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FULL STORY
The College of Arts and Sciences prides itself on the diversity of its academic programs, and this diversity is aptly represented this year in the backgrounds and academic interests of the new faculty. This article highlights a few of these new assistant professors and provides basic biosketch information about the others. Given the exceptional qualifications of these newcomers, you will certainly be hearing more about their activities and research in the future.
Ryan Boettger (Assistant Professor, Linguistics & Technical Communication) earned his Ph.D. in 2008 from Texas Tech University. His forthcoming publications on technical communication curriculum assessment and quantitative research methods will appear in IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication in 2010 and 2011.
"One of the many factors that motivated me to join the UNT faculty was my department's unique approach to studying workplace communication," Boettger said. "Joining the discipline of technical communication with linguistics offers many new approaches to research and teaching and establishes a unique foundation for building a competitive program."
In the classroom, Boettger strives to engage students with the rhetorical situations affecting their own discipline and communities. He develops his courses with a pragmatic focus, drawing on his ten years of experience as a grant writer, technical editor, and journalist.
Boettger comes to UNT after working as the managing director of grant proposal and program development for the Laura W. Bush Institute for Women's Health. In that position, he edited grant applications that sought a total of $8.7 million in funding. He also recently completed a four-year contract with the Texas Army National Guard where he assisted with editing wildland fire, natural resources, and cultural resource management plans for various Army bases and environmental agencies.
Boettger's current research focuses on identifying the variables that university faculty see as barriers to securing grant funding. Results of this research will suggest programs to increase federal funding, and he feels UNT is the perfect institute for pursing this endeavor: "UNT is poised to become a flagship research institution, and I feel fortunate to be able to contribute to its growth."
Jacqueline DeMeritt (Assistant Professor, Political Science) earned her Ph.D. in 2009 at Florida State University. Her research and teaching focus on human rights, including explanations for rights violations as well as opportunities for international actors to protect vulnerable individuals. "I have a real sense of efficacy with respect to my work," she says. "I seek to understand what compels individual human beings to use violence against their neighbors, friends, even families. And what we, as an international community, can do to prevent that violence. My hope is that someday, somewhere, someone's life will be saved as a result of something I discover with this work."
DeMerritt's current research focuses on why low-level perpetrators participate in government killing events, while upcoming projects will shift the focus towards humanitarian efforts to intervene. "Is intervention useful for saving lives? If so, what types of interventions are the most effective?" she asks. "Right now, we simply do not know the answers to these questions, and I hope to begin to provide some helpful insights."
She is also interested in the application of quantitative methodology and formal theory to social scientific processes. "I ask big questions with this work," she says. "How I answer these questions is just as important as asking them in the first place, and that's where the methodology becomes critical."
For DeMerritt, the opportunity to be a part of the community of peace scholars at UNT was impossible to resist. In addition, she explains, "the department has everything I was looking for. I get to work with a small, nationally-respected group of scholars who genuinely support and encourage one another to excel. I couldn't ask for more, and I look forward to a happy and productive career here at UNT.”
Darrel Enck-Wanzer (Assistant Professor, Communication Studies) is a scholar of race and public culture with a particular interest in Latina/o studies. He is the first Latino faculty member in the department. In 2007, he earned his Ph.D. in rhetoric and public culture at Indiana University, where his work focused on the intersections of race/ethnicity, democratic theory, and public discourse. After serving as an assistant professor at the University of Georgia for one year, Enck-Wanzer spent the 2008-2009 academic year as a postdoctoral research associate in Latina/Latino studies at the University of Illinois.
“I’m currently putting the finishing touches on a couple of larger projects that emerged out of my dissertation research on the New York Young Lords,” a revolutionary Puerto Rican organization that operated in the late-1960s and early-1970s,” Enck-Wanzer explains. “The Young Lords are drastically understudied, given the significant role they played in mobilizing Puerto Ricans politically.” More broadly, Enck-Wanzer sees his research as being “located in the terrain between communication studies and critical/cultural studies” as it pertains to the study of race. Therefore, in addition to his work on the Young Lords, he is pursuing an active research program “interrogating the paradoxical relationships between race and democracy in the U.S.,” which is a thread of inquiry that has led him to examine the “anti-racial politics” of Barack Obama.
Enck-Wanzer was drawn to the Department of Communication Studies at UNT “because of its extremely collegial environment, its commitment to rigorous critical inquiry, and the quality undergraduate and graduate students it has produced over the years. It’s also important for me to be somewhere that is concerned with critical inquiries about race and public culture – a concern that both the department and college have demonstrated to me.” He is excited to be at UNT and in Denton, which has a vibrant community he has already grown to love.
