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Affiliated Faculty

Department of American Studies

  • Michael Innis-Jiménez

    Ph.D. University of Iowa

    Latinos/Latinas in the U.S.; U.S. social, cultural, and labor history, the American West; race and ethnicity in the Americas
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Department of Anthropology

  • Elliot Blair

    Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley

    Population aggregation and identity in the 16th– and 17th -century Spanish missions of the American Southeast
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  • Katherine L. Chiou

    Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley

    Archaeologist and paleoethnobotanist/archaeobotanist, studies ancient foodways in the Andean region of South America
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  • Lisa Pawloski

    Ph.D. Indiana University, Bloomington

    The biocultural factors influencing nutritional status, particularly obesity and the nutrition transition. Research includes work in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Mexico, Chile, and Cuba, and on Latina immigrants in the US
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  • Flavio Silva

    Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley

    Anthropological Archaeologist specializing in American Prehistory, communities of practice, indigenous technologies, and knowledge. Research includes Mesoamerica (Maya region), Southwest US (California), and applied archaeology. Registered Practicing Archaeologist.

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  • Alexandre Tokovinine

    Ph.D. Harvard University

    Maya archaeology and epigraphy (Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras), ancient political history and indigenous concepts of place, memory, and identity

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  • Rachel Cajigas

    Ph.D. University of Arizona

    Archaeologist and geoarchaeologist, studying the Late Archaic Period (Early Agricultural Period) in the Sonoran Desert of Northwest Mexico and ancient Indigenous agricultural techniques in arid lands, and the Late Archaic period in the Atlantic coastal Southeast US.

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Department of Biological Sciences

  • Juan Lopez-Bautista

    Ph.D. Louisiana State University

    Biodiversity, molecular systematics, and the evolution of marine benthic algae and the subaerial microchlorophytes from tropical rainforests
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Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry

  • Kevin Shaughnessy

    Ph.D. Stanford University

    Application of transition metal catalysts in organic synthesis and development of methods for water remediation applicable in developing countries
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Department of English

  • Nikhil Bilwakesh

    Ph.D. The City University New York

    Cuban translations of Walt Whitman; South Asian diasporic literature in the West Indies; nutmeg (cultivation, mythology, intoxication, etc.); early Spanish depictions of the Americas as “Moorish”
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  • Fred Whiting

    Ph.D. University of Chicago

    Twentieth century American literature and culture and critical theory
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  • Cassander Smith

    Ph.D. Purdue University

    Literary scholar focused on representations of people of color in the Atlantic world; 16th-18th century; emphasis on modes of representation of people of color in early Caribbean and Americas

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Department of Gender and Race Studies

  • Briana Royster

    Ph.D. New York University

    Historian researching gender, empire, identity formation, Black internationalism, and religion in the U.S. and the Caribbean, late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

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Department of Geography

  • Fred Andrus

    Ph.D. University of Georgia

    Climate/environmental change related to human prehistory, using the geochemistry of the shells of organisms excavated from archaeological sites or fossil deposits, with projects in Peru, Panama, Belize, and Cuba
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  • Kevin Curtain

    Ph.D. University of California, Santa Barbara

    The intersection of violence, economics, and political movements (Guns, Drugs, and Development in Colombia), and the spatial influence of interdiction on drug trafficking networks (funded by NSF)
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  • Matthew C. LaFevor

    Ph.D. University of Texas at Austin

    Geographer who studies agriculture and conservation, water resources, mountains, Mexico, and the Caribbean
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  • Michael Steinberg

    Ph.D. Louisiana State University

    The ecology and geography of endangered species in Central America and the U.S. SoutheastView faculty profile

Department of Geological Sciences

  • Marcello Minzoni

    Ph.D. University of Kansas

    Geologic and oceanographic factors that control Pleistocene and Holocene coral reef development and carbonate sediment accumulation in Cuba. An expert in the carbonate reservoir system of offshore Brazil, one of the largest oil and gas accumulations in the world
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Department of History

