Faculty & Staff
Department Chair
Tom Mould teaches and conducts research in the areas of folklore, language and culture, American Indian studies, oral narrative, religious and sacred narrative, contemporary legend, identity, ethnography, genre, and performance theory. He is the author of the books ChoctawProphecy: A Legacy of the Future (2003), Choctaw Tales (2004), Still, the Small Voice: Revelation, Personal Narrative and the Mormon Folk Tradition (2011), and Overthrowing the Queen: Telling Stories of Welfare in America (2020), which won the Chicago Folklore Prize and the Brian McConnell Book Award from the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research. He is currently working on a second edition of Choctaw Tales, and two new books: Choctaw Traditions: Stories of the Life and Customs of the Mississippi Choctaw, and Folklore in the Public Square: How the Study of Traditional Culture Can Solve Contemporary Social Issues.
Before coming to Butler in 2019, Tom was the J.Earl Danieley Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Folklore at Elon University where he taught for 18 years and served in various roles including Director of the Honors Program and Chair of the Sociology and Anthropology Department.
Faculty & Staff
Biography
Dr. Bungard hails from the Buckeye State, having earned a BA from Denison University in Granville, Ohio before moving westwards down I-70 to Ohio State University where he earned both an MA and a PhD. He has continued his travel westwards down I-70, landing here at Butler University, where he has taught since 2008.
Areas of Research
Dr. Bungard’s research looks broadly at humor and theatre from the ancient world. He has published on laughter in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes as well as several articles in English and Italian on the role of clever slaves in the comedies of the 2nd century BCE playwright Plautus. He is also interested in the ways that ancient theatre continues to speak to the modern world whether in the classroom or the enduring themes of Medea’s story, connecting her experience with music in the modern world.
Dr. Bungard has also turned his hand to translating various plays of Plautus. His translation of Truculentus has been performed by an all-female cast at Butler as well as an international cast in Toronto.
Dr. Bungard’s interest in humor stems from humor’s ability to encourage us to think about gaps in a world that we may think is perfectly whole. Humor exposes our values and prejudices, and it allows us to find alternatives when discussions founder along the lines of beliefs that may seem ‘natural’ and ‘normal’.
Teaching Assignments
Dr. Bungard teaches intermediate and advanced Latin courses on authors as broad ranging as Caesar, Vergil, Seneca, and Plautus. He also teaches upper level courses in translation on Ancient Drama, Ancient Law, and Epic Poetry. A grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, led him to teach a First Year Seminar entitled "Why Is It Funny?".
In addition, Dr. Bungard regularly takes students to Rome and the Bay of Naples for summer study courses on Roman literature, exploring the intersections of texts and physical sites. As part of this course, students develop short digital stories imagining what it would have been like to live near Mt. Vesuvius on the fateful day of the eruption in 79 CE.
Biography
Rosina Eileen Catalan earned her BA in Classics from The Ohio State University in 1998 before earning her MA from John Carroll University in 2003. Professor Catalan moved to Indiana in 2006 to teach Latin full time at Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School. She has enjoyed her role as Adjunct Professor here at Butler University since 2015.
Professor Catalan focuses on the eastern edges and provinces of the Roman Empire and the transition out of Hellenism in Egypt. Whenever possible she investigates the spoilia of ancient buildings and their purposeful or accidental use in newer buildings. She received a Fulbright Scholarship for her study of the Architecture of the Turkokratia in Greece in 2008 under the American School of Classical Studies in Athens.
Teaching Assignments
Professor Catalan’s teaching assignments vary. She regularly teaches Intermediate or Advanced Greek. In the past she has enjoyed teaching Core classes like PCA 262 Greek Art and Myth and TI200 Roman Perspectives.
