African & Black Studies Faculty
Minor Coordinator
Robin L. Turner is an Associate Professor of Political Science, Chair of the Department of Political Science, Director of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program, and Coordinator of the African and Black Studies Minor at Butler University in the US A and an honorary research associate of the Society, Work, and Politics Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. Co-founder of Black Women Writing African Politics and Women of Color in Comparative Politics, Dr. Turner also served as the founding director of the Social Justice and Diversity Butler University Core Curriculum requirement from 2017 to 2019. She earned a master’s degree and doctorate in political science at the University of California, Berkeley and a masters degree in social science (African politics) from the University of Cape Town (South Africa). Her research, writing, and teaching span multiple fields, including political science, gender studies, African studies, development studies, tourism studies, political ecology, and geography.
Dr. Turner’s research focuses principally on how public policies shape rural political economies, influence identities, and affect people’s behavior in southern Africa. She uses interviews, ethnography, and archival research to examine the interplay between state policies and local practices over time and to look closely at how past and present ways of structuring property and authority shape local political economies and influence constructions of identity. She has published on topics ranging from the politics of tradition; dispossession, property, and nature tourism; and field research to decolonial pedagogy in journals including Africa Spectrum, Development and Change, Journal of Modern African Studies, Peacebuilding, and Qualitative and Multi-Method Research.
Dr. Turner teaches courses that help students better understand the perspectives, experiences, and political strategies of historically marginalized people in Africa, the United States, and elsewhere in the world. Her courses contribute to the political science major and minor, to the core curriculum, and to several interdisciplinary programs She led the the development of a new Global and Historical Studies course centered on the question, “What is Freedom,” with grant support from the National Endowment for the Humanities,
Her recent course offerings include:
GHS 206-SJD Resistance and Reaction: Resistance and Reaction: Colonialism and Post-Colonialism in Africa
GHS 210-SJD Freedom and Movement in the Transatlantic World
PO 151 Introduction to Comparative Politics
PO 350 African Politics
PO 351-SJD Politics of Gender & Sexuality in Africa
PO 352 Comparative Political Economy
PO 354-SJD Environmental Justice
PO 490 Senior Seminar on Women and Politics across the World
SW 245-PO Politics from the Margins
Faculty
Dr. Fletcher is the Frances Shera Fessler Assistant Professor of History. She holds a Ph.D. in History from Indiana University.
Before entering the academy, Charlene led a domestic violence/sexual assault program and a significant prison reentry initiative in New York City, assisting women and men in their transition from incarceration to society, and served as a lecturer of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York. Charlene’s forthcoming book Confined Femininity: Race, Gender, and Incarceration in Kentucky, 1865-1920, explores the experiences of confined African American women in Kentucky from Reconstruction to the Progressive Era, explicitly illuminating the lives of confined Black women by examining places other than carceral locales as arenas of confinement, including mental health institutions and domestic spaces. Charlene’s newest research project is rooted in her grandmother’s memories, takes a transnational approach to race and confinement in the American South, and builds on Charlene’s interest in Italian history. The project, Down in the Delta: Race Relations between African and Italian Americans in Mississippi, 1880-1940 explores Italian migration and experiences in the Mississippi Delta between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. It interrogates the Italian padrone system as a form of confinement and examines relationships between Italians and African Americans because of their shared proximity and experience in the rural Jim Crow South.
In addition to her research, Dr. Fletcher is a Community Scholar at the Center for Africana Studies and Culture at Indiana University Indianapolis. She also serves on the editorial boards of The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society and the North Meridian Review. She is an elected member of the National Council of Public History (NCPH) Board of Directors.
To learn more about Charlene and her work, visit www.charlenejfletcher.com
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology & Criminology at Butler University. I am a socio-legal scholar exploring how legal, political, and social actors influence global and local institutions and organizations, producing social change or reproducing structural inequalities. Globally, I study how lawyers shape trade regimes between countries, which has contributed to today’s climate crisis. Locally, I analyze the mobilization against and governance of climate change in Brazil’s Amazon, where I was born and raised. My work has appeared in World Development, Sociology of Development, Law & Social Inquiry, University of Illinois Law Review, University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, and Cambridge University Press.
After moving from Brazil to the U.S., I earned my LL.M. and Ph.D. degrees from Indiana University Bloomington. In 2022-2023, I was a Visiting Fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame. At IU-Bloomington, I remain affiliated with the Center for the Analysis of Social-Ecological Landscapes and the Maurer School of Law’s Stewart Center on the Global Legal Profession. I am currently co-editing a special issue of the Law & Society Review on Law in a Changing Climate.
You can find more information about Vitor at vitormartinsdias.github.io.
Fait Muedini is a faculty member in the Department of International Studies at Butler University. He is also a Fellow at the Desmond Tutu Center for Peace, Reconciliation, and Global Justice at the Christian Theological Seminary and Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana.
He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University at Buffalo, SUNY, an M.A. in International Affairs from the American University School of International Service, and a B.A. in Political Science from Wayne State University. His teaching and research interests are centered primarily on issues of human rights, Islam and politics, and the politics of the Middle East and North Africa.
Dr. Muedini is the author of two books: Sponsoring Sufism: How Governments Promote "Mystical Islam" in their Domestic and Foreign Policies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), and Human Rights and Universal Child Primary Education (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). He has also published peer-reviewed articles in PS: Political Science and Politics, Oxford Handbooks Online, The Muslim World, and The Muslim World Journal of Human Rights, along with other publication outlets.
