LIBERAL STUDIES - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Committee
- Associate in Research
Amanda Starling Gould, PhD, is a technology scholar with a particular interest in the environmental effects of digital technologies and questions the ways technologies of connection can cause disconnect, bias, and harm. She thinks, for example, about how our technologies design us, and about how the unequal distribution of power and access are designed into the system. In her current appointment with Duke's Graduate Liberal Studies program, she seeks to enable students to interrogate these issues and pursue critical interdisciplinary research projects of their own.
She teaches undergraduate, graduate, and adult learners on topics related to critical digital studies, public and digital humanities, designing equitable futures, and for many years taught a class called Learning to Fail for the Innovation & Entrepreneurship department at Duke.
Prior to moving to the Partnership for Public Service, she co-directed Duke's Story+ Research program, where she worked with hundreds of researchers within the academy, in the community, and beyond to develop projects, manage research teams, create communities of practice, and translate their knowledge into stories for public audiences. She was also the Program Director for Educational Programs and Digital Humanities at the Duke John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute where she designed digital learning experiences, consulted on projects, and supported the integration of critical digital thinking across the disciplines.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Committee
- Associate Professor of Christian Ethics and Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies
- Author
- Professor
Amy Laura Hall is the author of four books: Kierkegaard and the Treachery of Love, Conceiving Parenthood: The Protestant Spirit of Biotechnological Reproduction, Writing Home with Love: Politics for Neighbors and Naysayers, and Laughing at the Devil: Seeing the World with Julian of Norwich. She has also written numerous scholarly articles in theological and biomedical ethics. Her new essay on Kierkegaard and love will appear in The T&T Clark Companion to the Theology of Kierkegaard, to be published by Bloomsbury T&T Clark. Her book Laughing at the Devil was chosen for the 2019 Virginia Festival of the Book and as a focus lecture for the Chautauqua Institution in June, 2019. She continues work on a longer research project on masculinity and gender anxiety in mainstream, white evangelicalism.
Professor Hall has served on the steering committee of the Genome Ethics, Law, and Policy Center, the Bioethics Task Force of the United Methodist Church, and as consultant on bioethics to the World Council of Churches. She has served on the steering committee of the Genome Ethics, Law, and Policy Center and as a faculty member for the Focus Program of the Institute on Genome Sciences and Policy. She served as a faculty adviser with the Duke Center for Civic Engagement and as a faculty advisor for the NCCU-Duke Program in African, African American & Diaspora Studies. She currently teaches with and serves on the faculty advisory board for Graduate Liberal Studies and serves as a core faculty member of the Focus Program in Global Health. Hall serves as an elder in the Rio Texas Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church.
Job Titles:
- Research Professor of Humanities
Job Titles:
- Director
- Historian
- Director of Graduate
- GLS Assistant Director
As the director of Graduate Liberal Studies, Anne Mitchell Whisnant oversees all aspects of the program, participating in both administration and academics. She joined GLS as director on August 15, 2019. From 2017-19, she worked full time as a professional historical consultant in her firm Primary Source History Services, conducting several historical research projects for the National Park Service. For the 2016-17 year she was Whichard Visiting Distinguished Professor of History at East Carolina University, and before that, for ten years (2006-16), she was Deputy Secretary of the Faculty and Director of Research, Communications, and Programs for UNC-Chapel Hill's Office of Faculty Governance. Her first Duke tenure was 2002-06, when she coordinated humanities programs at the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute.
Dr. Whisnant is a historian whose teaching, research, speaking, consulting, and writing focus on public history, digital and geospatial history, and the history of the U.S. National Parks. She has taught public history at UNC-Chapel Hill, UNC-Greensboro, East Carolina University, and George Mason University. In 2006 she published Super-Scenic Motorway: A Blue Ridge Parkway History, the first fully grounded history of the parkway's development, with the University of North Carolina Press. She subsequently served as scholarly adviser for Driving Through Time: The Digital Blue Ridge Parkway, an online history collection developed collaboratively with the Park Service and the UNC Libraries. More of her Blue Ridge Parkway work may be seen here. As a consultant, Dr. Whisnant has been the co-principal historian on several other National Park Service projects. From 2008-12, she chaired a task force commissioned by the Organization of American Historians and the National Park Service to study historical practice within the Park Service. The resulting report, Imperiled Promise: The State of History in the National Park Service, won the 2013 Excellence in Consulting Award from the National Council on Public History.
