Portfolios

A.T. Miller

A.T. grew up in a large, active, musical, creative, overeducated, and socially-engaged family with many siblings and cousins found on the shores of two–one very large, and one very small–Midwestern U.S. lakes in the Chicago area. Museums and libraries, outdoor adventures, along with concerts and plays both on stage and in the audience, were a constant part of his childhood. His father’s family has a long Quaker heritage to which A.T. maintains a commitment, serving as an adult in theRead more

About

In the “Scholar as Human” project, a group of Cornell University faculty, staff, and graduate students met once per week for an entire year to explore the intersections of their academic interests and research projects with their private lives and identities. We know that our personal histories drive and shape our pursuits, and we are aware of the sacrifice involved in stripping our scholarship of those personal dimensions, but the academy has only so much tolerance for “other” voices, forRead more

Anna Sims Bartel

Once described as “part activist, part administrator, and part academic,” Anna Sims Bartel earned her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Cornell University, where she recently returned to work in the Office of Engagement Initiatives, part of Engaged Cornell. Anna’s background includes faculty work, consulting, and public humanities initiatives as well the development of community-engagement centers at several higher ed institutions in cold, white places (upstate New York, Maine, and Iowa). Currently, she serves as Associate Director for Community-Engaged Curricula and Practice, where she works onRead more

Bobby J. Smith II

Bobby J. Smith II is the great-grandson of sharecroppers in Pitt County, North Carolina and grew up listening to incredible stories about the importance of hard work, determination, and advancement. His family cultivated land that produced tobacco, cotton, potatoes, onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, and corn—yet their profit margin only yielded enough income to keep them comfortable, secure, and self-assured in a time when black farmers and sharecroppers could not guarantee their future from season to season. Nonetheless, their hardy spirit wasRead more

Caitlin Kane

My work, as both a theater artist and a scholar is, at its very core, the product of a collective effort. I could not be here without the support and mentorship of countless individuals. This feels particularly important to note in the context of this project because my essay, “Performing the Past/Rehearsing the Future,” is both the product of and an examination of a deeply collaborative approach to documentary theater and public scholarship. In lieu of a more traditional bio,Read more

Christine Henseler

Christine wanted to be an artist. Every moment of her childhood was spent drawing, painting, making. She won prizes for the posters she made in high school; she painted theatre sets. She still gets a high when walking into an Art building. And with several Engineers in her family, she loves to use her hands to build, from decks to transdisciplinary programs. So, why did she become a professor of Spanish Literature? Because she had teachers in this field whoRead more

Debra A. Castillo

Debra comes from a ninth generation, family-operated, small dairy farm in Wisconsin. From a very young age she was attracted to arts and culture: she wrote her first novel, Brownie, The Horse that Talks (co-illustrated by younger siblings), along with other short novels and memoirs beginning at age seven; her magnum opus, Never Say Dull, based on stories she told her siblings during barn chores and before bed, was written between the sixth and eighth grades. She scripted plays forRead more

Edward Eugene Baptist

I focus on the history of the 19th-century United States, and in particular on the history of the enslavement of African Americans in the South. The expansion of slavery in the United States between the writing of the Constitution in 1787 and the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 had enormous consequences for all Americans. Indeed, the expansion shaped many elements of the modern world that we now live in, both inside and outside the borders of the UnitedRead more

Ella Maria Diaz

Ella Diaz is from Northern California and emphasizes that by “northern,” she does not mean the San Francisco Bay Area. Much like Central New Yorkers, Northern Californians are particular about their region and its distance from major cities. Northern California encompasses the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains that move across the northeast corner of California into Nevada, the ocean towns of the pacific west coast, and the bountiful Sacramento Valley where several rivers meet, producing abundant and diverse eco-systems.Read more

Gerald Torres

Gerald Torres is a leading figure in critical race theory, environmental law and federal Indian Law. He previously served as the Bryant Smith Chair in Law at the University of Texas School of Law and taught at The University of Minnesota Law School, where he served as Associate Dean. He is also a former president of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS). Torres has served as deputy assistant attorney general for the Environment and Natural Resources Division of theRead more

José Ragas

Professor Ragas investigates the emergence of the global biometric system in post-colonial societies and the current implementation of ID cards as a mechanism designed to grant citizenship and curb the legacy of gender, age, and racial discrimination imposed by similar technologies in the past. In his dissertation he examined the genealogy of the identification system in post-colonial Peru, arguing that the implementation of certain techniques and devices (fingerprints, mug shots, and identity cards) reinforced archaic social structures that enabled policyRead more

Matt Velasco

Matt was born and raised in southern California, the son of a first-generation Mexican father and immigrant Cuban mother. In high school, Matt dabbled in TV and film production. He even planned to go to film school; but his acceptance into Stanford University led to other paths. As a sophomore, he took courses in archaeology and human osteology, the scientific study of bones. During a lecture in Introduction to Archaeology, his professor showed the class an animated 3D model ofRead more

Riché Richardson

Riché Richardson was born and raised primarily by her mother Joanne Richardson and grandparents Joe and Emma Lou Jenkins Richardson in Montgomery, Alabama, the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement. She was baptized at Maggie Street Baptist Church and attended St. John the Baptist Catholic School and St. Jude Educational Institute, and grew up with a love for collecting dolls, working on crafts and writing poetry. Growing up, she was also a student leader and honor student very active inRead more

Sara Warner

Sara studies the art of activism. She looks at the ways political actors use performance in programs for social justice and the ways stage actors use the theater as a laboratory for reimagining notions of community, citizenship, power, and responsibility. As an associate professor in the Department of Performing & Media Arts, Sara’s research takes many forms, from collaborating with incarcerated women to researching Suffragette pageants. She co-produces a series of “patriot acts,” political performances on national holidays, with theRead more

Scott Peters

The youngest child of working class, depression-era parents, Scott Peters grew up in a small town nestled in the corn and soybean deserts of the Midwest. He fell in love with stories and storytelling as a child. And music, which he pursued first with trumpet, baritone and tuba, and then with a Fender Stratocaster. After graduating from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he recorded his first album with his band, Crayon Rubbings, at a recording studio in a convertedRead more

Shawn McDaniel

The day after Shawn was born, his crib was placed in the Queen’s Kitchen, his grandparent’s diner in rural Oklahoma where he would spend most of his early life. Alongside his mother, he grew up serving coffee and chicken fried steaks to wheat farmers, cattle ranchers, and oil field workers. Shawn left the southern plains and made his way to Nova Scotia, where he pursued a degree in Celtic Studies and became a fluent speaker, singer, and folklorist of ScottishRead more

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