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Dr. Dennis Tyler - Associate Professor in the Department of English at Fordham University

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Dr. Dennis Tyler - Associate Professor in the Department of English at Fordham University

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Dennis Tyler is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Fordham University. He has published work on African American literature and culture, disability studies, performance studies, and popular culture, and his essays and reviews have appeared in African American Review, Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, Gender: Space, The Feminist Wire, Oxford Bibliographies, American Literary History Online Review, and elsewhere. His first book, Disabilities of the Color Line, is forthcoming from New York University Press. His work has been recognized with grants and fellowships from the Ford Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Social Science Research Council, and the University of Virginia’s Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies. He has taught courses on Oprah’s Book Club, Black disability studies, African American autobiography, Black women novelists, and the First Amendment right to protest.

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Dr. Elizabeth Todd-Breland - Associate Professor of History at The University of Illinois Chicago

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Dr. Elizabeth Todd-Breland - Associate Professor of History at The University of Illinois Chicago

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In her research and teaching, Professor Todd-Breland focuses on 20th-century United States urban and social history, African American history, and the history of education. Her work also explores interdisciplinary issues related to racial and economic inequality, urban public policy, neighborhood transformation, education policy, and civic engagement. Her book, A Political Education: Black Politics and Education Reform in Chicago since the 1960s (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), analyzes transformations in Black politics, shifts in modes of education organizing, and the racial politics of education reform from the 1960s to the present. Professor Todd-Breland’s writing has appeared in the Journal of African American History, Souls, and scholarly edited volumes. She has also contributed to popular outlets, including NPR, ESPN, the Washington Post, and local radio, television, print, and online media. Professor Todd-Breland also coordinates professional development workshops, curricula, and courses for K-12 teachers and gives public talks on African American history, urban education, and college readiness. Her research has been supported by grants and fellowships from the National Academy of Education, Spencer Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, Social Science Research Council, Ford Foundation, and UIC Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy. Professor Todd-Breland earned her Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago.

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Dr. Drew Thompson - Associate Professor of Africana and Historical Studies at Bard College/Ryerson University

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Dr. Drew Thompson - Associate Professor of Africana and Historical Studies at Bard College/Ryerson University

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Drew Thompson is a visual historian and writer who focuses on the visual arts of Africa and the Diaspora, photography, black radical thought, and curatorial studies. Thompson recently authored Filtering Histories: The Photographic Bureaucracy in Mozambique, 1960 to Recent Times (Forthcoming in March 2021, University of Michigan Press), and is at work on second book project provisionally called Coloring Black Surveillance: The History of Polaroid in Africa, Anti-Apartheid Protest, and Contemporary Art. He actively publishes artist interviews, exhibition reviews, and art criticism in leading contemporary arts and peer-reviewed publications, and he will guest curate an exhibition on the late black American printmaker, Ben Wigfall, slated to open at the SUNY New Paltz’s Dorsky Museum in Spring 2022. As of January 2021, Drew Thompson will be an Associate Professor of Contemporary Art and Visual Culture at Ryerson University’s School of Image Arts. Previously, he taught at Bard College where he served as Director of Africana Studies and developed the interactive arts platform Creative Process In Dialogue: Art and the Public Today.

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Dr. Jonathan Rosa - Associate Professor of Education, Anthropology, and Linguistics, and Director of the Program in Chicanx-Latinx Studies at Stanford University

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Dr. Jonathan Rosa - Associate Professor of Education, Anthropology, and Linguistics, and Director of the Program in Chicanx-Latinx Studies at Stanford University

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Jonathan Rosa is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education, Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, and, by courtesy, Departments of Anthropology and Linguistics, at Stanford University. His research centers on joint analyses of racial marginalization, linguistic stigmatization, and educational inequity, as well as collaborations with schools and communities to track these phenomena and develop tools for understanding and eradicating the forms of disparity to which they correspond. Rosa is author of the book, Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and the Learning of Latinidad (2019, Oxford University Press), and co-editor of the volume, Language and Social Justice in Practice (2019, Routledge). His work has appeared in scholarly journals such as the Harvard Educational Review, American Ethnologist, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, and Language in Society, as well as media outlets such as MSNBC, NPR, CNN, and Univision.

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Dr. Darren Ranco - Chair of Native American Programs, Associate Professor of Anthropology, and Coordinator of Native American Research at the University of Maine

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Dr. Darren Ranco - Chair of Native American Programs, Associate Professor of Anthropology, and Coordinator of Native American Research at the University of Maine

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Professor Ranco, a citizen of the Penobscot Nation, received his Ph.D in Social Anthropology at Harvard University in 2000 and has been a faculty member at the University of California-Berkeley, Dartmouth College, and now at the University of Maine.  At the University of Maine, Professor Ranco has a joint appointment in the George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions. His research focuses on the ways in which indigenous communities in the United States resist environmental destruction by using indigenous diplomacies and critiques of liberalism to protect cultural resources, and how state knowledge systems, rooted in colonial contexts, continue to expose indigenous peoples to an inordinate amount of environmental risk. Professor Ranco teaches classes on indigenous intellectual property rights, research ethics, environmental justice and tribal governance. As an indigenous researcher, he is particularly interested in how better research relationships can be made between universities, Native and non-Native researchers, and indigenous communities.

