Graduate Students
Ph.D. Students
Amber Meadow Adams graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Literature and Writing from Columbia University in 2004. Ford Foundation Diversity and Arthur A. Schomburg Fellowships have facilitated doctoral research into the ethnopoetic and ethnobotanical dimensions of the creation story of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) people. A member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society and the Columbia University School of General Studies Honor Society, Adams is also a daughter of the Mohawk Nation of the Six Nations at Grand River.
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Sierra Adare-Tasiwoopa ápi received a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies from SUNY Empire State College (2000) and an MA in Indigenous Nations Studies from the University of Kansas (2001). A prolific writer, she has authored twelve books including several Native American educational texts for young people. Her latest book, "Indian" Stereotypes in TV Science Fiction: First Nations Voices Speak Out (University of Texas Press, 2005), examines stereotypes from the unique perspective of First Nations peoples. Additionally, she has contributed to numerous anthologies. Her play, Takeover of the Andrew Jackson Reading Room appears in Keepers of the Morning Star: An Anthology of Native Women’s Theater (University of California Press, 2003). Recent presentations include “Oral Tradition, New Technology, and John C. Mohawk” (University at Buffalo); “Teaching Academic Writing through Learning Styles: An Online Project” (SUNY Conference on Writing); “The Indigenous Perspective in Native American Literature” (Onondaga Community College); “Up Stage, Down Stage: The Ins and Outs of Writing Stage Plays” (SUNY Cortland); and “‘Indian’ Politics from an ‘Indian’ Perspective” (Wells College). A recipient of the prestigious Ford Foundation Predoctoral Diversity Fellowship, she is currently researching the origins and effects of stereotypes on Indigenous peoples in the Americas. |
Kritika Agarwal is a PhD student in the department of American Studies. Her areas of interest include U.S. immigration history, citizenship studies, Asian American studies, gender studies, and international human rights.
Robert Antone is pursuing his PhD in American Studies, specializing in Indigenous peoples. He received his MA in American Studies at UB (2008), with a thesis titled, “Haudenosaunee Relational Knowledge and Impact on Cultural Revitalization – Seven Spans Paradigm.” His current research and area of expertise includes cultural revitalization and the development of appropriate approaches to enhancing Indigenous community cultures. A citizen of the Oneida Nation, he serves on the traditional Chiefs Council in a turtle clan position. He is also the Executive Director of Kiikeewanniikaan – Southwest Regional Healing Lodge located in Ontario, Canada.
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Swati Bandi is a PhD student in American Studies. She is working on her dissertation titled, "Of Rights and Representation: Feminism, Human Rights and the Documentary Film in India." Her research interests include transnational human rights media, documentary film, globalization, gender and sexuality. In addition to her studies, Bandi is a member of the community organization PUSH Buffalo. |
Kushal K. Bhardwaj
Peter Bjelskou is a PhD student in American Studies. He earned a BA in English and an MA in American Studies, both from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. His MA thesis titled, "Wording the Magic: The Rhetorical Aspect of the American Presidential Campaign," examines the extent of predictability in presidential campaigns (with regard to issues, themes and presentation) and investigating why certain campaigns are effective and others are not. Its two primary case studies are Bill Clinton's presidential campaign (1992) and Howard Dean's campaign (2003-2004). His other research interests include voting behavior and historical and contemporary studies of class identities in the United States.
John M. Burdick graduated summa cum laude from the University at Buffalo with a BA in Sociology and American Studies. His current research interests include issues of globalization, postcolonialism, the politics and ethics of food, agricultural imperialism, global poverty, urban subculture formation, oral history, and the politics of alternative cultures. In October 2009, he will present at the Oral History Association Conference. His paper, "Oral History and the Zine as the Amateur Historian," grapples methodologically with issues of amateur publishing, cultural exclusion, and subculture analysis. Burdick is a recipient of the Arthur A. Schomburg Fellowship and the UB Dean’s Fellowship.
