Asim Ali (aali@umd.edu)
Asim Ali is a doctoral candidate. His research interests include cyberculture, media and television studies, race and slavery, and religion in American culture. He founded and directs the Project on Religion, Culture, and Globalization.
Aaron Allen (aron1@ucla.edu)
Aaron is a first year Ph.D. Student in the Department of American Studies. He recieved his B.A. in Sociology and M.A. in African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research interests include mixed race studies, intersectional approaches to black identity, visual/popular culture. He his specifically interested in examining mixed race male identity as it relates to notions of authentic black male masculinity.
Portia Barker (portia.barker@yahoo.com)
Portia is a first-year Ph.D. student in American Studies. Her research interests include African-American material culture, African-American middle-class, and African-American Women's Studies. African American folk art and lore as well as contemporary pop culture including TV, film and music are also of interest. She earned a B.A. in History from Texas Christian University in 2006 and an M.A. in American Studies from The University of Alabama in 2008. Portia is a native of Houston, Texas.
Aaron Bryant (aebryant@umd.edu)
Aaron is curator for the James E. Lewis Museum of Art at Morgan State University. His honors include a Burroughs-Wright Fellowship with the Association of African American Museums, a Lord Baltimore Fellowship with the Maryland Historical Society, an Exhibition Research and Design Fellowship with the Historical Electronics Museum, and a Gertrude Johnson Williams National Literary Prize. His current curatorial projects include: “Most Daring Dream: Robert Houston Photography and the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign,” a traveling exhibition of photographs taken during Houston’s Life Magazine coverage of Martin Luther King’s Poor People’s March in DC; “Paper, Paint and Steel: The Art of Mel Edwards, Sam Gilliam, Richard Hunt and William T. Williams,” a collaborative project with the four artists; and “William H. Johnson: An American Modern,” a traveling exhibition and catalog organized in association with the Smithsonian. Aaron has written for Black Enterprise, The Crisis Magazine, Africana.com, the New England Theatre Journal, Black Issues Book Review and Callaloo. He received his Bachelors in History from Duke and his Masters in Fine Arts from Yale.
Cornelia Cody (codyhickox@aol.com)
Cornelia is a Ph.D. student. Her research
focuses on humor, specifically New York City humor. Her dissertation
will be on the humor elements of the New York City personal
experience narrative. Cornelia is an adjunct instructor at New York
University’s Tisch of the Arts. She teaches a course titled “What’s
So Funny About New York?” for the Undergraduate Drama department.
Maddy Fickes (mfickes@umd.edu)
Maddy is a Ph.D. student in American Studies. She received her Bachelor's degree in American Studies from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in May of 2007. Her primary research interests surround the disadvantages shared by young people growing up in extremely rural and/or urban settings that stem from the similarly low incomes of many families in such areas. In order to stay engaged and motivated in her work, she draws on her experiences surrounding her own upbringing in a tiny Pennsylvania town and her move to Baltimore to attend college. Also, she loves working face to face with people, and as a result, relies on ethnographic methods for most of her research projects.
Bethany M. Gibson (bgibson1@mail.umd.edu)
Bethany is a second year Masters candidate. Her scholarly interests are in gender studies, popular culture, and ethnography. However, she plans to focus her scholarly article on pet ownership - particularly dogs - and and why people perceive themselves to own pets. She would also like to see how issues of identity and control impact dog ownership and play a role in the relationship between owner and pet. Bethany completed her Bachelor’s degree at the University of Maryland in American Studies and Women’s Studies. Originally from Maryland, she is excited to have such a fantastic program so close to home.
Kenyatta Dorey Graves (kdg1906@umd.edu)
Kenyatta Dorey Graves is a second-year Ph.D. student in American Studies. His research interests include African American identity politics and the oral, written, and visual representations of black same-gender-loving men. Kenyatta’s general interests include literature, film, pop culture, folklore, and material culture. He earned a BA from George Mason University and an MFA from the University of Maryland. Kenyatta has published literary criticism and fiction and is a self-employed K-12 education consultant, specializing in curriculum, instruction and professional development for various school districts across the nation.