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Dr. Kaneesha Cherelle Parsard - Assistant Professor of English at The University of Chicago

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Dr. Kaneesha Cherelle Parsard - Assistant Professor of English at The University of Chicago

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Dr. Kaneesha Cherelle Parsard’s scholarship examines the legacies of slavery and emancipation in the Americas, with an emphasis on how gender and sexuality structure race, labor, and capital. Her book project, “An Illicit Wage: Economies of Sex and the Family after West Indian Emancipation,” explores representations and histories of informality in the century after emancipation and the start of Indian indenture in the British West Indies. Her scholarship appears in American Quarterly, Indo-Caribbean Feminist Thought, and Small Axe. The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship and Graduate Initiatives Program, the Social Science Research Council Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship, and the Mellon/American Council of Learned Societies Dissertation Completion Fellowship have supported her research. Parsard holds a PhD in American studies and African American studies, with a certificate in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, from Yale University.

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Dr. McKinley Melton - Professor of English at Gettysburg College

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Dr. McKinley Melton - Professor of English at Gettysburg College

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McKinley E. Melton entered MMUF at Duke University in 2002, going on to earn his Ph.D. from the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2012. Dr. Melton then joined the English Department at Gettysburg College, where he earned tenure in 2017. His teaching focuses primarily on 20th Century African American and African diasporan literature, and his courses are designed to engage the intersections of social, political, and cultural movements as part of a critical approach to Africana literatures. Dr. Melton’s research—including his current book project, Claiming All the World as Our Stage: Contemporary Black Poetry, Performance, and Resistance—focuses primarily on the relationship between the rituals and traditions of Africana cultures and diasporan creative expression. Dr. Melton’s active scholarly agenda includes published essays on the work and writing of James Baldwin, Richard Wright, James Weldon Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston, Danez Smith, and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Dr. Janaka Bowman Lewis - Professor of English and Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program and Center for the Study of the New South

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Dr. Janaka Bowman Lewis - Professor of English and Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program and Center for the Study of the New South

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Janaka Bowman Lewis, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Women's and Gender Studies Program at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She entered MMUF in 2001 at Duke University, where she earned Bachelor's Degrees in English and African and African American Studies. She earned her Ph.D. in English from Northwestern University and was also an instructor at Spelman College before beginning at UNC Charlotte in 2009. She is the author of several book chapters and articles on 19th Century African American women's writing and material culture, three children's books (Brown All Over, Bold Nia Marie Passes the Test, Dr. King is Tired, Too!!), and Freedom Narratives of African American Women (McFarland 2017). Her current scholarship is on representations of black girlhood in American literature and film.

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Dr. Ryan Cecil Jobson - Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Anthropology at The University of Chicago

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Dr. Ryan Cecil Jobson - Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Anthropology at The University of Chicago

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Dr. Ryan Cecil Jobson is a social scientist trained in sociocultural anthropology and African American Studies. His research and teaching engage issues of energy and extractive resource development, technology and infrastructure, states and sovereignty, and histories of racial capitalism in the colonial and postcolonial Americas. Broadly, his research examines the relationship between modern energy regimes (i.e. plantation slavery, carbon-based fuels) and the modern political ideal of sovereignty. Jobson is a faculty affiliate of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture, Center for Latin American Studies, and Committee on International Relations. He is Associate Editor of the journal Transforming Anthropology.

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Dr. Fareeda McClinton Griffith - Associate Professor of Sociology/Anthropology and Director of the Global Health Program at Denison University

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Dr. Fareeda McClinton Griffith - Associate Professor of Sociology/Anthropology and Director of the Global Health Program at Denison University

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As a quantitatively trained sociologist and demographer, Dr. Griffith advises students on research projects with interests in quantitative methods, and teaches courses on global health, demographic changes in the continent of Africa, survey research methods and racial and ethnic relations around the globe. She received her B.A. in Sociology with summa cum laude honors from Paine College. She received a M.A. in Demography and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania. Additionally, Dr. Griffith has published on race relations and residential segregation patterns in South Africa and Somali immigrants and health perceptions in Columbus, Ohio. Her work appears in the Southern African Journal of Demography, Glocalism, and Health, Culture, and Society. Dr. Griffith has also received several grants to investigate racial residential segregation and chronic health outcomes in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and health perceptions of Somali immigrants in Columbus, OH.

