New Faculty 2022-23

Dr. Berquist recently finished a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Toronto. His dissertation investigates social change and the politics of space on the North Coast of Peru during the late pre-Hispanic period. More broadly, Stephen works on themes related to colonialism, climate, infrastructure, and planning in both archaeological and contemporary cities. He has conducted research in Peru, Cambodia, and the U.S.  This Advent semester, Dr. Berquist will teach Introductory Cultural Anthropology.

Dr. Coll received a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Iowa. His research examines election administration and voting behavior, particularly as it pertains to racial, ethnic, and age groups. Joseph will be teaching courses covering American government and politics, campaigns and elections, research design, racial and ethnic politics, and political behavior at Sewanee.

Dr. Duarte-Gray received her Ph.D. in American literature from Harvard University. Her research focuses on U.S. Latinx novels and book history, American ethnic imaginaries, and ecocriticism. Her first poetry collection, Even Shorn, debuted with Sarabande Books in 2021. This Advent semester, Dr. Duarte-Gray will teach Literature and Composition and Studies in Poetry.

Dr. Eppolito comes from a Ph.D. program at SUNY Binghamton with a focus on matroids and related topics. This Advent semester, he will teach Calculus II and Discrete Mathematics.

Dr. Falikman earned her Ph.D. at Lomonosov Moscow State University and started her research and teaching career there. Most recently, Dr. Falikman has been Professor of Psychology at HSE University in Moscow, Russia, where she also served as Head of the School of Psychology. A cognitive psychologist with broad interests, Dr. Falikman’s research topics include visual attention and top-down influence upon visual information processing, joining attention, cultural evolution and digital transformations of the human mind from a cultural perspective, and the mind-body problem. This Advent semester, she will teach Principles of Psychology and Cognitive Psychology.

Dr. Foy holds degrees in Comparative Literature and English from Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania (Ph.D. in English). Her research and teaching center on English-language poetry and poetics in the eighteenth century and Romanticism, including poetries of empire and adaptations of the Greco-Roman classics. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Global Anglophone Literature and Romanticism for the coming academic year and is teaching Literature and Composition, Representative Masterpieces, Fictions of Empire, and Romanticism.

Dr. Gannon received a Ph.D. in Applied and Industrial Mathematics from the University of Louisville. Dr. Gannon’s research interests are in algebraic coding theory and code based cryptography. This Advent semester, he will be teaching two sections of Statistics 204 and one section of Math 210.

Dr. Gauding is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics. His primary research and teaching interests include public policy, criminal justice reform, and state and local government. He recently completed his Ph.D. at the University of Kansas and is originally from Cleveland, Ohio. This Advent semester, Dr. Gauding will teach Criminal Justice Policy, Public Policy, and Environmental Politics and Policy. 

Sarah Lacy Hamilton (she/her) is a director specializing in actor-driven productions of new and contemporary plays that foreground the human condition and highlight the experiences of underrepresented communities. Before coming to Sewanee, she was based in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she worked as a freelance director, an adjunct faculty member at Pellissippi State Community College, and a visiting guest artist faculty member at the South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities. This year, she will teach Fundamentals of Acting, Directing, American Theatre, and Global Theatre, and will direct Sewanee's production of Sense and Sensibility.

Dr. Hopkins received a Ph.D. in Mathematics at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. His dissertation was in the areas of operator algebras and subfactor theory with a focus on objects known as Hadamard matrices. Before moving to UT, Dr. Hopkins attended King University in Bristol, Tennessee. He is “looking forward to rejoining a small liberal arts institution and working with the wonderful students at Sewanee.” This Advent semester, Dr. Hopkins will teach Calculus I and Multidimensional Calculus.

Dr. Jang received a Ph.D. in English from the University of Mississippi and her M.A. in American Culture and B.A. in Korean literature and Philosophy from Sogang University. She specializes in African American literature, with research and teaching interests in Black feminism, critical prison studies, and the Global South. This Advent semester, she will teach African American Literature and Literature and Composition.

Dr. Jensen holds a Ph.D. in English with a designated emphasis in critical theory from the University of California, Irvine. His research focuses on 19th & 20th c. American literature, especially nature writing, and its intersections with literary and aesthetic theory. This Advent semester, Dr. Jensen will teach Contemporary American Fiction and Literature and Composition.

Dr. Keogh has a Ph.D. in Plant Biology from North Carolina State University. He has lived on the mountain for a bit over a year and is excited to be teaching Molecular Cell Biology. His interests are in agricultural biotechnology and intellectual property, particularly as these fields relate to plant breeding and gene targeting methods. This Advent semester, Dr. Keogh will teach Molecular Cell Biology.