Beth E. Graybill (bgraybill@LMHS.org)
Beth is ABD in American Studies. She is working with John Caughey
on her dissertation,"Negotiating Business: the Strategies of Amish Women
Entreprenuers in the Lancaster County, Pa., Tourist Market." Her
research interests include gender and material culture, women and religion,
women's work and small-business entreprenuership. Beth is employed as director of the Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society in Pennsylvania.
Patrick R. Grzanka (pgrzanka@umd.edu)
Patrick is a doctoral candidate in the department and the Assistant Director of Honors Humanities, an honors program for talented undergraduate students interested in intellectual work and careers in the humanities and fine arts. Patrick's research draws on sociology and social psychology and is concerned with the relationships between social identities, attitudes, affect and popular culture, with particular emphasis on the intersections of race, gender and sexuality. His dissertation project focuses on White guilt and employs quantitative and qualitative methodologies, reflecting his general interests in innovative interdisciplinary approaches. His review of Laura Mamo's first book, Queering Reproduction, recently appeared in Symbolic Interaction. He has taught courses on social issues in popular culture, technology and American culture, graphic novels, history of the arts and humanities, and philosophy and social theory. Patrick has a bachelor's degree in journalism from the Philip Merrill College of Journalism.
Elizabeth M. Hagovsky (sinisterwisdom@yahoo.com)
Elizabeth is an M.A. student with interests in film theory and production,
with a specific focus on documentaries and ethnographic film.
Robb Hernandez (robbher3@umd.edu)
Robb Hernandez is a Ph.D. student in the program. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a B.A. in Ethnic Studies and a B.S. in Broadcast Journalism. He also holds a M.A. in Film and Television from UCLA. His research focuses on Queer Latina/o Visuality, Art Museum Preservation/Exhibition and Chicana/o Avant-Gardism and Contemporary Art in L.A. He is the Founder and Director of the Latina/o Studies Working Group, and pursuing a certificate in Museum Scholarship and Material Culture. He has taught courses in Black Social Protest Movements, Chicana/o History, Culture and Theory, and American Television History.
Kristen Hodge (hodgekristen@yahoo.com)
Kristen is a Ph.D student in American
Studies and she recieved her BA in English from Spelman College in 2004.
Her research interests include examining constructions and conceptions
of Black masculinity among Black male children, as well as urban education/curriculum,
and child development.
Douglas Ishii (dishii@umd.edu)
Douglas Ishii's academic interests include ethnic studies (particularly transnational trajectories in Asian American studies), media studies, and pedagogy in the humanities. A native Californian, he graduated with a B.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Irvine, and completed work in the Cultural Studies program at Claremont Graduate University. Before entering the program, Douglas worked as an academic counselor and just finished a research internship with the National Japanese American Historical Society; he is now employed as a teaching assistant with the department. Currently pursuing the graduate emphasis in Critical Theory, his past times include reading high cultural theory, watching bad TV shows, and forever searching for the perfect burrito.
Bailey Kier (bkier@umd.edu)
Bailey is a Ph.D. student. His research interests include the
intersections of gender, class, race, and sexuality. He focuses on the
connections, contradictions, and meshing of queer and working class cultures.
Nicole King (nicoking_sc@yahoo.com)
Nicole is a is a doctoral student in American Studies. She has earned
a B.A. in English from Coastal Carolina University and a M.A. in Comparative
Literature and Cultural Studies from the University of New Mexico,
Albuquerque. Her master's thesis was on South Carolina’s roadside
tourist attraction “South
of the Border.” Her current research interests are in the politics
of leisure culture/popular culture, material culture, and southern
studies.
Tiffany King (tking@umd.edu)
Tiffany King is a first year doctoral student. Her research areas include Black women's activism, historical memory, Black feminism, transnational feminism and state theory. She holds a BA from the University of Virginia and an MA from the University of Toronto.