Eugene Martin (Assistant Professor, Radio, Television & Film) holds an MFA from Temple. He comes to UNT with not only a wealth of experience but a plethora of projects underway. He is in the process of creating a three-part trans-media project on the history of North Philadelphia. Commissioned with a major grant from the Office of the Provost at Temple University, the project will include a one-hour documentary film about the history of North Philadelphia as told from the point of view of four generations of African American women; a stage play called “Shot!” based on the interviews and images created for the film; and a photo book and history of North Philadelphia to be published by Temple University Press.
Martin’s feature length narrative film, The Other America, was selected as one of ten films nationally as part of the 2008 on-line film festival “From Here to Awesome.” The film was then selected for distribution by Indieflix and B-Side and is now a featured release on Amazon On-Demand and Hulu. The Other America had a theatrical screening in New York City in October, 2008 at the Times Square Art Cinemas. It was the opening night film at the Slamdance Film Festival in 2004, an official selection at the San Francisco International Film Festival and the Lake Placid Film Forum, and received the award for best independent feature film at the Philadelphia Film Festival. It was nominated for an award for “Best Emerging Feature” at the Independent Feature Project Market.
Martin has taught community media and the arts in collaboration with students from the Temple Honors Program and the Village of Arts and Humanities, a non-profit youth development organization in North Philadelphia. He designed curriculum to teach narrative filmmaking to teens in an after-school program with the honors students serving as mentors.
Feifei Pan (Assistant Professor, Geography) obtained his Ph.D. in civil engineering with a focus on hydrology and water resources from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2002. From 2002 to 2004 he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Prior to coming UNT, he was a research scientist in School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology (2004-2009). From 1992 to 1993, he was a member of China’s ninth Antarctic expedition team and worked in Antarctica for one year.
Pan's research centers on the application of theories, numerical models, remote sensing, and GIS techniques to environmental issues related to water resources, hydrology, ecology, meteorology, and climate. He is particularly interested in soil moisture dynamics, surface water and groundwater interaction, surface water quality modeling, and visualization and numerical modeling of vegetation dynamics and snow process. He is extremely excited about joining UNT.
Pan enjoys teaching both graduates and undergraduates and firmly believes that a good researcher should also be a good teacher.
Pan was attracted to UNT’s emphasis on interdisciplinary research and education. He is looking forward to collaborating with departmental colleagues and faculty from other departments to develop a strong research program in eco-hydrology and water resources. Putting his experience in numerical modeling and visualization to work, he hopes to work with other faculty members to develop some interactive teaching-learning software tools. He also hopes to collaborate with geography colleagues to develop a summer field school in China.
Amanda J. Wright (Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences) earned her Ph.D. at Harvard University in 2003. She is a plant cell biologist and geneticist whose research in maize focuses on aspects of cell division. Prior to joining the UNT faculty, she was an NIH IRACDA (Institutional Research and Academic Career Development Awards) postdoctoral fellow at the University of California San Diego.
Wright’s postdoctoral work at UCSD and the work she will continue here at UNT focuses on cell divisions that take place during leaf formation in maize. She is identifying and characterizing mutants with defects in these cell divisions. Determining which genes are disrupted by the mutations will help explain this fundamental biological process as well as how cell division is controlled to build and organize various plant tissues and organs during growth and development.
In choosing UNT, Wright was very aware that plant biology is one of the great strengths the Department of Biological Sciences. “The prospect of working with a group of lively colleagues whose research interests are related to mine was very appealing to me,” Wright said. “Another draw was the quality of the research equipment and microscopes available for use within the department. Working at UNT will also allow me to teach and train budding scientists at all levels from high school through post-graduate. I’ve had wonderful experiences at every level during my scientific research career and feel I can provide my students with a scientific environment capable of generating great research and positive experiences for them as well here at UNT.”
Other new tenure-system faculty, arranged alphabetically by name, are:
Jorge Aviles Diz (Assistant Professor, Foreign Languages & Literatures) studied at the University of Salamanca, where he received his Ph.D. in Spanish Peninsular literature in 2009. Aviles has taught at James Madison University and Wake Forest University. He specializes in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Spanish Peninsular literature, with a special focus in romantic theater. He is currently working on a critical edition of an unpublished play by Fernandez y Gonzalez based on the life of the Italian poet Torcuato Tasso, as well as a book about Spanish post-romanticism.
Jason Balas (Assistant Professor, Radio, Television & Film) earned his MFA in film production from Ohio University in 2002. He has worked for the WB Network and has freelanced for Fox Corporate/NY and the A&E Networks. His productions have received several distinguished awards. Balas has also had narrative work screened and awarded at several film festivals. Prior to joining the UNT faculty, he taught media production at Sam Houston State University and the University of Oklahoma.
Bethany Blackstone (Assistant Professor, Political Science) received her Ph.D. from Emory University in 2009. She comes to UNT after serving as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow during the 2008-2009 academic year. Her current research focuses on judicial process and behavior and the impact of the Supreme Court on congressional decision-making.
