RGSS Faculty & Staff
Program Director
Dr. Terri Carney
Professor of Spanish
Modern Languages, Literatures & Cultures
Butler University, JH391A (940-8438)
https://works.bepress.com/terri_carney/about/
Core Faculty
Teigha VanHester aka Dr. V (she/they) is a fierce intellectual; pleasure activist; joyful griot; SoCal native; Cancer; proud Black, Oceania femme; 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
- Pleasure Activism
Fall 2025 Office Hours provided
Jointly Appointed Faculty
Mira Zoubeida ‘Assaf ميرا زبيدة عساف is an Associate Professor of English and Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Butler University, specializing in Premodern Critical Race Studies, Shakespeare, and Early Modern Culture. She earned her Ph.D. in English from The Ohio State University, her M.A. in English from the American University of Beirut, and her B.A. in English Literature and Language from the Lebanese University. Her trans-historical and cross-disciplinary research explores the intersections of race-making with the politics of royal marriage, foreign queens, and border-crossing in the early modern period and in our current historical moment.
‘Assaf is completing her first open-access manuscript, titled Royal Marriage, Foreign Queens, and Constructions of Race in Early Modern England, which is under contract with the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Press and will be published in 2026. She was a 2023-2024 Folger Shakespeare Library Long-Term fellow.
With Sonja Drimmer and Treva B. Lindsey, she co-edited an open-access special issue of the Barnard Center for Research on Women’s journal, The Scholar and Feminist Online, titled “Race-ing Queens.” Her book chapters have appeared in Race and/as Affect; The Palgrave Handbook of Shakespeare’s Queens; and The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson (with Richard Dutton). A new commissioned article on the mobility of racialized foreign queens is forthcoming in The Oxford Handbook of Travel, Identity, and Race in Early Modern England, edited by Nandini Das. Her current work includes an open-access edited collection (with Urvashi Chakravarty) on early modern queenship, premodern critical race studies, and queer theory, Race/Queer/Queens. The volume will be published in 2026 by the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Press
For the Oxford World Series, she is writing the critical introduction to Antony and Cleopatra.
Her public humanities essays have appeared in several online publications, including the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Collation, Shakespeare Globe, The Sundial, The Millions, Overland Journal, The Rambling, The Conversation, Medium-Equity, and The Platform.
‘Assaf currently serves as Early Modern Section Editor for The Sundial. In 2023-2024, she served on the Program Committee for the Shakespeare Association of America. Her work has been supported by generous grants and fellowships from The Folger Shakespeare Library, The Shakespeare Association of America, The Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (ACMRS), The Renaissance Society of America, Butler Awards Committee Faculty Research Grant, The Women’s Place at The Ohio State University, The Muslim Studies Endowment (Butler), and NEH/Frederic M. Ayres Fund (Butler).
At Butler, ‘Assaf teaches courses on Shakespeare, early British literature, premodern critical race studies, women, gender, sexuality and trans* studies, and in the Core Curriculum. She regularly and enthusiastically mentors graduate and honors students.
Past Awards:
2021-22: Folger Shakespeare Library and Society for the Study of Early Women and Gender Margaret Hannay Fellow.
2021: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Short-Term Fellow.
2013-2014: Ohio State University Presidential Fellowship
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 Department of History, Anthropology & Classics,
and across multiple interdisciplinary programs including, Race Gende Sexuality
Studies, Global and Historical Studies, Asian 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.
Additionally, she has published several 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 book chapters 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).
I. Selected Book Chapters
Audacious Cinema: How a new generation of films is transforming the contemporary ethical landscape in Iran. Cinema Iranica, Encyclopaedia Iranica Foundation, 2026.
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, et’al. Intellect. Bristol, UK.
