People

Lara Cahill-Booth is an associate professor in the English and Communications Department at MDC Kendall, where she teaches World Literature, American Literatures, Creative Writing and Composition. She earned a PhD in Caribbean Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Miami. Her interest in human geography, performativity, and the poetics of place runs through her scholarly publications, digital projects, zine-making, and inquiry-based teaching. She is the creator|facilitator of the digital writing archive Everything Speaks To Me. Her scholarship on Caribbean literature and performing arts has been published in TDR: The Drama Review, e-misférica, and Journal of Postcolonial Literature. 

Phillip M. Carter (Ph.D., Duke University, 2009) is an associate professor of English and linguistics in the Department of English and director of the Center for the Humanities in an Urban Environment at FIU. He works interdisciplinary, moving between quantitative and qualitative approaches to sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, critical discourse analysis, ethnography, and critical theory. His scholarship addresses a range of issues of contemporary concern, including the relationship between social formations and linguistic variation, Spanish language change in the U.S., maintenance and shift of Spanish in the U.S., new dialect formation, and popular discourses about language. Carter’s current research projects interrogate the dialectic between national narratives about immigration and the circumstanced individual.

David Y. Chang, MFA, a renowned artist and award-winning professor, is graduate director and professor, painting, drawing and visual arts education. Chang has been teaching visual arts education theories and practices, classical drawing, and painting, as well as visual analysis for more than three decades. He is the founding director of FIU’s Academy of Portrait and Figurative Art, recognized as one of the top 30 art academies/institutions in the nation.  

Katie L. Coldiron is the Digital Archivist of the Wolfsonian Public Humanities Lab at Florida International University. She holds an M.S. in Information Studies from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.A. in Latin American Studies from the University of Florida. Her research and professional interests include Latin America and the Caribbean (with emphasis on Cuba and Colombia), South Florida, digital humanities, public-facing scholarship, and postcustodial partnerships. She will also be a doctoral student at FIU’s Department of History beginning Fall 2022.

Amaris R. Cruz-Guerrero is currently an Education Specialist at the Frost Art Museum. She graduated from FIU in 2020 with a degree in art and minors in art history and religious studies. Cruz-Guerrero is also a practicing multidisciplinary artist in Miami.

Amy Durant is a freelance graphic designer and artist currently residing in Miami. While studying at Miami Dade College, she participated in the juried art show “Quest for Peace,” and was featured in MDC’s art and literature magazine “Miambiance.” Durant participated in many design projects during her studies and after graduating from Florida International University. Her work has been featured in magazines and books, and she has also contributed designs for the non-profit Baptist Health. She earned an associate degree in graphic design from Miami Dade College and a BFA in digital arts, with a focus on graphic design, and a minor in art history from FIU.

Eric M. Feldman leads The Talent Lab, which trains the FIU community on the workings of the federal government and policymaking. The Fly-In Seminars, internships, and the 'Impact Series' of events he programs focus on the skills of communication, emerging technology, and global learning, which are essential to career success in Washington, D.C.   For eight years prior to this, Eric managed the signature student programs associated with FIU’s Global Learning for Global Citizenship initiative, including the Global Learning Medallion, Tuesday Times Roundtable, and Peace Corps Prep. 

Rebecca Friedman is the founding director of the Wolfsonian Public Humanities Lab and a professor in the Department of History. She is a specialist on the history and culture of modern Russia. Her monograph Modernity, Domesticity and Temporality in Modern Russia: Time at Home was published with Bloomsbury in August 2020. She is also author of “Masculinity, Autocracy and the Russian University, 1804-1863” and “Russian Masculinities in History and Culture and European Identity and Culture.” Friedman has been a leader at FIU in a number of capacities. She served as the director of the European Union Center of Excellence/European and Eurasian Studies and now serves as a faculty fellow in the provost’s office. In 2019, she was named founding director of the Wolfsonian Public Humanities Lab, FIU's hub for the humanities and one of 12 Emerging/Preeminent Programs.  

Amy Galpin is the chief curator of the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum. She previously served as the curator of the Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College and the associate curator, Art of the Americas, at the San Diego Museum of Art. Her exhibitions include “Alfredo Ramos Martinez: Picturing Mexico” at the Pasadena Museum of Art in California and “Translation Revolution: U.S. Artists Interpret Mexica Muralism” at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago. In 2010, she worked with the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the Timken Museum of Art, and the San Diego Museum of Art on an exhibition and publication titled “Behold, America! Art of the United States from Three San Diego Museums.” At both the Frost and at the Cornell, Galpin curated numerous group exhibitions of contemporary art including “Displacement: Symbols and Journeys, Cut: Abstraction in the U.S. from the 1970s to the Present” and solo projects with Patrick Martinez, Liu Shiyuan, and Jess T. Dugan, among others.