Neilesh Bose (Assistant Professor, History) holds a Ph.D. in South Asian history from Tufts University. During his graduate career, he had teaching fellowships at the College of St. Rose, West Chester University, and Colorado College. His interests include modern Muslim politics in South Asia, intellectual history, decolonization, the twentieth century world, and the history of South Asian diasporas. Recent publications include, Beyond Bollywood and Broadway: Plays from the South Asian Diaspora and Of Human Rights (A Translation of Utpal Dutt's Bengali language Maanusher Adhikare).
Adam Briggle (Assistant Professor, Philosophy and Religion Studies) earned his Ph.D. in environmental studies from the University of Colorado in 2006. For the past three years he has been a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. His research interests lie at the intersections of science, technology, and ethics. He is the author of The Kass Bioethics Council: Public Philosophy and the Politics of Biotechnology (University of Notre Dame Press, forthcoming) and is presently co-authoring a book with Carl Mitcham titled Ethics and Science: An Introduction from Cambridge University Press.
Tony E. Carey, Jr. (Assistant Professor, Political Science) earned his Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 2009. His research focuses on public opinion and political behavior with concerns in African-American politics, political and social identity, political psychology, and experimental and survey methodology. He explores the factors that influence electoral alliances between urban African Americans and Latinos. He also recently co-authored an article published in Gender and Politics that explored racial and gendered identities’ influence on citizens’ candidate choice in the 2008 Democratic primaries.
Jiyoung Cha (Assistant Professor, Radio, Television & Film) received her Ph.D. in mass communication at the University of Florida. Her teaching areas include media economics, media management, new media systems, and audience analysis. Cha has worked as a marketing director and editing assistant in the Korean film industry, and has served as marketing coordinator for the Syracuse Korean Film Festival. Her research interests include the relationship between the media and the audience, and the interaction between emerging new media and traditional media from management and marketing perspectives.
Adam Chamberlin (Assistant Professor, Dance & Theatre) received his MFA in theatrical design from the University of Texas at Austin. He has been an assistant professor and lighting designer for Virginia Commonwealth University; director of production for Amaranth Contemporary Dance; and resident lighting designer for One World Theatre, the Latin Ballet of Virginia, and a variety of musical and dance groups. Additionally, he has been a high school teacher and a faculty member at the Institute of Digital – Performing Arts and has led workshops internationally.
Robert M. Citino (Associate Professor, History) received his Ph.D. from Indiana University in 1984. He is the author of eight books, including The German Way of War and Death of the Wehrmacht, which were both selections of the History Book Club and the Military Book Club. His book, Blitzkrieg to Desert Storm, won both the American Historical Association’s Paul M. Birdsall Prize for book of the Year in military and strategic history and the Society for Military History’s Distinguished Book Award. He comes to UNT after a year as the Charles Boal Ewing Visiting Professor of Military History at the U.S. Military Academy.
Suzanne Enck-Wanzer (Assistant Professor, Communication Studies) earned a Ph.D. in communication and culture from Indiana University in 2005. Her scholarship, teaching, and service involve collaborative approaches to the study of rhetorical theory and criticism, feminist theory and activism, social movement and protest, and contemporary public culture. Her research centers on mediated depictions of gender and violence in the U.S. context. Viewing academia and activism as inextricably linked, Suzanne has worked directly with domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers throughout the Midwest.
David Hoeinghaus (Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences) earned his Ph.D. at Texas A&M University. Most recently, he conducted postdoctoral research at Kansas State University. His research program examines aquatic community and ecosystem ecology, with a special interest in responses of aquatic ecosystems to habitat alteration and changes in biodiversity.
Kyle Jensen (Assistant Professor, English) earned his Ph.D. in English studies from Illinois State University. He specializes in modern rhetorical theory, as well as the intersections between writing theory, writing instruction, and new media technologies. He is currently at work on a book that reassesses and redirects the predominant approaches to university writing instruction. He is also online editor of JAC, the leading theoretical journal in the field of rhetoric and composition studies.
Derek Johnson (Assistant Professor, Radio, Television & Film) received his Ph.D. in communication arts from the Media and Cultural Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research explores the uneasy, negotiated collaborations required of corporations, creators, and consumers when single intellectual properties are shared among multiple sites of cultural production in the television, film, game, and comic industries. His work has been published most recently in journals including Popular Communication and The Velvet Light Trap, as well as the anthologies Reading Lost and Convergence Media History.
John Krueger (Assistant Professor, Mathematics) earned his Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon University in 2003, after which he did a three year post-doc at the University of Vienna in Austria. Subsequent to that, he was Morrey Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley. In the summer of 2008, he spent a month at the University of Nagoya in Japan as a JSPS short-term postdoctoral fellow. His research is in mathematical logic and set theory.
