Executive Committee

Stacey Balkan (CLL Committee)

Stacey Balkan is an Associate Professor of Environmental Literature and Humanities and Program Coordinator for the Undergraduate Minor in Environment and Society and Graduate Certificate in Environmental Studies. Dr. Balkan’s teaching and research focus on Environmental Literature(s), Ecocriticism, Environmental/Energy Humanities, Postcolonial Studies, and Anglophone World Literatures; and she teaches several undergraduate and graduate seminars, including Literature and the Environment, Anglophone World Literatures, Postcolonial Environments, and  Climate Fictions.

Dr. Balkan received her Ph.D. in English from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY); and she is the author, most recently, of  Rogues in the Postcolony: Narrating Extraction and Itinerancy in India  (West Virginia UP, 2022) and the co-editor of  Oil Fictions: World Literature and our Contemporary Petrosphere  (Penn State UP, 2021). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous collected volumes and journals including the  Routledge Companion to Literature and Environment,  ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment,  Revue Études Anglaises, and  The Global South.

Associate Professor of English & Environmental Humanities
sbalkan@fau.edu 

Eric Berlatsky (DAA Committee) Eric Berlatsky is the author of The Real, The True, and The Told: Postmodern Historical Narrative And The Ethics of Representation (The Ohio State University Press, 2011) and the editor of Alan Moore: Con versations (University Press of Mississippi, 2012). The Real, The True, and The Told explores the intersections of postmodern theory, narrative theory, historiographic theory, and con temporary fiction. Articles on similar topics preceded the book. Alan Moore: Con versations is a collection of interviews with the co-creator of Watchmen, V for Vendetta, From Hell, and Lost Girls. Ber l atsky is slowly working on a critical volume devoted to Moore's work. He has also recently published articles on Watchmen, Posy Simmonds' Gemma Bovery , Hanif Kureishi's The Black Album, and early Superman comics. He teaches twentieth century British literature, literary theory, postcolonial literature, postmodern literature, and comics.  

Professor of English  
Associate Dean of Graduate Studies  
561-297-0928  
eberlats@fau.edu    

Ann Branaman (CSP Committee) Ann Branaman's research focuses on identity processes in 'emerging adulthood', a term other scholars have used to refer to a developmental phase between adolescence and adulthood. Drawing upon her background in social theory, Branaman analyzes how the experience of 'growing up' has changed as a con sequence of broader changes in society, culture and political e con omy. This research involves intensive interviewing and analysis of autobiographical narratives of young, middle-aged and older adults from varied social backgrounds. Branaman's research of the past two decades has covered a broad range of topics in social theory, including: the social theory of Erving Goffman and Kenneth Burke; psychoanalytical social theory; interaction and inequality; emotions and human rights; feminist social theories of identity; Zygmunt Bauman's theory of gender and sexualities in 'liquid modernity' .    

Professor and Chair  
Department of Sociology  
561-297-0261  
branaman@fau.edu  

Joseph Choma (DAA Committee)

Joseph Choma is Director of the School of Architecture, the  Foldable Structures & Materials Lab  and Professor of Architecture at Florida Atlantic University.

Joseph is also the Founder and Director of the Design Topology Lab, an interdisciplinary practice which conducts design research and provides consultation relating to material innovation, unconventional means and methods of construction, and the role of geometry in the built environment. Current topics of exploration include: foldable structures and materials, lightweight deployable shelters, ultra-thin formwork for concrete casting, stay-in-place formwork for shell structures and concrete slabs, and advancements in natural fiber textiles. As a researcher, he uses mathematics, folding, structure and materials as generative design devices to imagine new ways to design and build more sustainably.  

