College of Arts and Letters
Fall 2022 – New Faculty
First Name | Last Name | Title/Rank | Dept/Unit | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Caryn | Bopp | Assistant Teaching Professor | School of Art | |
Caryn Bopp’s highest degree is an M.F.A. from Savannah College of Art and Design in Painting. In addition, she has a M.Ed in Secondary Education with Art Emphasis from N.A.U., and also a B.F.A. in Sculpture from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Her work is mostly two-dimensional combinations of painting and collage. This year Caryn was a winter resident at Penland School of Craft for the month of January, creating a series of collage work. She has received three grants from the Arizona Commission on the Arts for various projects. | ||||
Janeece | Henes | Lecturer | School of Art | |
Master’s in Education. Currently a Ph.D. candidate at Prescott College, Sustainability in Education. She has been a High School art educator for 25 years, 21 years at Flagstaff Arts & Leadership Academy. Her research interests and praxis focus on social justice art education, experiential & service-learning, community arts and engagement, and youth participatory action research. Janeece is also a mixed media artist creating works with the encaustic method; beeswax, pigment, damar resin. In 1997 Janeece earned her Bachelor of Science in Art Education from NAU. She is thrilled to share her 25 years of teaching art with NAU students. | ||||
Tai | Lipan | Assistant Teaching Professor | School of Art | |
Tai taught studio art for nineteen years as Associate Professor of Art at Anderson University, IN. and co-directed the Jeeninga Museum of Near Eastern Archeology where she led the renovation, research, and museum design. As Visiting Associate Professor at Marian University in Indianapolis, Lipan directed the foundations program and was lead faculty for the studio arts major. In addition to her work at the university, Lipan maintains a rigorous studio practice and exhibition record. | ||||
Barbara | Ryan-Gartin | Assistant Teaching Professor | School of Art | |
She is returning to the School of Art to work in foundations and co-manage the Beasley Gallery. She previously lived and taught all over the country - most notably at Nova Southeastern University serving as the Art Major Program Chair, Co-Gallery Director and Assistant Professor in Painting. Barbara's creative research is in Printmaking and Books Arts working recently in two ongoing series ‘Invisible Ancestors’, that navigates real and invented ancestral narratives and ‘The Story of Our Disappearing’ that documents the preservation of public lands. | ||||
Carli | Anderson | Assistant Teaching Professor | Comparative Cultural Studies | |
Dr. Carli Anderson joined CCS in fall 2021 and holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Arizona State University. Her research focuses on contested religious spaces and looks broadly at how contemporary interpretation of Biblical and other religious texts conceptualize and construct those spaces for different communities. Accordingly, her work is based on a blending of textual hermeneutics and religious anthropology and informed by theories of ritual, pilgrimage, space, memory and religious emotion. Her dissertation is a study of the Biblical Rachel as an “emplaced” cultural figure at the site of Rachel’s Tomb in Jerusalem, exploring the multiple facets (social, political, religious) that Rachel takes on for the women who visit the site of her tomb and the ways they interpret and apply her textual story. Her work with the intersection of Biblical interpretation and politics inspired a presentation of “‘When Earth’s Curse Shall Be Removed’: Interpretations of the Genesis Creation/Fall Narrative in Mormon Women’s Suffrage Rhetoric” at the National Society of Biblical Literature conference in 2018. She also assisted in editing multiple critical edition volumes of the Dead Sea Scrolls Reader series published by Brill. | ||||
Eric | Breault | Assistant Teaching Professor | Comparative Cultural Studies | |
Dr. Eric Breault graduated with a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Arizona State University in 2022. His research examines the modern intersections of lived Catholicism and Occultism in the use of material objects appropriated within the category of “folk magic.” His dissertation “A Subversive Gathering: Material Culture, Lived Catholicism, and the Occult” outlines how lived Catholicism and Occultism converge within a gathering of religious practitioners who seek to subvert dominant social narratives that accuse them of deviancy. He will be teaching HUM 101: Introduction to Global Humanities and REL 150: Religions of the World during the fall semester at NAU. | ||||
Marco | Cabrera Geserick | Assistant Professor | Comparative Cultural Studies | |
