Sixteen New Faculty Members Join the College

The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters is proud to announce that sixteen new faculty members have joined the College in seven different departments. Among them are scholars in human rights; health care; contemporary media; Latin America; ethnomusicology; bioethics; Artificial Intelligence and the Mind; race, class, gender and sexual orientation studies; and more.

They are recent graduates of or previously professors from colleges and universities all over the country and the list of their achievements is long. We welcome all of our new faculty and look forward to learning from and working with them.

SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION AND MULTIMEDIA STUDIES

Dr. Andrea Miller comes to the FAU School of Communication and Multimedia Studies as an Assistant Professor.  They are a media archaeologist with a background in feminist science and technology studies. Their dissertation, “Environmental Order: Making and Securing Ecosystems from Nuclear to Cyber” examines how military-driven nuclear and cybersecurity projects shape the built and natural environment in real and imagined ways. They will help expand SCMS’s profile in digital studies by contributing expertise in algorithm, surveillance, and infrastructure studies. Their work is published in journals such as Antipode and Public Culture, and Their work has been invited to appear in collections edited by Ruha Benjamin, Lisa Parks & Caren Kaplan, Richard Grusin, David Correia, and Tyler Wall.

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Dr. Marquese McFerguson comes to the FAU School of Communication and Multimedia Studies from the University of South Florida as an Assistant Professor with an emphasis in Intercultural Communication. His research, teaching, and service focuses on how individuals in society communicate, perform and (re)imagine identity across the diverse number of cultural intersections including race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. Furthermore, his creative-intellectual research about representation and media-created scripts is guided by feminist, aesthetic, and narrative sensibilities and situated within the interdisciplinary fields of Media Studies, Hip Hop Studies, and Performance Studies.

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Dr. Lindsay Harroff comes from the University of Kansas to the FAU School of Communication and Multimedia Studies as an Assistant Professor. She will teach a variety of rhetoric courses across the Communication Studies program and is excited to work with the Graduate Teaching Assistants who teach Public Speaking. Her research draws on perspectives from rhetorical studies, decolonial theory, and African studies to refigure matters of violence, identity, national community, justice, and democratic norms. Her dissertation, titled “Reimagining the National Community through Truth and Reconciliation: A Rhetorical Analysis of Truth Commissions in South Africa, Kenya, and the United States,” focuses on key concepts in the work of truth commissions—truth, reconciliation, and justice—to examine how they contribute to national unity. 

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DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY

 


Dr. Stephanie M. Ortiz comes to the FAU Sociology Department as an Assistant Professor. She joins us from Texas A&M University where she received her Ph.D. in Sociology.  Her research examines how racism and sexism are reproduced and contested in the everyday context. This fall, she will be teaching Sociological Perspectives and Race & Ethnic Relations.

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Dr. Daniel Auguste comes to the FAU Sociology Department as an Assistant Professor. He earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he also served as an Associate Editor of Social Forces. Daniel earned a BA from Covenant College, with a major in Economics and a minor in Community Development. His research and teaching interests include inequality, stratification, economic and organizational sociology, and entrepreneurship. Daniel is currently working on several projects that investigate the importance of entrepreneurship for economic wellbeing among low and-moderate income households in the United States, the role of the state in shaping entrepreneurship development, and the link between religion and economic inequality.

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DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

Dr. Candace Cunningham comes to the FAU History Department as an Assistant Professor. She earned her M.A. and Ph.D. from USC where she won the Robert H. Wienefeld Essay Prize and was a Fellow in the Grace Jordan McFadden Professors Program. In her previous position, she was the Brown Fellow in Public History at Stetson University where she taught a range of courses including: Introduction to Public History, and Oral History. Before that she taught in the University of South Carolina’s (USC) Opportunity Scholars Program, a program for first-generation, low-income college students. Her research focuses on the 20th century African American experience with a special emphasis on civil rights, education, gender, and the South.  She has presented her research at numerous conferences, including the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the History of Education Society, and Southern Labor Studies. She is currently working on a manuscript about African American teachers who were in the long civil rights movement. 