  • Steven Bunker

    Ph.D. Texas Christian University

    Mexican History, especially in the areas of modernity, material culture, consumption, as well as cultural economic and business history
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  • Heather Kopelson

    Ph.D. University of Iowa

    Gender and race in the Atlantic World
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  • Juan Ponce-Vázquez

    Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania

    Latin American History, Spanish Caribbean History, Race and Slavery in Spanish American, and Atlantic History
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  • Jenny Shaw

    Ph.D. New York University

    The Atlantic World, the early modern English Caribbean, race and slavery in the Americas, and approaches to the archive
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Department of Modern Languages and Classics

  • Isabelle Drewelow

    Ph.D. University of Wisconsin

    Second language acquisition, foreign language learners’ stereotypes and beliefs, foreign language teachers’ attitudes and beliefs, the teaching of culture in the foreign language classroom, and the integration of technology in language learning/teaching
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  • Micah McKay

    Ph.D. University of Wisconsin, Madison

    Environmental discourse in contemporary Latin American literature and film, especially themes related to trash, waste, and waste management
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  • Sarah Moody

    Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley

    Modernismo, women’s writing, and gendered aesthetics in Latin America’s nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
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  • Erin O’Rourke

    Ph.D. University of Illinois

    Intonation, sociolinguistics, phonetics and phonology, and languages in contact
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  • Ignacio Rodeño

    Ph.D. University of Massachusetts, Amherst & Universidad de Deusto

    U.S. Latino, Caribbean, and Mexican literature and cultures, Hispanic autobiography and narratives of the self, literary theory, and transatlantic studies.
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  • David Tézil

    Ph.D. Indiana University

    Language contact and the influence of superstrate and substrate languages on creole languages of the Caribbean islands of Haiti, St Lucia, Martinique, Guadeloupe, etc.

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Department of Political Science

  • Richard Fording

    Ph.D. Florida State University

    Public policy; state politics; race, ethnicity, and politics
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  • Christopher Hale

    Ph.D. Arizona State University

    Religion and politics, indigenous political movements, and political activism, with a specific regional focus on Mexico
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School of Education

  • John Petrovic

    Ph.D. University of Colorado, Boulder

    Critical pedagogy, decentering whiteness in education, language policy, language policy in education, language diversity promotion, bilingual education for language minority students (focus on US Latinos), comparative citizenship education (focus on Cuba)
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School of Music

  • Andrew Raffo Dewar

    Ph.D. Wesleyan University

    Composer, musician, and ethnomusicologist, practice and study of experimental music, jazz, and music technologies in a global context, with a particular focus on these practices in Argentina and the US
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  • Mary Lindsey Bailey

    D.M.A. University of Cincinnati College (Conservatory of Music)

    Oboe performance, oboe literature, performance practices, and reed-making disciplines in Brazil, Cuba, and the Caribbean
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  • Osiris J. Molina

    D.M.A. Michigan State University

    Musician who specializes in woodwind chamber music, especially that of the trio d’anches, the chamber sub-genre consisting of works for oboe, clarinet, and bassoon
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  • Susan E. Williams

    D.M.A. Cleveland Institute of Music

    Classical voice, opera, and voice pedagogy; virtual anatomy and other technology usage in the voice studio; yoga; Cuban art song.
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School of Social Work

  • Ellen Csikai

    Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh

    Palliative/end-of-life care education, research/scholarship and advocacy; cultural similarities/ differences in health care approaches; communication/treatment decisions among older oncology patients/family members in the U.S. and Cuba; Mexico study abroad course
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  • Luciana Giorgio

    Ph.D. Columbia School of Social Work

    Social work researcher examining how social and cultural contexts affect cardiovascular health risk factors through psychological, behavioral, and physiologic pathways among US-born and immigrant Latinx families
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University Museums and Museum Studies

  • John C. Abbott

    Ph.D. University of North Texas

    Research throughout Latin America on many different insect groups, but especially on the systematics and biogeography of Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies)
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  • William F. Bomar

    Ph.D. The University of Alabama

    Museum studies curricula in higher education and the professional personnel needs of the museum, public history, and public archaeology fields
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