Full Directory

The Institute invites several visiting speakers each year and sponsors conferences that are linked to the research and teaching interests of our faculty. The Institute now offers faculty fellowships and a graduate certificate in addition to research grants to faculty associates to support research in African and African-American Studies.

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A

Cary Adams doing acoustic radar research during a residency at the Center for Land Use Interpretation

Adams, Cary

Associate Professor of Art, Environment, and Emerging Practices

Office Location
Sage Art Center
Telephone
(585) 273-5994
Web Address
Website

Interests: Environmental Art and Humanities; New Media; Social Practice

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Bakhmetyeva, Tanya

she/her/hers

Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies

Associate Academic Director, Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies

Office Location
535 Lattimore
Telephone
(585) 273-5187

Interests: Russian and Eastern European History, History of Catholicism, Gender

Molly Ball Headshot

Ball, Molly

Assistant Professor of History

Office Location
449 Rush Rhees Library
Telephone
(585) 276-7184
Web Address
Website

Interests: Brazilian History; Latin American History; Economic History; Immigration History

Person's photo

Bridges, William H., IV

Arthur Satz Professor of the Humanities

Associate Professor of Modern Languages and Cultures

Office Location
407 Lattimore Hall
Telephone
(585) 275-2235

Interests: Modern Japanese language, literature, and culture; Race and ethnicity in modern Japanese literature and culture; Contemporary Japanese popular culture, especially anime; 20th-century African American media and culture; Literary theory, especially African American literary theory and the theory of the novel; Translation (theory and practice); Creative Nonfiction; Digital Humanities; Reparations and Intergenerational Justice

C

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Kristin Doughty

Doughty, Kristin

Associate Professor of Anthropology

Director of Undergraduate Studies

Office Location
437 Lattimore Hall
Telephone
(585) 275-5155

Interests: political and legal anthropology; politics of reconciliation; transitional justice; violence and conflict; memory; politics of energy; Africa; Rwanda

Jack Downey

Downey, Jack

John Henry Newman Professor of Roman Catholic Studies

Associate Professor of Religion

Research Active

Office Location
436 Rush Rhees Library
Telephone
(585) 275-5224

Interests: Contemporary Justice Movements; Liberation Theologies; North American religious history; Christianity; Buddhism: and Contemplative Traditions

Joshua Dubler

Dubler, Joshua

Associate Professor of Religion

Director, Rochester Education Justice Initiative

Research Active

Office Location
428A Rush Rhees Library
Telephone
(585) 275-4756

Interests: Religion in America

Headshot of Professor Dunning.

Dunning, Stefanie K.

Susan B. Anthony Professor

Professor of Black Studies

Professor of English

Director, Sexuality, Women, and Gender Studies

Office Location
538 Lattimore Hall
Telephone
(585) 275-5115

Interests: Black ecologies; Queer ecologies; Queer theory; Black feminist theory; African American literature; Literary and cultural studies; Film and visual cultures

E

Headshot of Jordan Ealey.

Ealey, Jordan

they/she

Assistant Professor of Black Studies

Interests: Black feminist theory and praxis; Black theatre and performance; Nineteenth and twentieth century Black intellectual history, sound studies, popular music, and Black girlhood studies

Headshot of Jordache Ellapen.

Ellapen, Jordache A.

Associate Professor of Black Studies

Associate Chair, Department of Black Studies

Interests: Visual Culture and Performance Studies; Indian Ocean Studies; Afro-Indian Studies; Indentureship and Slavery Studies; Black/African Feminist Thought; Black/African Queer Studies; Black Sexual Cultures; Porn Studies and Race; Black Pleasure Politics; Queer Diaspora Studies; Queer of Color Critique; African Fashion

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Nadine Grimm

Grimm, Nadine

she/her/hers

James P. Wilmot Distinguished Assistant Professor of Linguistics

Professor of Linguistics

Director of Language Documentation and Description Program

Co-Director of Grammar and Variation Lab

Office Location
509 Lattimore Hall
Web Address
Website

Interests: Language documentation and description; typology; linguistic fieldwork; African linguistics; grammatical tone; grammar writing; language and culture; language and cognition

H

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Hunter, Cory

James P. Wilmot Distinguished Assistant Professor of Music in the Arthur Satz Department of Music