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Dr. Jermaine Scott comes to the FAU History Department as an Assistant Professor of African American and African Diaspora History. He received his Ph.D. in African American Studies from Northwestern University, and a BA in History from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University. His research interests include 20th century African American history, the cultural politics of sport, black politics, African Diaspora history, and postcolonial theory. He is currently working on a manuscript, tentatively titled “Black Teamwork: Soccer and Black Politics in the African Diaspora, 1950-2008," that interrogates the ways in which black athletes transformed football (soccer) into a critical site for black politics and solidarity during the second half of the twentieth century. 

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Dr. Eyal Weinberg comes to the FAU History Department as an Assistant Professor.  He received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin and was a postdoctoral fellow at UT-Austin's Institute for Historical Studies in 2019-2020. Weinberg’s research examines histories of medicine, health, political violence, and human rights in Cold War Latin America, with a focus on Brazil.  His current book project, Tending to the Body Politic: Doctors, Military Repression, and Transitional Justice in Brazil (1961-1988),explores the contested realms of professional medicine, bioethics, and political repression in military and post-authoritarian Brazil. The project is based on Weinberg's dissertation, which was recognized with Honorable Mention for Best Dissertation in the Humanities by the Latin American Studies Association's Brazil Section.  Weinberg’s teaching explores the intersections of medicine and human rights in Latin America, as well as histories of the Cold War, torture, and transitional justice in the Southern Cone and the Global South.

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DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

Dr. Kate Polak comes to the FAU English Department as a Visiting Instructor. She is also the new Assistant Director at the UCEW. Her book, Ethics in the Gutter, explores how graphic narrative representations of violence can teach readers about the possibilities and limitations of empathy and ethics. Her poetry has recently appeared in McSweeney’s, Plainsongs, and elsewhere. Her current projects include a graphic novel that develops the complicated relationship between teen girls and their bodies, an analysis of contemporary representations of the Holocaust, and an edited collection of essays on the nexus between historical fiction and science fiction with her husband, Dr. Ian MacDonald.

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Dr. Regis Fox comes to the FAU English Department as an Assistant Professor. She earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Riverside. Her primary research interests include Nineteenth-Century American Literatures, Feminist Theory, and African-American Literary and Cultural Studies.  She has published in such journals as Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal and the Journal of American Studies, and in edited collections, including A Determined Life: The Elizabeth Keckley Reader. A McKnight Junior Faculty Fellow for the 2015-16 academic year, she released her first book, Resistance Reimagined: Black Women's Critical Thought as Survival (University Press of Florida) in December 2017.

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Dr. Timothy S. Miller comes to the FAU English Department as an Assistant Professor in the area of science fiction and fantasy. He received his Ph.D. in English from the University of Notre Dame in 2014. As visiting faculty at Sarah Lawrence College and Marquette University, he has previously taught courses on science fiction and fantasy as well as on medieval literature. Some of his research interests include genre-crossing works of fantasy and science fiction; games and literature; and the representation of the Middle Ages in contemporary media. His current project examines representations of plants and plant being across speculative fiction

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DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGES, LINGUISTICS AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

Dr. María Alejandra Aguilar Dornelles comes to the FAU Languages, Linguistics and Comparative Literature Department as an Assistant Professor. She earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Latin American literature from Washington University in St Louis, MO. She also completed the graduate certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexualities Studies in 2011. Her research interests include 19th Century Latin-American literature, Caribbean literature, Brazilian literature, Gender Studies, and Afro-Latin American Diaspora. She has published articles on Caribbean narrative and poetry in journals such as Confluence, Meridional Revista Chilena de Estudios Latinoamericanos, Afro-Hispanic Review and Latin American Literary Review. She has also collaborated in the volume Cantos y poemas: antología crítica de autoras afro-descendientes de América Latina, edited by María Mercedes Jaramillo and Betty Osorio.  In addition, Dr. Aguilar’s article, “Heroísmo y conciencia racial en la poeta afro-cubana Cristina Ayala,” was awarded the 2017 Ibero-American Prize for an Academic Article on the Nineteenth Century (LASA), and with the Harold Eugene Davis Prize awarded by the Middle Atlantic Council of Latin American Studies (MACLAS). Her article “Activismo, literatura y cambio social en el Caribe hispano: aproximación en tres movimientos” received the 2020 Adela Zamudio Prize awarded by Feministas Unidas. She is currently working on a book-length project entitled Herederos de la libertad: heroísmo y afrodescendencia en Colombia, Brasil y Cuba. 

