Past Faculty Fellows

I am an historian of maritime environments, food, and island geographies in the late medieval and early modern Atlantic world. My main research has been on the sixteenth-century fisheries at Newfoundland, but I am more broadly interested in the earliest years of European expansion into the Atlantic basin during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. I received my PhD from the History Department of the University of Pittsburgh in 2018. In addition, I hold an M.A. in history from McGill University, and a B.A. in Classical Studies and History from Brandeis University.  

Kristin Grogan is an Assistant Professor in English at Rutgers University. Her research and teaching focus on modern and contemporary poetry and poetics, labor history and theory, and gender and sexuality. She is finishing her first book, an account of the dynamic relationship between poetry and labor of various kinds—artisanal, mechanical, clerical, and reproductive work—with chapters on Langston Hughes, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, and Lorine Niedecker. She is beginning a new project on feminist and queer poetics and anarchism in the USA, from Emma Goldman to now. Her writing has appeared in American Literature, Critical Quarterly, Social Text Online, and Post45; most recently, she edited, with David B. Hobbs, a special issue of Post45 Contemporaries on Bernadette Mayer. 

David Kurnick is an Associate Professor of English and the Director of Graduate Studies at Rutgers University. His research and teaching focus on the history of the novel, narrative theory, sociology and literature, and sexuality and gender. He is the author of Empty Houses: Theatrical Failure and the Novel (2012). The book examines the theatrical ambitions of major novelists (William Makepeace Thackeray, George Eliot, Henry James, James Joyce, and James Baldwin) better known for their narrative explorations of domestic and psychological interiors, tracing the novelistic aftermath of these failed theatrical projects to claim that these writers’ pioneering narrative techniques for representing interiority grew out of a frustrated appetite for collectivity. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in ELH, PMLA, Raritan, Victorian Studies, NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, Victorian Literature and Culture, The Henry James Review, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, The Oxford History of the Novel in English, Vol. 3: 1820-1880, and Literature Compass.

Dr. Ramenzoniis an environmental anthropologist specialized in human behavioral ecology, coastal communities, and marine and coastal policies. She is an Assistant Professor in Marine Policy at the Department of Human Ecology, Rutgers University. Through a mixed methods approach, she studies how socio-ecological factors shape human adaptation, the historical ecology of fishing societies, the impact of environmental uncertainty on decisions about resource use, and household nutrition in coastal environments. Her fieldwork includes communities from Eastern Indonesia, Kalimantan, Cuba, and the U.S. Dr. Ramenzoni has a strong commitment to applied science, co-participatory methods, and policy development. 

Meredith Bak (PhD, University of California, Santa Barbara) is an Assistant Professor of Childhood Studies at Rutgers University-Camden. Her research and teaching interests focus on children’s film, media, visual, and material cultures from the nineteenth century to the present. She is the author of Playful Visions: Optical Toys and the Emergence of Children’s Media Culture (MIT Press, 2020), which explores the role of pre-cinematic visual media from optical toys to early pop-up books in shaping children as media spectators. Recent articles and book chapters have considered the connections between children’s media and visual/material cultures applied to case studies such as talking dolls, the DC Super Hero Girls toy line, and the Give-a-Show Projector. A second large-scale project in development considers the history and theory of animate toys from talking dolls to augmented reality apps. Since joining the faculty at Rutgers-Camden, Dr. Bak’s research has been supported by the Penn Humanities Forum, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Rutgers-Camden Digital Studies Center. 

Brittany Friedman is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Faculty Affiliate of the Program in Criminal Justice and the Center for Security, Race, and Rights at Rutgers University.  She holds a PhD in Sociology from Northwestern University and researches race and prison order, penal policy, and the intersections between institutions and monetary sanctions in the criminal justice system.  Her first book, Born in Blood: Death Work, White Power, and the Rise of the Black Guerilla Family (forthcoming, University of North Carolina Press), traces the institutionalization of control strategies designed to eradicate Black political protest and the resulting consequences for the prison social system.  She enjoys writing for academic and general audiences, with articles, chapters, essays, and interviews appearing in scholarly and public outlets.  