Patrick Callan earned a BA in English with Secondary Education Certification at SUNY College at Geneseo (1992) and an MA in English at UB (1997). He has taught public high school in New York and currently is tenured and teaches English full-time at Monroe Community College in Rochester, NY (1997 to the present). Callan’s focus is in American literature and his research interests include Asian American literature and history, transnationalism, and representations of masculinity in Japanese American literature of the Internment period.
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Joseph Candillo graduated with a Masters Degree in American Indian Studies from the University of Arizona and is a tribally enrolled member of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe of Arizona. His current research and area of expertise include prehistoric, protohistoric, and early historic Native American cultures, focusing on material culture and technologies of the Eastern Woodland and Southwest (Cahita) Indian groups. He is also proficient in the techniques used in creating traditional aboriginal arts and utilitarian tools. |
Patricia A. Carter
Carol Ciaciuch
Marta Cieslak is a PhD student in the American Studies Department and a teaching assistant in the Polish Studies Program. She received her MA degrees in American Studies and Polish Studies from the University of Warsaw. Her academic interests revolve around questions of nationalism and the nation-state, and the construction of national identity.
Michael Cimasi
Steve Demchak
Nathan Drag
Nicholle Dragone is a Baldy Dissertation Fellow and a PhD candidate in the American Studies Department/Indigenous Studies Program. She completed a J.D. with a specialization in International Law at UB (2006), and an MA in English with an emphasis in Native American Literature at the University of Oklahoma (2002). She was a recipient of the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers Academic Writer of the Year award for her MA thesis (2002), which she is currently revising for publication. Dragone’s doctoral dissertation, “The International Indigenous Rights Movement, 1923-2008,” explores Indigenous activism in a global perspective, with an emphasis on the importance of oral narratives/storytelling in advancing the recognition of Indigenous peoples’ collective rights. Her publications include, "Tortured Skins, Bears, and Our Responsibilities to the Natural World," in Penelope Kelsey, ed., Strawberries in Brooklyn: Maurice Kenny, Mohawk Poet. (SUNY Press, Forthcoming) and "Lest We Forget. . .Remembering Through the Resilient Song of the Spirit" in Studies in Humanities (2006). Dragone is currently writing a chapter on Indigenous Cross-Border Rights for the forthcoming, three-volume set, American Indians in American Popular Culture (Praeger Press). Dragone’s teaching and research interests include International Indigenous rights and land rights; Indigenous critical theory; Indigenous Studies as an academic discipline; Federal Indian Law; pre-emption, discovery, and terra nullius; sovereignty, self-determination, and development; Indigenous intellectual property; Native American literature; and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Native American history. She is currently teaching courses in Native American literature at SUNY at Fredonia.
Anne Alexandra Garner
Ruth Goldman is a Phd student in American Studies. She is a documentary and experimental filmmaker. Her films have screened at festivals in the U.S. and internationally. Ruth's academic and artistic interests include identity, social justice issues, documentary, propaganda and the history and political economy of film. She has created and taught numerous original classes in the areas of film and video production, film studies, documentary studies, propaganda, gender studies, queer studies and popular culture studies. She has published work on queer theory and the political economy of popular culture. In addition to teaching college students and making films, Ruth directs the Buffalo Youth Media Institute at Squeaky Wheel in Buffalo. Ruth is an active member of PUSH Buffalo and is currently working on a feature length documentary about PUSH's grassroots community organizing. In 2008 she received a Channels grant to make a short documentary about PUSH titled, "PUSHing Straight Up People Power." She's the recipient of a 2009 Gender Institute Scholarship with which she will produce the third film in a trilogy of avant-garde films about gender. Ruth has an M.A. in American Studies from the University of New Mexico and an MFA in Film and Video Production from the department of Media Study at the University at Buffalo.
Erika Haygood graduated from NYU with a BA (2004). Her area of concentration was Political Science/Africana Studies. She received her MA from Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School (2006). Haygood is a Schomberg Fellow in the American Studies PhD program. Her research and teaching interests include American and African American history, Black religious history and Hip Hop Studies. She also currently teaches in the Political Science Department at Hilbert College. Her hobbies include writing and performing spoken word poetry. Some of her self-published work can be viewed at www.haygoodpoetry.com.