Dr. Marco Cabrera Geserick is a specialist in Latin American history and Cultural History and holds a Ph.D. in History from Arizona State University. He previously taught at Rhodes College and Gustavus Adolphus College, among others, where he designed courses on Modern Latin America, Colonial Latin America, Indigenous Peoples of the Americas, Heroes and Myths, and Memory Studies. His research explores issues of memory and history in nineteenth-century United States and Latin America. As a result, Lexington Books published his book The Legacy of the Filibuster War: National Identity and Collective Memory in Central America in 2019. A revised version of the book will be available in Spanish in 2023. Additional publications include the article “Conquest Without War: U.S. Expansionism, The Age of Revolution, and the First Filibuster” in Age of Revolutions (2021) and “Usos políticos de las batallas de Santa Rosa de 1856 y 1955; o, cómo fallar al inventar tradiciones” in Diálogos Rev. Elec. de Historia, Vol. especial: 77-97 (2015). Dr. Cabrera Geserick has also been interviewed for the podcast Historically Thinking and gives public talks for organizations such as the National Library of Costa Rica (2022 and 2021). In 2022, he was appointed as a member of the Academia Morista Costarricense. | ||||
Matthew | Goodwin | Assistant Teaching Professor | Comparative Cultural Studies | |
Dr. Matthew Goodwin earned his Ph.D. in philosophy at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. He specializes in phenomenology, philosophy of art, and environmental philosophy. His authored chapters include “Aesthetic Ideas: Developing the Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty with the Art of Matta-Clark” in Perception and Its Development in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology (University of Toronto Press, 2017), “Of Earth and Sky: The Phenomenology of James Turrell’s Roden Crater Project” in Phenomenology and the Arts (Lexington Books, 2016), and “Art and the Deflagration of Being: Setting Passivity Afire” in Phenomenology 2010, Volume 5: Selected Essays from North America Part 1: Phenomenology within Philosophy (Zeta Books, 2010). Dr. Goodwin participated in the 2016 National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminar on extending Aldo Leopold’s “Land Ethic.” He has given numerous talks throughout the state as a speaker for the Arizona Humanities AZ Speaks program. And he is a co-founder of Sedona Philosophy, offering guided hikes and retreats in Sedona and northern Arizona. | ||||
Kent | Linthicum | Assistant Teaching Professor | Comparative Cultural Studies | |
Dr. Kent Linthicum joined the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies in 2022. He earned his Ph.D. in English from Arizona State University in 2016 and was a Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology before joining CCS. He teaches courses in the environmental humanities, energy humanities, environmental justice, media studies, and writing. Dr. Linthicum’s research focuses on energy, especially fossil fuels, in culture. His peer-reviewed articles have appeared in Environmental Humanities, European Romantic Review, Nineteenth Century-Contexts, and Studies in English Literature. Public essays by Dr. Linthicum have been published in The Atlantic and Slate among other venues. Dr. Linthicum’s current book project, “Crowning Coal: Slavery, Fossil Fuels, and Literature 1755–1865” shows how print culture facilitated the expansion of British coal and American slavery through metaphor, comparison, metonymy, and other literary devices. His research was most recently supported by the American Council of Learned Societies in 2021-22. | ||||
Steven | Acton | Lecturer | English | |
I have strived for quality teaching while working in Japan, China, and United States. Teaching in various countries and environments has allowed me to enjoy and understand diversity in and outside of the classroom. I feel student success and academic excellence will lead my students to more community engagement and impactful scholarship. My personal interest in improving student academic writing has lead to research in paraphrase/summary writing and preparation of students before facing academic challenges. | ||||
Andie | Francis Lenhart | Lecturer | English | |
Andie Francis Lenhart is a Lecturer in the English Department at NAU. She has also worked as a University Supervisor and Candidate Work Sample Evaluator for NAU’s Professional Education Programs. She is currently a doctoral student at NAU in Curriculum and Instruction. She is the author of two poetry books: A Fresh Start Will Put You on Your Way (Finishing Line Press, 2022) and I Am Trying To Show You My Matchbook Collection (CutBank Books, 2014). Her research interests include Arts Integration, Multimodal Literacy, Bookcraft and Book Objects, Critical Pedagogy, and the Assessment of Writing and Writing Programs. | ||||