Miroslav Penkov (Assistant Professor, English) was born and raised in Bulgaria. He attended the University of Arkansas, where he earned his an MFA in creative writing. His stories have received several awards and fellowships, including the Walton Fellowship and the Lily Peter. One of Penkov's stories was awarded the Southern Review's 2007 Eudora Welty Prize in fiction and was later chosen to appear in the 2008 Best American Short Stories. His debut collection of stories will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the near future.
Tilo Reinert (Assistant Professor, Physics) received his Ph.D. in experimental physics from the University of Leipzig, Germany, where he was involved in the development of an advanced nuclear microprobe laboratory. He is a specialist in the application of high energy focused ion beams for analysis and materials modification. His research is mainly based on high resolution quantitative element microscopy and promoting it as a new tool, especially for neuroscience. He has taught undergraduate courses in experimental physics, nuclear and particle physics, and nuclear microprobe technology.
Jaime Javier Rodríguez (Assistant Professor, English) happens to be a UNT alumnus, having graduated with a B.A. in 1981. He earned his doctorate in English and American literature from Harvard University in 2000, and has taught at Boston University and at the University of Notre Dame. He specializes in the literatures of the U.S.-Mexican borderlands. His first book, The Literatures of the U.S.-Mexican War: Narrative, Time, and Identity, explores the way that war's narratives and poetry continue to influence how each country interacts with the other and how Mexican-American culture relates to our global age.
Yuri Rostovtsev (Assistant Professor, Physics) has a Ph.D. in physics and mathematics from the Russian Academy of Sciences, earned at the Institute of Applied Physics, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. He has taught college-level physics in Russia (Nizhny Novgorod State University), as well as at Texas A&M University. His research interests include laser physics, atomic and molecular physics, condensed matter, and nonlinear and quantum optics. This research has involved the study of coherence effects in various media, such as atomic and molecular gases, nanostructures, solids, and plasmas.
Camilo J. Ruggero (Assistant Professor, Psychology) earned his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Miami. He completed his clinical internship and a postdoctoral fellowship at Brown University. He also holds an adjunct professor position at Korea University in Seoul. He is the recipient of an NIMH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) as well as a NARSAD Young Investigator Award for work that explored how to improve the detection of bipolar disorders. His research explores what puts people at risk for developing episodes of mania and depression.
Sean Tierney (Assistant Professor, Geography) specializes in the spatial variations of the new energy economy. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Denver, where he was a lecturer for two years teaching a wide variety of geography courses. In addition to green energy and the broader themes of clean-tech, Tierney’s expanded research interests include urban metabolism, making the decision to join UNT an easy one, given its proximity to the DFW urban laboratory.
Andrew J. Torget (Assistant Professor, History) received his Ph.D. in 2009 from the University of Virginia and specializes in the history of the American South and U.S.-Mexican borderlands. He has published two edited volumes on the American Civil War, and served most recently as the director of the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond. He has also directed a number of award-winning digital research projects, such as "Voting America," where he partnered with Google on interactive maps of historical elections.
Jennifer Wallach (Assistant Professor, History) earned her Ph.D. in Afro-American studies from the University of Massachusetts in 2004. She specializes in the history of African Americans in the South since the Civil War. Her publication, Closer to the Truth Than Any Fact: Memoir, Memory, and Jim Crow was named a 2008 Choice Outstanding Academic Title. Recently, Wallach finished a biography of Richard Wright, which will be published in 2010. She is co-editing a collection about the civil rights movement in Arkansas and is writing a book about African American foodways and racial identity.
Christoph Weber (Assistant Professor, Foreign Languages & Literatures) earned his Ph.D. in German from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His area of expertise is eighteenth- and twentieth-century German literature and aesthetic theory, with special interest in the cultural representation of nature in literature and fine arts. He recently conducted research on the representation and perception of natural disasters in eighteenth-century German texts.
Kelly Wisecup (Assistant Professor, English) received her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. She specializes in the literatures of early America and the Atlantic world, science and empire, and interdisciplinary approaches to early American literatures. She has published several articles, most recently in the Southern Literary Journal, and she has been a research fellow at the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. She is currently at work on a book project on intercultural encounters among Native, African, and European medical philosophies and their influence upon early American literary practices.
Stefanie Wulff (Assistant Professor, Linguistics & Technical Communication) received her Ph.D. in English linguistics at the University of Bremen in 2007. She then received a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Michigan. Wulff also gained teaching experience in the Linguistic Department at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Her current research includes the interaction between lexis and grammar in creating meaning; second language acquisition; and academic writing proficiency. She has published more than a dozen research articles in peer-reviewed journals, edited volumes on these topics, and published a book on English idioms.
In addition to the new tenure-system faculty, CAS has hired one visiting assistant professor, four one-year lecturers and seven continuing lecturers this year.
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