Faculty Associates are instructional faculty and professionals across the University with an informal and valued affiliation to the Department of American Culture. Faculty Associates occasionally list courses with the Department, serve on departmental administrative or dissertation committees, and actively engage with the American Culture community in a variety of other ways.
Irina Aristarkhova, Professor, School of Art & Design | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Additionally holds affiliations in the Department of Women's and Gender Studies, The Digital Studies Institute, the Center for Ethics, Society and Computing (ESC), the Institute for Research on Women & Gender, The Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies, and the Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSAS).
Ruth Behar, James W. Fernandez Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology, Victor Haim Perera Collegiate Professor of Anthropology | Faculty Associate in American Culture and Faculty Associate in the Latina/o Studies program. Primary interests: self-narratives, autobiographies, and life histories of Latin American and Latina women; ethnicity and narrative in American personal ethnographies; Cuba and Cuban Americans; diaspora Jewish cultures.
Giorgio Bertellini, Professor of Film, Television, and Media, and Romance Languages & Literatures | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: silent film, early twentieth-century film viewership, Italian and Italian-American cinema.
Sara Blair, Patricia S. Yaeger Collegiate Professor of English Language & Literature; Vice Provost for Academic and Faculty Affairs | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: American literature and culture 1890–present; U.S. modernism and modernity; photography and visual cultures.
John Carson, Associate Professor of History | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: American intellectual/cultural history; history of science; history of the human sciences.
Rosario Ceballo, Professor Emerita of Women's and Gender Studies and Professor Emerita of Psychology; Faculty Associate in American Culture and Faculty Associate in Latina/o Studies program. Primary interest: the impact of poverty and community violence on child development.
Edward C. Chang, Professor of Psychology | Faculty Associate in American Culture and Faculty Associate in the Asian/Pacific Islander American studies program. Primary interests: cognitive-behavioral processes, stress, and coping in general; correlates of heightened pessimism among Asian Americans compared to Caucasian Americans; intersections between clinical, social, and personality psychology, particularly concerning optimism, pessimism, social problem solving, and perfectionism as predictors of psychological and physical well-being.
Barry Checkoway, Arthur M. Dunham Collegiate Professor Emeritus of Social Work and Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: community organization and community development; social policy and planning; urban affairs and neighborhood practice.
Mark Clague, Professor of Musicology and Entrepreneurship & Leadership, School of Music, Theatre & Dance; SMTD Associate Dean for Collaboration and Partnerships; Director, U-M Gershwin Initiative; Co-Editor-In-Chief, MUSA | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: all periods and styles of American music (classical, popular, sacred, and folk), especially cultural institutions in American cities, symphony orchestras, Motown, discourse on the social function of music especially concerning class, film music (esp. Copland), a patriotic song especially "The Star-Spangled Banner," band music especially by Alton Augustus Adams, Sr., first black bandmaster of the U.S. Navy, music in everyday life, cultural economics.
Paul Conway, Associate Professor Emeritus, School of Information | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: digitization of cultural heritage resources, particularly photographic archives, the use of digitized resources by experts in a variety of humanities contexts, and the measurement of image and text quality in large-scale digitization programs.
Matthew Countryman, Associate Professor of Afroamerican and African Studies, Associate Professor of History | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: United States history; race and ethnicity; intellectual and cultural history; African diaspora; Atlantic studies.
Deborah Dash Moore, Frederick G. L. Huetwell Professor of History and Professor of Judaic Studies | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: Jewish history; Jewish life in the Americas.
Susan Douglas, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, Catherine Neafie Kellogg Professor of Communication and Media | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: media studies, gender studies.
Herbert Eagle, Associate Professor of Slavic Languages & Literatures and Associate Professor in the Residential College | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: Russian and Eastern European film.
Sam Erman, Professor of Law | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: law and history; citizenship; the Constitution; empire; race; legal change.
Sherina Feliciano-Santos, Associate Professor of Anthropology | Core Faculty in the Native American Studies program; Faculty Associate in American Culture and Faculty Associate in the Latina/o Studies program. Primary interests: linguistic anthropology; narratives; race and ethnicity; identity; Indigeneity; Puerto Rico and the Caribbean.
Thomas Fricke, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology; Senior Research Scientist at the Population Studies Center and SRC Family Demography | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: marriage, family work, social change; moral identities in American; rural American transition; anthropologies of American place and identity.