DIRECTOR, PROFESSOR & DIRECTOR OF FOLDABLE STRUCTURES & MATERIALS LAB
School of Architecture
jchoma@fau.edu
(954) 762-5111 

Frédéric Conrod (CLL Committee) Dr. Frédéric Conrod is Professor of Comparative Literature at Florida Atlantic University. His research focuses on transatlantic connections between French, Spanish, and Latin American literatures, withparticular attention to philosophy, mysticism, and cultural psychology. He has published extensively ontransatlantic narratives, exploring questions of identity, language, and cross-cultural exchange. His current projects bridge the humanities and environmental studies by examining how French and Spanish transatlantic literatures engage with the cultural imagination of the ocean.

Associate Professor  
Department of Languages, Linguistics and Comparative Literature   
561-297-3313   
fconrod@fau.edu  

Veronique Cote (DAA Committee)

Véronique Côté was appointed Galleries Director at Florida Atlantic University in August 2022. She holds an MA in Museum Studies and Nonprofit Management from Harvard University, an MFA in Visual Studies from the University at Buffalo SUNY, a Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Arts from the University of Quebec in Chicoutimi, and a Collegiate Diploma in Sciences, Letters and Arts from the College de Jonquiere. With a strong interdisciplinary background, Côté is dedicated to fostering artistic expression and innovative educational approaches. Her curatorial vision encourages collaboration across the Humanities, Natural Sciences, History, and Art, emphasizing the power of visual storytelling. She integrates emerging technologies into museum studies, exploring digital tools and interactive platforms to enhance learning and engagement.

Before joining FAU, she served as the Executive Director & Chief Curator at the Center for Exploratory & Perceptual Arts in Buffalo, NY. She also worked at the Pérez Art Museum Miami, where she developed the Citi Foundation Leadership Training and Internship Curriculum, reinforcing her commitment to mentorship and professional development in the arts. In 2025, she was named one of ten Propel Fellows by the international Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC)

Galleries Director
561-297-2661
vcote@fau.edu

Andres Espinoza (DAA Committee)

Dr. Espinoza Agurto 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 degree in Jazz Composition, and holds an MA in Jazz studies and Ethnomusicology from the University of York (England). He received his Ph.D. in Musicology/Ethnomusicology from Boston University in 2014. His upcoming book is titled Salsa Consciente: Poetics, Politics and Latinidad in 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. 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 is also a consecrated drummer in the lineage of Añá Ilu Kan and is currently conducting his research on the lineage, performance practice, and aesthetics of Afro- Cuban batá drummers and drumming.

Associate Professor
Email:  espinozaa@fau.edu
Office Phone: 561.297.2045

Emily Fenichel (DAA Committee) Emily Fenichel received her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. Dr. Fenichel’s research focuses on the interaction of art and religion in the Renaissance, particularly in the art of Michelangelo. Her essays have appeared in Renaissance Quarterly, Source: Notes on the History of Art, and Artibus et Historiae. She is currently completing a book manuscript on Michelangelo’s late sculpture, poetry, drawing and collaborations. This project examines these works as reactions to con temporary criticism of the artist’s Last Judgment fresco in the Sistine Chapel (1541) and against the backdrop of Counter-Reformation Rome. Dr. Fenichel is also the Co-Director of a Digital Humanities initiative entitled the The Arquin Slide Collection Digitization Project. This project aims to create an interactive, searchable database of FAU’s collection of Florence Arquin’s 25,000 slides of Central and South America, which were a product of Arquin’s employment by the State Department and her research on Diego Rivera.

Assistant Professor  
Department of Visual Arts & Art History  
efenichel@fau.edu  

Desmond Gallant (DAA Committee) Desmond Gallant is an Associate Professor in Theatre in the Department of Theatre and Dance at Florida Atlantic University where he teaches acting, directing, and script analysis. Prior to arriving at FAU, he was the Literary Manager at the critically acclaimed South Florida theatre company, Florida Stage. He has an MFA in Directing and a BFA in Acting. During his career, Desmond has directed over fifty productions including, most recently, The Lady from the Sea by Henrik Ibsen, The Wolves by Sarah Delappe, and 1776 by Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone. He has written several plays including Billing the NRA which received a reading at the New Play Festival at Theatre Lab, the resident professional company at FAU, and is hard at work on a new play about the geologist and oceanographic cartographer, Marie Tharp. Des has acted in many productions including, most recently, Be Here Now by Deborah Zoe Laufer for which he received a Carbonell Award nomination for Best Actor and The Glass Piano by Alix Sobler, both also at Theatre Lab.