Gender and Sexuality: An Anthropological Approach (2017), Ethnology, Ethnography and Cultural Anthropology, eds. Paolo Barbaro. Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), UNESCO, Eolss Publishers, Oxford, UK, [http://www.eolss.net]
Iranian War Cinema: The Art of Remembering Pain in the Iranian War Cinema: National Identity, Ethnic Diversity, and Gender Issues, (2012). Edited book by P. Khosronejad. S. K. Publishing, Oxford: UK.
II. Selected 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)
Courses (Developed and taught at Butler):
I. Core Courses in the Social World
SW215 Being Human: An Introduction to Anthropology (SJD)
SW233 Political Islam in Paris
II. Core Courses in Global and Historical Studies
GHS207 Global Women: Rights and Resistance. (RGSS & SJD)
GHS211 Modern Middle East and North Africa (RGSS & SJD)
II. Core Courses in Perspectives in the Creative Arts
PCA215 Art Across Borders: Refugees in Political North
PCA233 Political Islam in Europe (Paris)
III. Courses in Anthropology (Majors/Minors)
AN311 Trespass: Anthropology of Power & Difference. (RGSS, IS)
AN315 Gender and Colonialism (RGSS)
AN320 Gender and Sexuality Through Globalization (RGSS)
AN326 Youth and Global Cinema (IS)
AN328 Popular Culture: Michael Jackson (RGSS)
AN340 Non-western Art: Ethnographic Art (RGSS, IS)
AN352 Anthropological Method: Ethnography
AN368 Coming of Age in the Middle East (IS)
AN390 Anthropological Thought: Theory
AN460 Anthropological Capstone Seminar
Staff
Affiliate Faculty
Biography
Professor Bauman grew up in eastern Pennsylvania before going to Goshen College, in Northern Indiana, where he earned a Bachelor’s degree. After college, Professor Bauman went to Princeton Theological Seminary (PTS) and earned both an M.Div. and Ph.D. degree, while teaching courses on Buddhism and Islam at PTS, Princeton University, and The College of New Jersey.
Contributions
Professor Bauman’s earliest research focused on the interaction of low-caste Christians and Hindus in colonial Chhattisgarh. His book on the topic, Christian Identity and Dalit Religion in Hindu India, 1868-1947 (Eerdmans Publishers, 2008) won the prize for Best Book in Hindu-Christian Studies, 2006-2008, from the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies. During this time period, Professor Bauman also conducted research on Sathya Sai Baba, a popular, miracle-working Indian guru with an international following that extends even to the city of Indianapolis.
From 2008 to 2019, Professor Bauman conducted research on Hindu-Christian conflict. His most recent book, published by Cornell University Press, is Anti-Christian Violence in India, and earlier he published a book on the same topic with specific reference to Pentecostals and the public controversies surrounding conversion (called Pentecostals, Proselytization, and anti-Christian Violence in Contemporary India). Both this book and a volume he co-edited with Richard Fox Young (Constructing Indian Christianities) were named as prize finalists for the Best Book in Hindu-Christian Studies (History/Ethnography), 2013-17, by the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies.
In 2020, he co-edited The Routledge Handbook of Hindu-Christian Relations with Michelle Voss Roberts, and in 2024, he co-edited The Routledge Handbook of Megachurches with Afe Adogame, Damaris Parsitau, and Jeaney Yip.
His future projects will likely focus on religion and the law in Asia, and on the experiences and treatment of Hindu minorities in predominantly Christian countries.
Butler Teaching Assignment
Professor Bauman teaches introductory surveys of the world’s religions as well as upper-level courses on Hinduism and Buddhism. He has recently taught topical courses such as “Religion, ‘Cults,’ and (In)Tolerance in America,” “Religion, Politics and Conflict in South Asia,” “Religion, Gender, and the Goddess in Asia,” “Race and Religion in America,” and “Theory and Method in the Study of Religion.”
