Faculty & Staff

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. 

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.

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."

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 a historian of race, gender, and confinement. 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 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 the mid-twentieth centuries. It interrogates the Italian padrone system as a form of confinement. It examines relationships between Italians and African Americans because of 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 Digital Encyclopedia of Indianapolis. 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!

Biography

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 has thus recently developed a new course at Butler for the Natural Worlds block of the Core Curriculum called 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, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. Having led several study-abroad programs in Viterbo and Siena, Italy to explore livable cities and walkable design, Tom is the author of several books, including Living the Palio: A Story of Community and Public Life in Siena, Italy (3rd edition 2020), and the Illustrated Encyclopedia of American Landmarks (2012), among earlier works. His recent follow-up book is Unbridled Spirit: The Untold Story of the 2018 Extraordinary Palio in Siena, Italy (Feb. 2020). He is now turning his sights to Singapore as he investigates the history of tourism development and tourist spaces there. 

Happy Hunger Games!

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. His latest book (fall, 2021) is A Place Called District 12: Appalachian Geography and Music in the Hunger Games (McFarland Press). 

Current and Upcoming Butler Courses

• FYS 101: Unpacking the Hunger Games, Part 1 (every fall)
• NW 265-ENV: Weather, Climate & Society (every fall, summer 2022)
• ENV 315 (STES Program): Designing for Livable Cities (fall 2021)
• FYS 102: Unpacking the Hunger Games, Part 2 (every spring)
• HST 305 (Topics Course): American Architecture and Preservation (spring 2022)
• HST 347: U.S. Urban History (spring 2022)
• HST 346: American Historical Geography (spring 2023)

 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 in Anthropology in the Department of History, Anthropology, and Classics, at the college of LAS at Butler University.

Dr. Shahrokhi received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley in 2008.  In the same year, she began teaching at Butler in the Department of History and Anthropology, and across interdisciplinary programs such as Race Gender and Sexuality Studies; Peace Studies; International Studies; and Global and Historical Studies.

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.

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.

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.