Joyce Shikowitz Hertzson
Jeffry J. Iovannone is a PhD candidate in the department of American Studies. He holds a BA in English (summa cum laude) from SUNY Fredonia and an MA in English from the University at Buffalo. His research interests include the history of American popular culture, queer and disability studies, critical race theory, and contemporary American literature. His dissertation-in-progress titled, "Human Menageries: Freaks and Queers in Contemporary American Literature and Popular Culture," examines how disabled, queer, and racialized bodies share an intertwined history within American popular culture, and how contemporary writers and performers reinvent nineteenth-century cultural tropes to re-imagine these notions of embodied difference. Iovannone's critical writings have been published in SAIL: Studies in American Indian Literatures and the African American National Biography, and he was also the recipient of UB’s prestigious "Excellence in Teaching” award.
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Dendi Kartini earned her BA in Education from the Universitas Lampung (the State of Lampung University) in Indonesia. In 1998, she won a scholarship from SEAMEO to study applied linguistics at RELC in Singapore. She completed her M.A. in American Studies at UB (2004), and then began her PhD. Kartini’s research interests lie in the field of Cultural studies, focusing Indigenous studies. She conducted ethnographic research on Iroquois women in Canada and the United States for her MA thesis, investigating the the traditional role of women in contemporary Iroquois society. She hopes to continue working on Indigenous women in North America for her dissertation. |
Josephine Barbar Kearney
Amy L. Kedron
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Cael Keegan graduated summa cum laude from St. Bonaventure University with a B.A. in English Literature (2001) and holds an M.A. in American Studies from SUNY Buffalo (2004). The majority of his work is concerned with making connections between queer theory, affect studies, political theory, and American popular culture. His dissertation, Queer Melodramatics: The Feeling Body and the American Democratic Imagination, draws connections between the development of Western democratic movements and the historical emergence of melodrama as a popular media form, specifically evaluating the ways in which melodrama has been employed to manage queer difference in American visual culture and national politics. He has published essays on the representation of queer women in American television movies as well as on the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison. Keegan’s work has previously appeared in NeoAmericanist, The Journal of Lesbian Studies, and in Challenging Lesbian Norms. A recent essay is forthcoming in the anthology Queering the Fantastic. Current research interests include posthumanist theory, animality studies, transgender politics, transmasculine queer identities, and the ethics of food. Keegan was the recipient of a 2009 Humanities Institute Dissertation Fellowship and the 2009 Gender Institute Graduate Award. The American Studies Department also named him a 2009 Outstanding Teaching Assistant of the Year. Recently, Keegan served as Coordinator and Chair of the special Intersextions sex and sexualities forum at Gender Week, 2009. His lecture, “Big Bitch and Wonder Woman Mudwrestle in Heaven: Graphic Femininity and the Rhetoric of Sexual Liberation,” will be delivered at the UB Libraries special event for visiting artist Spain Rodriguez this semester. Keegan defended his dissertation in October 2009. |
Mary E. Kohler graduated from Bucknell University with a BA in History and received her first MA in International Peace and Conflict Resolution from Arcadia University. She also attended the Pennsylvania State University in Harrisburg where she received her second MA in American Studies and was the recipient of the Dr. Irwin Richmond Scholarship. Her research interests include American culture, capitalism, and environmental studies.
Marta Elzbieta Marciniak graduated from the University of Warsaw, where she received MA degrees in Applied Linguistics (English and French) and in Cultural Studies (specialization: the United States; summa cum laude). In her work for the past four years, she has focused on alternative culture, especially subcultures linked with popular music like punk. Her work has also engaged with Queer theory and the history of the gay community in New York City. She plans to continue studying issues of sexuality and the formation and flourishing of alternative subcultures in Poland and the United States.
Brandon J. Martin
Paul McCutcheon is a PhD student in the American Studies Department. He received his MA in History from Montana State University with an emphasis on the American West and Environmental History. His present academic interests surround issues of sexuality and gender.