Musicologist and cellist Dr. Sophie Benn enjoys a multifaceted career that encompasses performance, research, and public outreach in many forms. In her academic work, Dr. Benn studies theatrical and social dance in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century France and the United States, modernist temporalities, and historical performance practice. Her recent and forthcoming publications center on dance theory and notation, social dance in Paris and Chicago, dance on early French film, and cello literature. Dr. Benn has presented at many national and international conferences, including the annual meetings of the Dance Studies Association, the American Musicological Society, the German Studies Association, and the Society for American Music. She currently serves as the chair of the Dance Studies Association’s Dance and Music Working Group.
Dr. Benn is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including an American Dissertation Fellowship from the American Association of University Women, a NEH/Newberry Library Summer Research Institute fellowship, travel grants from the American Musicological Society and the Eva L. Pancoast Memorial Fund, a Graduate Affiliateship at the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities, and a Case Western Reserve University Fellowship at the Library of Congress.
Dr. Benn also maintains an active career as a cellist and baroque cellist. She thrives when working with composers and in finding new sounds. As an interpreter of new music, she served as one of the principal cellists of the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra; has premiered work in the United States, Europe, and Canada; and has collaborated with Joel Sachs, Miranda Cuckson, and members of the International Contemporary Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, Yarn/Wire, and the Kronos Quartet. As a baroque cellist, she has studied under Jaap ter Linden, Julie Andrijeski, and Debra Nagy, and has appeared in masterclasses for Malcom Bilson and Paul O’Dette.
For nine years, Dr. Benn was a proud member of the music scene in Cleveland, Ohio, where she had a particular passion for building community through artistic projects. Between 2017 and 2021, she served as a director of Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project (CUSP), an organization dedicated to new and experimental music that she co-founded with the saxophonist Noa Even. Due to this work, Dr. Benn was named one of the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland’s New Agents, a group of 52 “experimenters, catalysts, and change-makers, who are pushing Cleveland forward right now.”
Dr. Benn holds degrees in cello performance, pedagogy, and music history from Rice University and the Cleveland Institute of Music. She received her PhD in musicology from Case Western Reserve University in 2021 and has previously taught at Western Kentucky University, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and Case Western Reserve University.
I am Associate Professor of Sociology and Criminology at Butler University. Before coming to Butler, I earned a dual-title Ph.D. from Purdue University in sociology and gerontology. I then spent at year at the University of Missouri as a postdoctoral scholar in the Research Center for Human Animal Interactions.
My research interests include the roles of women and mothers, health and body weight issues, and social psychology. I teach a variety of courses including; families, international crime, gender, race, and crime, health and society, aging and the life course, and gender and society.
My research is currently funded by the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS). This research examines mothers’ perspectives of the benefits of interscholastic activities of their high school students. This is a 10 year longitudinal study that begin in the fall of 2019. I also host the podcast, MOMent with Mom, with members of the NFHS.
A native from Bilbao (Basque Country), I moved to the US in 2000 to pursue graduate studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. While I was growing up, I lived in France and Belgium which introduced me to different cultures and languages. From this exposure, I decided to study Latin American and Caribbean cultures while familiarizing myself with feminisms, queer studies, postcolonial and transatlantic studies.
Over my twelve years at Butler, I have developed numerous original courses including “Women on the Road: Representations on Women’s Migrations in Hispanic Cultures”, “Slavery in the New World”, “Revisiting History through Film”, or “The Role of Sports in the Construction of Gender, Sexuality, Race and National Identity”, “Women Going Green: Tales of Toxic Environment and Corporate Waste” among many others. These courses inform my students’ intellectual curiosity and expose them to a multiplicity of perspectives on identity, critical thinking, and sociocultural awareness. I am fortunate to work at a University where I can expand my desire to always learn new material through teaching courses that I am passionate about, and connecting them with research. Similarly, I have been able to intersect teaching interests with my research agenda on alternative family and nation formations in the Caribbean; what led to the publication of my first book.