Assistant Professor of Music, Department of Music, School of Arts & Sciences

Assistant Professor of Musicology, Eastman School of Music

Office Location
1-341 Dewey Hall

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K

Cilas Kemedjio

Kemedjio, Cilas

Professor of Black Studies

Professor of Francophone and French Studies

Office Location
406 Lattimore
Telephone
(585) 275--425

Interests: Francophone Caribbean and African literary and cultural studies; postcolonial theory; transnational black studies; humanitarianism

Jennifer Kyker

Kyker, Jennifer

Academic Leave 2024-2025

Associate Professor of Music, Arthur Satz Department of Music, School of Arts & Sciences

Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology, Eastman School of Music

Office Location
1-308 Dewey Hall
Telephone
(585) 275-0239

M

Kathryn Mariner

Mariner, Kathryn

Associate Professor of Anthropology

Office Location
444 Lattimore Hall
Telephone
(585) 275-8734

Interests: intimacy and social inequality; politics of race, class and gender; temporality; kinship and adoption; care; social work; space and place; visual anthropology; United States

Marshall, Cona

Assistant Professor of American Religions

Research Active

Office Location
431 Rush Rhees Library
Telephone
Office (585) 275-9368

Interests: Womanism; Black feminism; the Black church (as an institution); African American public religious rhetoric

Professor McCune.

McCune, Jeffrey Q., Jr.

he/him/his

Frederick Douglass Professor

Associate Professor of English

Associate Professor of Black Studies

Founding Chair, Department of Black Studies

Office Location
311B Morey Hall
Telephone
(585) 273-5346

Interests: Gender Studies; Sexuality Studies; Performance and Popular Culture; Visual and Cultural Studies; Black Queer Theory

Jeffrey Q. McCune, Jr.

McCune, Jeffrey Q., Jr.

Founding Chair, Department of Black Studies

Office Location
311B Morey Hall
Telephone
(585) 273-5346
John Michael

Michael, John

John Hall Deane Professor of Rhetoric and Poetry

Professor of English

Professor of Visual and Cultural Studies

Director, American Studies

Office Location
405 Morey Hall
Telephone
(585) 275-9259

Interests: American literature; critical theory; cultural studies

N

Leila Nadir

Nadir, Leila Christine

Associate Professor of Environmental Humanities

Director, Environmental Humanities Program

Interests: Anthropocene; Apocalypse; Environmental humanities; Memoir and creative nonfiction; Social practice art; Food studies; Theories of modernity/modernism; Cultural histories of colonialism and extractive capitalism; Immigration studies; Cold War geopolitics, especially related to Afghanistan; Politics of Race and Ethnicity; American Literature

O

Headshot of Professor Omelsky.

Omelsky, Matthew

Associate Professor of English

Associate Professor of Black Studies

Associate Professor of Visual and Cultural Studies

Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of Black Studies

Office Location
417 Morey Hall
Telephone
(585) 275-2376

Interests: Global black cultural studies; African, African American, and Caribbean literatures; Film and media studies; Speculative aesthetics; Time and phenomenology; Critical theory

P

Person's photo

Papaioannou, Julie

Professor of Instruction in French

Language Pedagogy Coordinator, French

Study Abroad Advisor, French

Office Location
427 Lattimore Hall
Telephone
(585) 275-4251

Interests: French language and culture; French and Francophone literature and film (twentieth and twenty-first centuries); French literary translation; French criticism, literary and postcolonial theory

R

Nora Rubel

Rubel, Nora

Jane and Alan Batkin Professor in Jewish Studies

Associate Professor of Religion

Chair, Department of Religion and Classics

Research Active

Office Location
438 Rush Rhees Library
Telephone
(585) 275-7215

Interests: American Religion; Race and Ethnicity; Religion and Foodways

S

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Jeffrey Tucker

Tucker, Jeffrey Allen

Associate Professor of English

Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of English

Office Location
418 Morey Hall
Telephone
(585) 275-2064

Interests: African-American literature; 20th-century American literature; science fiction

W

Sharon Willis

Willis, Sharon

Fanny Knapp Allen Professor of Fine Arts

Professor of Art and Art History

Professor of Visual and Cultural Studies

Office Location
517 Morey Hall
Telephone
(585) 275-5757

Interests: Film history and theory; visual and cultural studies; women's studies and feminist theory; comparative literature and critical theory; French cinema; 19th and 20th century French literature