2015-2016 New Faculty Appointments
August 27, 2015
ARHU welcomes new faculty cohort to UMD.
The College of Arts and Humanities welcomes new faculty cohort to UMD.
Communication| Women's Studies| SLLC| Music| Linguistics| History| ARTT
FALL 2015 NEW FACULTY: Department of Communication
LINDA ALDOORY, Associate Professor, Department of Communication
Linda Aldoory earned her doctorate from Syracuse University in 1999. Her research focuses on health campaigns, and she recently completed a four-year term directing the Herschel S. Horowitz Center for Health Literacy in the School of Public Health. Under a Prince George's County Health Enterprise Zone grant from the state of Maryland, Aldoory is conducting community-based participatory research to evaluate health literacy. She plans to continue strengthening community partnerships for participatory action and research in health communication. Her work has been published in the Journal of Health Communication, Health Communication and Women & Health.
BOBBY BENEDICTO, Assistant Professor, Department of Women's Studies
Bobby Benedicto earned his doctorate in cultural studies from the University of Melbourne in 2010. Prior to arriving at Maryland, he held postdoctoral fellowships at the Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry and at McGill University. He researches and teaches at the intersections of queer theory, postcolonial theory, and urban anthropology. His first book, “Under Bright Lights: Gay Manila and the Global Scene,” was a finalist for the 2015 LAMBDA Literary Awards. He is currently completing his second monograph, “Queer Afterlives: Dictatorship Architecture, Transgender Performance, and the Place of the Dead.” His work has also appeared in journals such as Social Text, GLQ and Antipode, among others.
LaMONDA HORTON-STALLINGS, Associate Professor, Department of Women's Studies
LaMonda Horton-Stallings received her doctorate in English from Michigan State University in 2002. Her primary research and teaching interests are African American literature and culture with a focus on sexuality and gender. She is author of “Mutha is Half a Word!: Intersections of Folklore, Vernacular, Myth, and Queerness in Black Female Culture.” Her second book, “Funk the Erotic: Transaesthetics and Black Sexual Cultures,” is forthcoming from the University of Illinois Press. Horton-Stallings has also published essays in African American Review, Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire, Obsidian III, MELUS, Feminist Formations, CR: The New Centennial Review, Palimpsest and Black Camera.
Back to top School of Languages, Literatures & Cultures
SATORU HASHIMOTO, Assistant Professor, School of Languages, Literatures & Cultures
Hashimoto received his doctorate in East Asian languages and civilizations at Harvard University in 2014. In 2014-15, he was junior fellow at the University of Chicago Society of Fellows. His current work examines how modern literature in China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan in the late-nineteenth to the early-twentieth centuries was practiced within contexts of these countries’ interrelated cultural traditions. Prior to doctoral work, Hashimoto studied French literature and culture at the University of Tokyo. His articles appear in several peer-reviewed edited volumes and journals in English, Japanese, Chinese and French. He is associate editor for the forthcoming Journal of World Literature.
IRINA MURESANU, Assistant Professor, School of Music
Irina Muresanu earned a D.M.A. degree in violin performance from the New England Conservatory in 2009. She has previously been a faculty member at the Boston Conservatory and in the music departments at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is the winner of the Presser Foundation Music Award, the Copland Foundation Recording Grant, the Pro Musicis International Award, the Arthur Foote Award from the Harvard Music Association and the Kate Neal Kinley Memorial Fellowship Award from the University of Illinois. Muresanu’s discography includes recordings on the Centaur, Avie Records, BMOP Sound, Albany Records, AR RE-SE and VPRO Radio Amsterdam labels. Her current project “Four Strings Around the World” is a solo violin concert/lecture featuring compositions inspired by musical cultures around the globe.
ERIC KUTZ, Assistant Professor, School of Music
Eric Kutz’s experience encompasses all roles available to a cellist. He is active as a teacher, chamber musician, orchestral musician and concerto soloist. He is a member of the Murasaki Duo, a cello/piano ensemble that just released its second compact disc recording. Kutz has premiered over two-dozen works, and has been broadcast on public radio stations throughout the country, as well as nationally on PBS television’s “Live from Lincoln Center.” Kutz received his D.M.A. from the Juilliard School in 2002. His previous appointments include 13 years as professor of music at Luther College and four years as Artist-in-Residence at Indiana University South Bend. Kutz’s next recording project will be a disc of the Murasaki Duo’s commissioned works, 2007-2012.
MARIA POLINSKY, Professor, Department of Linguistics
Maria Polinsky received her doctorate in Linguistics in 1986. She has taught at the University of Southern California, the University of California, San Diego and Harvard University. She specializes in linguistic theory and has done extensive work on endangered languages in different locations around the world. She has just completed a book on the properties of ergative languages and is now working on a monograph on heritage languages, another special interest of hers. She is currently working on the development of a research station model which will be piloted in Mesoamerica next year. At Maryland, Polinsky will be dividing her time between the Department of Linguistics and the Maryland Language Science Center, where she will be serving as associate director.
CHANTEL RODRIGUEZ, Assistant Professor, Department of History
Chantel Rodríguez received her doctorate in U.S. history from the University of Minnesota in 2013. Her book manuscript, “Health on the Line: The Railroad Bracero Program and the Struggle for Health Citizenship during World War II, ” examines the debates over the health rights of Mexican guest workers in order to show that the railroad bracero program played a crucial and under-examined role in shaping the larger twentieth-century struggle for health citizenship. Before joining the history faculty, Rodríguez was a Smithsonian Latino Studies Fellow and the Miller Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Maryland.
LIESE ZAHABI, Assistant Professor, Department of Art
Liese Zahabi received her M.F.A. degree in graphic design from North Carolina State University in 2010, and previously taught at Weber State University. Zahabi's research focuses on search as a cognitive and cultural process and artifact, and the concept of information-triage. She has presented her research at the Human Computer Interaction International Conference, and at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association. She has also exhibited creative work at Eastern Michigan and Eastern Illinois universities. Her current projects include finishing a book to be published with the Interaction-Design Foundation, and new creative work exploring search and interface design.