Likewise, my area of research has been extended due to the flexibility offered by Butler to study new regions and topics of inquiry through Study Abroad programs, and instructional and research grants. My second books explores affect theory, ecofeminisms, intersectional struggles, and social activisms in Honduras, Central America. The tragic death of Berta Cáceres led me to develop an intellectual and critical mindset regarding extractivism in Latin America, which is one of the most violent forms of neocolonialism exercised upon indigenous communities whose land and human rights have been completely erased. Furthermore, the urgency to conceptualize and validate alternative ecological cosmologies based on affective relations with nature and with others presents potential for democratic encounters, radical transformation, and social justice.
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. Charlene Fletcher is the Frances Shera Fessler Assistant Professor of American History and International Studies and an affiliate faculty member in the Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (RGSS) Program.
Before her academic career, Charlene led a domestic violence and sexual assault program, as well as a significant prison reentry initiative in New York City, helping individuals transition from incarceration back to society. She also served as a lecturer in Criminal Justice at the City University of New York. Her forthcoming book, Confined Femininity: Race, Gender, and Incarceration in Kentucky, 1865-1920, explores the experiences of African American women in confinement in Kentucky during the Reconstruction and Progressive Era. This work specifically highlights the lives of confined Black women by examining not only carceral settings but also mental health institutions and domestic spaces as sites of confinement.
Charlene’s latest research project draws on her grandmother’s memories and adopts a transnational approach to race and confinement in the American South. Titled Catfish and Spaghetti: Social Relations between Italians and African Americans in the Mississippi Delta, 1880-1950, this project investigates Italian migration and experiences in the Mississippi Delta from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. It critiques the Italian padrone system as a form of confinement and examines the relationships between Italians and African Americans, who shared close proximity and similar experiences in the rural Jim Crow South.
In addition to her research, Dr. Fletcher serves on the editorial boards of The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society and the North Meridian Review. She is also an elected member of the National Council of Public History (NCPH) Board of Directors.
Lee Garver teaches in Butler University’s English Department and the Global and Historical Studies program. He is the author of introductions to Volumes 8 and 19 of the Modernist Journals Project online edition of the early twentieth-century magazine The New Age and has published articles on modernist literature and politics in such journals as Modernism/Modernity, The Journal of Modern Literature, and The Journal of Modern Periodical Literature as well as such volumes as The Feminist New Age: Beatrice Hastings, Katherine Mansfield and Modernist-Era Periodical Culture, Women Periodicals, and Print Culture in Britain 1890s-1920s, and T.E. Hulme and the Question of Modernism. A co-recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Enduring Questions Grant, Garver has served as English Chair, Global and Historical Studies Director, and Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Director, and he has taught study abroad courses for Butler in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and South Africa.
Teaching Goals
“As someone who passionately loves literature, film, and the arts, especially work that is formally challenging or unconventional in subject matter, I make it a priority to assist students in appreciating the wonders of language, storytelling, and cinema through lively classroom discussion and friendly debate. As someone deeply invested in global historical inquiry, whether of global modernisms, colonialism and the transatlantic slave system, or international art cinema, I seek to situate texts and films in their original historical contexts and awaken students to their deeper social and political meanings. Finally, as someone with a strong commitment to social justice, diversity, and free and open dialogue, I make it my mission to call attention to inequity, explore the social experiences of marginalized communities, and foster a classroom climate of mutual respect and support.”
Margaretha Geertsema-Sligh is a Professor of Journalism and Director of Graduate Studies in the College of Communication. Her textbook, “Journalism and Gender: Global Perspectives,” with Routledge, was published in August 2025.
She held the Richard M. Fairbanks endowed chair from 2018 to 2024 and served as Interim Dean from April 2021 to December 2022. Before her appointment as Interim Dean, Dr. Geertsema-Sligh served as Director of the Eugene S. Pulliam School of Journalism and Creative Media for five years. She joined Butler University in 2005 and has taught classes in news writing, gender and news, and global media.