Associate Professor
Email: dgallant@fau.edu

Adriana Garriga-Lopez (CSP Committee)

Dr. Adriana Garriga-López is a cultural anthropologist and Caribbeanist originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico. Her research examines how people in the Caribbean respond and adapt to non-ideal ecologies in the anthropocene. She's driven by a humanistic interest in the imbrication of public health and decolonization. Adriana holds a Ph.D in anthropology from Columbia University (2010).

Associate Professor
Email: agarrigalopez@fau.edu 

Taylor Hagood (CLL Committee) Dr. Tay lor Hagood teaches American literature, with specialization in the writing of William Faulkner, African American literature, and the literature and culture of the United States South. His s cho larship examines literary and cultural production with an approach informed by postcolonial theory, theorizing of social interaction via secrecy as a cultural item, and disability studies. He has written Faulkner's Imperialism: Space, Place, and the Materiality of Myth (2008); Secrecy, Magic, and the One-Act Plays of Harlem Renaissance Women Writers (2010); and Faulkner: Writer of Disability (2015). He also edited the recently published Critical Insights: The Sound and the Fury (2014). Additionally, he has published articles and reviews in numerous journals, including African American Review, College Literature, European Journal of American Culture, Faulkner Journal, Literature Compass, Southern Literary Journal, Studies in Popular Culture, and Walt Whitman Quarterly Review. After receiving a Fulbright fellowship to Germany in 2012, Dr. Hagood was selected to serve as a research ambassador for the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) for 2013-14. DAAD is the German national agency for the support of international academic cooperation.  

Professor  
Department of English   
561-297-2306   
thagood@fau.edu  

Douglas Kanter (CSP Committee)

Douglas Kanter, Chair of the Department of History, specializes in the histories of modern Britain and Ireland, with an emphasis on Anglo-Irish relations in the nineteenth century. He is the author of  The Making of British Unionism, 1740-1848: Politics, Government and the Anglo-Irish Constitutional Relationship  (2009) and co-editor of  Taxation, Politics, and Protest in Ireland, 1662-2016  (2019). Dr. Kanter has also contributed a chapter to the  Cambridge History of Ireland  (2018), written biographical entries for  The History of Parliament  and the  Dictionary of Irish Biography, and published articles in such leading scholarly journals as  The English Historical Review, Irish Historical Studies, and  The   Historical Journal.  A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, his research has been supported by the American Philosophical Society, the Huntington Library, and Gladstone's Library.

Dr. Kanter is currently completing a book on the Irish policy of the Victorian Prime Minister, William Gladstone.  His other research interests include Irish fiscal, electoral, and parliamentary politics during the "long" nineteenth century.

Before coming to Florida Atlantic University, Dr. Kanter received his B.A. from Northwestern University (1997), and his M.A. (1999) and Ph.D. (2006) from the University of Chicago.

Associate Professor and Chair
Email:  dkanter1@fau.edu
Office Phone:  561-297-3841

Viktor Kharlamov (CLL Committee)

Dr. Viktor Kharlamov is an Associate Professor of Linguistics and the Director of Graduate Studies in Languages, Linguistics, and Comparative Literature.

Dr. Kharlamov's Ph.D. degree in Linguistics is from the University of Ottawa, Canada. His primary area of expertise is experimental linguistics, including acoustic and articulatory phonetics, laboratory phonology, and psycholinguistics. In the Department of Languages, Linguistics, and Comparative Literature, Dr. Kharlamov directs experimental research in linguistics and teaches a wide range of undergraduate and graduate courses in general linguistics, phonetics, phonology, psycholinguistics, and research methods.