Job Titles:
- Professor Emeritus of Environmental Policy
Bob Healy is Professor Emeritus of Environmental Policy in the Nicholas School and of Public Policy Studies in the Terry Sanford School. Before coming to Duke in 1986, he was a researcher with The Urban Institute, Resources for the Future and The Conservation Foundation/World Wildlife Fund in Washington, D.C. He has written ten books, mainly on issues of land use, environmental management and economic development. The latest are Knowledge and Environmental Policy (MIT 2011) and Environmental Policy in North America (Toronto 2013). Locally, he has long been involved with efforts to protect the New Hope Creek watershed. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Los Angeles.
Job Titles:
- Editor
- Member of the Advisory Committee
- Professor of the Practice of Cultural Anthropology
Charles D. Thompson, Jr. is Professor of the Practice of Cultural Anthropology and Documentary Studies at Duke University, and Senior Fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics. He holds a Ph.D. in religion and culture from UNC-Chapel Hill, with concentrations in cultural studies and Latin American studies. He also holds an M.S. degree in Agricultural Education from NC A&T State University. A former farmer, Thompson remains concerned about issues affecting laborers within our food system. He has written about farmworkers, and he is an advisory board member of Student Action with Farmworkers, the Duke Campus Farm, and other Duke food and agriculture initiatives.
Thompson is author or editor of seven books, including Going Over Home: A Search for Rural Justice in an Unsettled Land, Border Odyssey: Traveling the US/Mexico Divide (2015), Spirits of Just Men: Mountaineers, Liquor Bosses, and Lawmen in the Moonshine Capital of the World, and, with Melinda Wiggins, The Human Cost of Food: Farmworker Lives, Labor, and Advocacy. He is also the producer/director of seven documentary films, including Rock Castle Home, Homeplace Under Fire, Border Crossing 101, Faces of Time, Brother Towns/ Pueblos Hermanos (2010), We Shall Not Be Moved (2008), and The Guestworker (2007). His current work includes a project hosted by Kenan Institute for Ethics entitled, "America's Hallowed Ground."
Dan McShea (Ph.D. 1990, University of Chicago) arrived at Duke in 1996 with a primary appointment in Biology, and now holds a secondary appointment in Philosophy. His major papers are in the field of paleobiology, with a focus on large-scale trends in the history of life, especially documenting and investigating the causes of the (putative) trend in the complexity of organisms. A significant part of this work involves operationalizing certain concepts, such as complexity and hierarchy, as well as clarifying conceptual issues related to trends at larger scales. He publishes regularly in the journals Evolution, Paleobiology, and Biology and Philosophy. He serves on the editorial board of Biology and Philosophy and as a book-review co-editor for the journal Complexity. Professor McShea is a member of Duke's Center for the Philosophy of Biology.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Medical Sociology
- Professor of Medical Sociology in the Departments
Deborah T. Gold is Professor of Medical Sociology in the Departments of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Sociology, and Psychology & Neuroscience at Duke University Medical Center, where she is also a Senior Fellow of the Duke Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development. Professor Gold received her B.A. in English and Latin from the University of Illinois, her M.Ed. in Reading from National Louis University, and her Ph.D. in Human Development and Social Policy from Northwestern University. Her primary research interests are in the psychological and social consequences of chronic disease in the elderly. She has done seminal research on osteoporosis and its impact on quality of life. She has also studied the psychosocial impact of breast cancer, Parkinson's disease, syncope, head and neck cancer, Paget's disease of bone, and dementia in older adults. Her current research examines compliance and persistence with medications for older adults with chronic illnesses.
Job Titles:
- Professor Emeritus of Theater Studies
Dr. John M. Clum, Professor Emeritus of Theater Studies and English, has led Duke's MALS, undergraduate and alumni London theater programs for over twenty-five years. He is the author of eight books and numerous articles on modern British and American drama and musical theater. He is also a playwright and director of over seventy-five professional and university theatrical and operatic productions. John has twice won Duke's Outstanding Professor Award.
Job Titles:
- Professor Emeritus of Sociology
Edward Tiryakian, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, has taught many courses in GLS, from "Altruism and Philanthropy" to "The Sociology of Disasters." Past president of two national organizations and past director of International Studies at Duke, he is widely traveled and published in sociological theory, sociology of religion, sociology of development.