Miranda Lichtenstein is an artist who works in photography and video.  Her work has been widely exhibited at institutions including, the Guggenheim Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; the Renaissance Society, Chicago, Stadhaus Ulm, Germany and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, NY. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at venues such as the UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris, NY and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson, AZ. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art & Design at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. She lives in Brooklyn. 

Colin Williamson (PhD, University of Chicago) is an Assistant Professor of American Studies and Cinema Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. He also serves on the Executive Committee of Domitor, the International Society for the Study of Early Cinema, and as a Reviews Editor for animation: an interdisciplinary journal (ANM). His research focuses on early film history, media archaeology, animation, and science and the cinema. Colin is the author of Hidden in Plain Sight: An Archaeology of Magic and the Cinema (Rutgers University Press, 2015), and has published articles and essays in such edited collections and journals as Thinking in the Dark: Cinema, Theory, Practice (Rutgers University Press, 2015), Film History, ANM, Leonardo, The Moving Image, and Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies. His current book project explores how a series of questions about the changing natures of still and moving images were negotiated at intersections between natural history and American animated films throughout the 20th century. Colin’s research has been supported by fellowships and awards from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University, Rutgers University, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Mark Aakhus investigates the relationship between communication and design, especially the uses of technological and organizational design, to augment human interaction and reasoning for decision-making and conflict-management. He uses multiple methods from discourse analysis and computational social science to examine language, argumentation, and social interaction in professional practice, organizational processes, and information infrastructures. The aim in these streams of research is to improve understanding of the intentional, and emergent, design of institutions for communication and the consequences for the co-creation of health, wellness, and democracy.

Dr. Nichole Margarita Garcia is an Assistant Professor of Higher Education in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. As a Chicana/Puerto Rican her research focuses on the intersections race, feminism, and Latinx/a/o communities in higher education She is a recipient of the Andrew W. Mellon dissertation fellowship which she completed a comparative study on Chicana/o and Puerto Rican college-educated families to advance narratives of intergenerational achievement and college choice processes.Dr. Garcia has published in international and national journals such as Race, Ethnicity and Education, The Journal of Latinos in Education, Journal of Hispanics in Higher Education, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Educationand Frontiers.She is a regular contributor to Diverse Issues in Higher Education Magazine, The Latino Book Review,and Motivos: Bilingual Magazine. She received her PhD in Social Science and Comparative Education with a specialization in Race and Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan is an Instructor in the History Department at Rutgers University, where she directs the Public History Program. She holds a PhD in History from the University of Leicester and an MA in Modern History from Queens University Belfast, and researches poverty, labor, mobility, crime and punishment in the early American northeast, as well as public historical and commemorative representations of these subjects. Kristin is the author of Vagrants and Vagabonds: Poverty and Mobility in the Early American Republic (New York University Press, 2019) and several chapters, articles, and essays on early American and public history. She has previously worked as an archivist and research analyst for the Pennsylvania House of Representatives Archives, and in museums, archives, and libraries in the US and the UK curating exhibits, managing archival collections, and creating inclusive public programming. She regularly consults on public history projects in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, and edits the new Routledge series Global Perspectives on Public History. 

Karen M. O’Neill is a sociologist studying coastal climate adaptation, biodiversity, and other policies on land and water. This includes understanding who wins and who loses under different policies. Karen has written or co-edited books on the U.S. program for river flood control and the growth of government power (Rivers by Design, Duke University Press), on race and Hurricane Katrina (Katrina’s Imprint, Rutgers University Press), and the book Taking Chances, on changes in institutions in response to Hurricane Sandy (Rutgers University Press).

Tobias Schulze-Cleven is Associate Professor of Labor Studies and Employment Relations at the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations (SMLR), and the Director of SMLR’s Center for Global Work and Employment. Interested in the role of collective action for sustaining social protection and economic performance, he studies the contemporary politics of labor market and higher education reforms in the rich democracies. A recipient of the John T. Dunlop award for research of international significance (Labor and Employment Relations Association, 2018), Tobias held fellowships at Harvard University and from Germany’s Max Planck Society, and received a teaching award at UC Berkeley. While at CCA, he examines the effects of shifting state strategies and faculty mobilization on the academy in transatlantic comparison.

