Faculty Fellows
We are pleased to announce our 2025-2026 cohort of CAH Faculty Fellows.
Supurna Dasgupta, "Ordinary Utopias: Gender and Joy in South Asian Media"
This project focuses on contemplating the joyful possibilities surrounding everyday gendered living in South Asian cities. I will be developing an article titled “Ordinary Utopias: Gendered Mobility in All We Imagine as Light,” in which I analyse this 2024 film to show how movement and stasis animate the lives of migrant women workers in the Mumbai metropolitan area. Concurrently, I will be hosting film screenings and discussions on this thematic framework for the larger SCU community including students and staff. Finally, I will be working with the SCU library to set up some book recommendations on the theme to increase visibility of contemporary South Asian life and its gendered norms.
Benjamin Gillespie, “Archiving Queer Performance: Joyful Rebellion and Legacy in the Later Work of Split Britches”
This fellowship will support the completion and release of Split Britches: Fifty Years On (University of Michigan Press, 2027). This is the first volume to document the later work and legacy of the groundbreaking lesbian-feminist theatre troupe Split Britches founded in New York in 1980 by Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver. Through archival research, critical essays, interviews, and a digital performance companion, the project examines how Split Britches' performances use lesbian desire, humor, and theatrical experimentation to challenge the cultural erasure of queer histories, aging bodies, and marginalized identities. The project will culminate in an artistic residency on campus featuring a performance by Shaw and Weaver along with public workshops and conversations that engage the SCU community in questions of joy and resistance in and as performance.
Meg Eppel Gudgeirsson, "Expecting Great Things: The Fight against Racial Caste at the Interracial Berea Literary Institution, 1857-1904”
"Expecting Great Things: The Fight against Racial Caste at the Interracial Berea Literary Institution, 1857-1904” centers on the abolitionist and anti-caste community in the slave state of Kentucky that sought to challenge both slavery and racism through education and religion. Through the founding of an interracial school, which later became Berea College, the community’s leaders sought to use education to create a generation of children who would embrace racial equality. The anticipated outcome of this project is a published manuscript and a corresponding digital exhibition.
Maria Judnick
Since 1982, Banned Books Week in the United States has highlighted our freedom to read while drawing attention to those authors whose books have been challenged or banned. This project will celebrate the ways in which members of our SCU community can joyfully (re)connect with these banned works and support efforts to keep reading them. Along with a series of campus events and creative workshops, I hope to display art and reflections created by our community related to banned books.
An exciting part of these projects is how they will engage with students, faculty, and community partners. Stay tuned for more details about these collaborations.
Past Faculty Fellows
2025 Fellows
2025-26 Faculty Fellows
Jeannette Alden Estruth, History: “The Galactic Commons: Reimagining Interplanetary Commons from the Cold War to the Present”
Michael Kevane, Economics: “Voices of Tomorrow: Science Fiction Stories by Students, for Readers in Ghana and Burkina Faso, Illustrated by Africa-Based Artists”
Daniel Summerhill, English: "Building a Language, Building a World"
2024 Fellows
2024-25 Faculty Fellows
Justin Clardy, Philosophy: "Civic Indifference and Black Suffering"
Heather Clydesdale, Art and Art History: “Building Public Character in Taiwan”
Jess Eastburn, Art and Art History: “Wayfinding”
Miah Jeffra, English: “Summer of the Locusts”
2023 Fellows
2023-24 Faculty Fellows
Jimia Boutouba, Modern Languages and Literatures: “ War, Race and Sexual Politics in French Indochina”
Hsin-I Cheng, Communication: “ Bridging the Digital and Physical Spaces: Furthering Black and Asian Solidarity”
Elizabeth Drescher, Religious Studies: “Seeing Spirits of Silicon Valley in Place: Mural Art as Memory, Identity, Resistance, Solidarity, and Transformation in San José, CA”
Christina Zanfagna, Music: “Black-Italian Crossroads: Racial Tensions, Social Solidarities, and Sonic Affinities”
2022 Fellows
2022-23 Faculty Fellows
Sonia Gomez, History: "A Gendered Diaspora: Intimacy and Empire in the Making of Japanese America, 1908-1952"
Tony Hazard, Ethnic Studies: "Afro-Indigeneity, Family Remembrance, and The Narragansett of Rhode Island"
Amy Lueck, English: "Indigenous Remembrance of the Winchester Mystery House"
Lee Panich, Anthropology: "Insurgent California: Native Resistance and the Collapse of the Missions"
Mukta Sharangpani, Women's and Gender Studies: "Aging Across Borders: Towards an Ethnography of Loss and Hope"
2021 Fellows
2021-22 Faculty Fellows
Chris Bacon, Environmental Studies and Sciences: “Framing Food Justice: Diverse Perspectives towards Building Back Post-COVID Food Systems with Equity and Resilience.”
Sonia Gomez, History: “A Gendered Diaspora: Intimacy and Empire in the Making of Japanese America, 1908-1952.”
Maggie Levantovskaya, English: “Writing Illness and Disability.”
Juan Velasco, English: “A Film Treatment/Screenplay Based on Salaria Kea’s Biography.”
2020 Fellows
2020-21 Faculty Fellows
The Center for the Arts and Humanities announces its 2020 Faculty Fellows. This year the Center has encouraged Fellows to explore how they might collaborate on similarly themed projects. More information on those projects and how they will eventually be shared with the compus and community will be forthcoming as circumstances permit. The Fellows will also be working with Student Fellows to be named later.