Dr. Geertsema-Sligh holds a doctorate in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin, a master’s degree in Communication from Washington State University, and a bachelor’s degree in Mass Communication from North-West University in South Africa. She is a past chair of the International Communication Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication and a past co-chair of the Gender and Communication section of the International Association for Media and Communication Research. Her research has been published in several leading academic journals. See www.margarethageertsemasligh.com for more information.
Biography
Born and raised in southcentral Pennsylvania in one of only two counties in the Commonwealth without a traffic light, Brent Hege earned his BA in Religion and History with a minor in Classics from Gettysburg College (PA) in 1998. He completed the Zentrale Mittelstufenprüfung Diplom (German Language Certificate) at the Goethe Institut in Dresden, Germany, in 2000 while completing his MA in Historical Theology with a minor in New Testament at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg (PA). He earned his PhD in Theology with Distinction from Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond, VA, in 2007. His dissertation was awarded the 2010 John Templeton Award for Theological Promise by the Forschungszentrum Internationale und Interdisziplinäre Theologie at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. He was honored by his alma mater with the 2013 Gettysburg College Young Alumni Achievement Award and in 2015 he was elected an honorary member of Butler’s chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. In 2017 he received the Outstanding Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching from Butler’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and in 2024 he received the Butler University First-Year Impact Award for his work teaching and mentoring first-year students at Butler. In 2017 he was appointed The Compass Center Scholar in Residence and in 2020 he was promoted to Senior Lecturer in Religion. He has taught at Butler since 2008.
Teaching Duties
As a faculty member of Butler’s Religious Studies program, Hege teaches the yearlong First Year Seminar, “Faith, Doubt, and Reason,” the Texts & Ideas (TI) course, “Religions of the World,” online every summer, and the following 300-level Religious Studies courses: God, Theologies of Liberation, Evil, Religious Pluralism, and Ecotheology. Hege has directed several offerings of the Butler Series on Religion and Society, including “Religion, Race, and Culture” (2015-2016), “Sacred Spaces: Intersections of Religion and Ecology” (2018-2019), and “Faith and Activism” (2022-2023). Hege is also the Compass Center Scholar in Residence, where he works with a cohort of student Scholars on issues of interfaith engagement and vocational discernment. Hege holds affiliate faculty status in the programs of Race, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies, Science, Technology, and Environmental Studies, and the Center for Urban Ecology and Sustainability. In 2022, Hege successfully chartered Butler’s chapter of Theta Alpha Kappa, the national honors society for Religious Studies and Theology, for which he serves as faculty advisor. Hege is also the faculty advisor of Grace Unlimited, Butler’s Lutheran-Episcopal campus ministry.
Scholarship
Hege’s research focuses on the history of Christian thought and contemporary Christian theology, with special focus on 19th- and 20th-century liberal Protestant theology, continental philosophy and philosophical theology, contemporary constructive theology, Lutheranism, and theology and culture. In addition to his award-winning first book, Faith at the Intersection of History and Experience: The Theology of Georg Wobbermin (Wipf and Stock, 2009), he has published articles and invited review essays in a number of European and American journals, including Zeitschrift für Neuere Theologiegeschichte/Journal for the History of Modern Theology, Theologische Zeitschrift, Theology and Science, Radical Philosophy Review, Politics and Religion, Teaching Theology and Religion, and Dialog: A Journal of Theology. He is also a frequent reviewer of books on historical and contemporary theology for Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology. He has presented papers at national and regional academic conferences, including The American Academy of Religion and The Southwest Popular Culture Association and The American Culture Association, as well as being a frequent guest lecturer and panel member for school, church, and community programs. His second book, Myth, History, and the Resurrection in German Protestant Theology, was published by Pickwick Press in 2017. His most recent book, based on the first semester of his popular Butler First Year Seminar, is Faith, Doubt, and Reason (Wipf and Stock 2020). In 2020 he was elected to the editorial council of Dialog: A Journal of Theology, the world’s premier journal of Lutheran theology.
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.
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.