Background
Research
Teaching
Fall 2022
MW 1-2:15 HST 305 Vexing Women: Transnational Feminist Histories and Struggles, 1870-1940
MW 2:30-3:40 American Visions
Spring 2022
MW 1-2:15 American Visions
T/TH 1-2:15 Formation of Modern America
Fall 2021
MW 1-2:15 HST 342 US Workingwomen in the Modern City, 1870-1940
T Dolly Parton’s America: Gender, Region, & Culture
- Check out our Spotify playlist for our course read, Sarah Smarsh, She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs (2020)
My research interests include the history and culture of Japan, the anthropology of sport, the anthropology of science, gender studies, feminist theory, historical anthropology, mass/popular culture, theories of embodiment, urban anthropology, and visual culture. Most of my fieldwork has focused on cultures of sport in Japan and while I study and teach about all kinds of sport, football (soccer) is my ultimate passion. I continue to work on my primary project about soccer, corporate sport, the recession of the 1990s, and national identity in Japan, but have also written recently about the new professional women’s soccer league in Japan and the history of women’s professional soccer/football globally; I’m also interested in issues related to trans* athletes in Japan and the U.S.
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
Dr. Jeana Jorgensen earned her PhD in Folklore with a minor in Gender Studies from Indiana University. Her scholarship focuses on representations of gender and sexuality in fairy tales, ranging from canonical tales like those of the Grimms’ to contemporary fairy tales in film, fiction, and poetry. She has published nearly 30 academic articles and book chapters in journals such as the Journal of American Folklore, Marvels & Tales, Journal of Folklore Research, Cultural Analysis, and more. Other areas of scholarship include dance, body art, feminist and queer theory, the digital humanities, and the history of sex education.
Dr. Jorgensen also writes for more public audiences, with the 2021 publication of her book Folklore 101: An Accessible Introduction to Folklore Studies and over a decade of blogging at a variety of outlets. Fairy Tales 101: An Accessible Introduction to Fairy Tales followed in 2022, and Sex Education 101: Approachable Essays on Folklore, Culture, & History in 2023. She appears regularly on podcasts and YouTube shows to talk about her work with folklore and fairy tales as well as her research in gender studies, which ranges from topics such as ethical non-monogamy to moral panics around marginalized genders and sexualities. Her creative writing, from retold fairy tales in poetic form to flash fiction, can also be found scattered around obscure corners of the internet.
When not teaching, reading, researching, or writing, she also directs two dance troupes and bakes with her sourdough starter.
Lynne A. Kvapil, known by her students as Dr. K, is an archaeologist specializing in ancient Greece and Aegean Prehistory. Her research focuses on the Mycenaean Greeks, particularly farming, warfare, the manufacture of ceramics, and labor organization and management. As an active field archaeologist, Dr. K travels to Greece every summer, where she is the Assistant Director of the Nemea Center of Archaeology Excavations at the Mycenaean cemetery at Aidonia and the Petsas House Excavations at Mycenae. Dr. K has been awarded research funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Mediterranean Archaeological Trust to support her ongoing research on the Mycenaean Greeks, and she has been a part of a successful grant-writing team that has been awarded funding from the Archaeological Institute of America and the Loeb Foundation to support the excavations at Aidonia.
At Butler University, Dr. K teaches in all aspects of the ancient Mediterranean world, but most often she teaches about Ancient Greece, including Ancient Greek language courses, Ancient Greek Art and Myth, Ancient Greek Perspectives. She also teaches upper level courses in Ancient Greek and Roman Art and Architecture and Women in Antiquity. Dr. K is also a co-director of the Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and Classics (AMCA) lab, which won a 2015 Butler University Innovation Grant and which aims to help put the material culture of the ancient world into the modern classroom.
Dr. Nebiolo is a historian of the early Atlantic world. She studies the history of health and medicine, spatial history, and early modern urban history. In 2023, she received her PhD in world history from Northeastern University. Her work also encompasses the digital humanities, with a focus on maps, modeling, and pedagogy. Here at Butler, Dr. N teaches courses on the early colonial period, the history of medicine, and digital humanities.
Her current project, Constructing Health: Concepts of Well-Being in an Urbanizing Atlantic World, has been supported by the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, the American Philosophical Society, the South Caroliniana Library, Haverford College Quaker & Special Collections, the Huntington Library and Corpus Christi College at Oxford, the John Carter Brown Library, the American Historical Association, and the Francis Wood Institute at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.
In August 2024, Dr. N published a chapter on visualizing cities in the Age of Revolutions found in the volume, American Revolutions in the Digital Age (Cornell University Press).