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Dr. Gonzalo Aguiar Malosetti comes to the FAU Languages, Linguistics and Comparative Literature Department as a Visiting Instructor. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in Latin American literature (Spanish and Portuguese) from Washington University in St Louis, MO. His research on Latin American intellectual history, literature, cinema, and theatre has been published in journals such as Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, Latin American Theatre Review, and Hispanic Review. His book La modernidad refractada: pensamiento, creación y resistencia en la historia intelectual de Argentina, Brasil y Uruguay (1900-1935) was published in 2019 by Editorial Cuarto Propio (Santiago de Chile). The book shows how Latin American intellectuals of this crucial period managed to rethink their relationship with authoritarian or liberal state policies and reclaim contested spaces in the struggle for political and cultural power. Dr. Aguiar Malosetti’s current research project has been selected to participate in the 2020 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar titled “The Making of Modern Brazil.” His research project, deals with literature, films, and music representing urban spaces security, surveillance, and pacification are designed to enforce segregation in public places.

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DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

Dr. Susan Schneider comes to the FAU Philosophy Department as the William F. Dietrich Distinguished Professor of Philosophy of Mind. She received her Ph.D. in philosophy from Rutgers University. Prior to coming to Florida Atlantic University, Dr. Schneider held a number of distinguished positions.  She was the NASA-Baruch Blumberg Chair at the Library of Congress and NASA, the Distinguished Scholar Chair at the Library of Congress, and the Director of the AI, Mind and Society ("AIMS") Group at the University of Connecticut, where she was also Professor of philosophy and cognitive science.

Dr. Schneider writes about the nature of the self and mind, especially from the vantage point of philosophy, AI, cognitive science, and astrobiology.  Within philosophy, she has explored the computational nature of the brain in her academic book, The Language of Thought: A New Direction.  In her new book, Artificial You: AI and the Future of the Mind, she brings these topics together in an accessible way, discussing the philosophical implications of AI and, in particular, the enterprise of "mind design."

Dr. Schneider appears frequently on television networks like PBS and The History Channel, as well as in keynote addresses at AI ethics conferences and at universities such as Harvard and Cambridge.  She also writes opinion pieces for The New York Times, Scientific American, and the Financial Times. Dr. Schneider is currently working on a new book on the shape of intelligent systems, to be published by W.W. Norton in the United States and by Oxford University Press in the United Kingdom.

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Dr. Justin Bernstein comes to the FAU Philosophy Department as an Assistant Professor. He is a philosopher and a bioethicist and he previously served as a Fellow at Johns Hopkins’ Berman Institute of Bioethics. His research in philosophy focuses on topics at the intersection of moral and political philosophy, especially on the legitimacy of political institutions and of actions by government actors. His work in bioethics addresses problems in public health ethics, especially issues concerning infectious disease and dietary patterns. His published work appears in Lancet Digital Health; Vaccine;  Ethics (forthcoming); Journal of Medical Ethics; Public Health Ethics (forthcoming); The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (forthcoming), The Journal of Value Enquiry; Ethics, Policy, and Environment (forthcoming); and The New York Times. 

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DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC

 

Dr. Andrés Espinoza Agurto comes to the FAU Music Department as an Assistant Professor. He has been playing percussion since he was 8 years old. He studied Afro-Cuban percussion at the Escuela Nacional de Arte (ENA) in La Habana, Cuba, graduated summa cum laude from Berklee College of Music, receiving a BM in Jazz Composition, and holds an MA in Jazz studies and Ethnomusicology from the University of York (England). He received his Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from Boston University in 2014. His upcoming book is titled Una Sola Casa: Salsa Consciente and the Poetics of the Meta-barrio, and analyzes the impact of Salsa music as a forging element of social and political identity within Latino and Latin American communities. Other research interests include the application of ethnomusicology to jazz performance and composition, Afro-Latino music, modern art music, and Spanish language rap. He is also the composer, musical director, and percussionist of the Andres Espinoza World Jazz Ensemble, the Andres Espinoza Octet, and the Latin fusion sextet Los Songos Jalapeños. He has performed and taught in many countries around the world, including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Cuba, England, Italy, Mexico, Peru, and the United States. Before coming to FAU, he was assistant professor of music at The University of La Verne, and has been a faculty member at Roxbury Community College, Boston University, Emmanuel college, and the University of Maine system.