Marinela | Golemi | Assistant Teaching Professor | English | |
Corine | Roche | Lecturer | English | |
Corina has taught English for seven years now, and she is starting her second year teaching full-time at NAU. She is committed to developing student's skills and self-efficacy in the writing process, as well as emphasizing impactful scholarship by teaching skills applicable in all areas of a students life. She is a lifelong Lumberjack and alumna, and she is thrilled to be a part of the NAU family. | ||||
Karen | Lopez Alonzo | Assistant Teaching Professor | Global Languages and Cultures | |
Karen López Alonzo is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Spanish and Faculty Mentor Coordinator for the International Global Program (IGP) at Northern Arizona University. She holds a doctorate in Hispanic Linguistics from The Ohio State University. Her primary concentrations are Sociolinguistics and Phonetics, with research focused on three areas: Spanish in language contact situations in Nicaragua and the US, voseo, and Heritage Spanish. She created a successful Heritage Spanish Program at Baylor University. Besides her publications on voseo and language contact in Bluefields, Nicaragua, part of her research provides language samples (Indigenous, Creole/English, Spanish) and data resources on culture and dance in Bluefields, Nicaragua in a free public digital archive, entitled “Nicaragua: Languages and Cultures” (http://sites.baylor.edu/k_lopezalonzo). Karen is from Central Nicaragua, but the Caribbean Coast is very close to her heart because of how its cultural and linguistic history is reflected in its people. | ||||
Jerry | Kien | Associate Teaching Professor | Global Languages and Cultures | |
I am - Ts’ah Yisk’idnii. Born for - Kinyaa’áanii. My maternal grandfathers are – Naakaii. My paternal grandfathers are - Tsi’naajinii. In this way I am a Diné. I teach NAV 101, NAV 497, and AIS 299. My Masters Degree is from Navajo Technical University in Diné Culture, Language & Leadership | ||||
Marcus | Macktima | Research Associate | History | |
Marcus C. Macktima joined the history department as a predoctoral fellow. Mr. Macktima is an award-winning doctoral candidate at the University of Oklahoma completing a dissertation entitled “Issues of Forced Political Identities: The San Carlos Apache Peoples.” A member of the San Carlos Apache Nation, Mr. Macktima has taught Native American and Apache history at San Carlos Apache College. Here at NAU, he is teaching the Native American history survey, while writing the last chapters of his dissertation. We are very pleased to have him in our department! | ||||
Lauren | Lefty | Assistant Professor | History | |
Dr. Lauren A. Lefty joined the history department as Assistant Professor and Director of History/Social Studies Education. Dr. Lefty received her Ph.D. from New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education, Culture, and Human Development in 2020. Her dissertation, entitled “Seize the Schools, Que Viva Puerto Rico Libre: Cold War Education Politics in New York and San Juan, 1948-1975”, focuses on the history of education and its intersection with U.S. empire in Puerto Rico. She has served as an ACLS Leading Edge Fellow with the Children’s Defense Fund’s Freedom School’s Program, which recently won a grant from the NEH for a K-12 Teacher Institute on "Centering Youth Agency in the Civil Rights Movement." She is the author of a co-edited volume (with James W. Fraser), Teaching the World’s Teachers (Johns Hopkins, 2020) and co-author (with James W. Fraser) of Teaching Teachers: Changing Paths and Enduring Debates (Johns Hopkins, 2018). We are thrilled to have such a stellar scholar leading our history education program! | ||||
Aimee | Fincher | Assistant Professor of Practice | Kitt School of Music | |
Collaborative pianist Aimee Fincher is an experienced chamber musician, collaborator, and large ensemble pianist. She is comfortable performing styles ranging from Bach and Schubert to Frank Zappa, John Cage, George Antheil, and Jason Robert Brown. Dr. Fincher frequently performs as a member of the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra. Recent performances include premieres by William Price and Amir Zaheri in 2021, Credo in US by John Cage in 2020, and the Alabama premiere of Absolute Jest by John Adams in 2019. Prior to joining the faculty at Northern Arizona University, Dr. Fincher worked at Oakwood University and the University of Alabama in Huntsville and as the company manager at Huntsville Ballet. Together with her duo partner, violinist Hannah Leland, Dr. Fincher released Duo Odéon’s debut album, Specter, in 2018 on the Sono Luminus label. The album features premiere recordings of unpublished manuscripts by the composer George Antheil and the violinist Werner Gebauer. She can also be heard on Summit records’ album, Table for Three at Chez Janou, in collaboration with Arizona State University brass professor John Ericson and professor emeritus Douglas Yeo. Dr. Fincher earned her doctorate in collaborative piano at Arizona State University, and performance and pedagogy degrees from the University of Alabama and the University of South Carolina, where her professors included Andrew Campbell, Russell Ryan, and Scott Price. | ||||