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Dr. N is always excited to be on conference panels, participate in writing opportunities, and network with other scholars. Please don’t hesitate to reach out!
Born and raised in northern Connecticut, Thomas (Tom) Paradis obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Geography at the Pennsylvania State University (1992), and his Masters (1994) and Ph.D. (1997) degrees in Geography: Urban & Rural Development from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He continued moving west to Flagstaff, Arizona in 1997 as faculty at Northern Arizona University (NAU), where he was recognized in 2011 and 2014 as a President’s Distinguished Teaching Fellow. He further served as the Chair of the Department of Geography, Planning & Recreation and as the university’s Director of Academic Assessment. As a professor of geography and community planning here at Butler, he is also an affiliate faculty member in Butler’s Science, Technology & Environmental Studies (STES) program. Having originally majored in meteorology at Penn State, he ended up teaching weather and climate at the U. of Illinois and later at NAU. He therefore teaches an NW course for the Core Curriculum, Weather, Climate & Society (NW 265). Beyond the fun of academics, Tom enjoys traveling, photography, railroad history and modeling, playing basketball, and was once an avid trumpet player in high school and the Penn State Blue Band (Go State!).
Teaching and Scholarship
Tom’s areas of teaching and research encompass the topics of urban and cultural geography, downtown redevelopment, historic preservation, urban design, heritage tourism, Italy, the American Southwest, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and most recently, the Hunger Games series and franchise. He also offers a creative First-Year Seminar (FYS) course focused on Unpacking the Hunger Games, an interdisciplinary approach to understanding our world through Suzanne Collins’ dystopian series. Having led several study-abroad programs in Viterbo and Siena, Italy to explore livable cities and walkable design, Tom is the author of two books about Siena, including Living the Palio: A Story of Community and Public Life in Siena, Italy (3rd edition 2020), and Unbridled Spirit: The Untold Story of the 2018 Extraordinary Palio in Siena, Italy (Feb. 2020). He remains active in the Panther contrada (neighborhood) in Siena. Other books (some very recently) include the following:
The Illustrated Encyclopedia of American Landmarks (2012), A Place Called District 12: Appalachian Geography and Music in the Hunger Games (2022), Behind the Ballads: A Tribute to the People, Places, and Music of Sonbirds and Snakes (2024), and A Daughter of Singapore: Life Lessons of a Homegrown Tour Guide (2025).
Current and Upcoming Butler Courses
- FYS 101/102: Unpacking the Hunger Games, Part 1 (every fall/spring)
- NW 265-ENV: Weather, Climate & Society (every fall, summer)
- ENV 315: Designing for Livable Cities (fall 2025)
- HST 347: U.S. Urban History and Landscape (spring 2025)
- HST 359: Architecture History and Preservation (spring 2026)
- ENV 390 (Topics): Sustainable Community Planning (fall 2026)
- SW 205: Cultural Geography: Regions of the World (spring 2026)
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
Zachary Scarlett is an assistant professor of modern Chinese history. He works on Maoist politics and culture. His current manuscript project focuses on the Chinese Communist Party’s understanding of radical political movements in the 1960s. He is specifically interested in how the Communist Party and the Red Guards incorporated events like the civil rights movement, anti-Vietnam war protests, and other revolutionary activism into everyday political discourse. He conducted research for the project in Beijing from 2010 to 2011, which was supported by a Fulbright grant. Professor Scarlett is also broadly interested in the Global Sixties. He is the co-editor of The Third World in the Global 1960s, which examines radical social movements in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Outside of his research, Professor Scarlett teaches classes on modern China, East Asia, the Cold War, and environmental history. He received his Ph.D. from Northeastern University in 2013.
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.
Sholeh Shahrokhi is a professor of anthropology and of race gender sexuality studies, whose research and teaching focuses on an intersectional critique of power and explores cultural values that empower empathetic approach to diversity of human relations against systemic racism, sexism, and other technologies of exclusion. She received her PhD in Anthropology from University of California, Berkeley in 2008. In the same year, she began serving as a faculty in anthropology at Butler University in the Deaprtment of History, Anthropology & Classics, and across multiple interdisciplinary programs including, Race Gende Sexuality Studies, Global and Historical Studies, and International Studies.