Michelle Grant-Murray is a choreographer, writer, performer, founder and artistic director of Olujimi Dance Collective and the Black Artist Talk, and co-founder of the Florida Black Dance Artists Organization and the Woodshed Dance Online Dance Platform. Michelle is an associate professor and coordinator of dance at Miami Dade College Kendall Campus. She serves as a council member with Miami Dade College Earth Ethics Institute, is a 2020-21 artist in residence with the Miami Dade College Live Arts Lab Alliance and the Deering Estates Artist Residency program. She holds a Bachelor of Science in dance education from Jacksonville University, a Master of Arts in cultural studies from FIU and an M.F.A. from Jacksonville University. 

As the Director of the Digital Writing Studio, Christine Gregory helps support faculty in planning and designing digital writing assignments. She has been teaching in FIU’s Writing Program since she was a graduate Linguistics student in 2009, and has been a full-time instructor since 2011. She teaches various digital projects in my Writing/Rhetoric and Linguistics courses — e-portfolios, video interviews, blogs – where she emphasizes rhetorically-minded design that allows students to critically examine the genre, media, and audience for their projects.

Glenn Hutchinson is director of the Center for Excellence in Writing and an associate professor of English at FIU. Dr. Hutchinson holds a PhD in rhetoric and composition from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. He is author of Writing Accomplices with Student Immigrant Rights Organizers (NCTE 2021). Dr. Hutchinson is currently co-editing a book about conversations between writing centers in Latin America and the United States. He also writes plays and acts.

Jairo R. Ledesma  is an assistant professor of history and sociology at Miami Dade College’s Homestead campus. For more than 20 years, he has worked at private and public institutions in different higher education roles, including student counselor, career counselor, academic advisor, grant director, and adjunct instructor. Ledesma holds a Bachelor of Science in communications and a Master of Arts in sociology from St. John’s University in New York City. He also has a Master of Arts in history and from Florida International University. He is a Ph.D. student in the history department at FIU and the 2022 recipient of Miami Dade College's Charles A. and Carrie Mastronardi Endowed Teaching Chair.  

Francis Xavier Luca has been working in The Wolfsonian Library for more than thirty years and serves as Chief Librarian. He has also been teaching as an Adjunct Professor in the Department of History at Florida International University for more than fifteen years, regularly offering a film and history course exploring the relationship between Hollywood, popular culture, and historical reality. He earned his Ph.D. in Ethnohistory of Colonial Latin America at FIU.

As Chief Librarian at The Wolfsonian–FIU, Dr. Luca has served as the lead curator of numerous museum exhibitions and installations, including most recently Art for Justice (2020/21) and Radicals and Reactionaries: Extremism in America (2020). Dr. Luca coauthored two essays on U.S.-Cuba tourism and cultural exchange in Promising Paradise: Cuban Allure, American Seduction (2019). He also served as assistant to the editor for the Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts during the publication of the Cuba Theme issue (1996). 

Ana M. Luszczynska (Ph.D., SUNY Buffalo, Comparative Literature) is an associate professor in the Department of English and dean of the School of Environment, Arts and Society at FIU. She is the author of “The Ethics of Community” (2011) as well as numerous scholarly articles devoted to contemporary U.S. Latinx literature and continental philosophy. From 2016–2019 she served as coordinator for the Mellon-funded HSI Pathways to the Professoriate Program, a student mentoring initiative designed to shepherd humanities majors successfully through the Ph.D. application process and into the professoriate. Since 2019 she has been a mentor for HSI Pathways as well as a faculty lead for the Mellon-funded Humanities Edge Program. 

Silvia Márquez Pease is a strategic creative, theorist, educator, and an advocate for the arts' potential to affect positive social change. Pease teaches research-service courses in art & design for social change at Florida International University, where she leads the graphic design effort and founded Designischange.org, a research service course initiative, connecting students with non-profit organizations through design. 

Silvia is a Fellow of the Institute of Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts (IDSVA,) and a PhD candidate in Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Art Theory (WHERE?). Her research focuses on the intersection between art, politics, and gender in Latin America. Pease studied poster and typography design with Swiss Bauhaus designers at Schule für Gestaltung in Basel. She received an M.F.A. in multimedia design, and a B.F.A. in Design, both from the University of Miami.