Thomas Robisheaux, Fred W. Shaffer Professor of History, is an historian of early modern Europe. Dr. Robisheaux has particular interests in social and cultural history, German-speaking Central Europe, Renaissance culture, religious reform, popular religion and culture, and microhistory. Author of The Last Witch of Langenburg and Rural Society and the Search for Order in Early Modern Germany, Lost Worlds, and many articles, he teaches courses on European history; Reformation Europe; Magic, Religion and Science; social and economic history; and religion and society in early modern Europe. He is currently writing a book on the craft of microhistory. He is a member of the Society for Reformation Research and the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference. As executive secretary of the Fruehe Neuzeit Interdisziplinaer (Conference Group in Early Modern German Studies) he co-organizes the trienniel conference in early modern studies at Duke University.
Job Titles:
- Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Committee
- Biology
- Professor
- Professor of Biology / Biology
Jonathan Shaw is a Professor in the Department of Biology. He received his Ph.D. in 1983 from the University of Michigan. Dr. Shaw's research is on the systematics, population genetics, and evolution of bryophytes (mosses). Some of his research interests have included the taxonomy and classification of particular groups of mosses, developmental anatomy, and genetic relationships among populations of very rare species. A current focus in the lab is the evolution of peatmosses (Sphagnum) and Dr. Shaw's field work tends to be in polar and high altitude environments. He has published some 200 scientific papers and has edited two books, one on the evolution of tolerance in plants to toxic metals in the environment, and one on the biology of bryophytes. Dr. Shaw taught for eight years at a liberal arts college (Ithaca College) before coming to Duke in 1996.
Job Titles:
- Professor Emeritus of Literature
Frank Lentricchia, a novelist and literary critic, is the Katharine Everett Gilbert Professor Emeritus of Literature. He received his Ph.D. from Duke in 1966 and has taught at UCLA, UC-Irvine and Rice University. He has taught poetry, film, literature, and fiction courses. He also spent many years as a literary critic and theorist before shifting into a new career as a novelist, and he'll continue that writing in retirement. His chief interests lie in American literature, history of poetry, modernism, the aesthetics of reading, and the history and theory of criticism. His most recent major publications include The Dog Killer of Utica (2014), The Accidental Pallbearer (2012), The Book of Ruth (2005), Crimes of Art and Terror (2003), Modernist Lyric in the Culture of Capital (2002), Close Reading: The Reader (2002), Lucchesi and The Whale (2001), The Music of the Inferno (1999), Johnny Critelli and The Knifeman (1996), The Edge of Night (1994), and Modernist Quartet (1994). He was editorial chair of South Atlantic Quarterly for five years and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2013.
Kent Wicker's academic interests include 1) issues of class, gender and region in American and post-colonial literatures; 2) narrative theory and the historical development of the novel; and 3) literary representation, realism, satire and fantasy. He is also interested in embodiment, religious and intellectual history, and the history of everyday life. With Donna Zapf, he created the GLS Core Course in interdisciplinary studies and now serves as assistant director of the GLS program. He holds a BS in International Relations from Georgetown's School of Foreign Service and a PhD in English from Duke. He has worked both inside and outside academia as a writer and editor, has served on the board of the Association of Graduate Liberal Studies Programs, and led several workshop sessions at the annual convention. Dr. Wicker lives with his wife near the Eno River, where he hikes, bikes and involuntarily feeds a growing herd of deer.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Committee
- Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
Leo Ching's research interests include colonial discourse studies, postcolonial theory, Japanese mass culture, and theories of globalization and regionalism. He has published in boundary 2, positions and Public Culture.
Lisa Robinson Bailey is an alumna of the Graduate Liberal Studies Program (AM 2007). She holds a BA in Women's Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. From 2007-2011, she was the assistant director of the A.B. Duke Memorial Scholarship Program in the Office of University Scholars and Fellows. Prior to joining the GLS staff in 2014, Lisa spent three years as a human subjects specialist in the Office of Research Support at Duke.
Malina Chavez (MFA|EDA, Duke University) has been a PhD Lab Artist in Residence, teaching assistant in Information Science + Studies (Web Multimedia), Experimental Film, and the groundbreaking Coursera MOOC, History and Future of (Mostly) Higher Education. Chavez graduated cum laude with a BS in Photography from Middle Tennessee State University, where she completed minors in both Film Studies and International Media. Her Google street project 1949 Armistice Agreement Line explores borders that separate Gaza and Israel and was the recipient of the 2013 SPE Jeannie Pearce Award for Innovations in Imaging.