Associate Professor of Linguistics
Email: vkharlamov@fau.edu

Dukhong Kim (CSP Committee) Professor Kim received his doctoral degree from Northwestern University. His main research and teaching areas include political behavior, public opinion, minority politics, the presidency, political psychology, and methods. He coauthored and published an article in the American Political Science Review .

Associate Professor
Phone: 561-297-3216
Email:  dkim4@fau.edu

Karen Leader (DAA Committee) Karen Leader is Associate Professor of Art History, and Faculty Associate in the Center for Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Florida Atlantic University .   She received her BA from the University of California, Ber keley and her MA and Ph.D. at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Her areas of interest include art and popular culture in the 19th and 20th centuries, feminist theory, and the history and future of the discipline of Art History. She has also recently produced a film, Stories on the Skin: Tattoo Culture at FAU.   

Associate Professor   
Department of Visual Arts & Art History  
561-297-3196  
kleader@fau.edu  

Steven Roper (CSP Committee)

Lotus Seeley (CSP Committee)

Dr. J. Lotus Seeley joined the department of Sociology at Florida Atlantic University as an Assistant Professor in Fall 2016. She has a Master’s in Women’s Studies from The Ohio State University (2007) and a PhD in Women’s Studies and Sociology from University of Michigan (2016). Her work focuses on gender, work, and organizations, with an emphasis on the mundane interactional processes through which identities and social statuses are (re)produced. Key research interests are feminist theory, economic sociology, sociology of gender and sexuality, the sociology of emotions, and microsociology. She is a qualitative researcher who engages in both ethnography and unstructured interviewing. Generally, her research emphasizes how gender is socially-constructed, organizationally-structured, performative, and generative of social inequality. She has examined experiences of women and men administrative professionals and IT support workers, focusing on how organizations structure their performances of gender and status.

At FAU, Dr. Seeley teaches classes on sociological theory, qualitative research methods, gender and society, gender and work, sociology of work, and microsociology. As an instructor in sociology, her goal is to teach students how to benefit from applying their sociological imaginations to their own lives and immediate circumstances. Her mission is to help students understand how macro-level forces structure their lives so that they can develop more useful ways of looking at the world than the individualism that dominates our culture.

Associate Professor of Sociology and Graduate Program Director
Phone: (561) 297-3270
Email:  seeleyj@fau.edu
Office: CU 261/Boca Campus

Ilaria Serra (CLL Committee)

Richard Shusterman (DAA Committee) Because of his unique expertise and reputation in the disciplines emphasized in the Design, Aesthetics, and the Arts track, Richard Shusterman has been named Academic Program Head. Dr. Shusterman is currently the  Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters’ Eminent Scholar in the Humanities . Educated in Jerusalem and at Oxford University, he was chair of the Temple University Philosophy Department before coming to FAU in 2005. He has held academic posts in Paris, Berlin, and Hiroshima and has won Fulbright and NEH Fellowships. He is widely known as the creator of the field of somaesthetics in philosophy and has published widely and influentially in many fields including philosophy, aesthetics, culture, language, identity and embodiment. His most recent book is Ars Erotica: Sex and Somaesthetics in the Classical Arts of Love (Cambridge, 2022). Previous widely-translated books include TS Eliot and the Philosophy of Criticism (Columbia), Practicing Philosophy (Routledge), Performing Live (Cornell), Surface and Depth (Cornell), Pragmatist Aesthetics (Blackwell), and Body Consciousness (Cambridge). He has also published essays in The Nation, The Chronicle of Higher Education and various art reviews and catalogues. He directs the FAU Center for Body, Mind, and Culture, which delivers a Colloquia series each year. His presence at FAU, and support for the DAA track, is made possible, in part, by the Barbara Schmidt Family Foundation.