Her scholarship takes an intersectional critique of power in everyday life practices, brining to focus intentional enactment of ethics of care in the face of human diversity and structural inequity. Her published work on anthropology of inclusions and visual culture include, a book chapter Iranian War Cinema: The Art of Remembering Pain (2012) that offers a gendered read of women in war cinema in the 1980’s and 1990’s, graphic novels and political change in Middle East and North Africa (2011), and a feminist reading of Farhadi’s cinematic repertoire (2012).
Additionally, she has published a number of articles on politics of the body as represented on screen in a global context (2009, 2015), and bodies in political protests in Iran (2010, 2016, 2024), art as protest (2012). Her research on the intersection of art-activism and asylum communities in Europe and in the US has led to publication of bookchapters and journal articles focused on border crossing art activism (2018, 2023), and photo albums as evocative articulation of memory and place-making among refugees and migrants (2024).
Selected published works:
I. Book Chapters
Between Lights and Shadows: Border Crossing and the Art of ‘Seeing’ and Being Seen (2024), in Entangled Histories of Art and Migration. Edited by Cathrine Bublatzky, Burcu Dogramaci, Kerstin Pinther and Mona Schieren. Intellect. Bristol, UK.
Gender and Sexuality: An Anthropological Approach (2017), in Ethnology, Ethnography and Cultural Anthropology, [Eds. Paolo Barbaro], in Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), Developed under the Auspices of the UNESCO, Eolss Publishers, Oxford, UK, [http://www.eolss.net]
Iranian War Cinema: The Art of RememberingPain, in the Iranian War Cinema: National Identity, Ethnic Diversity, and Gender Issues, (2012). Edited book by P. Khosronejad. S. K. Publishing, Oxford:UK.
Beyond “tragedy”: A Cultural Critique of SexTrafficking of Young Iranian Women, in Sex Trafficking, Human Rights, andSocial Justice, (2010). Edited volume by T. Zheng. Routledge, NY.
II. Articles:
Life jackets on shore: Anthropology, refugees, and the politics of belonging in Europe, in Anthropology of the Contemporary Middle East and Central Eurasia 4(2):11-33. (2018). Sean KingstonPublishing. Oxford: UK.
Body Aesthetics and Protest Art In Contemporary Iran (2014)
Adolescents’ perspective on addiction. Co-author
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1442-2018.2005.00237.x/full
III. Selected Conference Papers:
“Family Albums in Flux: Portraits of life and memory across borders.” Photo Albums Twisted Meaning: Between nostalgia and trauma. Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences and DOX – Center for Contemporary Art. Prague, Cz. (November 2021).
“Life in Fragments: Anthropology and Art Across the Border”. Hostile Terrain 94. Butler University. (October 2021).
“Crossing the Border: Anthropology, identity politics, and the role of Art.” A workshop organized by Zanan: Iranian Women in Northern California (April 2021).
“Art-Activism – an exercise in love: Stories from Iranian refugees living in Europe.” Didar VaGoftar Seminar: A critical inquiry special group of Iranians in Indiana. Zionsville, Indiana. (2019)
“Between Lights andShadows: The art of ‘seeing’ refugees.” European Association of SocialAnthropologists (EASA). Staying, Moving, and Settling conference. StockholmUniversity. Stockholm, Sweden. (2018).