Abigail | Fisher | Assistant Professor | Kitt School of Music | |
Abby Fisher is a percussionist and educator, focused on performing and supporting continued growth of new music, with expertise in contemporary and classical percussion. National and international performances include: Stony Brook University's TEDx, Transplanted Roots Percussion Symposium, New Music Gathering, Big Ears Festival, Percussive Arts Society International Convention, and One World Trade Center. Abby is a co-founder of the percussion duo Fisher/Lau Project with Matthew Lau, and she is regularly collaborating with composers and musicians on new works. Abby is a dedicated educator and is the Assistant Professor of Percussion and Director of Percussion Studies at Northern Arizona University. She previously taught at University of Tennessee and Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville, TN. Abby currently serves on the Percussive Arts Society: New Music/ Research Committee and is co-hosting the New Music/ Research day at PASIC 2022. She has served as the Managing Director for Nief-Norf for the past seven years, and works with the NN team to produce the annual Nief-Norf Summer Festival, where more than fifty international participants experience an engaging environment of collaboration, experimentation, and support. | ||||
Melanie | Galloway | Assistant Professor of Practice | Kitt School of Music | |
Melanie’s passion for directing opera, applied voice teaching, music, and for her students’ success and well-being are the driving forces behind her success in training and mentoring young singers. Her voice students have been accepted into renowned training programs, won scholarships at esteemed graduate schools, and won national and international competitions including the Metropolitan Opera National Council District Auditions, as well as gone to successful early performance careers. Her prolific singing career has included performances of quintessential opera roles in the soprano repertoire, such as Mimi (La Bohème), Marguerite (Faust), and Micaëla (Carmen). Early career awards also include being awarded the National “Artist on the Rise” award in Belgium, and the Médaille d’Honneur in the Concours Lyrique International de France. Performing internationally, in Europe, China, Thailand, Philippines and Peru, has often provided unique opportunities to benefit world outreach and education in underserved communities, and has inspired her mission to mentor students to use their gifts in pursuit of uplifting community engagement. A champion for the development of young singers, her pursuit of artistic excellence and practice of making a positive difference in our communities is seen in her own performance and academic career and something that she hopes to inspire in her students as well. | ||||
Lillie | Gordon | Assistant Teaching Professor | Kitt School of Music | |
Dr. Gordon specializes in the musics of the Middle East, music, gender, and sexuality, and music and (post)colonialism. Her main area of research examines violinists in Egypt as multifaceted negotiators of the instrument's colonial history and aesthetic potential. She also performs regularly on the 'ud (Arab lute) and the violin, and established the University of Tennessee Middle East Ensemble while teaching there. Her courses challenge students to read about and discuss music with a critical eye, listen actively with an open mind, and think about the complex musical lives of everyone around us. She also enjoys writing about other topics including women's sports and politics, walking in nature that's not too far from her own bed, and baking bread with varying degrees of success. | ||||
Brent | Levine | Assistant Professor of Practice | Kitt School of Music | |
Dr. Brent Levine is the Associate Director of Bands at Northern Arizona University, where he conducts the Symphonic Band, teaches courses in Music Education, and directs the Lumberjack Marching Band. His most recent projects at NAU include collaborations with local visual artists, the Native American Cultural Center, and local high schools. His current research centers around the music of composers Adolphus Hailstork and Edward Kennedy ("Duke") Ellington. | ||||