Atıf Akın is an artist and designer and Associate Professor of Visual Arts at Rutgers, State University of New Jersey. He lives and works in New York. His work examines science, nature, mobility, and politics. Through a series of activities made up of research, documentation and design, Akın’s work considers transdisciplinary issues, through a technoscientific lens, in aesthetic and political contexts. During his studies at the Middle East Technical University, Akın was actively involved in artistic and political circles in Ankara. He practiced design, photography and video, and in graduate school, developed an interest in interaction design, cyberculture, digital humanities, semantics and semiotics. Akın became active as an artist during his years in İstanbul, and exhibited widely in Turkey and Europe, taking part in collective and international projects in a field that was seeing its first years of development and emergence. From İstanbul, Akın created connections with institutions in Germany, took classes in Berlin, and stayed close to the pioneers who practiced interaction design and digital data driven forms and interfaces in artistic and political contexts. In 2009, his work was listed in the ‘Younger Than Jesus’ art directory project of the New Museum, published by Phaidon. That same year, Akın co-curated a seminal media art exhibition, ‘Uncharted: User Frames in Media Arts,’ and edited an accompanying book. Throughout his practice in İstanbul, he regularly...

Francesca Giannetti is the Digital Humanities Librarian at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, and subject liaison to the departments of Classics, French, and Italian, and the program in Comparative Literature. In her research, she pursues topics at the intersection of information studies, digital humanities, and music. Working with a musicologist, a music librarian, and a digital humanities project developer, Giannetti is developing a digital research environment called Music Scholarship Online (MuSO), a contributing node of the Advanced Research Consortium (ARC) whose aims are to improve the dissemination of digital scholarly outputs in music as well as develop a peer review framework for the evaluation of digital work in musicology and music history. Her research interests include digital libraries, audio preservation, opera and libretto studies, and digital humanities pedagogy. She has published articles in the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, Music Reference Services Quarterly, Notes, and College & Undergraduate Libraries.   

Preetha Mani is Assistant Professor of South Asian Literatures at Rutgers University. Her research focuses on how representations of the Indian woman are used to shape ideas of regional and national identity, and experiences of belonging, in the aftermath of Indian Independence. She is currently completing a book manuscript, which chronicles the emergence of the short story as a preeminent genre in twentieth century Hindi and Tamil literature. The book proposes a view of Indian literature as a field of comparative literature that is comprised of mutually imbricated local, regional, national, and global processes of literary canonization and shows the short story to be a major genre of postcolonial literature and central to the formation of the new woman. She has an enduring interest in the relationship between gender and genre and the popular and the literary, which informs her ongoing work on the comparative study of Indian and world literatures, translation studies, and women’s writing in South Asia.

Hana Shepherd is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University. She received her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2011. She specializes in the study of culture, networks, and organizations. She uses diverse methods, including network analysis, lab and field-based experiments, interviews, and archival research to study social processes, especially social influence. She has designed instruments to build several datasets, both quantitative and qualitative, to study organizations and culture, particularly in terms of the development of shared norms within groups. A current line of work uses comparative, qualitative data from schools and city government agencies to understand variation in how organizations implement law. Her work has appeared in journals such as The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Social Psychology Quarterly, Poetics, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Sociological Forum.

Laura Weigert is Professor of Art History at Rutgers University. She specializes in Northern European art of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. She received her B.A. from Swarthmore College and her Ph.D. from Northwestern University. Professor Weigert has taught at the University of Nantes and the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées and was Associate Professor of Art History and Humanities at Reed College before joining the Rutgers faculty in September, 2006. Her scholarship addresses the interaction between diverse media in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as a means to probe questions of representation, spectatorship, and meaning making during this period. She has published on manuscript illumination, prints, panel painting, textiles, and the ephemeral arts of performance. Her book on tapestries, Weaving Sacred Stories: French Choir Tapestries and the Performance of Clerical Identity (Cornell, 2004) reconstructs the architectural and ceremonial context in which tapestries were seen and the process of storytelling to which they contributed. French Visual Culture and the Making of Medieval Theater (Cambridge, 2015) engages theatricality as an interpretive lens to understand a broad range of fifteenth-century artifacts and performance practices and reveals the roots of misperceptions about medieval theater that continue to inform the disciplines of art history and theater history. She is currently investigating the fifteenth-century origins of modern media...