Faculty

List of Affiliated Faculty in IS: These faculty serve as IS major advisors and on senior comp boards. (rev. August 2022)

Economics:

  • Chris Finaret  Regional focus: Central Africa, Colombia. Areas of interest: development economics; policy, strategy, and programming evaluation.
  • Steve Onyeiwu  Regional focus: Sub-Saharan Africa, with secondary interest in North Africa/the Middle East. Areas of interest: structural adjustment, multinational corporations, globalization, economic/industrial development, and political economy.

History:

  • Kalé Haywood  Regional focus: Latin America. Areas of interest: colonialism and the era of independence, Mexican history, and ecclesiastical and institutional history.
  • Brian Miller Regional focus: Middle East, Germany. Areas of interest: transnational migration, history of development, gender studies, nationalism, and press censorship.
  • Ken Pinnow  Regional focus: Russia, Eastern Europe. Areas of interest: history of medicine, global health, and the technologies of modern governance (statistics, censuses, social science criminology, etc.).
  • Guo Wu  Regional focus: China. Areas of interest: late Imperial China, 20th century Chinese intellectual history, print culture, nationalism, liberalism and anarchism, modern Chinese literature and film.

World Languages & Cultures:

  • Sami Alkyam, Chair Regional focus: Middle East. Areas of interest: Modern Arabic literature and cultural studies; gender and sexuality studies; trauma and war novel; Arabic dictator novels; film and television studies; postcolonial and literary theory; Arabic literary translation; African literature in translation.
  • Wilfredo Hernández  Regional focus: Latin America. Areas of interest: gender studies in modern and contemporary Latin America with a focus on Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela, same-sex issues in the Hispanic world.
  • Teresa Herrera  Regional focus: Spain. Areas of interest: nineteenth- and early-twentieth century Spanish theater, ideology studies, and Spanish television during the transition.
  • Reem Hilal  Regional focus: Middle East. Areas of interest: contemporary Arabic Literature, Arab American literature, identity, diasporic Muslim and Arab communities.
  • Briana Lewis  Regional focus: France. Areas of interest: nineteenth-century French literature, particularly the novel and the works of Victor Hugo; questions of individual, political, and social identity.
  • Julia Ludewig  Regional focus: German-speaking countries. Areas of interest: GDR history; current cultural and political developments in German speaking countries; popular culture, especially visual culture
  • Tommy Conners Latinx, Ethnic, and Latin American Studies; queer, affect, and critical race theories
  • Barbara Riess  Regional focus: Latin America. Areas of interest: Translation Studies, Women’s Studies, feminism and feminist criticism, nationalisms and intellectual history, Latino identity and cultural production in the U.S.

Political Science:

  • Shanna Kirschner  Regional focus: Middle East. Areas of interest: Middle Eastern politics, especially in the Levant, ethnic conflict, and civil war, international organizations, human rights, and democratization.
  • Shannan Mattiace  Regional focus: Latin America. Areas of interest: criminal violence in Mexico, ethnic politics and social movements in Mexico and Latin America, immigration to the U.S., U.S.-Mexico border issues.
  • Rebecca Oliver Regional focus: Europe. Areas of interest: European politics, comparative political economy, political institutions, inequality, social policy, and labor politics.
  • Sharon Wesoky Regional focus: China. Areas of interest: gender, globalization and state-society relations in China and East Asia, feminism, civil society, and intellectual criticism in contemporary China.