Michelle Mueller, Religious Studies: Adam the Father, Eve the Mother: The Adam-God Doctrine & 'Heavenly Parents' in Mormonism
Robin Tremblay-McGaw, English (in collaboration with Megan Nicely, Performing Arts, University of San Francisco): The Art of Reflection, Resistance, and Dissensus
Ryan Carrington, Art and Art History: Contradictions-Solo Exhibition at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, 11/28/20-1/10/21
Roya Ebtehaj, Art and Art History: In-between
Allia Ida Griffin, Ethnic Studies: The Afterlife of Loss: On Writing from the Iranian Diaspora
Danielle Morgan, English: 'A Bogeyman's Family': The Black Uncanny in the 21st century
Tricia Creason-Valencia and Emily Reese, Communication: A Short Film: ¡Aguas!
2019 Fellows
2019-20 Faculty Fellows
Renee Billingslea, Art and Art History: Ten Japanese Concentration Camps.
Katharine Heintz, Communication: Saint Clare School media project
Jackie Hendricks, English, Theresa Conefrey, English, Maura Tarnoff, English,: A Humanities Annotation App
Mathew Kroot: Anthropology, Treasures of the Old Quad: Tangible and intangible heritage in a Santa Clara neighborhood
Kristin Kusanovich, Theater and Dance and Child Studies: Sustainability and Environmental Justice project
Roberto Mata, Religious Studies: Latinx Religious Art & The Degentrification of Aesthetics in San Jose
Danielle Morgan, English: Frank Sinatra Fellow
Nico Opper, Communication and Sonja Mackenzie, Public Health, Gender Justice.
David Popalisky Theater and Dance: Water
Enrique Pulmar, Sociology
Julia A. Scott, Neuroscience: Controlling your reality: Transforming ancient meditative practices into a virtual reality experience
2018 Fellows
2018 Frank Sinatra Faculty Fellow
Danielle Morgan, Assistant Professor of English
Danielle Morgan specializes in African American literature in the twentieth and twenty-first century. She is particularly interested in the ways that literature, popular culture, and humor shape identity formation. Her writing has been published on Racialicious, in Post-Soul Satire: Black Identity after Civil Rights, Humanities, and is forthcoming in Afterlife in the African Diaspora and Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly. She has recently completed a manuscript entitled Just Kidding: African American Satire, Selfhood, and the 21st Century.
2018 Faculty Fellows
Renee Billingslea, Lecturer, Art and Art History Department
Project: Ten Japanese Internment Camps
This project will create a “comprehensive picture of this part of American and California history, bringing together imagery of the campsites today, historical imagery, and stories of the people who were imprisoned in each camp, demonstrating the depth and magnitude of Order 9066.
Renee Billingslea received her MFA in Photography from San Jose State University and teaches in the Department of Art and Art History at Santa Clara University. Her Nationally known installation, The Fabric of Race: Racial Violence and Lynching was recently on exhibit at the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. Currently, Billingslea is creating a photographic installation, entitled Ten Internment Camps that address the unjust incarceration of Japanese Citizen living in the United States during WWII. The installation will include her imagery of each of the ten Interment Camp sites, as well as historical photographs helping to tell a complete story of this part of American history, and its impact on racism and immigration issues today.
Blake de Maria, Harold and Edythe Toso Professor, Art and Art History Department
Project: The Built Environment: Architectural History in the Digital Age
Utilizing her training as an architectural historian, Blake de Maria plans to develop a technology-based course and digital exhibition entitled "The Built Environment: Architectural History in the Digital Age." The course will focus on the historical development of three categories of public spaces – educational, commercial, and industrial – with a specific emphasis on structures on the Santa Clara campus and in Silicon Valley. Students will create a digital exhibition showcasing architectural developments on campus as well as those built at neighboring institutions, including Apple, Google, and Adobe. The exhibition will be accompanied by a GuidiGo app that will offer additional information concerning the exhibition, as well as materials concerning spaces of architectural interest in Silicon Valley.
Dr. de Maria received her undergraduate degree from UCLA, where she specialized in Islamic Art, and then attended Princeton University where she continued her focus on the early modern Mediterranean. Her publications include the books, Becoming Venetian: Immigrants and the Arts in Early Modern Venice (Yale 2010) and Reflections on Renaissance Venice: Essays in Honor of Patricia Fortini Brown - which was awarded the Gladys Krieble Delmas Award by the Renaissance Society of America as well as essays on The Oracles of Leo the Wise and the material culture of dining in early modern Venice. She is currently completing the manuscript, "Facets of Splendour: Gemstones and Jewellery in the Republic of Venice." In this study, she explores the mining, trade, and use of precious stones in a variety of venues, including the Treasury of San Marco in Venice.
Angela Holzmeister, Lecturer, Classics Department
Project: Interdisciplinary Conversations on Ancient Art in the Modern World
This project involves conversations between academics and local museum curators, disseminated via podcasts. The goal is to explore “the ethics of finding and acquiring objects, the presentation of artifacts, and the history of collections, as well as issues of identity, nationalism, and repatriation”.
Angela Holzmeister is Lecturer in the Classics Department, where she teaches Ancient Greek and Latin at all levels, as well as courses on mythology, friendship, and ethics. Her research focuses on Greek Imperial literature. She is also co-organizer of the upcoming SCU event "The Ethics of Collecting Art" (May 11, 2018), which is supported through a Hackworth Grant.
2017 Fellows
2017 Faculty Fellows
- Elizabeth Drescher, Religious Studies: Living Religions Collaborative Multimedia Website Development
- Teresia Hinga, Religious Studies: Religion and The Arts in (global) Silicon Valley: Building Resilience and Hope Through (Sacred) Song, Dance and Story Among (The African) Diaspora(s)
- Kristin Kusanovich, Theater and Dance: Art and Democracy
- Amy Lueck, English: Extending Digital Archival Research on our Campus
- Takeshi Moro, Art and Art History: Digital Storytelling through Virtual Reality Video Art