Joseph A. Galura, LEO Adjunct Lecturer in Social Work and LSA; Advisor, undergraduate minor in Community Action and Social Change | Faculty Associate in American Culture and Faculty Associate in the Asian/Pacific Islander American studies program. Primary interests: community service learning, especially how this pedagogy affects student outcomes; diversity, spirituality, and social work practice; the experiences of Filipino Americans, particularly in metropolitan Detroit.
Charles Hiroshi Garrett, Professor of Musicology, School of Music, Theatre & Dance | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: twentieth-century music, American music, jazz, popular music, music, and racial/ethnic representation, and cultural theory.
Hollis Griffin, Associate Professor of Communication & Media and Film, Television & Media | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: cultural politics of television, the internet, and social media; affect; sexuality; space/place.
Lorraine Gutierrez, Edith A. Lewis Professor Emerita of Social Work; Core Faculty in the Latina/o Studies program | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: community psychology, multicultural community participation, and social action; empowerment processes on the individual and community levels.
Don Herzog, Edson R. Sunderland Professor of Law, U-M Law School | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: political, legal, social, and moral theory.
Joel D. Howell, Elizabeth Farrand Professor; Professor of History, Internal Medicine, and Health Management & Policy | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: The history of medical technology and medical care in the late-nineteenth and the early-twentieth-century U.S.; the history and sociology of science and technology.
Tung-Hui Hu, Associate Professor of English Language and Literature | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: creative writing (poetry); history & politics of digital media; contemporary media art.
Dean Hubbs, Professor of Women's and Gender Studies, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts and Professor of Music, School of Music, Theatre & Dance; Director of the Lesbian-Gay-Queer Research Initiative | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: postwar pop-rock and country music, twentieth-century American concert music, gender and sexuality studies, U.S. cultural history, class studies.
Amy E. Hughes, Professor of Theatre and Drama, School of Music, Theatre & Dance | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: nineteenth-century U.S. theatre; material and visual culture; disability studies; animal studies; digital humanities; documentary editing; collaborative learning.
Carlos Francisco Jackson, Professor of Art and Design, Dean of the Penny W. Stamps School of Arts and Design | Faculty Associate in American Culture and Faculty Associate in the Latina/o Studies program. Primary interests: visual arts, Chicanx art praxis, community-engaged cultural practices of social justice.
Carol Jacobsen, Professor Emerita of Art & Design, and Women's and Gender Studies | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: contemporary art, feminism, social documentary film/video, photography, issues of women's criminalization, and censorship.
Stuart Kirsch, Roy A. Rappaport Collegiate Professor of Anthropology | Faculty Associate in American Culture and Faculty Associate in the Asian/Pacific Islander American studies program. Primary interests: indigenous movements, mining conflicts, political ecology, cultural property; Melanesia, Oceania.
Rijul Kochhar, 202 -2024 Michigan Society of Fellows fellow in anthropology and Assistant Professor of Anthropology | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests:sociocultural anthropology; transnational histories of infectious diseases; environmental anthropology; critical theories of technology, disability, and rationality.
Anthony Kolenic, Director of the Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: indigeneity and decolonization; antiracism and institutional criticality; gender equity; normalizing research partnerships; sustainability and carbon neutrality; community co-design; translation and public education; alt-ac mentorship.
Joseph S. C. Lam, Professor of Musicology in the School of Music, Theatre & Dance | Faculty Associate in American Culture and Faculty Associate in the Asian/Pacific Islander American studies program. Primary interests: ethnomusicology, music historiography, East Asian music, Asian American music.
Kerry Larson, Professor in English Language & Literature | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: American literature; contemporary American poetry.
Matthew Lassiter, Professor of History, Urban and Regional Planning, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: political history; urban/suburban studies; racial and social inequality; policing and the carceral state.
Howard Markel, George E. Wantz Distinguished Professor of the History of Medicine, Professor of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases; Director of the Center for the History of Medicine | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: history and sociology of medicine, health care, and public health in nineteenth and twentieth-century U.S.; immigration.
Terrence McDonald, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of History| Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: American history; American urban history; economic history.
Donna Nagata, Professor, Psychology | Faculty Associate in American Culture and Faculty Associate in the Asian/Pacific Islander American studies program. Primary interests: psychosocial consequences of the Japanese American internment; Asian American mental health, multicultural issues in psychotherapy; intergenerational and family relations.
Ivette Perfecto, Bunyan Bryant Collegiate Professor of Environmental Justice | Faculty Associate in American Culture and Faculty Associate in the Latina/o Studies program. Primary interests: agricultural ecology and tropical ecology in Latin America; natural resources and sustainability issues in the Tropics; conservation of biodiversity.