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Dr. Jarvis R. Givens - Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, 2020-2021 / Assistant Professor of Education, Affiliate Faculty of African & African American Studies at Harvard University

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Dr. Jarvis R. Givens - Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, 2020-2021 / Assistant Professor of Education, Affiliate Faculty of African & African American Studies at Harvard University

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Jarvis Givens is an assistant professor of education and an affiliate faculty in the department of African & African American Studies at Harvard University, having earned his Ph.D. in African American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Givens' research falls at the intersection of 19th and 20th century African American history, the history of education, and critical theories of race, power, and schooling. His book, Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching, will be published in Spring 2021, and he was the co-editor of We Dare Say Love: Supporting Achievement in the Educational Life of Black Boys, published by Columbia's Teachers College Press in 2018. Givens is the recent recipient of a $610,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to build a digital archive to preserve the more than 100-year history of "Colored Teacher Associations," which spans the years of 1861 to 1970. Professor Givens is originally from Compton, California and currently lives in Roxbury, Massachusetts.

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Dr. Hanna Garth - Assistant Professor of Anthropology at UC San Diego

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Dr. Hanna Garth - Assistant Professor of Anthropology at UC San Diego

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Dr. Hanna Garth is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at UC San Diego with affiliations in African American Studies, Latin American Studies, and Global Health. Hanna is a sociocultural and medical anthropologist broadly interested in how marginalized communities struggle to overcome structural violence. Her recent work is focused on the connections between food systems, structural inequalities, health, and wellbeing. Her regional interests include Black and Latino communities in the United States, as well as Latin America and the Caribbean. She completed her BA in Anthropology, Hispanic Studies, and Policy Studies at Rice University, an MPH in International Health at Boston University, and a PhD in Anthropology at UCLA.

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Dr. Heath Fogg Davis - Director of Temple’s Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program

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Dr. Heath Fogg Davis - Director of Temple’s Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program

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Dr. Heath Fogg Davis’ most recent book, Beyond Trans: Does Gender Matter? (New York University Press 2017) questions our need for gender policies, and offers practical strategies to help organizations of all kinds design and implement policies that are both trans-inclusive and institutionally smart. Newsweek named Beyond Trans a must-read book. His commentary on transgender and gender non-conforming political and legal issues has appeared in CNN.com, Aeon magazine, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Feminist Wire and on MSNBC, National Public Radio, C-SPAN Book TV, Imagine Otherwise, Sex Out Loud, and other podcasts. He consults with businesses, schools, and organizations, and has served as an appointed member of the Mayor’s Commission on LGBT Affairs in Philadelphia, and a member of the Leeway Foundation’s board of directors.

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Dr. Shanna Greene Benjamin - Independent Scholar

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Dr. Shanna Greene Benjamin - Independent Scholar

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Dr. Shanna Greene Benjamin is a biographer and scholar who studies the literature, lives, and archives of Black women. A former Associate Dean and Professor of English at Grinnell College, she led curricular initiatives centered on teaching and learning and oversaw programs fostering diversity and achievement through undergraduate research. With over fifteen years of experience in higher education, Dr. Benjamin is a sought-after coach and mentor of dissertators and faculty of color. For the past seven years, she has facilitated the Social Science Research Council’s (SSRC) Dissertation Writing Retreat and now facilitates Regional Writing Retreats throughout the academic year. She has published on African American literature and Black women's intellectual history in MELUS, African American Review, a/b:Auto/Biography Studies, Studies in American Fiction, and PMLA. Dr. Benjamin’s biography of Nellie Y. McKay is forthcoming from the University of North Carolina Press. She lives with her family in Charlotte, North Carolina.

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Dr. Jeffrey Coleman - Associate Professor of Spanish in the Department of Languages, Literatures & Cultures at Marquette University

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Dr. Jeffrey Coleman - Associate Professor of Spanish in the Department of Languages, Literatures & Cultures at Marquette University

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Jeffrey K. Coleman is a Dartmouth College MMUF and obtained his Ph.D. in Romance Languages & Literatures from the University of Chicago in 2014. He has published several articles on immigration, race, and national identity in the Spanish context in the Journal of Catalan Studies, Symposium, Estreno and others. In addition, in 2015 he was awarded the Duke University SITPA (Summer Institute on Tenure and Professional Advancement) Fellowship and in 2017 was awarded the Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowship. His first book, entitled The Necropolitical Theater: Race and Immigration on the Contemporary Spanish Stage (Northwestern University Press, May 2020), explores how the intersections of race and immigration manifest in Spanish theatre from 1991-present. He is now working on his next book project tentatively titled, España Negra: The Consumption & Rejection of Blackness in Contemporary Spain, which explores the ways in which Spanish media, popular culture, and literature have portrayed and appropriated Blackness from the late 19th century to the present.

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Dr. Sa’ed Atshan - Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at Swarthmore College

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Dr. Sa’ed Atshan - Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at Swarthmore College

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Dr. Atshan is Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at Swarthmore College, where he is also Coordinator of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program. He previously served as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies. As an anthropologist and peace and conflict studies scholar, Atshan's research is focused on a) contemporary Palestinian society and politics, b) global LGBTQ social movements, and c) Quaker Studies and Christian minorities in the Middle East.