Founding Faculty

Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing. Dr. Bennett is the author of The Sobbing School (Penguin, 2016)—which was a National Poetry Series winner and a finalist for an NAACP Image Award—as well as Being Property Once Myself: Blackness and the End of Man  (Harvard University Press, 2020) and Owed  (Penguin, 2020).

Associate Professor of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies and Film Department Affiliate. Dr. Garcia is an interdisciplinary humanities scholar, trained in American Studies, Ethnic Studies, and Film and Media Studies. Her areas of specialization include the musical film and race and ethnicity in American culture. She has produced historical documentaries, including Zoot Suit Riots (2002) and Remember the Alamo (2004), and has a forthcoming publication, The Movie Musical (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2021 )

Professor of History and Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies. Dr. Garcia is a historian of food and labor history through the use of oral and archival research methodologies. He is the author of From the Jaws of Victory:  The Triumph and Tragedy of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Worker Movement (University of California Press, 2012) and is currently working on his latest project, Eli and the Octopus: The Man Who Failed to Tame United Fruit Company. His recent work on Bernie’s influence on Latinx voters has been published in the JACOBIN Magazine. 

Assistant Professor in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Dr. Huang’s research focuses on Afro-Asia, Global South Studies, and transnational feminist critique. She is working on her first book project, The Intimacies of Racial Capitalism, which ethnographically explores contemporary formations of Chinese racial capitalism and empire in South Africa.

Professor of Government, Director of the Program in Politics and Law, and Assistant Provost for Faculty Recruitment. Dr. Lacy reseraches political parties and interests groups, statistical and surveying methods in government elections.

Assistant Professor of History and Mellon Faculty Fellow in History. Dr. Meléndez-Badillo’s scholarship focuses on global circulation of radical ideas of working-class communities in Latin America and the Caribbean. His recent article publications include “Los ecos del silencio: Dimensiones locales y aspiraciones globales del periódico Voz humana.” Revista La Brecha 2, no. 3 (Fall 2016): 23-27.

Professor of History; Faculty Affiliate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Faculty Affiliate, Latin American, Latinx, and Caribbean Studies; and Co-Founder of Freedom University (Georgia). Dr. Moreton’s research focuses on understanding the intersectionality of religion and sexuality with relation to the history of U.S. capitalism. She is the author of To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise (Harvard University Press, 2009), and her recent article publications include  “What Do We Miss When We Call Them “Culture Wars”? a response article published in Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs. December 18, 2019.

Assistant Professor of Geography and Affilate Faculty in African and African American Studies. Dr. Neely’s research centers on the interactions among local people and government or development workers, as well as between people and non-human actors like crops, nutrients, and witchcraft. Her recent publications include “Two Worlds, One Bottle: An Object-Centered Ethnography for Global Health,”Medicine Anthropology Theory, and “Care in the Time of Covid-19.” Published in Antipode Online and co-authored with Prof. Patricia Lopez.

Professor of English and Creative Writing. Dr. Orner’s work centers on fiction and non-fiction tales and narratives of becoming, loss, love, and finding. His recent publication, Maggie Brown & Others, (Little, Brown, 2019), is a New York Times Notable Book and was featured in the Oprah Magazine as one of the Best Books of 2019. 

Professor of Studio Art and The Parents Distinguished Research Professor in the Humanities. Prof. Park uses contemporary sculpture using light as a sculptural material to create work that Vladimir Tatin coined, “real object in real space,” exploring the spaces in between our existence. Her most recent art is published in Fare/Luce: Shedding Light, edited by Beppe Finessi, Corraini Edizioni (2017).

Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and Director of Fellowships for the Office of the Provost. Dr. Reyes teaches and conducts research on Latin American, Puerto Rican, and US Latinx literature and culture. He is the author of Humor and the Eccentric Text in Puerto Rican Literature (University Press of Florida, 2005) and is currently working on a new project, Embodied Economies: Diaspora and Transcultural Capital in Hispanic Caribbean Fiction and Theater, which examines upward mobility and the material and bodily practices that emerge as part of the diasporic experience.

Professor and Chair of African and African American Studies and Affiliate in the Anthropology Department. Dr. Shipley’s work explores the links between aesthetics and politics by focusing on performances and popular cultures in the midst of changing economic regimes and forms of sovereignty. He is author of Living the Hiplife: Celebrity and Entrepreneurship in Ghanaian Popular Music and Trickster Theatre: The Poetics of Freedom in Urban Africa. Currently, he is working on a book on political aesthetics and another on the relationship between parody and violence, as well as project on a film on world champion female boxers.

Associate Professor of History and Co-Founder of Freedom University (Georgia). Dr. Voekel’s work centers on the history of colonial and modern Latin America, capitalism in the Americas, and racial and gender configurations in empire building and decolonization. She is the author of Alone Before God: The Religious Origins of Modernity in Mexico, and is working on her second book project, For God and Liberty: Catholicism and Democracy in the Atlantic World in the Age of Revolution.