Melissa Phruksachart, Assistant Professor of Film, Television, and Media and Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: Asian/American media; U.S. film and television; the broad political and libidinal economies of diversity and multiculturalism.
Vyta Pivo, 2021-2024 Michigan Society of Fellows fellow in architecture and Assistant Professor, A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: architectural and urban history, environmental studies, U.S. cement and concrete industries, histories of the environment, colonialism, racial capitalism, and the U.S. in a global context.
Alisse Portnoy, Associate Professor of English Language & Literature | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: language studies; twentieth-century American; nineteenth-century America; pedagogy; American; rhetoric and composition
Richard Primus, Theodore J. St. Antoine Collegiate Professor of Law, U-M Law School | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: law, theory, and history of the U.S. Constitution.
Xiomara Santamarina, Associate Professor of English Language & Literature, and Afroamerican & African Studies | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: African-American, nineteenth- and twentieth-century American; autobiography studies; Caribbean; gender and sexuality; global and transnational; novel and narrative; theory; and women's literature.
David Schoem, Adjunct Associate Professor of Sociology; Director Michigan Community Scholars Program | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: intergroup relations; conflict and community; Jewish identity and the American Jewish community; multicultural organizational change; higher education reform; multicultural teaching.
Andrew J. Shryock, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Anthropology | Faculty Associate in American Culture and Faculty Associate in the Arab & Muslim American Studies program. Primary interests: cultural anthropology and ethnographic fieldwork.
Naomi Eavana Silver, LEO Lecturer IV at the Sweetland Writing Center | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: college student writing development, faculty and graduate instructor professional development in connection to teaching and developing writing courses across U-M, one-to-one writing consultations in the Writing Workshop and Peer Tutor Program, Sweetland Digital Rhetoric Collaborative, a community webspace and born-digital book series with the U-M Press.
Megan Sweeney, Arthur F. Thurnau Associate Professor of English Language & Literature, and Afroamerican & African Studies | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: twentieth to twenty-first-century African American literature and culture; inter-American literature; U.S. Latina/o literature; critical race studies; transnational feminist and gender studies, critical prison studies, cultural studies, and ethnography.
Marie P. Ting, Assistant Vice Provost for Equity, Inclusion & Academic Affairs | Faculty Associate in American Culture and Faculty Associate in the Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies program. Primary interests: institutional diversity, leadership, management, and strategy development.
Derek Vaillant, Professor of Communication Studies | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: U.S. media and communication history; late nineteenth and early twentieth-century urban social and cultural history; music and popular culture, ethnicity, race, and gender.
John Vandermeer, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, Asa Gray Distinguished Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Professor of Natural Resources & Environment | Faculty Associate in American Culture and Faculty Associate in the Latina/o Studies program. Primary interests: environmental sciences; environmental justice; race, class, gender and the environment; sustainable development; Latino/as and third world issues; science and society.
Gustavo Verdesio, Associate Professor of Spanish in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures; Core Faculty in the Native American Studies program | Faculty Associate in American Culture and Faculty Associate in the Latina/o Studies program. Primary interests: colonial studies, Native American studies, American culture, cultural studies, material culture.
Stephen M. Ward, Associate Professor in the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies and the Residential College | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: recent American history, African American political thought and social movements, grassroots activism, and community-based approaches to urban development.
Celeste Watkins-Hayes, Joan and Sanford Weill Dean of Ford School of Public Policy; Jean E. Fairfax Collegiate Professor of Public Policy; Director, Center for Racial Justice; University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor; Professor of Sociology; Research and Community Impact Fellow, Anti-Racism Collaborative | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: urban poverty; social policy; HIV/AIDS; non-profit and government organizations; race, class, and gender.
M. Remi Yergeau, Associate Professor of English Language & Literature and Digital Studies | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: critical autism studies; critical disability studies; cultural rhetorics; digital studies; feminist rhetorics; queer rhetorics; pedagogy; rhetoric and writing studies.
Jason Young, Associate Professor of History | Faculty Associate in American Culture and Core Faculty in the Arab and Muslim American studies program. Primary interests: United States history; race and ethnicity; intellectual and cultural history; African diaspora; Atlantic studies.
Rebecca Zurier, Associate Professor of History of Art | Faculty Associate in American Culture. Primary interests: American art, material culture, architecture from colonial times to the present; art and the mass media; American culture at the turn of the twentieth century; realism and representation; urban culture; histography.