Lav McKittrick-Sweitzer is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy. Before arriving at Butler in Autumn 2021, they completed their PhD (philosophy, 2021) at Ohio State University, MA (philosophy, 2015) at the University of Missouri – St. Louis, and BA (philosophy, 2013) at the University of Missouri – Columbia.
Their area of specialization is feminist social and political philosophy, with a focus on care, exploitation, public reason, and global justice.
For more information about Lavender’s research, teaching, and CV, visit: www.lmsweitzer.com.
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!
Chair, Department of Political Science
Director, Peace and Conflict Studies Program
Faculty Director, Butler in Asia Program
Su-Mei Ooi joined the Department of Political Science and Peace & Conflict Studies program in 2010 as Assistant Professor, shortly before earning a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto with a joint specialty in international relations and comparative politics.
Prior to settling down in Indianapolis, Ooi studied and worked in many different parts of Asia, Europe, and North America. Her lived experiences have shaped Ooi into a dedicated educator who believes strongly in the importance of critical global citizenship education in the United States. At Butler, she teaches courses in international relations and Asian politics with the express purpose of helping students to understand that there are many different ways of being in this world. She particularly encourages students to seek better solutions to global problems by re-imagining new possibilities for a better world. Ooi grew up in Singapore and Malaysia. Since 2017, Ooi has also led students to Malaysia and Singapore on the Butler in Asia program, which offers students the unique opportunity to live and work in Asia for 7 weeks in the summer.
As an affiliate faculty of the Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program, Ooi also believes in a diverse, inclusive, and equitable learning and working environment for all. At Butler, she works closely with senior administration in her role as the Director of Academic Affairs for DEI. In terms of curricular affairs, she is also responsible for Asian and Pacific American representation in the Core Curriculum, as she led a team of excellent colleagues in the development of GHS 212: Asian Americas. She works closely with students as well and is the faculty advisor of the student group Asian and Pacific Islander Alliance (APIA).
Although Ooi’s research expertise is in democratic development and human rights in East Asia, she has expanded the scope of her research in response to issues and problems beyond her core interest. More recently, her scholarship addresses peace building on the Korean Peninsula, US-China relations, global education, the well-being of faculty in teaching-focused institutions and the leadership experiences of minoritized faculty. She also believes in integrating teaching and scholarship and has mentored students in the research and publication process at Butler.
In her personal time, Ooi enjoys the company of her husband, daughter and a pet hamster named Coco. She is also an active member of the Asian and Pacific American community in Indianapolis. She is on the Board of the Indianapolis Chinese Community Center, Inc., the Council of the Indiana Association of Chinese Americans, and is also a member of Hoosier Asian American Power.
Teaching Expertise:
International Relations, US-China Relations, East and Southeast Asian Politics, Chinese Politics, Human Rights and Humanitarianism, International Political Economy
Research Specialization:
Comparative Democratization, Transnational Activism, Human Rights, East Asian Politics and International Relations, Global Citizenship Education
Education:
PhD Political Science
University of Toronto (Canada)
MA (Southeast Asian Studies)
National University of Singapore (Singapore)
LLB (Bachelor of Laws, with Honors)
University College London (United Kingdom)
Publications:
http://works.bepress.com/sumei_ooi/
Awards/Fellowships
Korea Foundation Fellowship
Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation Fellowship
Taiwan Foundation for Democracy Fellowship
Dr. David Chu Scholarship
Political Science Award, University of Toronto
Volkswagen Foundation Fellowship
Corey Reed is the Katherine and Tracy McGregor Assistant Professor of Humanities and a member of the Philosophy faculty. He is one of three co-directors for the Hub on Black Affairs and Community Engagement and a 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. He specializes in Africana Philosophy and the Critical Philosophy of Race and Racism, with nterests in Existentialism, Phenomenology, Feminism/Male Theories 20th Century French Continental Philosophy, and Aesthetics.