Prior to joining the GLS team, Chavez was the Program Coordinator for the Carolina Digital Humanities Initiative at UNC Chapel Hill. She also worked as a web assistant for the Center for Documentary Studies and a marketing assistant for the MFA|EDA program at Duke University. She is interested in work that engages the public, serves communities, and propels participatory projects with underserved demographics.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Committee
- Assistant Professor of the Practice of Visual & Media
- Assistant Professor of the Practice of Visual & Media Studies
Mark Olson is Assistant Professor of the Practice of Visual & Media Studies at Duke University. He teaches courses on media (new & old - theory, practice, & history) and medicine & visual culture. As a extension of his past work with the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media & Learning Initiative, he collaborates on the development of a new interdisciplinary project that connects the study of the material culture of art history, architecture and archaeology with new media modes of representation and visualization. Olson is the former Director of New Media & Information Technologies for HASTAC (Humanties, Arts, Sciences & Technology Advanced Collaboratory) and the John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary & International Studies.
Preferred pronouns: he, him, his
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor of Italian Studies at Duke University
Martin Eisner is Associate Professor of Italian Studies at Duke University and Director of Graduate Studies for both the Department of Romance Studies and the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. He specializes in medieval Italian literature, particularly the works of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, as well as the history of the book and media.
Martin Miller received his Ph.D. in Russian history at the University of Chicago and has taught at Stanford University and the New School for Social Research. He has been a member of the History Department at Duke for many years. Dr. Miller has conducted archival research in Russia and Western Europe, and has received numerous grants, among which are the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ford Foundation, the National Council on Russian and Eastern European Studies, and the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX). His publications include The Russian Revolution (Blackwell, 2001), Freud and the Bolsheviks: Psychoanalysis in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union (Yale University Press, 1998), The Russian Revolutionary Emigrees, 1825-1870 (Johns Hopkins, 1986), Krotpotkin (University of Chicago Press, 1976), and, most recently,The Foundations of Modern Terrorism: State, Society and the Dynamics of Political Violence (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2012).
Job Titles:
- Professor of the Practice of English
Melissa Malouf is Professor of the Practice of English. She teaches courses in creative writing and (mainly) contemporary literature. She is the author of two novels, More Than You Know and It Had to Be Yo u (Avisson Press, 1997) and a collection of stories, sNo Guarantees (William Morrow, 1990). One of the stories in this collection, "The Golden Robe," was awarded a prestigious Pushcart Prize (1989). Several of her stories have been cited for excellence by both Pushcart and Best American Short Stories; two of them appear in North Carolina anthologies of contemporary literature. She has written three one-act plays, which premiered at Duke, as well as two opera libretti, one of them commissioned by The Durham Arts Council. Dr. Malouf is the recipient of The Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award (1997). She earned her Ph.D. in English and American Literature at the University of California, Irvine. In addition to her roles as a member of Duke's English Department, she works on Selection and Recruitment for the Office of Undergraduate Scholars and Fellows.
Paul Manos is a Professor in the Department of Biology. He received his Ph.D. in 1993 from Cornell University. Dr. Manos's research is on the systematics and biogeography of the flowering plants. His main research interest is the evolution of the oaks and their relatives, the hickories and walnuts. He has published some 40 scientific papers spanning many different families of flowering plants, often with an emphasis on geography. Dr. Manos has taught several plant biodiversity courses since coming to Duke in 1996.
Job Titles:
- Arts and Sciences Professor of Music in Trinity College of Arts and Sciences / Music
- Music
Job Titles:
- Academic Dean Director, Program II
- Is Director of Program II
Rachael Murphey is Director of Program II and Dean for Trinity Transfer Students. She manages the Trinity Arts & Sciences Graduation with Distinction Program. Dr. Murphey earned M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where her research centered on the nature of the relationship between racial identity and academic culture and the extent to which such a relationship explains the critical political engagement (CPE) of African American intellectuals. At UNC she taught political science and African American studies courses in addition to working as an academic advisor for undergraduate students. She specialized in transfer student advising, working directly with transfer students, their campus partners, and community colleges across the state of North Carolina.