Academic Head DAA Program
Email: shuster1@fau.edu

Gerald Sim (CLL Committee)

Gerald Sim’s research and teaching is grounded in theoretically informed film and media studies. His writing appears in  Television & New Media,  Convergence,  positions,  Discourse,  Rethinking Marxism,  Projections,  Quarterly Review of Film and Video,  Inter-Asia Cultural Studies,  Asian Cinema, and  Film Quarterly. They include essays about data Platonism in  Moneyball, Netflix’s data operations and its place in media history, CNBC personality Jim Cramer’s Marxist investment advice, Edward Said’s influence on film studies, film music theory, and cinema’s transition to digital cinematography.
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Professor Sim's new book,  Screening Big Data: Films that Shape Our Algorithmic Literacy   , examines the influence of key films on public understandings of AI and the algorithmic systems that structure our digitally mediated lives. Foregrounding technopolitics with close readings of films like  Moneyball,  Minority Report,  The Social Dilemma, and  Coded Bias, he reveals compelling ways in which films and tech industry–adjacent media define apprehension of AI. His current research springs from some of  Screening Big Data’s findings: studies of how techno-Orientalism frames the US-China AI arms race, and of AI’s incursion into media industries.

Sim’s second monograph,  Postcolonial Hangups in Southeast Asian Cinema: Poetics of Space, Sound, and Stability   (2020) inaugurated the Critical Asian Cinemas series at Amsterdam University Press. The book reveals how the region’s unique postcoloniality manifests stylistically in films, including the way that Singapore's spatial preoccupations fashion a cartographic cinema, the import of Malay aural culture in the films of Yasmin Ahmad, and the persistence of stability discourse within the Indonesian investment in genre. The project was supported by two Visiting Senior Research Fellowships at the Asia Research Institute, and the  Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Distinguished Fellowship on Contemporary Southeast Asia. Sim’s first book,  The Subject of Film and Race: Retheorizing Politics, Ideology, and Cinema   (Bloomsbury Academic) was published in 2014.


Professor School of Communication and Multimedia Studies
Email: gsim@fau.edu

Yanai Toister (DAA Committee)

Yanai Toister (Ph.D.) is an artist, writer and educator serving as associate professor at the Multidisciplinary Art school and the Unit for History and Philosophy. He was the director of the Unit for History and Philosophy between 2017-2022 and is currently Dean of International programs at Shenkar.

Toister’s artworks have been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions (including Sandroni.Rey, Los Angeles; Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv; Kunstahalle Luzern, Switzerland; Bolsky Gallery, Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles; Maison Europèenne de la Photographie, Paris; the 11th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale; Kunstmuseen Krefeld, Haus Lange, Krefeld, Germany; Israel Museum).

Toister’s writing has been published in various books and journals (including: Digital Creativity; Flusser Studies; Journal of Science and Technology of the Arts; Mafte’akh Lexical Review of Political Thought; Philosophy of Photography; Photographies; Ubiquity). Toister’s book Photography from the Turin Shroud to the Turing Machine has recently been published by Intellect/University of Chicago Press. 

Professor Shenkar University
Email: yanaitoister@shenkar.ac.il

Kevin Wagner (CSP Committee)

Kevin Wagner received his J.D. from the University of Florida and worked as an attorney and member of the Florida Bar with the law firm of Scott, Harris, Bryan, Barra, and Jorgensen in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. He returned to the University of Florida five years later to earn an M.A. and Ph.D in political science.

Dr. Wagner has lectured extensively on American Politics and has been cited in many leading newspapers including the New York Times, Boston Globe, New York Newsday, the Dallas Morning News, and the Miami Herald.  He has been featured as the political analyst for CBS 12 in West Palm Beach and on national television including NBC’s “The Today Show.”

His work has been published in leading journals and law reviews including American Review of Politics, Journal of Legislative Studies, and Politics and Policy.

Dr. Wagner has presented at national conferences including the American Political Science Association, the Southern Political Science Association and the Midwest Political Science Association. His recent work focuses on the affects of technology on politics and campaigning and is currently completing a book with Roman and Littlefield Press entitled "Click and Reboot: How the Internet is Revolutionizing American Politics." His other research focuses in the areas of American Institutions, American Political Development, Judicial Politics,  Political Behavior, and Research Methods.

Professor and Associate Dean
Email:  kwagne15@fau.edu