More information can be found at https://www.coreynreed.com/
Alex Roehrkasse is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminology. He is faculty fellow at the Desmond Tutu Peace Lab and a faculty affiliate in the Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Peace and Conflict Studies programs.
Alex’s research focuses on inequality, crime and punishment, families and children, and quantitative and historical methods. He is particularly interested in the ways that families interact with the legal, criminal justice, and child welfare systems with consequences for racial, class, and gender equity and child well-being.
Alex teaches courses on introductory sociology, sociological theory, research methods, social statistics, victimization, incarceration and inequality, and prison abolition, among others.
Before joining the faculty at Butler, Alex held postdoctoral fellowships at Cornell and Duke Universities. He received a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, and an A.B. in economics from Brown University. More information about Alex’s research and teaching is available at alexr.info.
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.
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.
Ania Spyra grew up in a German and Polish speaking home in Upper Silesia in Southern Poland. She received her MA in Literature and Linguistics from the University of Silesia, and her PhD in English from the University of Iowa. Dr. Spyra’s research looks at the influence of migration on the language of literature. She has published articles on feminist contestations of cosmopolitanism, multilingualism and transnationalism, most recently in Studies in the Novel, Contemporary Literature and Comparative Literature. Dr. Spyra teaches a wide range of courses in Transnational and Postcolonial Literature, Translation and Creative Writing. In her commitment to Global Education, she twice directed Butler University’s Global Adventures in Liberal Arts (GALA) as well as taught short term study abroad courses in Cuba, Ireland, Scotland and Australia.
Brynnar Swenson holds a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society (2008). He is Associate Professor and the Director of the M.A. in English. He teaches American literature, literary theory, and cultural studies and his research focuses on literature, continental philosophy, and the history of capitalism. He is the editor of Literature and the Encounter with Immanence (Brill / Rodopi, 2017), and his essays have appeared in Cultural Critique, The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, New American Notes Online (NANO), Letterature d’America, and The Baltic Journal of Law and Politics.
Robin L. Turner is a Professor of Political Science and Coordinator of the African and Black Studies Minor at Butler University in the USA 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 and as Chair of the Department of Political Science and Director of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program from 2019 to 2025. 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 Africa and the World
GHS 210 Freedom and Movement in the Transatlantic World
PO 151 Introduction to Comparative Politics
PO 245/SW-PO 245 Politics from the Margins
PO 350 African Politics
PO 351 Politics of Gender & Sexuality in Africa
PO 352 Comparative Political Economy
PO 354 Environmental Justice
PO 490 Senior Seminar on Women and Politics across the World
Dr. Jocelyn Zimmerman (she/they) is a cultural and intellectual historian of Early Modern Europe with particular expertise in Scotland, European empires in Asia, and gender and sexuality. She holds a PhD in History and Gender Studies from Stony Brook University.
Her work considers the origin and evolution of ideas about human difference and ‘progress’ through early modern voyages of ‘scientific’ discovery. Her current project, Knowing Polygamy: People, Plants and the Global Scottish Enlightenment, investigates how British colonials and European intellectuals fashioned polygamy as a model for categorizing foreign plants and people while also practicing it themselves. Drawing on these tensions and the ‘trouble’ with empire across intellectual, intimate, and imagined spaces, Zimmerman argues that the colonial theories that deemed self ‘civilized’ and other ‘savage’ in the global Enlightenment were slippery, indeterminant, and were brought together amid alternative possibilities. Their work and teaching alike are informed by Queer, Decolonial, and Black Feminist theories.
Zimmerman teaches history courses on Early Modern Europe with an emphasis on knowledge production, colonialism, race, gender, and sexuality; they also teach Global and Historical Studies courses that approach gender, past and present, through transnational and intersectional lenses. This semester she is excited to offer an upper division course titled “Scotland and the World.”
Recent article: “‘Towards the advancement of medical knowledge’: Tibetan Eye Surgery and Eighteenth-Century Colonial Knowledge Production”