“Living as Trans*: The experiences from fieldwork in Tehran, Iran.” Transgender Lives in GlobalPerspective: Trans Lives in Iran. Religion Seminar by the Center for Faith andVocation at Butler University and the Desmond Tutu Center at the ChristianTheological Seminary. (2016)
Engendering the Protester: Body politics and sexual representation of the Iranian protests (2012)
https://gws.as.uky.edu/engendering-protester-body-politics-and-sexual-representation-iranian-political-protest-dr-sholeh
Body Beautiful: Making the Figure of Women in Film, Contemplation on the Iranian New Wave Cinema of the Past Decade (2009)
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/92f6p1p8
Courses (Butler):
I. Core Courses in the Social World
SW 215 Being Human: An Introduction to Anthropology; Designated Social Justice Diversity (SJD)
SW 233 Political Islam in Paris
II. Core Courses in Global and Historical Studies
GHS207 Global Women: Rights and Resistance
Cross-listed: Race, Gender, Sexuality Studies(RGSS), (SJD)
GHS211 Modern Middle East and North Africa (RGSS & SJD)
II. Core Courses in Perspectives in the Creative Arts
PCA 215 Art Across Borders: Refugees in Political North
IV. Courses in Anthropology (Majors/Minors)
AN 311 Trespass: Anthropology of Power & Difference
Cross-listed: RGSS, International Studies (IS)
AN 315 Gender and Colonialism (RGSS)
AN 320 Gender and Sexuality Through Globalization (RGSS)
AN 326 Youth and Global Cinema (IS)
AN 328 Popular Culture: Michael Jackson (RGSS)
AN 340 Non-western Art: Ethnographic Art (RGSS, IS)
AN 345 Conflict Resolution Through Art (IS)
AN 352 Anthropological Method: Ethnography
AN 368 Coming of Age in the Middle East (IS)
AN 390 Anthropological Thought: Theory
I am a professor of Latin American History in the department of History and Anthropology, and affiliate faculty in Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (RGSS) and International Studies (IS). I am also currently the Director of Global and Historical Studies at Butler University.
I teach courses on a variety of subjects, but all deal in some way with the interplay of power, culture, identity formations and historical shifts.
My scholarship generally lands at the intersections of gender, space, and the history of the Americas. You can find my articles in The Americas, the Journal of Urban History, and the Journal of Transnational American Studies (among others). My first book titled Deco Body/Deco City: Spectacle and Modernity in Mexico City (University of Nebraska Press, 2016) looks at how new ideas about femininity and female bodies influenced urban reform in Mexico’s capital city in the 1920s and 1930s. My new project, Warrior Power: Dreaming, Drugs, Death and the Search for Alternate Spirituality in Mexico during the Sixties and Seventies (tentative title), focuses on the interplay between the books and appeal of Carlos Castaneda, the history of anthropology, New Age sensibilities, popular imaginings of Mexico, and indigenismo.
Emeriti Faculty
My interest in teaching centers on the historical cultural geography of the US, especially the Midwest. I also teach courses on the Civil War, US Urban History, the American Empire since 1945, the American Midwest, and World History. I also teach Cultural Geography: Regions of the World for the core curriculum. My publications focus on Indiana during the Civil War, especially politics, and also the Midwest as a culture region.
I teach modern European history, including "The Enlightenment and Romanticism," "Modern Germany," "Back in the USSR,"and "20th-Century Europe I also offer courses in Butler’s core program Global and Historical Studies, including Africa, the Caribbean, and Modern Middle East. Recent specialty topics include "History and Fiction," "The History of Children and Youth," and "Walls."
When I was a boy, the TV show Robin Hood captivated me. The tales of Robin Hood in any form still do. I suppose that is what introduced the middle ages to my imagination, why I resorted to the Appleton public library to discover more, and why I became a medievalist. What now intrigues me about the middle ages in Europe is how such a dark and cold and poor place, really the third world of its time, brought to fruition some wonderful components of human well-being: a spiritual and psychological sense of the individual self, human rights theory, constitutional principles and practice, universities and rational thought, romanesque and gothic architecture, rose windows, new ideas about love and friendship. Medieval life also helps me ponder, as tales of Robin Hood display all too well, the disparities and inequities in the world, how and why people are so readily unjust, and how they justify hurting and disparaging other folk.
My mind was first formed in the public schools of the state of Wisconsin. Thereafter, I studied history at Yale, Cornell, and Oxford, focusing on the religious, constitutional, and personal dimensions of medieval life. My own research focuses on the medieval sources of human rights theory and on family history which puts faces to past life.
I came to Butler in 1991. Here I teach core courses as well as history courses about the middle ages in Europe and elsewhere in the world. I helped found the gender studies program at Butler, served as director of both the gender studies and the honors program, and work with the peace studies program.
Music absorbs me, especially Bach, and I play the organ and piano.
I cook and will happily show anyone how to make gnocchi as my Italian grandmother showed me. I still use her potato ricer to make them.
In the accompanying picture, I’m the one on the left.