Dr. Leipert is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Popular Music. He works on popular electronic music and music and media. He holds a Ph.D. in Music History & Theory from the University of Chicago and prior to coming to Sewanee taught in the Music and Creative Technology programs at the University of Regina in Canada. He will be teaching music appreciation, music theory, and electronic music production and recording this fall.

Dr. Malone earned her Ph.D. in Community Psychology from Wichita State University. A licensed clinical professional counselor, Dr. Malone’s main research focus is compassion fatigue, which is the emotional exhaustion that comes from expressing compassion for others. The Advent semester, Dr. Malone will teach Principles of Psychology and Clinical Psychology.

Dr. N H Manzur-E-Maula’s home country is Bangladesh. He received a Ph.D. in Economics from Texas Tech University, Lubbock. Broadly, his research interests are macroeconomics and finance topics. His Ph.D. dissertation involves the estimation of 'Geopolitical Uncertainty' and its impact on the macroeconomy. This Advent semester, Dr. Manzur-E-Maula will teach Corporate Finance and Introduction to Macroeconomics.

Dr. Masur is an environmental anthropologist and archaeologist who studies the relationships people have with plants and their landscapes. She is interested in how archaeological data on past plant use can inform modern environmental policies including cultural heritage landscapes, agricultural reform, and Indigenous food sovereignty. She conducts fieldwork primarily in the lower Great Lakes and on the north coast of Peru. She is joining Sewanee from the University of Toronto, where she received her Ph.D. in Anthropology. This semester she will be teaching Environmental Justice and Introductory Cultural Anthropology. In the Easter semester she hopes to teach classes on Ethnobotany as well as Food and Culture.

Luis Mendez comes from Los Angeles, California. His current research focuses on identity, phenotype, language, mental health, and scale development. This Advent semester, he will teach Research Methods & Data Analysis (lab portion) and Social Psychology.

Ved Patel is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University. His work combines archival and ethnographic research to examine the development of indigenous systems and practices of social service in India between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries to consider a more robust register of intentionality informing philanthropy in India today. He completed my BA at the University of California, Irvine in Religion and then went on to complete two MA degrees in Religion at the University of Florida and Oxford University. At the University of the South, he will offer courses on South Asian Religions, Religion and Philanthropy, and Gandhian Thought.

Kathryn Morgan is a community psychologist completing a Ph.D. in Community Research and Action from Vanderbilt University. She studies civic and sociopolitical identity development among young people involved in social change efforts. This semester, she will be teaching Research Methods and Data Analysis and The Psychology of Social Change.

Originally from India, Misha Rai joins Sewanee after a year in central New York. She has a Ph.D. in English Literature & Creative Writing from Florida State University. She is currently finishing her first novel, an historical political novel. She is teaching fiction workshops and literature courses at Sewanee.

Dr. Silver comes from UT Chattanooga, where he taught research methodology, statistics for the social sciences, and qualitative methods. His research is in the areas of psychology of religion as well as diversity. He is teaching Introduction to Psychology and Personality Psychology at Sewanee.

Dr. Siegrist recently completed her Ph.D. at UVA but has been at Sewanee for a few years now. She’s an Americanist in the English Department and has research on queer Southern fiction from the past fifty years. She is teaching English 101 and an American course in the spring. She will also be assisting Elizabeth Grammer with the Sewanee Young Writers’ Conference.

Mario Alejandro Torres is a conductor, teacher, and performer who hails from San Pedro Sula, Honduras. He holds a B.M. and a M.M in Viola Performance from Northwestern State University of Louisiana, and M.M. in Orchestral conducting from Ithaca College.  Torres served four seasons as the Music Director and Conductor of the Bainbridge Symphony Orchestra and three seasons as the Conductor of the Poulsbo Community Orchestra. Torres is thrilled to be the newly appointed conductor of the Sewanee Symphony Orchestra.

Dr. Uhuegbu received his Ph.D. in German Studies with a specialization in twenty-first century German literature and culture and a Graduate Certificate in Second Language Studies from Vanderbilt University in 2021. His research interest includes the genre of autobiography, the depiction of culture, and Blackness in African-German Migration literature. This Advent semester, Dr. Uhuegbu will teach Contemporary German Cultures and Cultural Inquiry: Pop Culture and Society.

This Advent semester, he will teach Modern Mechanics and Advanced Electromagnetic Theory.