Robin Kirk is the Faculty Co-Chair of the Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute and is a founding member of the Pauli Murray Project, an initiative of the center that seeks to use the legacy of this Durham daughter to examine the region's past of slavery, segregation and continuing economic inequality. An author and human rights advocate, Kirk is a lecturer in the Department of Cultural Anthropology and directs the Human Rights Certificate. Kirk has written three books, including More Terrible Than Death: Massacres, Drugs and America's War in Colombia (Public Affairs) and The Monkey's Paw: New Chronicles from Peru (University of Massachusetts Press). She is a co-editor of The Peru Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Duke University) and co edits Duke University Press's "World Readers" series. An essayist and award-winning poet, she has published widely on issues as diverse as the Andes, torture, the politics of memory, family life and pop culture. Her essay on Belfast, "City of Walls," is included in the Best American Travel Writing anthology of 2012 (Mariner Books). Kirk authored, co-authored and edited over twelve reports for Human Rights Watch, all available on-line. In the 1980s, Kirk reported for U.S. media from Peru, where she covered the war between the government and the Shining Path. She continues to write for US media, and has been published in The New York Times, Washington Post, Sojourners, The American Scholar, the Raleigh News and Observer, the Boston Globe, the Durham Herald Sun and other media.
Martin Eisner is Associate Professor of Italian Studies at Duke University and Director of Graduate Studies for both the Department of Romance Studies and the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. He specializes in medieval Italian literature, particularly the works of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, as well as the history of the book and media.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor of History
Susan Thorne, Associate Professor of History, teaches courses on the social history of Britain and the British Empire, and on the history of European expansion more generally. She is currently working on Charles Dickens' influence on Anglo American "ways of seeing" the children of the urban poor. The Dickensian Affect: Reckonings with Reform in Early Victorian Southwark (in progress) juxtaposes Dickens's representation of criminal poverty and urban childhood in his most popular novel, Oliver Twist (1837-8) to archival accounts generated by the poor law's reform during the 1830s and hungry ‘40s.
Thomas Brothers is Professor of Music. He joined the faculty at Duke in 1991 after completing his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley. He has published three books on Louis Armstrong, most recently Louis Armstrong, Master of Modernism (W.W. Norton, 2014). In addition to African American music, Professor Brothers also teaches music of the medieval and renaissance periods. His most recent book, Help! The Beatles, Duke Ellington, and the Magic of Collaboration, was published in 2018.
An Education of Feelings: Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and the Art of Fiction
Job Titles:
- Fred W. Shaffer Professor
Thomas Robisheaux, Fred W. Shaffer Professor of History, is an historian of early modern Europe. Dr. Robisheaux has particular interests in social and cultural history, German-speaking Central Europe, Renaissance culture, religious reform, popular religion and culture, and microhistory. Author of The Last Witch of Langenburg and Rural Society and the Search for Order in Early Modern Germany, Lost Worlds, and many articles, he teaches courses on European history; Reformation Europe; Magic, Religion and Science; social and economic history; and religion and society in early modern Europe. He is currently writing a book on the craft of microhistory. He is a member of the Society for Reformation Research and the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference. As executive secretary of the Fruehe Neuzeit Interdisziplinaer (Conference Group in Early Modern German Studies) he co-organizes the trienniel conference in early modern studies at Duke University.
Job Titles:
- Senior Fellow / Duke University
Trudi Abel is a cultural historian and Rubenstein Library archivist at Duke who created the Digital Durham (http://digitaldurham.duke.edu), a web repository for primary sources relating to Durham from the post-Civil War decades to the present. Currently, Dr. Abel co-directs the NC Jukebox Project with Victoria Szabo (AAHVS). Over the past decade, Dr. Abel has taught Consumer Culture in America and Digital Durham and the New South for the MALS Program. In the summer of 2016, she will offer NC Jukebox, a cross-disciplinary course in which students use new technologies and digitized audio recordings to create fresh interpretation of the history of North Carolina and its roots music.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- History
- Visiting Scholar / History
Ylana Miller (Ph.D. Berkeley) is visiting Associate Professor in the Department of History and a graduate of the Duke-UNC Psychoanalytic Institute. She teaches a range of courses on the history of the modern Middle East, including "Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict" as well as "History of Zionism and the State of Israel." Dr. Miller has published Government and Society in Rural Palestine - 1920-1948 (University of Texas Press), and her current research project is Constructing a Framework: How US-Israeli Relations Defined the Meaning Given to Victory in 1967.