Katherine McMahon is a third-year PhD student in American Studies. She received her BA in History from SUNY Fredonia (2005) and earned her MA in History at Buffalo State College, with a thesis titled, “Marching to the Beat of a Different Sound: American Popular Music during World War II.” She is currently a Teaching Assistant for World Civilizations, and next semester will be teaching her own course on American popular music. Her research interests include the major movements, genres, and artists of twentieth-century U.S. music history and how they contribute to the social constructions of race, sexuality, gender, ethnicity, class, and disability. Her specific areas of inquiry include the racial politics of the swing era, the advent of rock and roll, and the Golden Age of Tin Pan Alley. She is also interested in the field of disability studies, and how music and certain musicians can be viewed through the lens of disability. McMahon has presented at several national conferences, including the Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association, the Society for American Music, and Film and History.
Nancy Napierala is in the American Studies PhD program, working with with Drs. Kari Winter, Michael Frisch, and Theresa McCarthy. She specializes in the field of Haudenosaunee biography and plans to write her dissertation on the life of a twentieth-century traditional Seneca woman. In 2005, Napierala completed her MA thesis in American Studies at UB on the subject of Haudenosaunee Clan Mothers. She has participated in the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccaleaurate Achievement Program and was the recipient of an Arthur A. Schomburg Fellowship Award. She is a member of the newly-formed Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) and the former treasurer of the American Studies Graduate Students Association (GSA). She is also studying the Seneca language in an informal class taught by Pearl White that meets in our department on Wednesday evenings at 7 PM.
Evelyn Navarre is a PhD candidate in American Studies. A recipient of the competitive UB College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Fellowship, Navarre will defend her dissertation in autumn 2009. She studies multi-ethnic literature and the culture and history of the Americas, with a specialization in nineteenth-century American Studies. She has also taught and published in contemporary multi-ethnic literature and gender studies. Her dissertation, “In Labor Her Best Teacher: Nineteenth-Century Women’s Work as a Transcendentalist Bildungsroman” brings together Transcendentalism, women’s literature, and labor history. A seasoned teacher in higher education, Navarre has taught freshman and advanced level English courses, along with classes in American Studies, and Women’s Studies. Through two master’s degrees, in English and Women’s Studies, she worked in non-profit community health, adult literacy, and campus-based women’s centers. An avid practitioner of yoga, she is also interested in Hindu and Buddhist philosophies.
Heidi C. Nickisher
Kei Okajima is a first-year PhD student in American Studies. He received both his BA and MA in American literature from Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan. His MA thesis titled, "Political Possibilities in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man," explores Ellison's novel from the perspective of politics, interrogating what it means to call a work of literature “political.” His main research interests include the literatures of ethnic minorities, along with the broader concepts of ethnicity and diaspora. Okajima is also the recipient of a Rotary ambassadorial scholarship.
Nayda Pares-Kane was born in Puerto Rico and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She is currently a PhD student in American Studies at the University at Buffalo. Nayda graduated from Binghamton University (1990) with a BA in Sociology and from San Diego State University (1997) with an MA in Latin American Studies. Nayda's research interests include globalization and international/global education, race theory, and transnational residential segregation. She is married with three children; ages 12, 9, and 3. Nayda is currently an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Monroe Community College in Rochester, New York.
Jessica Perkins received a BA in Philosophy with a minor in English from SUNY Geneseo and a BS from SUNY Brockport in Studio Art. Perkins started out at UB as a Masters student in the Humanities Interdisciplinary program, specializing in English and Art History, and is now pursuing a PhD in American Studies. Perkins' current research focuses on Indigenous American and African American cultural productions. Perkins is particularly interested in visual and literary representations of Native and African American women and the historical trauma that has informed these representations. Other research interests include trauma, especially sexual trauma, and the post-traumatic (re)formation of identity.
Urszula Piasta
Sunanda Ray
Meghan Reynolds
Michael Rio received a BA (summa cum laude) in English and American Studies from the State University of New York at Buffalo and an MA in English from California State University, Hayward. He is currently an Arthur A. Schomburg Fellow in the American Studies Department and his research interests include questions of Globalization, Agricultural Imperialism, and identity Production in the Americas; the impact of US Foreign Policy on local economies and food sources; and the perseverance of Community through Resistance and Coping. Current projects include his doctoral dissertation, tentatively titled, Beyond Paralysis: Biofuel, Biopower, and the Mexican Tortilla Crisis; and two collections of poetry, Warthog: Songs of Love and Bestiary and Pangaea/Pangaia: Theories of Continental Drift.
