte Thralls, professor of English
Dr. Grace Tiffany, professor of English
Dr. Richard Utz, professor of English
Dr. Karen Vocke, associate professor of English
Dr. Daneen Wardrop, professor of English
Dr. Allen Webb, professor of English
Dr. Nicolas Witschi, associate professor of English