Instructors

ACADEMIC YEAR 2011-2012

SCARLETT BROOKS - PhD candidate in the Department of English, Indiana University, Bloomington

Scarlett conducts scholarly research in the field of prison writing in America from 1930-1980. She has eleven years of teaching experience: eight at the high school level and three at the collegiate level. She also does volunteer work with inmates, especially with regard to increasing Indiana inmates' access to educational services and decreasing the chances that young people living in Indiana's high-incarceration zip codes will end up incarcerated. Scarlett hopes to graduate in May 2012 and continue her record of teaching and service.

SIOBHAN CARTER-DAVID - PhD, Departments of History and American Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington

Siobhan's research explores the "new" politics of racial uplift as represented in the fashion instruction of post-Civil Rights African American print media, as well as more broadly, American fashion, beauty culture, and the politics of presentation. She teaches in the areas of fashion/beauty studies, youth culture, and U.S. history and African American urban history (colonial period to the present).

MARK HAIN - Combined PhD candidate in the Department of Communication and Culture, dual majoring in Film and Media Studies and the Department of American Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington

In Mark's scholarship, he is particularly invested in exploring the ways audiences find meaning and use in film and other media. His dissertation, "Revamped: Theda Bara, Cultural Memory, and the Repurposing of Star Image," combines research interests in silent-era cinema, remediation of old media in new media, and reception, memory, gender, and star studies. Through a cultural history and reception study of the early film star Theda Bara from 1915 to the present, Hain tracks the many ways her star image has been "repurposed" both in the media and by audiences. In doing so,he contends that uncovering the reception of Bara's image reveals a century-long record of changing values and attitudes about gender, sexuality, ethnic difference, cultural marginalization, and social transgression. He also analyzes how media audiences have contributed to the formation and dissemination of cultural memory, making the case that audiences have long served as a amateur achivists, curators, and historians of cultural heritage through their interaction with the media, popular music, and American art history. His courses for American Studies have focused on American foodways and popular music as frameworks for investigating the impact of multicultural exchange on both ethnic and American identities. Hain holds an MFA in printmaking from Penn State, and prior to resuming his studies at IU served as assistant curator at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.

CARA KINNALLY - Combined PhD candidate in Spanish Literatures, Department of Spanish and Portuguese and Department of American Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington

Before teaching in the Department of American Studies, Cara taught Spanish grammar, composition, and culture classes at IU. She also taught literature classes in Spanish in the IU Honors Program in Foreign Languages in San Luis Potosí, Mexico. Her dissertation, "Writing America: Transnational Dicourses of Empire, Race, and Community Formation in the Nineteenth-century Borderlands," explores the ways in which the cultural, racial, and ethnic identities of individuals and communities in Mexico, California, and the U.S. Southwest were formed and informed by transnational discourses of empire, colonialism, and power in the nineteenth century. Rather than focusing solely on cultural conflict and antagonism between Anglos and Latinas/os, her dissertation considers how Mexicans and U.S. Latinas/os imagined and constructed--through literature and other cultural texts--a transnational and intercultural literary history that embraced collaboration between Anglo Americans, Mexicans and U.S. Latinas/os.

Cara plans to finish her dissertation by May of 2013. In her spare time, she enjoys riding her bike, playing bass guitar, and cooking, eating, and reading about Mexican and Asian food.

HOLLY MAYNE - PhD candidate in the Department of American Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington

Originally from California, Holly received a BA, with Honors, in African American Studies from the Unviersity of California Berkeley. My research interests include looking at race, gender, and sexuality in fiction written by mixed-raced female authors. She is currently a research assistant for Dr. Matt Guterl, working with him on several projects. Holly was also previously an Associate Instructor for the academic year 2010-2011 at IU in the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies and will teach for American Studies spring 2012.

AMY RUBENS - PhD candidate in the Department of English and has a minor in the Department of American Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington

Before becoming an Associate Instructor for the Department of American Studies, Amy taught composition and literature courses at IU and Ivy Tech as well as a medical humanities course at IU's Collins Living Learning Center. In May 2012, she will complete her dissertation, "Making 'Medicine' in America: A Literary Account, 1870-1950" under the guidance of Professor George Hutchinson. In this project, she analyzes literature of the pre-antibiotics era of medical science. During this time frame, physicl and social "bodies" became enmeshed in novel, ever-expanding systems of surveillance and control. The historical and literary records reflect an overwhelming acquiescence to the loss of agency, deeming the condition a consequence of scientific discovery and modern life. In the literary record, however, contagion sometimes is configured optimistically even while the need for its containment is acknowledged. Thus, in some literary texts, syphilis, tuberculosis, or pandemic influenza are empowering experiences because those afflicted paradoxically work with, as opposed to against, disciplinary mechanisms that undermine indivdual autonomy. When Amy isn't teaching or writing, she tweets from the handle @ ambulantscholar about higher education, her academic interests, and backpacking (one of her favorite hobbies).