Evelyn Santiago
Stephen J. Smith is pursuing a PhD in American Studies. Smith focuses on the role of the Anglican Church in the Atlantic Slave Trade and slavery in the British Caribbean and the United States. In June 2007 he presented a paper, "The Church of England and Slavery" at the National Conference of Episcopal Church Historiographers and Archivists. Before attending university, he went to drama school in Britain and worked as a repertory theater actor. Smith then returned to full-time study and received a BA with Honors in American Social Studies from Sussex University; an M. Social Sciences in Comparative (US and UK) Health Care from Birmingham University; and an M. Divinity from Westcott House. He was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1986, serving in the Church of England until 1989 when he transferred to the U.S. Episcopal Church to serve in the Diocese of South Dakota, on the Cheyenne River and Rosebud Lakota Reservations. In 1994 Smith moved to New Haven, CT, where he worked as a chaplain at the Yale-New Haven Hospital, and the pastoral care team at the Yale Divinity School. In 1998, he moved to Buffalo, where he served at St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral, and in 2004, he left the cathedral to begin studying for his PhD.
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Mark F. Tattenbaum is an award-winning theatre, film, and video artist. Tattenbaum is a director, actor, dramaturgy, producer, playwright, poet, and author. In 1995 he founded Dancing Lindy Productions, a Tonawanda, NY, based film, video, and theatrical production company and is currently a PhD candidate specializing in theatre and film. He holds a BA in cultural multimedia, an M.A.H. in theatre and film with a directing concentration, and an M.F.A. in media production with a concentration in directing. His dissertation is titled, "Elia Kazan: An American Director and the Turn From Communism." He is also currently researching and writing a book manuscript titled, "Ms. Alberta Vaughn: A Queen of the Two Reel Serials." His research interests include dramaturgy, theatre and film from 1930 to 1960, method acting, problem solving for actors and directors, and theatre and puppetry in Poland and Romania. Tattenbaum has lectured on dramaturgy and serves as a tutor for theatre and film at the University at Buffalo. He is also a Fulbright Senior Scholar. |
Aaron VanEvery is a proud member of the Cayuga Nation and Wolf clan of the Six Nations reserve at Grand River in Ontario, Canada. He graduated with a BA in history from St. Lawrence University (2007) and an MA in American Studies from UB. Currently a PhD student, his research interests include Hotinonshonni history and culture, Hotinonshonni oral traditions, the contemporary issues facing the Hotinonshonni, and the use of traditional knowledge in contemporary times. VanEvery also works as a tutor for the Science and Technology Enrichment Program at UB where he helps students in Math and Science.
Jessica Wilkie is a PhD student in American Studies. Wilkie received a BA in English Literature, Secondary Education, and Women's Studies from Nazareth College in Rochester, NY after which she taught English in the Rochester City Schools for five years and served as English Department Chair for two years. Wilkie earned an MA from the University at Buffalo in Interdisciplinary Studies (Women's Studies and Film Studies) with her thesis, "Of Tramps and Vamps: Gender in the American Silent Film Era." Her current research interests include race relations in Western NY, and labor, immigrant, and political propaganda in American silent film. Wilkie received the UB College Fellowship. Outside of the University, she is the co-chair of programming for the ImageOut LGBT film festival in Rochester, NY. She is currently working full-time as a tenure-track Assistant Professor at Monroe Community College.