His public speaking has included talks and presentations at different universities and conferences, as well as the Foreign Policy Association’s Great Decision Series in Indianapolis.
Dr. Muedini has also published opinions in popular press outlets such as Foreign Affairs.
In addition, Dr. Muedini founded and runs the website www.internationalrelations.org.
Corey Reed is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and steering committee member in the Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (RGSS) program at Butler University. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Morehouse College, double majoring in English and Philosophy, his Master of Arts degree from the University of Louisville in Comparative Humanities, and his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Memphis with a graduate certificate in Women and Gender Studies. His dissertation was entitled “Black-Male Imagos and Counternarrative Resistance: An Africana Existentialist Framework for Black-Male Analysis.” He specializes in Africana Philosophy and the Critical Philosophy of Race and Racism, with sub-interests in Existentialism, Phenomenology, Feminism/Male Theory, 20th Century French Continental Philosophy, and Aesthetics. Reed is one of three Co-Directors for the Hub of Black Affairs and Community Engagement.
More information can be found at https://www.coreynreed.com/
Dr. Rolfsen is a historian of nineteenth and twentieth century West Africa. Her scholarship focuses on histories of colonialism, religion, development, and humanitarianism. She received her PhD in history from Indiana University in 2024 with a minor in Gender Studies.
Dr. Rolfsen’s current research is on the history of giving in Senegal from the late nineteenth century into the 1970s. Her research analyzes the history of Islamic charity including zakat (assaka in Wolof), and haddiya (Arabic for “gift” that references donations made to Muslim leaders) in Senegalese society. She also focuses on collections of donations to undertake the hajj and build mosques. She combines an analysis of Islamic charity with the history of social assistance provided by the colonial state, missionaries and the French Red Cross. In bringing together the charitable practices of French colonists and Senegalese Muslims she focuses on how the “act of giving” unites the practices.
The project uses ethnographic interviews and archival research combining methodologies from history and anthropology. Dr. Rolfsen is currently working on an article stemming from this research about Senegalese donations to France during World War II. Her research has been supported by a Fulbright- Hays Fellowship, a Charlotte Newcombe Doctoral Fellowship, and a Debra Mesch Doctoral Fellowship. At Indiana University, the Department of History, African Studies Program and Islamic Studies Program also supported her work.
In addition to her historical work, Dr. Rolfsen is also excited about learning African languages. She speaks Wolof and has studied both Sereer and Pulaar. She is currently working on a co-authored textbook, for the teaching and learning of Sereer in American universities, with Abdourahmane Sarr. The textbook will be published by the National African Language Resource Press (NARLC) at Indiana University.
At Butler University, Dr. Rolfsen teaches courses on African history and Global history including:
GHS 206: Resistance and Reaction: Colonialism and Postcolonialism in Africa
GHS 207: Resistance and Rights: Global Women
HST 205: African Environmental History
HST 305: Humanitarianism and Development in African History
Julie Johnson Searcy is a medical anthropologist who investigates reproduction and maternal health. Her work looks at the intersection of disease, birth and race in the United States and South Africa. She is currently working on an ethnographic book about the role doulas play in reimagining birth and addressing maternal inequities. In her applied work, she works with local doula groups on key issues for birth, postpartum and maternal health, including Medicaid policy that would reimburse doulas for attending births. Julie’s research has been supported by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Fulbright-Hays, Wilma Gibbs Moore Fellowship, and Indiana University and Butler University.
Teigha VanHester aka Dr. V (she/they) is a fierce intellectual; pleasure activist; joyful griot; SoCal native; proud Black, Polynesian femme; proud Cancer; and assistant professor of Race, Gender and Sexuality studies at Butler University. Dr. V’s community-based scholar-activist cultivates an understanding of sovereignty as a literacy, human right, and key component of survival. This work is mainly done through theorizing ecologies of Black femme intellectual ancestry, cultural rhetoric, and antecedent knowledge creation, and grassroots activism. They work to situate joy, rest, creativity, and pleasure as imperative strategies to liberation..
Dr. V has presented at several conferences, including the Cultural Rhetoric Conference, the Conference for College Composition and Communication, Community Writing Conference, and the National Women’s Studies Association Conference. They have been a Coalition for Community Writing writer-in-residence and a recipient of the CCW’s Emerging Scholars Award, a recipient of the Conference on College Composition and Communication’s Scholars for the Dream Travel Award and a NAFSA RISE (Representation, Inclusion, Support, and Empowerment) Fellow, and an Indiana Humanities Wilma Gibbs Fellow. Dr. V was the first Forum Editorial Fellow and has served as a peer reviewer for the journal Emerging Voices in Education. Their work has been featured in Race and Yoga; Rhetoric, Politics, and Culture; Community Literacy Journal and Women’s Studies Quarterly. In addition to scholastic work, they loves cave and shipwreck diving, Beyonce, horror films, professional wrestling, the Chicago Blackhawks, Texas BBQ, spades and visiting as many of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants as possible.
Current Research Projects:
- Undercurrents of Resistance
- Wayfinding as Liberation
- Queerness in Professional Wrestling
- Megan thee Stallion
- Identifying Rituals in the Borderlands
Expertise:
- Cultural Rhetorical Theory
- Decolonization and Resistance
- Community Literacies
- Intersectionality/Assemblage
- Black Feminist Ecologies
Fall 2024 Office Hours provided
