Posted on April 18, 2020 by Ashley Duffalo -
Bonnie Gordon is Associate Professor of Critical and Comparative Studies and a faculty director of the newly launched Equity Center. Her research is centered on the experiences of sound in Early Modern music making and the affective potential of the human voice. She is currently working on two book projects. Voice Machines: The Castrato, The Cat Piano and Other Strange Sounds, about the interrelated histories of music, technology, sound, and the limits of the human body, and Jefferson’s Ear, which focuses on sound, music, and race in Monticello and New Orleans. Between 2016–2017, she was the Robert Lehman Visiting Professor at Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. She plays viola in a rock band and a free improvisation trio, and her writing has been published in the Washington Post, Slate, and various blogs.
Posted on April 4, 2020 by Ashley Duffalo -
An ordained Buddhist priest in the Soto Zen tradition, Duncan Ryūken Williams has spent years piecing together the story of the Japanese American community during World War II. A renowned scholar of Buddhism, he has taught at the University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Irvine, and Trinity College, and is now the Director of the Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture at the University of Southern California. He has published five other books, including The Other Side of Zen.
Posted on March 15, 2020 by Ashley Duffalo -
Eli Smolen, from Fairfax, Virginia, is a third year undergraduate in the Frank Batten School of Public Policy and Leadership. He is planning on double majoring in Public Policy and Global Studies with a focus on Security and Justice. His experience in the Religion Politics and Conflict Forum led him to his interests in justice and reconciliation. On campus, he remains involved with the Religion Politics and Conflict Lab as a research intern as well as an active member in the UVA Jewish community.
Posted on March 13, 2020 by Ashley Duffalo -
Danielle Cormier is a third year student with a double major in Women and Gender Studies and Studio Art, and a minor in Entrepreneurship. She is interested in how queer issues intersect with rural identities. Her work visualizes this intersection and shines a light on problems—like the absence of sexual education courses—facing LGBTQ+ youth in rural areas. In bringing awareness to these issues, Cormier hopes to inspire change.
Posted on March 13, 2020 by Ashley Duffalo -
Malcolm Cammeron is a Ph.D. student in history at the University of Virginia. He studies race and the built environment in the 20th century American South. His film, Saving Grace: Preserving Black History in Southern Appalachia was an official selection of the Columbus Black International Film Festival, Montreal International Black Film Festival, George Lindsey UNA Film Festival, Gary International Black Film Festival, Seattle Black Film Festival, Black Warrior Film Festival, and the Deltas of Charlotte Foundation Legacy of Black Women Film Showcases.
Posted on March 13, 2020 by Ashley Duffalo -
Christopher L. Mathis, is currently a third-year graduate student at the Curry School of Education, emphasis in higher education, and a graduate of the University of South Carolina School of Law. Mathis’ legal scholarly interests are grounded at the intersection of the law and higher educational policy, with a focus on constitutional issues, access, diversity, and equity in higher education and the use of social sciences in legal research. Mathis is an avid tennis player! He challenges you to a match any day and any time.
Posted on March 11, 2020 by Ashley Duffalo -
Nicholls is a PhD candidate in Sociology. Her research revolves around the relationship between racialization and sovereignty across contexts currently within U.S. empire. Specifically, her dissertation focuses on the formation of whiteness to further settler colonialism and Indigenous dispossession in Hawai’i and Virginia. Nicholls’ previous research examines the cultural politics of decolonization and social movements in Hawai’i. Prior to graduate school, she worked as an emergency residential counselor at a youth crisis shelter and in higher education administration.
Posted on January 22, 2020 by Ashley Duffalo -
Milov is a historian of the twentieth century United States. Her work focuses on how organized interest groups and everyday Americans influence government policy and the terms of political debate. She is currently working on a project that examines the relationship between gender and whistleblowing in the modern United States. Her first book, The Cigarette: A Political History is a history of tobacco in the twentieth century that places farmers, government officials, and citizen-activists at the center of the story. Rather than focusing exclusively on “Big Tobacco,” she argues that domestic and global cigarette consumption rose through the efforts of organized tobacco farmers and US government officials; and that it fell as a result of local government action spurred by the efforts of citizen-activists and activist lawyers.
Posted on January 22, 2020 by Ashley Duffalo -
Oludamini Ogunnaike is Assistant Professor of African Religious Thought and Democracy at the University of Virginia, co-director of the Virginia Center for the Study of Religion, and a faculty partner with the Religion, Race & Democracy Lab. His research examines the philosophical and artistic dimensions of postcolonial, colonial, and pre-colonial Islamic and indigenous religious traditions of West and North Africa, especially Sufism and Ifa. He is the author of Deep Knowledge: Ways of Knowing in Sufism and Ifa, Two West African Intellectual Traditions (Penn State University Press, 2020) and Poetry in Praise of Prophetic Perfection: West African Madīḥ Poetry and its Precedents (Islamic Texts Society, 2020). He is currently working on two introductory book projects: Exploring Africana Philosophy (Equinox Press) and The Language of the Birds: An Introduction to Sufi Poetry and Poetics and conducting research comparing and contrasting indigenous/Islamic and Europhone theorizations and projects of decoloniality.
Ogunnaike earned his Ph.D. in African and African American Studies and Religion at Harvard University. Prior to his appointment at UVA, he taught at the College of William and Mary and held a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University. Professor Ogunnaike also writes and does work on the Philosophy of Religion, African Philosophy, Anthropology, Decoloniality, and Race.
Posted on November 26, 2019 by Ashley Duffalo -
Cassie Davies is a writer and editor from London. Her writing has appeared in the Telegraph, Financial Times, Literary Review, Spaces, ArtSlant, Times Literary Supplement, Columbia Journal, among others. She is currently a Poe/Faulkner Fellow in Fiction at the University of Virginia. She will graduate in May 2020.
Posted on August 28, 2019 by Ashley Duffalo -
I’m a freelance producer and editor, currently working on Seizing Freedom (from Virginia Public Media and Stitcher). I also help UVA students produce documentaries for the Religion, Race & Democracy Lab. I used to be a producer for BackStory, which I joined after a brief and sordid affair with graduate-level philosophy in Guelph, Canada.
I started a nationally syndicated radio show and podcast called Pioneer Radio, got some training at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, won a Third Coast Short Doc award for a three-minute piece about poutine, produced a documentary for the BBC about firearm suicide, and started a family.
Before becoming a freelancer, I developed, produced, edited, and hosted a podcast through NPR’s Storytelling Lab called Do Over about regret and the strange terror of the choices we make. I also produced Brand Soundscapes for NPM/Creative.
In my non-audio time, I do kung fu.
Posted on August 21, 2019 by Ashley Duffalo -
Rebecca Draughon is a PhD candidate in Religious Studies, concentrating in Judaism and Christianity in Antiquity. Her interests are primarily rooted in the literary imagination of early Christian and Jewish groups—how they adapted, expanded, and reinvented narrative works and the characters found within. In her current research, she reads these reworked narratives for what they can tell us about gender, ritual practice, and belief in the ancient world.
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