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Breea C. Willingham spent ten years as a reporter for newspapers in the Carolinas and upstate New York before beginning her doctoral studies at UB. Willingham received a BA in Communications from the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford (1994) and an MA in Management from Webster University (2000). Her teaching and research interests include the portrayal of race and racism in the media, and the impact incarceration has on the relationship between black fathers and their children. Her dissertation explores prison literature and what inmate writings reveal about race, gender and culture in U.S. prisons. In 2005, she wrote a powerful first-person narrative for USA Today about the tenth anniversary of the Million Man March from her perspective as a black woman with a father and brother in prison. Willingham is an Arthur A. Schomburg Fellow and teaches journalism at St. Bonaventure University. She also freelances for local and national publications. One of her most recent columns, "Too many blacks are simply stuck," appeared in USA Today in December 2007. She has two upcoming presentations in 2009. Willingham will speak on "Prison Writing as Resistance" at the National Association of African American Studies annual conference. Her second paper, "We Don't See Color: The Challenges of Teaching Racism Issues to Students Who Don't Believe Racism Exists," will be part of a panel at the Southern Sociological Society's annual meeting. |
Gregory D. Young
M.A. Students
Jamie Lee Brown
Jeffrey Cooper is a part-time MA student in American Studies. He received a BA in History from Brock University in Ontario (1989) and then began his professional career as a police officer with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). In 1990, Cooper worked at the Akwesasne Mohawk Territory during the Oka crisis. This experience inspired him to return to academics at Brock, where he graduated with a BA in Sociology (1993). He continues to work as a police officer full-time in the RCMP Aboriginal Policing Section and has been recognized as a subject matter expert. He has been a strong supporter of self-administered First Nations Police Services and has received numerous awards from the RCMP, First Nations Police Services, and First Nations Police governing authorities. He researches Indigenous criminal justice models within the context of colonial history and Indigenous nation-building. Cooper is a member of the Cayuga Nation at Six Nations of the Grand River Territory.
Jadaiman Dacosta
Pamela J. Davison is pursuing an MA in American Studies with a concentration in Native American History. She is particularly interested in the Haudenosaunee of the Western New York region during the early 1800s and their interactions with white settlers. Davidson is actively involved in the development of the Hull House (c. 1810 ) in Lancaster, New York, which is currently being restored to a working nineteenth-century family home and farmstead. Through her research and studies, she hopes to bring an accurate and authentic representation of the original peoples of the area to this historic site.
Christine Ditzel
Chao Fu
Leah Doherty
Kathleen Granchelli
Amelia Poletti Joyce
Wendy Painting
Verdis Robinson
Micah Rust
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Richie Sasala, born and raised on Buffalo's west side, received a BA in History with Honors from Canisius College (2007). He was a recipient of the William G. McGowan Urban Leadership Learning Community Scholarship at Canisius, and has continued his studies at UB as an Arthur Schomberg Fellow. Sasala's concentration lies in Native American Studies, with research interests in Haudenosaunee History, Contemporary American Indian Life, Nation Building, and Indigenous Activism. Sasala is a proud citizen of the Cayuga Nation and Turtle Clan of the Iroquois Confederacy. He also works as an academic tutuor for Native American Community Services of Buffalo, is a member of the Six Nations Agricultural Society, was student-chair of the Canisius College Native American Art Project, and is an active lacrosse player. |
Centrell Smith
Carolyn Stirling is a Pākehā scholar from Aotearoa/New Zealand. She is a student in the MA program in American Studies and is a PhD candidate in the Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education program. Her work in American Studies explores relationships between Indigenous and non-indigenous peoples, particularly in relation to issues of power, the validation of knowledge, and assertions of sovereignty. Her doctoral dissertation, “The Politics of Decolonizing Education in Settler Societies,” examines the ways Allied and Indigenous people are using decolonization to resist colonization. Stirling proposes a methodology whereby Allied scholars can use Indigenous and decolonizing methodologies to create research that engages with Indigenous knowledge with integrity and respect. She also holds a MEd from Te Uru Māraurau, Massey University, New Zealand (2007), where she focused on the politics of power-sharing between Indigenous people and colonial descendants in her thesis, “Making this a Better Place: Young People’s Perceptions of Biculturalism in Aotearoa/New Zealand.” Her research interests center on the politics of decolonization, the interrogation of Western notions of power and political ideologies like democracy, critiques of capitalism and environmental exploitation, analyses of the ways colonization is perpetuated, and the creation of frameworks and strategies to address the legacy of colonization in contemporary settler societies.
Hee-Yong Yang