Brett | Peppo | Lecturer | Kitt School of Music | |
Bret Peppo is excited to be joining the faculty at Northern Arizona University this fall. He is currently on a sabbatical where he just completed his fifteenth year as Director of Choral Activities and Music Department chair at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, CA. Prior positions include, Director of Choral Activities at Alderson-Broaddus University, the University of South Alabama and Illinois State University. | ||||
Kevin | Tague | Assistant Professor | Kitt School of Music | |
Dr. Kevin Tague is a trumpeter who embraces musical styles and genres ranging from symphony orchestras to salsa bands and everything in between. He has performed on the world famous Las Vegas Strip, toured internationally with Disney's "Beauty and The Beast" musical, and been a featured soloist with bands and orchestras throughout the country. He has presented clinics and masterclasses throughout the United States and in 2016 spent a week teaching and performing at the University of Trinidad and Tobago. Dr. Tague believes that versatility is crucial to the success of future performers and educators. To that end, his students not only work on traditional classical trumpet technique and repertoire; they also study jazz, latin, and popular styles, as well as improvisation and even arranging. | ||||
Megan | Hilton | Assistant Teaching Professor | Theatre | |
Megan Hilton (They/She) is a scenic designer who received their MFA in Scenic Design from the University of Idaho. They have worked at various companies including the Contemporary American Theatre Festival, Nashville Shakespeare Festival, and Tent Theatre to name a few. They have also designed shows such as "Into the Woods", "Macbeth: Alba Gu Brath", "The Earthling" (unpublished new work), and "The Taste of Sunrise". They are excited to start this new journey at NAU and look forward to getting to work with everyone. Professor Hilton will be teaching Scenic Design, Stagecraft, Drafting and Model Building and will design scenery for the Main Stage season | ||||
Jaclynn | Jutting | Assistant Professor | Theatre | |
Jaclynn Jutting is an award-winning freelance director and teaching artist. Her work as director focuses on the contemporary play and post-modern adaptations of classics. She currently teaches solo performance at the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center for Women with Lipscomb University’s LIFE program and is a Fellow with the Tennessee Playwrights Studio. She most recently directed the U.S. premiere of Lucy Kirkwood’s MOSQUITOES with Chicago’s Steep Theatre and has directed for Steppenwolf (Garage), Raven, Nashville Repertory Theater, Actors Bridge Ensemble, Verge Theater and Oz Arts Nashville. She has worked at Middle Tennessee State University, as an Artist in Residence at Vanderbilt and was the Director of the BFA-Directing program at Belmont University for 5 years. In addition to her work in the theater, she spent 7 years working on public health and environmental campaigns for the Environmental Law & Policy Center of the Midwest. She received her BA (a double major in Theater and English-Creative Writing) from Knox College and an MFA in Directing from Northwestern University. Professor Jutting will be teaching Directing, Acting, Script Analysis and directing for our mainstage season. | ||||
Shadow | Zimmerman | Assistant Teaching Professor | Theatre | |
Shadow David Zimmerman holds a PhD in Theatre History and Theory program at the University of Washington School of Drama, where his dissertation, “Mediating Black Modernisms,” draws necessary attention to the modernist multimedia artistic production by underappreciated Black American artists and intellectuals during the American New Negro movement. His research explores the limits and intersections of liberalism, especially during the modern(ist) period, and he has a special fondness for the classics and their historical reception and the racial relationships of the historical avant-garde. His scholarship has been featured in Theatre Symposium and How to Teach a Play, as well as the upcoming first issue of The Black Theatre Review. He has previously served as the Editorial Assistant for Theatre History Studies and the Secretary/Historian for the ASTR Graduate Student Caucus. He has presented at conferences for the American Society for Theatre Research, the Mid-America Theatre Conference, the Southeastern Theatre Symposium, and the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of America. He is beyond thrilled to be joining the NAU theatre community and cannot wait to bring his love of theatre history to the classroom! Professor Zimmerman will be teaching Theatre History I and II, Modern and Contemporary drama, Script Analysis, Introduction to Acting, and Introduction to Theatre. |