Faculty
“The death penalty operates in constant opposition to itself, grinding out its lethal outcomes even as it fails to accomplish any of its intended purposes beyond exacting vengeance. It fails quietly when it provides the families of victims no closure or satisfaction after a horrific tragedy and the long years of suffering they experience in its wake. It fails spectacularly when innocent people are executed. This failure is not unusual. Many institutions fail, and many American institutions—even government—exist in a state of near constant failure.”
– Seth Kotch
What is food? “This is not a stupid question,” anthropologist Jon Holtzman says. Indeed, there may be no more polysemic material than the array of edible goods available to living beings on the planet today. This makes Food Studies an exciting interdisciplinary field that addresses issues of politics, ethics, equity, power, and knowledge through methods of both theory and practice. From the Travis Scott meal at McDonald’s to Julia Child’s Boeuf Bourguignon to “Glory Soup” freely given by activist dumpster divers, “food” is a rocky terrain combining memory, circumstance, corporate strategy, and a host of idiosyncratic ideological qualities.
– Kelly Alexander
“As we approach the century mark for audio recording projects that began documenting traditional music forms in the Southern U.S. (and elsewhere), it is worth examining and interrogating the profound ways that old commercial and field recordings shape contemporary performance practices and understandings of these genres, especially as copies of older commercial and field recordings circulate widely and unexpectedly, accumulating new meanings and inspiring new interpretations.”
– Joseph Decosimo
“As a scholar and teacher of Asian American studies, I study the ways that diasporic experience shapes Asian American creative cultures and how they are, and are not, documented. I work broadly at the intersections of visual, literary, and material culture. I question how issues of archival retrieval and absence shape Asian American cultural productions in diasporic and interracial movements in North America. In addition to Asian American studies, my teaching and research areas include critical ethnic studies, gender and sexuality studies, and activist and institutional histories.”
– Kita Douglas
“Melville’s true patriots included a ragged bunch of survivors and hapless rebels who testified to the dignity of human experience despite the struggles that the species was destined to suffer. Melville celebrated a hybrid society that welcomed the world as its paternity and matrix and did not rope itself off in incestuous conventions from the fertile contamination of diversity… Melville thus helped to inaugurate the process of authoring the declaration of interdependence.”
– Tim Marr
“No ID coaxed Jay-Z into making the song that he was putting off, one that addressed the rumors of his infidelity to Beyoncé in the wake of her album Lemonade. He capitalized on the trust that he built to nudge Jay-Z to write about his relationship with Beyoncé. Like a midwife, he recognized that the song was ready to be born and helped Jay-Z push it out.”
– Antonia Randolph
“Performance theory encourages attention to storytelling as communication; to the teller’s creative process, rhetorical goals, and means for achieving them; to the social and cultural context in which the story is told; to the effects of the story on the audience; to the audience’s manifest and internal responses; and to the reciprocal efforts of the teller to anticipate, satisfy, and possibly transform the audience’s expectations. A performance approach emphasizes that a story is more than words or text.”
– Patricia Sawin
| Name | Title | Research Interests | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alexander, Kelly | Assistant Professor |
| kelly.alexander@unc.edu |
 | Berlinger, Gabrielle | Associate Professor |
| gberling@unc.edu |
 | Cobb, Daniel | Professor |
| dcobb@unc.edu |
 | Diaz, Von | Professor of Practice |
| vondiaz@email.unc.edu |
| Douglas, Kita | Teaching Assistant Professor |
| kitakd@email.unc.edu |
 | Engelhardt, Elizabeth | Distinguished Professor |
| e.engelhardt@unc.edu |
 | Frey, Benjamin E. | Assistant Professor |
| benfrey@live.unc.edu |
 | Hinson, Glenn | Associate Professor |
| ghinson@unc.edu |
 | Holland, Sharon | Distinguished Professor |
| pasharon@email.unc.edu |
| Kotch, Seth | Associate Professor and Director, Southern Oral History Program |
| sethkotch@unc.edu |
 | Marr, Timothy | Professor |
| marr@unc.edu |
 | Randolph, Antonia | Assistant Professor |
| antonia.randolph@unc.edu |
 | Richotte, Jr., Keith | Associate Professor |
| richotte@email.unc.edu |
 | Robinson, Michelle | Associate Chair |
| mmrobins@email.unc.edu |
 | Sawin, Patricia | Chair of American Studies |
| sawin@unc.edu |
 | Willis, Rachel | Professor |
| Rachel.Willis@unc.edu |
Adjunct/Affiliated:
Daniel Anderson, English & Comparative Literature
William L. Andrews, English & Comparative Literature
Sarah Boyd, English & Comparative Literature
Fitzhugh Brundage, History
Maggie Cao, Art & Art History
Claude Clegg, African American & Diaspora Studies, and History
Tyree Daye, English & Comparative Literature
María DeGuzmán, English & Comparative Literature
Kathleen DuVal, History
Lawrence Grossberg, Communication Studies
Philip F. Gura, English & Comparative Literature
Amy Hertel, American Indian Center
Wes Hogan, Center for Documentary Studies-Duke
Heidi Kim, English & Comparative Literature
Malinda Maynor Lowery, History
Jocelyn Neal, Music and Folklore
Michael Palm, Communication Studies
Della Pollock, Communication Studies
Eliza Richards, English & Comparative Literature
Katherine Roberts, Center for the Study of the American South
William Sturkey, History
Jane Thrailkill, English & Comparative Literature
Tim Tyson, Center for Documentary Studies-Duke
Harry Watson, History
Anne Whisnant, History
Emeritus Professors
Marcie Ferris
William R. Ferris
Bernie Herman
Bobby Allen
Peter Filene
Jacquelyn Hall
John Kasson
Joy Kasson
Daniel Patterson
Theda Perdue
Charles Zug