Rebecca Krefting (Beck) (beckortee@starpower.net)
Rebecca Krefting, who goes by Beck, is a doctoral candidate whose research focuses on the comic performances of women in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Her dissertation, “Charged Performances: Economy and Motive in Women’s Humor,” explores the way women’s comedic discourses negotiate citizenship in the US. She earned a BA in English and Psychology at the University of Alabama, Huntsville and an MA in Women’s Studies at Ohio State University. She is currently the Program Director for the African-American Studies Department, a graduate instructor in American Studies and African American Studies and works as co-director for the Comedy Club, a middle-school after school program that teaches young people how to write and perform sketch comedy and improv. Her essay, “Who Knew Public Scholarship was so Fun(ny)?: Practical Applications Within and Beyond the Academy,” will be published in Reflections: A Journal of Writing, Service-Learning, and Community Literacy this fall. Also forthcoming is her essay, “Laughter in the Final Instance: Nation and Economy in Humor,” which is included in the edited collection The Laughing Stalk (2009). She has presented her research nationally and internationally and was a PAGE Fellow for Imagining America (2007). When she’s not cracking jokes or studying them, she enjoys swimming, biking, hiking, yoga, riding horses, cooking and eating good food, walking her dogs and singing in the shower (badly).
Henrike Lehnguth (lehnguth@umd.edu)
Henrike is a doctoral student in the department. She has also taught several classes in American studies and works currently as the Coordinator for Graduate Student Programs at the Center for Teaching Excellence. She has earned an equivalent of a B.A. at the Free University of Berlin and a Master's at the University of Texas in Austin. Her research interests include representations of the Middle East in literature, film, and newspaper discourse in the United States and Germany.
Justin Maher (justintmaher@gmail.com)
Justin Maher is a fourth-year PhD student in the American Studies program. He is also program coordinator and lecturer for Honors Humanities, an honors program for undergraduate students interested in the humanities and creative arts. Justin came to Maryland after receiving a BA in English and an MA in American Studies from the University of Massachusetts Boston. Justin’s research interests include cultural landscapes, popular culture studies, and critical theories of sexuality, race, gender, and class. His dissertation will examine the deployment and marketing of race and sexuality in sustaining inequitable urban (re)development in Washington, DC.
Shayna Maskell (smaskell@umd.edu)
Shayna is a Ph.D. student in American Studies, as well as the Graduate Assistant for the Beyond the Classroom Living/Learning Program, which involves undergraduates in social justice issues and the nonprofit world. Her research interests involve the production and consumption of socio-political literature and music, and their effect on social movements, in 1960s and contemporary America. She received her B.A. from University of Pennsylvania in English, her Master's in Creative Writing at the University of Southern California, and has taught writing to undergrads for the last four years. She believes that avocadoes are underappreciated and that the Red Sox will win the World Series.
Johonna McCants (johonnam@yahoo.com)
Johonna McCants is a third year Ph.D. student and graduate
instructor whose work focuses on youth organizing, social movements,
and incarceration.
Her research investigates juvenile justice organizing among African-American
and Latino youth. Johonna also serves as a founding coordinator
of the Carceral Studies Working Group at the University of Maryland,
an interdisciplinary group engaged in research, education and activism
related to the incarceration of marginalized communities. She holds
Bachelors degrees in Journalism and Interdisciplinary Studies from
the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Teresa Moyer (tsmoyer@gmail.com)
Teresa Moyer is a Ph.D. student in American Studies who is pursuing a certificate in Museum Scholarship and Material Culture Studies. She holds a B.A. in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology from Bryn Mawr College and a M.A.A. in Applied Anthropology from the University of Maryland. Her current research focuses on the interpretation of the past and present at museums and parks. Other academic interests include the epistemology of material culture, curatorial method and theory, the question of relevance, and the application of archaeological resources to social justice issues. She has conducted numerous public history and archaeology projects with museums, national parks, and local historical organizations in the mid-Atlantic region. Her favorite cookie is chocolate chip.
Christine Muller (cmuller1@umd.edu)
Christine is a fourth-year Ph.D. student. Her primary interests in life writing, popular culture and literature explore how people generate meaning from everyday life through narrative. Specifically, she is interested in the cultural implications of experiencing and witnessing traumatic events such as Sept. 11, which her dissertation, “Cultural Trauma, Personal Ordeals and American Life in the Context of September 11,” explores in terms of subjectivity, agency, and responsibility under conditions of precarious and vulnerable knowledge and power. Her essay, “Witnessing the Fall: September 11 and the Crisis of the Permeable Self” is included in the forthcoming edited collection, The War on Terror and American Popular Culture: September 11 and Beyond, published by Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. Her short essay, “Dying in Public: September 11 and the Representation of Horror,” is included in an untitled edited collection forthcoming from Greenwood Publishing. She is a 2008-2009 Graduate Fellow with START, the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism based at the University of Maryland. She has taught Introduction to American Studies and Diversity in American Culture. She has a B.A. in history and psychology and an M.A. in English from Villanova University, where she also spent five rewarding years as Assistant Director of the University's interdisciplinary Honors Program.