Enrique Rosell is the Program Manager at the Wolfsonian Public Humanities Lab (WPHL) at FIU. He works hand-in-hand with the WPHL’s Digital Archivist, Katie Coldiron, through the Community Data Curation grant funded by the Mellon Foundation. This grant connects FIU with eight cultural institutions around the Miami area and supports them by helping them digitize their archive, conduct oral histories, and create new public programming initiatives. Enrique leads the WPHL’s audio/visual production and has a wide variety of experience with podcast production and oral-history recording within different communities in Miami. He is also a photographer and musician, currently working with Carl Just as an Iris Photo Collective Fellow through the Haitian Cultural Arts Alliance and preforming locally with the indie-folk band stillblue.

Dan Royles is an assistant professor of history at FIU, where he teaches courses on United States, African American, LGBTQ, oral, and public history. His first book, “To Make the Wounded Whole: The African American Struggle against HIV/AIDS”, was published in 2020 by UNC Press. 

Taurie Gittings Wheeler is an associate professor of arts and letters at Miami Dade College. She is an artisan, performer, and educator, with over 20 years of experience. A Miami native with family roots from Jamaica and Georgia, she is a graduate of New World School of the Arts, where she studied Theatre. She holds a Master of Science degree with a focus on Interdisciplinary Arts and a Master of Humanities degree in Art & Visual Media. Taurie teaches Humanities, Cinema, Art, and Theatre Appreciation. She is passionate about global education and has led four summer study abroad trips (England, France, Italy, and Greece). Over the years she has been very involved at MDC, serving on various campus committees, and was chair of college-wide College Academic and Student Support Council (CASSC).

Marcia Diaz completed her undergraduate degree at Rhode Island College in 2013, focusing on justice studies, psychology, and sociology. She continued her academic career at FIU where she received a master’s degree in criminal justice in 2014 and is currently completing a doctoral degree in international Crime and Justice. Her experience with college students began in 2013 when she started working as a teaching assistant for the criminology and criminal justice department at FIU. Her career as an academic advisor began in 2017 when she became an advisor and program coordinator for Miami Dade College’s engineering and technology department. She transitioned to FIU as a humanities bridge advisor in 2018 and has been a part of the Humanities Edge team for the past three years. 

Molly Castro is the digital humanities librarian at FIU. Previously, she worked in digital collections for the Wisconsin Historical Society and the University of Wisconsin. Her research interests include digital literacy and text and data mining for the humanities. She is passionate about teaching and learning, digital scholarship, and open and equitable access to information. 

Zhaohui Jennifer Fu is the Interim Dean of Libraries at Florida International University. Before assuming her role as Dean, Jennifer Fu served as the founding Director of the Libraries Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Center, which also oversees the University’s Digital Collection Center. She is an affiliated professor for the FIU Department of Earth and Environment and founding Director for the Graduate Certificate Program in GIS. She is an invited fellow of FIU Extreme Event Institute, a preeminent center. Under her leadership, FIU Libraries GIS Center established state-of-the-art library-based GIS Laboratories, serving FIU students and faculty in learning, teaching, and research using geo-spatial data and technology.

Althea (Vicki) Silvera is the department head of Special Collections in the Green Library at FIU. She has been at FIU for more than 25 years. She previously served as university archivist, FIU's records management liaison officer, and curator for the Gallery at Green Library. She came to FIU in 1987 from Occidental College in California. Silvera has also worked with the Archives of Jamaica, the National Library of Jamaica, and NHPRC's Garvey Papers Project (UCLA). She received her library degree from the University of Western Ontario. During her tenure as head of Special Collections, the department has received donations of more than $5 million.  

BA, art history, fine arts minor; Wolfsonian-FIU, registration intern, fall 2021; Wolfsonian-FIU, curatorial intern, spring 2022; PAMM, curatorial intern, summer 2022; co-founder and editor, Sleepwalking 

BA, history; Research Fellow with Dr. Daniel Royles, spring 2022

BA in Philosophy; FIUURJ Editorial Intern

BA, Philosophy 
Research Fellow with Dr. Glenn Hutchinson, spring 2022

BA, English, creative writing track
Humanities Edge 2021 cohort member; co-founder and editor, Sleepwalking

BA, English literature and anthropology; Wolfsonian-FIU, library intern, fall 2021; 
Digital Research Fellow, Wolfsonian Public Humanities Lab, spring 2022

BA, English, writing and rhetoric track

BA Art History track with an Art minor

BA English Major

 BA, English, writing and rhetoric track