Jennifer Nolan-Stinson (jnolan2@umd.edu)
Jennifer is a Ph.D. candidate whose interests include ethnography and life history research and the uses of literature and reading in everyday lives. Her dissertation combines these interests by using life history methods to explore the roles that reading plays in the lives of avid readers. She has also taught a variety of classes in the American Studies department, service-learning courses within the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, and Freshman Composition. She holds a B.A. in English and Philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.A. in English from the University of Virginia.
Krista Park (krista.park@verizon.net)
Krista M. Park’s dissertation will examine lifestyle, constructions of identity, and American leisure practices through the lens of the marathon. Her methodologies include ethnography, discourse analysis, and spatial analysis using GIS. Tangential scholarly interests include methods of urban and social planning that encourage sustainable, healthy communities. Professionally, Krista is a full- time test preparation professional with an international test preparation, education, and media corporation. In her leisure time, Krista promotes positive portrayals of gay, lesbian, bi, and trans people in the media through her work with the DC-area fan group LambdaSF and the Gaylactic Spectrum awards (an annual award given to speculative fiction works with positive portrayals of GLBT individuals or lives). Finally, Krista trains for marathons and long distance bike rides.
Manon Parry (parrym@mail.nlm.nih.gov)
Manon Parry is curator of the exhibition Against the Odds: Making a Difference in Global Health at the National Library of Medicine. She has taught business history at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, and is co-editor, with Ellen S. More and Elizabeth Fee, of Women Physicians and the Cultures of Medicine (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008). Her research interests include disability and the history of medicine, and she is currently writing her dissertation on the use of mass media to promote family planning, 1914-1984. View the exhibition online at: http://apps.nlm.nih.gov/againsttheodds/index.cfm
Gabriel Peoples (gpeoples@umd.edu)
Gabriel Peoples studied English and African studies at The University of Michigan. He went on to study Africana studies at Cornell University. He is interested in researching and actively participating in Black expressive subcultures. As far as teaching, he would like to engage in innovative ways to integrate creative expression with the academic classroom.
Christopher J. Pérez (chripere@gmail.com)
Christopher is a third-year doctoral student in the Department of American Studies. His work has been largely informed by poststructuralist thought, queer theory, and cultural studies scholarship. Christopher holds degrees in English Literature, Women's Studies, and American Studies. His current research interests include transnationalism, ethnography, and intersectional approaches to identity. Christopher's specific research in the Department of American Studies at University of Maryland is an ethnographic exploration of gay men living in the US under political asylum. Christopher also teaches "Introduction to Popular Culture and Cultural Studies" in the Department of American Studies and is the GSG representative for American Studies.
Dawn Reynolds (dawnrey@yahoo.com)
Dawn is a Ph.D. candidate and graduate instructor in the Department of American Studies. Her dissertation is tentatively titled, "Narratives of Trauma in Contemporary Women's Scrapbooks." Dawn has presented papers at several regional and national conferences, and recently published an article in Sexuality Research and Social Policy: Journal of the National Sexuality Resource Center. She has taught several courses for the department, including "Introduction to American Studies," "Diversity in American Culture," and classes for the Freshman First and Academic Achievement Programs. Dawn holds a Bachelor's degree in American Studies from Brandeis University.
A. Sandosharaj (asandosharaj@hotmail.com)
A. Sandosharaj is a doctoral candidate in American Studies. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from The Ohio State University and is interested in the utility of memoir/self-ethnography to critical race theory and poverty studies. She is especially interested in relationships between Black Americans and Model Minorities. Her work has appeared in Massachusetts Review, Subcontinental, Crab Orchard Review, Alligator Juniper, Bartleby, River City, American Literary Review and at addictedtorace.com.
Shelby Shapiro (shelshap@comcast.net)
Shelby is now a Ph.D. Candidate in American Studies working on a dissertation, tentatively titled "Words to the Wives: The Jewish Press, Immigrant Women, and Identity Construction, 1895-1925." From Shelby: "Goals: teaching and more research. I have continued as the English-language editor of _TSUM PUNKT/To the Point_, the small magazine put out by Yiddish of Greater Washington."
Jennifer
Stabler (js482@umail.umd.edu)
Jennifer is a Ph.D. student concentrating on historical archaeology,
cultural landscapes, and material culture. She is interested in the
formation and development of rural communities in Central Texas and
the role of women, children, and ethnic minorities in the farm economy.
She also works in the History Department for the Combined
Caesarea Expeditions, an archaeological project on the coast of
Israel, under the direction of Prof. Kenneth G. Holum.
Heidi Temple (htemple@umd.edu)
Heidi is a second-year PhD student also working on the Women's Studies Certification. Originally from the Philadelphia area, Heidi graduated with a BS in Education - English and Communications from Kutztown University and taught high school English, Speech and Theatre for 7 years. She left teaching to return to graduate school full time and earn an MA in Theatre Studies and a Museum Studies Certification from Florida State University in 2004. Her current work focuses on Disability Studies and questions of identity and Othering in Popular Culture (specifically theatre and musical theatre), as well as exploring the idea of the Body as a Public Space.
Catherine Stewart Thomas (sbcsthomas@yahoo.com)
Catherine is a Master's student concentrating on 18th and 19th
century material culture and historic preservation. She also has full-time
job as Assistant Curator of Decorative Arts at the Baltimore Museum of
Art.
Wendy Marie Thompson (wmt@umd.edu)
Wendy Marie Thompson is a doctoral candidate whose research interests include Chinese diaspora and Chinese American history; mixed race representations in art, popular culture, literature, and film; and narratives of conquest and resistance.
Judith Church Tydings (jtydings@xecu.net)
With an MA in History from St. John's University, New York, Judith is ABD in American Studies working with John Caughey. In her eighth decade herself, her dissertation, Yankee Women Coming of Age: Life Histories and Cultural Significance (the working title) explores the foreign terrain of old age with some old women. Thirty years after de Beauvoir's work, "we're still pioneering - this must be rough country indeed." (L. Marshall NWSA Journal 4/2006) Judith's interests include the nascent field of Age Studies, feminist gerontology, New England Studies, and contemporary American memoir.
Maria E. Vargas (mvargas5@umd.edu)
Maria is a first year Ph.D. student in the Department of American Studies at University of Maryland, College Park. She received her B.A. in Psychology with a Minor in Spanish from New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, NM. Her research interests include intersectional approaches to identity in contemporary diasporic Latina lesbian communities that span different "borders." Maria has conducted primary research in New Mexico and Chicago including an ethnographic project with Latina lesbians in the Southwest border (El Paso/Juarez and rural New Mexico and Mexico) and a focus group study with Latina lesbian students in Urbana-Champaign that examined representations of "lesbians" in popular culture. She is currently working towards expanding her research base by incorporating issues of immigration among Latina lesbians in major metro poles including Washington, D.C., New York, and Chicago, IL and examining how meanings are made within those spaces.
Maria I. Velazquez (maria.i.velazquez@gmail.com)
Maria Velazquez' research interests include constructions of race, gender, and sexuality in contemporary media. She also works on issues related to the mechanisms of collective memory as they pertain to communities of color. She interned this summer at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and will be working with the Consortium on Race, Gender, and Ethnicity during the academic year. She is entering her second year in the program.
Elise White (elisemwhite@gmail.com)
Elise White is a doctoral candidate whose interests include youth
organizing and activism, ethnography, and the school-to-prison
pipeline. She is currently conducting dissertation research with
young women in an alternative-to-incarceration program in New York
City. She also designed and runs a youth organizing program for young
people who live in the Red Hook Houses in Brooklyn, is a member of the
New York Juvenile Justice Coalition, and sits on the junior board of Advocates for Children of New York.
Amelia Wong (awong22@umd.edu)
Amelia Wong is a Ph.D. student whose dissertation research focuses on museums' uses of the social Web. Other academic interests include public history, the collecting impulse, and architectural space; non-academic interests involve the pursuit of the perfect pie, a balanced handstand, good sightlines at concerts, and adequate knitting skills. She holds a B.A. in History/Art History from UCLA and has held several positions in humanities research in Los Angeles and the mid-Atlantic area. During the summer of 2008, she was the inaugural Field Visiting Scholar at the National Building Museum.
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